Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Reward! I wouldn’t exactly call myself “green,” not much of a tree hugger, and popular or not, I love my bottled water. However, there are a few things that just make sense to me, and one of them is consignment. Buying, selling and donating.

I have always recognized the ways it can be good for my family. It’s really a great way for us to save money on practically new clothes. We can buy gently used brand-name items that we could not have afforded new retail, and on the flip side, items that we bought and used very little or cared for during their use with our family, can be consigned and sold for some cash or donations.

All the really good basic reasons have always made sense. But there is more to the story. Do you realize the impact that buying consignment can have by simply keeping tons of packaging as well as perfectly good items out of our landfills? The packaging for new baby strollers, car seats, baby beds and toys is tremendous. It is bad enough to break it all down to get into the trash can for curbside pickup, but it has a massive impact on our landfills. Realizing the impact of that packaging alone for the items I have been buying, I was amazed and somewhat dismayed

My time is money. I have done my share of the garage sale circus and the one thing I am sure of, is that I have never really made enough money to pay for the pain and suffering I go through. Need I refresh your memory of the: borrowing of racks/tables from a distant cousin (hauling and returning it after that l-o-n-g weekend), cleaning out the garage to even start displaying the items, waking up the first morning to six cars in your driveway at 6 am (early investors!), getting haggled down to almost nothing for some wonderfully cared-for items that you had priced low to begin with, and ugh…on and on.

Consigning just makes sense, so buy, sell and donate through consignment. It is a shade of green that looks good on all of us.