Paying it Forward

I know that 90% of my blog is all about sales and making money but I wanted to talk for a bit about something else that I participate in. Have you seen the movie Pay it Forward? I'm sure you have but if for some reason you haven't I highly recommend you rent it and watch it, amazing movie! Its about a little boy who starts a phenomenon called Paying it Forward. When someone helps you or does a good deed for you, you turn around and do something good for 5 people. I try to live by this motto and help out my community where I can. I believe in good karma and lets face it we all need karma on our side!

I occasionally buy coffee for the person behind me in the Starbucks drive through and donate to charities that are important to me but I recently became a part of a new kind of group on Facebook called the Buy Nothing Project. This is a trend spreading nationwide and its all about gifting and not exchanging money. Its not just about getting rid of stuff either (although that has been nice!) its about creating a better community, meeting neighbors and giving & receiving. My group is in Kirkland, WA and I have come across some of the nicest people from it!

I'm not picking up things for resale, I'm only picking up things that we genuinely will use in our home and I'm gifting things we no longer use to people that will get use out of those items, its awesome! I've been slowly going through things that we don't use anymore and posting items here and there that people have come to pick up from me and in return I've received some wonderful gifts as well!

In fact, we were gifted this wonderful balance bike for our son from a fellow mom that we'd never met before yesterday. These bikes are not cheap brand new and I wasn't sure if he'd actually like it if we bought him one so when we went to pick this up yesterday I was shocked at the quality and the condition of this bike and Mason LOVES it! I intend to bake her some cookies here in the next couple of days as a thank you for this awesome toy that my kids are going to get lots of use out of the coming year!

There are several Buy Nothing Project groups in my area, I heard about it on another group that does exchange money and joined, but to find other groups all you have to do is search for "Buy Nothing + your town/city" there are probably 20+ neighborhood BN groups in the Seattle area and I know that there are groups popping up all over the country. If you are on Facebook, see if you can find a group in your area and do some gifting!

How else do you Pay it Forward in your community?!

 

 

P.S. I just have to mention something else I'm super excited about - We are officially diaper free in our house again! Mason has been potty training the last 3 weeks, I'm shocked at how fast he trained and is almost completely accident free. We did the potty training in a day method but with our own variation so it worked for our schedule. I was worried this was just going to be a first attempt and that we'd have to wait a little longer since he's a stubborn little guy but he caught on right away and is good to go! So long to high diaper prices and hunting for the best diaper deals every week!