Five Frugal Things | Look at me, decorating!

Now that I am done with school, I am knocking out tasks that felt nigh onto impossible before.

When I do these tasks, I think, “Oh, that wasn’t that hard.” But nursing school felt so all-consuming, I was not getting around to even smallish tasks!

I’m doing a great job of catching up now, though. 

1. I hung up a piece of wall art from my Buy Nothing group

I picked this up quite a while ago and it has just sat in my carport, collecting dust.

But as we mentioned, I have time now. And mental energy.

So, I cleaned it off and hung it up in my living room. Yay me! 

2. I hung up some frames from my old house

I originally bought these on clearance at Kohl’s, eons ago. I printed a few flower photographs and hung the frames on the wall in my kids’ bathroom (you can see them in this post!).

Sonia initially put some watercolors of hers in the frames and kept them up, but eventually, she switched to some other wall decor, and she brought the frames over to me.

Like the wall art mentioned above, these have just been sitting in my carport, collecting dust (an embarrassing theme!)

I dusted them off, wiped them down, and hung them up in my living room. Right now, they still have the watercolors in them, and I haven’t decided if I’ll keep them like that or swap them out for something else because they did look nice with the black and white photos!

But at least they are not catching dust in my carport anymore. 😉 

3. I hit a $5.99 scrub sale

This was quite an inadvertent frugality, but I’m including it anyway! 

I randomly stopped by a scrubs store to check it out for the first time, and lo and behold, they were going out of business. Every scrub top/bottom in the store was $5.99.

I didn’t even have to do a Google price comparison check to know that was a screaming deal.

The sizing options were a little limited, but I managed to find three sets that fit, plus two pairs of compression socks. And my total was $42.

(!!!!!!)

That is a wild bargain, considering most scrub items cost at least $25 apiece. 

I made it through my year of working as a tech with only two sets of scrubs, but I’m glad I have some more on hand now. 

I took a photo of my blue scrubs all by myself…

But then look who showed up again!

4. I did not renew my Archer NCLEX review membership

My NCLEX test date is a week from today, but my Archer membership expired a few days ago.

I considered renewing it for $59, but I think I have gotten a sufficient amount of review from it (I did over 1200 questions!), and besides, every one of their predictor tests gave me top chances of passing.

So, I let it expire, and I am just using my ATI membership (from my school) and my physical NCLEX review book for this last week. 

And then hopefully in a week, I will not have to think about NCLEX review questions ever again in my life. 

The last few years of my life have been so focused on getting ready for the NCLEX; it’s hard to believe I am close to (hopefully) having it behind me.

I CANNOT WAIT.

5. I used up two wrinkly cucumbers in agua de pepino

I got two regular cucumbers in my Hungry Harvest box, and they were not the lovely kind with smaller seeds.

So, unfortunately, I left them until they were showing some signs of age.

However, I’d seen an agua de pepino recipe online, which involved blending up the cucumbers with water, lime juice, sugar, and mint leaves.

I would never in a million years have considered combining sugar with cucumbers, but I forged ahead.

Honestly, it was very tasty,and perfect to drink on a hot day.

And since my VitaMix is a beast, I didn’t even remove the big seeds these cucumbers had; they got all nicely blended up.

As I said on my Instagram story, I don’t know if this was tasty just because lime and mint are a good combo (the cucumber flavor is not super strong), but it was refreshing and delicious and it kept my cucumbers from going to waste.

10/10, would recommend.

(I only used 1/4 cup of sugar, so I’d recommend starting with that and then adjusting to your taste. Also, the mint leaves are optional but I think this would be only half as good without the mint.)

6. (bonus) I did a modified sun-bleach on the pillow sham

Ok, so you know that yellow spot Snoopy was pointing to?

I did one more overnight oxi-clean soak on that pillow sham, and the spot was better, but still not completely gone.

So then I folded up the sham so only the yellowed spot was showing, put washcloths over the embroidery to protect it, and then put it out in the sun. 

It definitely helped, and now the spot is pretty inconspicuous. I’m gonna call this good enough for now. 😉

It’s not like anyone is popping in to closely inspect my summer bed linens. Ha. 

Your turn! What frugal things have you been up to lately?