This post is the result of random shower thoughts from the other morning. Ha. I was pondering how we generally share our frugal activities that have worked, but then I thought about how it’s actually really fun to read about frugal mishaps/mistakes too.
Because sometimes, our money-saving efforts go sideways, or turn out to be a miserable experience.
I’ll go first, of course, and then you can join me in the comments.
(Long-time readers may remember some of these stories because I usually do mention my frugal fails in the course of regular blog posts!)
1. Homemade laundry soap
This immediately came to mind because it was such a colossal fail.
I was so proud of the batch I mixed up, made of bar soap, castile soap, washing soda, and I don’t remember what else.
It looked like detergent and smelled like detergent and poured like detergent.
But OH MY WORD it was terrible.
After a few weeks of using it, our clothes smelled distinctly of dirty socks. And they also felt rather stiff, like the soap wasn’t getting rinsed out properly.
I switched back to commercial detergent and the problems disappeared.
I know some people swear by their homemade laundry soap but I am not going back. I will cheerfully pay for my scent-free, dye-free laundry detergent from a warehouse club and call it good.
2. Cracker-Making
This one is not so much an outcome fail as it is me deciding it’s too much effort for too little payoff.
I gave cracker-making a solid try multiple times over the course of my life, and every time I have decided it’s far too tedious.
It’s hard to roll the dough to the perfect even thickness, and crackers that aren’t perfectly even will bake unevenly. You get some that burn and some that aren’t baked enough to get crisp.
Plus, it’s time-consuming to prick the dough all over, cut the crackers, and place them all on a baking sheet.
I think cracker-making can be a fun baking project, just for the novelty.
Lisey and I made homemade graham crackers, just for fun. And those are easier because they’re bigger!
For everyday cracker purposes, though, I’m happy to just buy Aldi’s version of Triscuits. They’re 100% whole wheat, sugar-free, and no work. 😉
3. Adding lemon-onion-salmon to my scrambled eggs
As you all know, one of the themes of my blog has been food waste prevention.
And one of my standby tricks is to throw random bits and bobs into scrambled eggs; they are an excellent vehicle for small quantities of things.
Well, years ago, I’d made baked salmon for dinner, using a recipe that involved lemons and onions. And I thought, “Hmm, what if I just mixed in some of the leftovers with my scrambled eggs?”
You guys, it was SO BAD. Gross, gross, gross.
I’m a hard sell on salmon anyway (I only eat it because it’s healthy), but the lemon/onion/salmon/egg combo was just the worst. I could not even finish it.
And that is how I learned not every leftover can be mixed in with scrambled eggs.
4. Eating sketchy shrimp
This is another food-waste-related one from some years back.
In this instance, I ate some leftover ravioli and shrimp with pink sauce one (trying to eat up my leftovers!) and somehow didn’t realize it had been several days since I’d made the dish.
these shrimp were not the offenders 😉
Well, I got a miserable case of food poisoning, complete with stomach cramps that were so painful that I felt like I was in labor.
Obviously, that food ended up going to waste (just in a different way), plus I gave myself a healthy helping of suffering.
So now I am extremely careful about how much shrimp I cook so that I can finish it up at that meal or within 24 hours.
I also try to apply similar caution (being careful not to cook too much) when I am preparing other meats. I am more brave with non-seafood meats, though, given their longer leftover shelf life.
5. I added lettuce to a smoothie
I have had success with adding a lot of things to smoothies, and given that spinach disappears nicely into a smoothie, one time I thought I’d throw in some iceberg lettuce that needed to be used up.
This is the only iceberg picture I had in my files. Do not take this to mean I put tomatoes in my smoothie. Even I wouldn’t go that far.
But I should have just chopped that up and made a salad because my goodness, even with all the other ingredients, somehow the iceberg flavor came through so strong.
Yuck.
And it’s not like iceberg lettuce was even adding a bunch of nutritional value to my smoothie.
So, learn from me. Don’t make an iceberg lettuce smoothie. 😉
Kayla
Thursday 10th of July 2025
I tried kale in a smoothie once. Nope! Another time I tried a small amount of beets in smoothie. Also nope! I couldn't drink either of them. Both tasted like dirt.
