Q&A | share an embarrassing frugal habit!
I'm saving the "embarrassing frugal habit" question for the end, so keep scrolling to get to that one. 😉
First, a few other questions.
How has your attitude to frugality changed with time, as your children are older (and yes, the rest of us are too!) Has this changed attitude led to changes in spending, are there new things to be frugal about, or are you frugal with fewer things?
-Kristina
I am definitely looser with money now than I was back in the earlier years of our marriage.
But I'd say that's less about my attitude changing and more about us having wiggle room in our budget.
Before, we really had to be frugal to avoid getting into debt. Now, we can spend above the bare minimum without fear of putting ourselves into consumer debt.
So, I am less laser focused on every little expenditure.
However, our increase in income has been accompanied by an increase in kid-related things to spend money on (braces, driver's ed, allergy shots, tutorial classes, etc.)
Plus, we got a late start on retirement savings, so we are needing to play catch-up with that.
At any rate, despite the increase in income, we haven't exactly been feeling like, "Oh, now we can burn dollar bills for fun!"
But I am very grateful that we have the money to cover the expenses of having older kids. In my experience, littler kids incur fewer expenses (though of course, if I'd needed daycare for my kids, I'd have a different perspective!), so I'm grateful our time of lower income was then and not now.
To your last question, I will say that there is almost always some way to lower the expenses each new life stage brings.
So, as new chapters unfold, as long as you bring with you a "willing-to-hunt-for-discounts" attitude, you will be able to lessen your new expenses.
(Related: quite a few of you asked how we are handling teen expenses, such as driver's ed and car insurance, and I'll address that in the next Q&A post.)
Do you get discouraged with frugality, the feeling of never “getting ahead”, comparing yourself to others who seem to have an easier time without the sacrifices you make (and not just seem to, but really have an easier time)?
-Kristina
Oh, I know this feeling! I definitely experienced it when Mr. FG was working in warehousing and I was teaching piano lessons.
We were working so hard to save money, and we really could barely get ahead before hitting another setback. We managed to stay out of debt, aside from our mortgage, but if you're not making more progress than that, it is so easy to feel like you're spinning your wheels.
I had to remind myself that staying out of consumer debt is not nothing, particularly on a small income. Staying out of the red, even if you're barely in the black, is a big accomplishment when your income is low.
(According to USA Today, as of early 2020, the average American carried over $6,000 of credit card debt! Avoiding that situation is definitely not nothing.)
I remember getting really frustrated when I would read advice that basically said, "Just cut your expenses and your savings rate will go through the roof."
This advice holds true if you have a lot of income and a lot of unnecessary expenses, but when your income is low and you've already trimmed and trimmed and trimmed...well, reading that advice can be discouraging.
As is true in so many areas of life, comparison is the thief of joy. And the only way I've found to avoid that thievery is to focus on my own journey.
Also: tune out the money advice given to higher earners. Read Amy Dacyzyn instead. 🙂
Could you enjoy a purely luxurious vacation (whether you paid or someone else did?)
-Connie
Yep, I think I could, particularly if someone else paid for it. (!)
If there's anyone out there who wants to gift me a luxurious vacation, please, feel free. I accept free vacations at any time. 😉
To pay for the vacation myself and be able to enjoy it at the same time, I'd have to save up for it ahead of time without neglecting any of my other financial responsibilities.
When I earmark money for something frivolous/fun, I can manage to spend it guilt-free. When it's not earmarked, though, I find myself wanting to save it instead.
So, it's massively helpful for me to have our targeted savings accounts, where we funnel money specifically for things like vacations.
Still, I haven't really found myself booking any luxurious vacations; usually the trips we take are fairly frugally minded. Even with our faithful monthly vacation saving, we haven't had the money for really extravagant traveling, especially as a family.
Maybe when Mr. FG and I are empty nesters, we'll book an all-inclusive tropical beach vacation!
Do you have any frugal habits that you may not tell most people about or are a little embarrassing (i.e. reusing floss, diluting soap, limiting electricity usage etc.)? I love to hear little things people do that become habits to be more frugal. I know I have a few that others may find extreme.
-Ally
One thing that comes to mind is my willingness to work with food that others might throw away.
