Got too much stuff in your kitchen? Take a lesson from John Perry, whose kitchen houses a motley assortment of secondhand gadgets that would appear at first glance to have been a highly prescient strategy to combat today’s surging food prices. But in fact, his passion for secondhand quesadilla makers and cappuccino machines sprung not from a desire to save money, but rather to heal the planet.

 image at [http://corkymoo.com/ebsait/cappucino-machine_410.jpg]

Perry and a group of friends were bemoaning the efficacy of recycling over dinner one night a few years ago; by the third glass of wine, the group hatched the Compact, a 90-day challenge to eliminate their collective consumer consumption. Those 90 days have stretched into four-plus years, and the Compact (http://sfcompact.blogspot.com) now has more than 8,000 members who have pledged not to buy anything new, save for toothpaste, medicines, toilet paper and (thank goodness) underwear. Says Perry, “First we hit a nerve with people around sustainability, and then gained a second wave of relevance with the troubled economy.” He and his friends were slightly ahead of their time, predating such saving and sharing sites as We Commune (wecommune.com) and Shareable (shareable.net).

Perry’s gadget quest was initially motivated by packaging, namely a desire to decrease the amount of it. Then, he began an exercise of recording all the money he was spending: The big revelation was just how much was going toward his soy latte habit. So he bought a Krups cappuccino maker secondhand for $3. Soon after, because he had just read The Omnivore’s Dilemma (michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php) and wanted to purge high-fructose corn syrup from his family’s life, he bought a bread maker.

After those initial few purchases, Perry says that he was “off to the races.” He and his partner went on to acquire a pizza stone, a donut maker, a yogurt maker and other discarded food-fad appliances found at the local Goodwill or on Craigslist (craigslist.org). Before long, they discovered that they were able to make food for themselves and their two kids that had no packaging, was healthy and exempted them from escalating food prices.

Yogurt Maker

Apart from the impulse purchase of an escargot kit from the ’70s, Perry has no regrets. “These things all pay for themselves in the first week,” he says. “And it’s like a science fair project every day!”

I was so inspired by Perry that I wrote a piece about his money-saving and planet-saving ideas for a sustainable holiday last year. I haven’t purchased any new gadgets (iPhone excepted!), but I do insist on buying—not making—yogurt. My daughter consumes too much for any home machine to keep up with!

[Main Image: iphotostock.com]