A random assortment of frugal things.
- For the last four-plus years, we’ve been collecting water for our cooler from a local, freely accessible spring. The water is so good, and the price tag can’t be beat.
- We keep boxes from things like crackers and cereal and use them to collect our organic waste. They can go straight into the compost bin, which saves money on buying compostable bags. My parents help out and save boxes for us, too. I took this picture after Dad dropped off an empty Mini-Wheats box.
- When I go to my favourite local cafe, I always order tea in an extra-large mug. I pay the same price, but I get double the amount of water!
- We don’t drink a lot of refundable beverages, but I do enjoy sparkling water. We keep a separate bag for refundables and every few months take it to the recycling depot to get our money back. It doesn’t add up very quickly, but it takes seconds each week to separate eligible items and toss them into the bag.
- I made French toast recently. I save all the heels from bread, along with little bits of things like half a stale cookie or half a waffle. Everything gets chopped up and soaked in the eggs and milk anyway. Bonus points: it was a bitterly cold day. Once the French toast finished baking and the oven was off, I left the door ajar to let the ambient heat warm the kitchen.
- I make banana muffins almost every week—they’re a perennial favourite around here. Back in OCTOBER, we volunteered at a church event and there were several Ziploc bags full of bananas that weren’t going to be used. I brought one bag home, popped it in the freezer, and just last week finally finished using up those free bananas!
- We live close to a very small ski hill, and the annual passes are under $200 if you purchase them in March. Considering a full-day pass is $70, I don’t have to go many times before I’m essentially skiing for “free.”
Okay. Your turn.
- What frugal things have you done lately?
- What frugal habit did you learn from someone else that stuck?
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I’ve not been very frugal lately- a bunch of necessities needed right around the same time. I did use the buy $$$ save $10 options for pet supplies and for household stuff at Target. From reading the Frugal Girl, I’ve become much better about using leftovers and what I have on hand for meals.
The box trick for composting is very clever- it means you don’t have a container that can get smelly and constantly needs washing out.
Also, we keep the box in our freezer so it doesn’t go wet and soggy and there is no risk of the organic material rotting and attracting fruit flies!
I was in Florence this week so frugality basically went out the window! I walked all around the city rather than taking the bus. I pre-booked museum tickets which saved time, and printed them off which saved a lot of hassle in terms of trying to load them on my phone. I read a library book (it was a reread of One Italian Summer, which felt appropriate!) on the plane and got free bottles of water and chocolate from the airline. Past Me stocked up on the food for when I got back and, as I live right across the street from a shop, I was able to pick up a couple of things I’d run out of when I came home last night.
FLORENCE! I hope it was everything you hoped it would be and more. We were only there for a day, but walked everywhere—a very walkable place.
All the best with re-entry!
Love love love these kinds of posts. Thank you! So many good ideas, and I’m going to use my boxes the same way now – thank you!
Thanks! As I wrote to mbmom11, we also store the box (as it fills up) in our fridge freezer so it never smells/goes soggy and doesn’t lead to fruit flies gathering!
Nicely done! I especially love those small, repeatable habits that add up over time. Those ski passes are a perfect example!
I’m reading a book in French (a 1970s second-hand copy I got for 1 Euro). It’s a bit challenging, so I keep checking words. I thought about getting the English version, but it costs around CAD 20 and isn’t in the library. Instead, I’ve decided to stick with French and keep my phone handy to ask ChatGPT to translate tricky parts. Feels like a smarter way to learn!
Love your commitment to working through the book in its French translation! I bet you’re learning a lot, too, while saving money and stretching your brain.
-we needed new rear tires, and there is a place that has the best price around. Bonus is that they have a very fun toy store upstairs while you wait for your car to be done. The kids love browsing there and each brought some of their own money and picked something out.
-my parents are treating us and some of my siblings plus their families to an overnight at an indoor waterpark. My mom found a great deal online last month so I guess this is frugal for her haha. We will have a suite with a kitchen so we’re bringing food from home instead of paying $$$ at the resort restaurants
– I repurposed some leftovers that were near the end of their useful life for supper last night
-we keep feeding our chickens even though they are NOT producing any eggs right now. Womp womp. I’ll just consider this maintaining a purchase in hopes that it will pay off in the next month or two…
These are awesome, Julia. Thanks for sharing.
Fingers crossed that fresh eggs are in the near future 🙂
I’ve never been to an indoor waterpark; I bet my kids would lose their minds doing something like that.
I absolutely love leftovers. They’re delicious and it always feels so fiscally virtuous.
I love all of these! Wait- except for the tea one. Do you mean you’re getting the same amount of tea leaves, but with extra water? Doesn’t that make the tea kind of weak? i still like the Starbucks hack, where if you consume your beverage there (tea or coffee, not the fancy drinks) they give you a free refill.
Not only are your habits frugal, but they cut down on waste- you live a very environment-friendly lifestyle!
I find they are generous with their tea leaves so I never find it weak (and I just let it steep for a few extra minutes). Sometimes I’ll also go back up and get some extra hot water (on the original bag).
I keep a freezer stash of “too brown” bananas for banana bread too! I can confirm that your drinking water tastes great.