Kristen
Thursday 10th of July 2025
Agreed on the beets. It takes a LOT of lemon and ginger to make that tolerable.
Brandi
Thursday 3rd of July 2025
hmmm, it is timely that I came across this. We are in central Montana, where cell phone service can be lacking, to put it lightly. We have been ardent TracFone users since day one. We got our last round of phones, paid for up front, in 2020 with a stimulus check, so needless to say they were getting worn out: the battery life was poor and they were buggy and all around we were ready for an update. So I set forth looking at iPhones... they are so expensive!! I had been piling up money so it wasn't a huge issue, but the sticker shock was definitely shocking!! After looking everywhere, I found a great deal on Boost Mobile's site: Buy the phone, in our case the 16e (3 of them) and get a $25 each credit towards your monthly bill for a year. We could absolutely live on the cheapest plan; unlimited talk and text and 30 gB of data per month, so we were going to pay $10 per month for a year (saving $75 per month because of the discount). Awesome!! We were currently paying around $50 per month for all 3 lines - super chill data users here as data is $$ with TracFone.
We got the phones, got our numbers ported over, and were all set. Cue the dark theme song... there was basically no service in our little corner of the world. I had previously checked the coverage map, found our house, our pastures, our fields, and they were all covered by at least 4G... Lies! We could use the satellite text and call feature, true, but it was very very cumbersome and hard to deal with. So within 10 days of having Boost I ported everything back to TracFone, lost the $40 a month savings, and can now talk to and text anyone I want from basically everywhere on the ranch.
I guess connectivity beats savings in this case...
Gina from The Cannary Family
Monday 23rd of June 2025
I don't know how I missed this post...but I also tried making my own laundry soap (powder version) and it worked OK, but it was too much effort, grating up soap bars and breathing in the various powders. I like scented laundry detergent so I was disappointed that my clothes didn't smell pretty. (: For awhile I was making my own bread, but as my mother would ask "do you know they sell bread at the store?" Ha! It was too labor intensive for me. Every leftover thing I have goes into my mouth the next day or the freezer for my future work meals. That being said, I cook for one, so I basically don't have that issue. Another fail for me would be making clothes. I used to love to sew my own but now fabric and notions make it too costly. But back in college I sewed dresses and skirts and tops. Even once made a bikini!
Kristen
Monday 23rd of June 2025
If mine had just not smelled pretty, I might have persevered. But Eau de Stinky Feet was too much to take!
Phyllis
Friday 20th of June 2025
I made some biscuits from scratch. It's been so long ago I was about 16, but anyway I remember my sister saying we should use these for snowball fights. I laughed so hard that I peed my pants. They were hard as the rubber balls we use to play jaxs.
Carla in Texas
Friday 20th of June 2025
1. Cheap lawyers. You get what you pay for and a cheap lawyer just isn't worth it, especially in a custody dispute. It would've been better if we'd represented ourselves, because even if we'd lost (and we probably would have without an attorney) we could've saved all that money. We wasted over $30,000 - 50,000 on 4 cheap lawyers until we wised up. We aren't rich people, barely in the middle class, if at all. However, we were blessed with the last one and she was excellent. We finally won. And finally got it all paid off.
2. Cheap car parts. Back when my husband did all of the repairs on our '71 VW, we bought the cheapest parts we could because we were broke. I remember the re-built master cylinders for the brakes. In a period of just a few months, the cheap ones kept failing. 3 times. No returns allowed. We learned that if at all possible, buy the best repair parts you can. Sometimes we couldn't, but when we could, we did.
3. Cheap shoes for growing boys. Again, when our son was about 11 years old, all we could afford was Walmart sneakers. $30 they lasted 3 months before tearing up but it was all we could do. As soon as my husband was able to find work, we bought him a pair of Reebok's and they lasted a year. A much better investment, but if you don't have it, you don't have it.
4. Cheap motels. We've had dirty ones, scary ones and beds that were so bad I couldn't sleep. I really like 4 star hotels, but Holiday Inn is just fine with me. The only cheap motels that are worth it are the ones on military bases. Always clean and very safe.
5. Coach seats on an airplane. I'm tall and crippled with arthritis and can't handle the ZERO leg room. I'd rather drive 1000 miles than fly coach.