I’m impressed. I’ve got a inkjet that Is about 18 years old. I have to occasionally wipe off the print head, but otherwise has never needed repairs. The ender 3 we have has needed replacement parts from heads to hot ends and feeders, and every print requires specific to it setting. I can print to my hp using generic drivers without a second thought. 3d printers are far from that level of ease of use/ reliability. I’m glad your stuff worked, but that’s the minority.

This is like common practice here… talk about something. But don’t actually link or post it

This isn’t your situation, but this is how we did it while living very paycheck to paycheck. Plan and budget. We had a plan for everything. It hurt, but we planned our store trips, our meals were the sales and manager specials. We knew how much gas we were buying and which kid had birthdays and gifts to buy for, and we shopped ebay gift cards and scrapped by. We also made hard decisions, and it sucked. We cut cable, and other non essentials, we almost never went out. We were able to plan a path out, we refinanced our house, by taking a title loan on my car. We consolidated our cc debt.

What I’m trying to say is, you find a way. Maybe you can work towards a promotion, or a new career. Or find a different living situation which would be cheaper to help sort it out. Try not to lose hope, try to find a path to prosper. I’m pulling for you.

It’s possible that we could reduce regular use, yet allow those with accibility issues to continue to use the alternative. This can work in tandem to help address the real problem accumulation of single use plastics. Not using a straw is a valid solution for the majority of use cases.