Welcome to Upcycle Extreme!

We are thrilled that you stopped by Upcycle Extreme, a blog dedicated to Upcycling items and recycling used pieces to something more useful or more beautiful and to saving money without sacrificing too much!


We are Tracey and Drew, husband and wife team on a mission.  We are both working parents in the suburbs of Maryland, smack dab between Baltimore and DC.  We have a beautiful little girl; she is 3 years old and she is our little princess.  A lot of our mission comes from what we want for her.


Our mission is simple: 
Don’t buy anything new in 2012!  (maybe NOT so simple!)


Why?  You ask…


The answer is three fold.

1.       To save money.  – Like many other families right now, times are tough.  We want to avoid times getting even tougher.

2.      To Upcycle and Recycle – We have a family and we don’t like the idea of perfectly good items being thrown in landfills.  We’d like to do our little part for the environment.  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

3.      Because it’s Fun!  We like the satisfaction of taking something free, used, or unappealing and turning it into something beautiful, decorative, or useful.

Our Rules:

1.      We will not buy anything new for ourselves in 2012.

2.      We will shop at thrift stores or try to find items for free for our projects.

3.      We will fulfill our need for décor changes and organizing by upcycling, repurposing, or somehow utilizing used items. 

Caveats:

1.      We need to keep our day jobs!  So if we need something for work, we will buy it. 

2.      We can’t imagine a year of not buying anything for our little princess.  So, she doesn’t count.  Although, we will continue to look for used items for her too when she needs something.  Since she was just spoiled to the tenth degree over Christmas and her birthday, which is just before Christmas, she shouldn’t need anything for a long while.

3.      We will need to buy replacements.  For instance, if our toaster breaks for the 4^th time, I will have to buy a new toaster if I can’t find an acceptable used one.  It’s not always the best choice or even possible to buy used for certain things, but that is rare and we will buy used whenever possible.

4.      We will need to buy supplies for our projects.  Maybe a tool here and there but we will have to be very selective.

5.      Groceries, of course!

Even with these exceptions, if we can do this, we are AWESOME!  Don’t you agree?  And we will save bundles of money.


Thanks for stopping by!  Please check in again soon!