For instance, if milk goes a little sour or yogurt looks a little grainy, I have no problem at all baking with it. The heat from the oven would kill anything remotely dangerous, and an off texture is totally disguised in muffins or bread.
Also, I routinely cut rotten spots out of produce and use the rest of it.
And if hard cheese has mold on the outside, I cut that away and use the rest (this is not a good idea with soft cheese, such as cream cheese, because the mold spores don't just stay on the outside of the cheese.)
(See this Mayo Clinic post on cheese mold.)
I know people throw away food like this out of an abundance of caution, and they probably would look at me in horror.
But if you educate yourself on what's actually safe and what isn't, you can prevent a lot of food waste.
And food waste is money waste!
So, I want to know: do you have any frugal habits that are a little embarrassing? or that other people think are embarrassing?
(This is a safe space to share them; we're all frugal here! 😉 )
P.S. It's Memorial Day here in the U.S., and normally I don't publish a post on that day. But since Memorial Day this year is a bit different for a lot of us, I thought people might want something to read. And of course, for everyone outside the U.S., today is not a holiday.
So, I may have, on occasion, pulled empty cardboard toilet paper tubes and recyclable plastics out of the household trash cans when they were left there by guests or family members. Recycling is not only good for the environment but, the more items I can divert from the regular trash, the farther my trash removal dollars go. Now that I've broken the ice, please don't leave me out here on the Limb of Embarrassment all alone . . .
Toilet paper rolls are great for taming electrical cords and I have use them for seed starting. When I was about 10, I made my grandmother an entire nativity scene out of toilet paper rolls (no camels).
In each of our bathrooms there are two waste cans and family is encouraged to separate burnables from non-burnables. Like you, I scan the trash and upcycle things.
No shame in that!
We recycle everything that can be recycled. The kids have 2 bis in their room: one for trash and one for recycling.
We don't do it for money saving since we pay a fixed garbage fee, we do it for the environment. Every little step helps
We save our tp tubes and sell them online. I'm not sure that's embarrassing.
Wait, who buys empty TP tubes, and why? I'm curious!!
I have pulled many recyclables out of the trash over my lifetime, so you are not alone on that.
Most of my “embarrassing” habits are connected to environmental concern, but do save money in the long run.
1) When my oldest was a baby/toddler, I found myself going through a million pieces of TP wiping his nose all day, especially when I was teaching him to wipe his own face. My husband donated some of his old t-shirts for the cause, and I made a bunch of little cloth wipes that we are still washing and reusing a decade later.
2) I save plastic food containers all year to use for my garden seedlings. I keep using the same containers year after year, as long as, they are still usable. I also have about fifty 5 gallon frosting containers that I got free from the bakery. They are great for growing things like tomatoes and peppers. I’m sure many people wouldn’t approve of my less than beautiful garden containers, but they allow me to grow much more food than I would have otherwise, plus I am happy to save them from the landfill.
3) Most recently, we also started using both sides of the printer paper for our quarantine school worksheets.
You’re in good company! I routinely pull large-ish items out of my kitchen trash can and take them straight to our trash bin outside to save on trash bags. Trash bags cost money. Recycling for us is a trip to the center, so I have to admit we don’t recycle everything we could, but I don’t see the need in cartons and plastic being enclosed in a plastic trash bag before being put in the garbage. I tell myself I take more steps (frugal exercise) and Vitamin D by making trips to the trash bin outside. I hope I helped you feel less alone out on the limb.
I find myself removing glass food jars from our recycling bin to be washed and reused - the brand of pasta sauce we buy uses Mason jars with volume markings and our jam jars are really nice! Saves me from buying regular Mason jars. I've also moved plenty of cardboards, plastics and papers from the trash to the recycling bin.
Haha, I never buy jarred pasta sauces, so I tend to get my jars at the thrift store or at garage sales. Even if I pay a quarter for the jar I'm still way ahead. I shop mostly at the 99 Cent Only Store and Grocery Outlet. I keep my eyes peeled for interesting jars with - and this is key - no writing on the lids, provided they come filled with something I need, such as capers. I scrub then out and save them. During the holidays, I fill them with edible gifts that don't require a canning jar level of seal. Recently, I was sharing yeast from my giant Costco bag and people loved the pretty little jars. It made my heart happy.
