You may call these items "used", "second-hand" or the current fav, "pre-owned", but it comes down to the same thing; buying used items instead of new, wherever you can, will save you a whole bunch of frijoles.
Now I realize that for some people there is a big "ewww" factor whenever they think of buying items used and that may be tough to overcome. However, you may just want to buy some items you need secondhand, it doesn't have to be everything you need. It's o.k. to stay within your comfort zone because a) as you practice this strategy, you may find your comfort zone expanding without any effort; b) everyone needs are different and won't be fulfilled by one shopping strategy anyway and c) whatever changes you make by buying used over new will save you money and keep an item out of the landfill.
I'm not a big fan of the buy a new Green product that has been made of sustainable materials by indigenous tribes in New Jersey. These products have their place in the decision making process, but I'd like to see the decision tree go something like this. I need a widget. Do I have an item around the house that can substitute or do the same job as said widget? No. Can I make a widget from items I have on hand? No. Can I purchase a few supplies to make widget? No. Can I buy widget from a yard sale, ebay, classified ad? No. Can I buy widget on sale, at a discount, with a coupon? No. Buy new Green widget.
A recent example of an alternative to buying new happened when our washer stopped working. Our washing machine stopped spinning during the spin cycle which left our clothes sopping wet and us having to wring them out by hand. I called a few repair people on Craigslist who did not show up. I fantasized briefly about the ease of walking into a Home Depot and slapping the HD card on the counter & barking out orders to "ship it to this address", but I curbed the impulse. The machine, after all, is only about 5 years old. I didn't pursue the repair services that didn't show up and started looking on CL, ebay and other online classifieds for a secondhand washer. I called on several that looked promising but turned out to be already sold. I ran into another repair service ad, called them and scheduled an appointment. When the repairman showed up, he found an easily fixable problem that cost $65 to repair. Woo hoo! The solution I chose worked out to be even cheaper than buying used and I didn't add a basically still functional machine to the world's junk heap.
There are many sources of buying used items, CL, ebay and yard sales are just a few, but one of my favorites, which you may like to investigate, are Police Auctions. What happens to items that are stolen, recovered by the police and the original owners can't be located? That's right, they go up for auction. A lot of police stations, no longer do their own but subcontract them out because they don't have the resources to put into what constitutes a whole 'nother business. If you want to find out what the police in your area do, just call your local station and ask about where they auction off the "unclaimed property" they've recovered. I hear that some people have seen ads for "police auctions" in newspapers, but I find that many of these ads are run by intermediate companies that are buying at police auctions and then reselling. You may want to start at the source yourself by calling your local station and going from there. You'll find that the items can be quite impressive; jewelery, electronics, including cameras, ipods, cell phones, PDAs, computer equipment, televisions and my personal favorite, bicycles. There are kids bicycles, racing bicycles and imported bikes. Since these auctions are not that well known, you could pick up a bike that originally sold for thousands for under $100.
Comfort challenge: If you're not a regular scrounger, try to buy one item used this week that you would have ordinarily bought new. If you are one of the Scrounging Regulars, please tell us in the comments about your greatest used find. Happy Scrounging!
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