Five Frugal Things | sun = free bleach
All of my things are tiny this week. 🙂
1. I put my white shirt in the sunshine
My white American Giant tee had a few faint stains on the front that I figured were probably food-based.
So, I put the shirt in the sun for a few hours, and now all is well.
Sunshine is great for getting rid of stains on white fabric because you don't have to worry about the sun fading the rest of the garment; it's all white anyway!
2. I doctored up my sparkling water
I saved the syrup from some passion fruit canned peaches (from Aldi), and added a bit of it to my glasses of sparkling water.
It's kinda like a no-extra-effort simple syrup; perfect for when you want a very slightly sweet drink. 🙂
3. I watered my plants with my dehumidifier water
It's been pretty dry here lately, but of course, with it being summer, the air has not been dry.
So, my basement dehumidifier is still pulling out plenty of water from the air, and I have been using it to water my non-edible plants outside.
(Dehumidifier water tends to have bacteria in it that might make it unsafe to use on edible plants.)
But for the edible ones, I've been using the water from my salad spinner.
4. I swapped out my A/C filter
A dirty air conditioning filter makes the unit work harder to cool the house. So, I try to be good about replacing them during the summer months.
I have baseboard hot water heat, so this is only a warm-weather task for me!
5. I walked to my mammogram
I had a 7:05 am appointment, and as I was trying to figure out when I'd fit in my exercise for the day, I realized...I could just walk there, since it's near the college.
So, that's what I did. This obviously did not save me very much gas, especially since I have a hybrid car now, but hey, it's fitting with the tiny frugal things concept. 😉
I do not love getting mammograms, but hey, a few minutes of discomfort once a year is not a huge ask, especially since early detection is so important.
Nothing dramatic, just household frugality:
* Husband helping sons build a new andirondak chair for the yard. Much cheaper than buying a new one and the sons learn something new.
*Cleaning out parts of the basement and disposing of broken things. Also donated some useful things to the thrift store. The little table and chairs my kids loved when they were little pulled at my heartstrings, but we haven't used them in a few years, so off they go to be a blessing to some other family.
*In the "time is money" category, husband bought a paint sprayer. He tried painting the basement wall and it took way too much time for one small section. Paint sprayer covered the scabrous walls in no time flat. We'll have many uses for this tool, so long term investment.
* Husband built a quick headboard for bed in basement using miscellaneous pieces of wood that he found while cleaning out basement. It doesn't need to be pretty, just functional.
* in one box of old letters and cards, we found about $3 in unused stamps from 25+ years ago. So I'll use those to send out snail mail this week.
* short term cost but long term frugal- new tires for our minivan. We were going to replace only two, but the shop called and said the other two were a lot older than we thought and not in great condition. Safety is important, and we want to drive this car another 50k miles if we can, so we replaced then all.