It really is SUCH GOOD WATER!!!
It was fantastic!
I love the composting idea! We have a counter top bin, but this seems like a better idea, especially in hotter months when there are lots of flies.
If I had to give myself a demerit it is that I never bring refundables back for the money. For so long we had almost zero in this department that I need to create a new routine around it now. It would be worth it longterm, I know.
We have only been doing this for a few years now. Before I started drinking sparkling water, we didn’t have enough to add up over the course of a year! But now (since we have the space in our furnace room), I’m happy to keep them separate!
It works like a charm! We’ve been doing it for almost a decade and I can’t ever see doing anything differently! (We used to have so many issues with fruit flies.)
I’m jealous of how “cheap” skiing is for you, but also happy for you! Spring water is also amazing, the filters for our fridge are pricey. You do things right!
It is so affordable. It’s a very small hill, but one of the perks of that is a relatively low price.
We are big fans of leaving the oven open for ambient heat after baking, especially if I’ve made pizza which bakes at a sizzling 450*! 🙂
Yes! No reason to leave that remaining ambient heat just sitting inside the oven! (Obviously not safe if there are little ones around, but at this stage in my parenting life, I can now leave it open safely!)
I had a punch card for a local sandwich shop (rated in Yelp in the top 100 in the country!!) with one hole left to punch in order to get a free sandwich. One day I happened to drive past when I had the card, money in my wallet, was really hungry, and the parking area was empty! So, I saved about $10 by spending $10, a two-fer, or “the more I spend, the more I save”.
I was in Big Town today and had a coupon for a take-and-bake pizza, so instead of $27, it was $24.
I was in Big Town because my friend took me down the hill with her (she had errands) so I could pick up my car with its NON-FRUGAL new starter. So by hitching a ride down, I saved $15 in gas (about what it cost to round-trip it to Big Town.)
My printing ten-key stopped printing. I found one on eBay and made an offer that wasn’t accepted. Now I have another offer pending; silly game to save $2.
And of course I got a load of books from the big library in Big Town!
Top 100 sandwich shop IN THE COUNTRY (I do love a good sandwich).
“Big Town” and “down the hill” sound exactly like things we would say in the rural Maritimes.
And your comment reminds me I have a stack of books to collect at my library on hold!
These are all really good ideas. We have a countertop for our compost, and in the summer it gets fruit flies. We have such a small freezer, and I’m always shoving leftovers in there for future me, so I don’t know whether that will work for me…but I may give it a try this summer. We get free compostable bags at the grocery store (California laws) so another option is to just take those out every day. Regarding the cans, we have cut WAY back because we bought a SodaStream, but we still have some. I take them for my money back once or twice a week. The biggest savings for us I think are leftovers. And turning off the heat the minute my husband and daughter leave for work (that only works the 3 days a week that I’m not alone at home, but it’s something).
A little box in the fridge would probably work, too. Fruit flies are very hardy and can survive being “chilled” for a LONG time, but it would keep them dormant in the fridge at least.
Leftovers (especially from cooking at home) saves SO. MUCH. MONEY.
Mine involves water too, Elisabeth. Essentially, I tried to be as frugal as I could in a very unfrugal situation. We had a cold snap – almost three weeks of temps in the teens and single digits 🙁 For the first time in my life, my pipes froze. Since then, I have been letting all of my faucets drip nonstop to avoid having it happen again. I hated the thought of all that water going to waste, so I caught what came from the tub faucet in my five-gallon cleaning bucket and used it to flush the toilet. I collected what came out of the kitchen faucet in pitchers and used it to water plants, make coffee, etc. Water is so precious! I was finally able to stop dripping the faucets two days ago when we got above freezing! Even with trying to use what I could, I am not looking forward to next month’s water bill…
I love this frugal hack! Yes, no need to waste all that water.
While the water bill won’t be pleasant, it’s better than burst pipes for sure. And putting that dripping water to good use is brilliant. Gold stars, Jean. And I hope you are able to enjoy nicer weather in the coming weeks. You’ve had a COLD stretch lately.
I learned about keeping the compost in the freezer in compostable boxes from YOU! 🙂 Thank you! My husband is always afraid of ants or rodents getting into our garbage can if we leave compost out all week, so this is a genius solution!
One frugal thing that I’ve done lately is find a new grocery store for some of the items we used to buy from Target (which I am boycotting right now).
We’ve been using the boxes for a decade and I don’t ever plan to go back!
that’s a brilliant way to use ends of bread and other odds baked goodies into French toast, or bread pudding! thanks for sharing.
I would say we’ve been frugal in buying sourdough since I started making them at home. Never buy store break anymore.
I had never saved little bits of old cookies before, but the kids had a few that weren’t bad but were no longer fresh, so I tossed them in the freezer and chopped them up and it worked great in the French Toast!
I’d never thought of using a used box for composting — genius!!
Sadly, It’s not been a very frugal week (month?) around here.
Buying your ski pass early certainly pays off!
I have a feeling we’re going to have a long stretch of anti-frugal life while in Europe, so I’m trying to make up for it while I can at home 🙂