I don't know. Regardless of what people say about "the simple life" (hopefully not including Paris Hilton or Nicole Richie {g}), I don't necessarily think doing everything by hand would BE all that simple. It's one thing to grow your own food to save some money and eat fresher stuff (and that's something I might want to do someday, if I ever have the resources), but quite another if you're going to starve if your vegetable garden doesn't work out. I don't think I could imagine living without electricity (not to mention indoor plumbing, the importance of which is too often understated). Sure, plenty of people have done it, but most of them never knew anything else, you know?

I do have to agree about packaging, though. The kind that protects things from getting broken or bruised is fine, but there's way too much of it on pretty much anything you get at the store. And store employees practically force excess bags on you. ("Are you sure you don't need a bag for this one item that's just as easy to carry without one?") When I worked as a bagger at the grocery store, some people would bring their own cloth bags, which I thought was pretty cool. And they'd hold a surprising amount, albeit rarely everything the person was buying. But I just know that, if I had bags like that, I'd always forget to bring them to the store. {g}

And how much stuff do people just THROW AWAY when it can be repaired or even reused as something else?

Well, if you want to save money, sometimes it can cost even more to get something repaired than to just get a new one.