I reuse and make things with what others might toss out. I reused an old office chair(all metal) to make a stool for the sewing machine. At the time my family made fun of me because I said. Nothing wrong with this, if I change this and do that then paint it, it will be good as new.lol So now when they see me working on a project they always say, not that there is anything wrong with it.☺
I remake old clothes, t-shirt into tanks, pants into capris, jeans into pot holders and placemats. I just get more satisfaction using recycled items, plus it's frugal fun.
My brother received potholders made from old jeans for Christmas. He was thrilled!
I re-use tin foil. Also, sometimes if a paper towel has been used for something small and innocuous I will leave it on the counter to use for something else.
1. I reuse PT that is clean but stained (most commonly, used to wrap clean but damp produce).
2. I rewear not just pants, but shirts as well.
3. I take leftovers home from work events; almost anything since I can always find a way to use it. It's not just me though: one year I had a polite-but-intense discussion with a new co-worker about how to split the carcass from the holiday Turkey.
4. As long as I don't need to dig through the trash, I move compostable food waste from the trash to the compost bucket.
5. Leftover food from family members' plates, go into the fridge for later.
6. Everyone's bones go into the stock pot.
7. I pick up pennies.
8. No daily shower unless I'm sweaty (bad weather, sweat).
9. I mend underwear and socks.
10. Of course I cut away bad spots on produce and in cheese (as FG says, not the soft cheeses), as well as breads and likely many more foods I can't think of right now.
Sigh. This comment was supposed to be top-level, not a response to Laura. No clue how this happened.
I also:
- Reuse paper for printing; with 100% telework I'm running out of reusable paper.
- Buy used books almost exclusively.
- When my neighborhood received a neighborhood paper with coupon inserts, I collected abandoned copies for the inserts. This is one that I was embarrassed to be seen doing.
Ugh, that whole "Just stop buying a morning latte and you can save $1,000 a year!" was SO ANNOYING TO ME. I used to be a proofreader for a company that, among other things, printed materials for various financial institutions, so I read that kind of stuff all day long in their newsletters and so forth. Meanwhile, my husband was in law school, I was the only one earning any money, I took my lunch to work every single day, we lived in a basement apartment, we had one car, and on and on and on. I didn't feel like that kind of advice was very helpful to me, because it didn't seem there was anywhere to easily save money.
Embarrassing frugal habit: I use pieces of cut-up flannel blankets in place of toilet paper (for um, liquid waste only) much of the time. It's mostly because I actually hate paper products for almost all uses, but I guess it does save money.
They are now called “wee wipes” and becoming trendy! You were just ahead of the curve.
I make fire starters out of dryer lint for camping and sometimes throw it out in the backyard for the birds to use as nesting material.
I drink day old coffee since my coffee pot does sit on a warmer giving it that burnt flavor.
I’ve been known to eat some fairly old leftovers and haven’t poisoned myself yet.
Doesn’t sit on warmer. Auto correct. I’m having a comment challenged morning.
‘Happy’ Memorial Day doesn’t seem appropriate but I’m praying for souls of all those who gave their lives in defense of our great country! Their sacrifice is surely something we should all be grateful for.
Haha, I was wondering if you were trying to say that you enjoyed the burnt flavor!
I will totally drink day old coffee too.
I’ve saved a bazillion dollars not drinking Starbucks because their coffee tastes burnt to me.
My husband has a huge travel mug he fills with coffee ☕ before he leaves in the morning. This is really helpful to him, because he's a teacher and doesn't have time to be running for more coffee during the school day. But he almost never finishes it, either! He drinks it black, so yes, I frequently drink day-old coffee. As a matter of fact, I am right now!
I also use up things others might throw out, such as produce with a bad spot on it or something.
I love these older photos SO MUCH! Definitely agree with you on vacations becoming enjoyable when they're paid for strategically.
Most of our waste is food related so I do the same. I bake with the out of date items. I tend to shop eBay and Facebook marketplace for birthday gifts. My kids are little and toys seem to be over priced so with a good scrubbing I think they make pretty affordable gifts.
I just started doing this, but it's definitely embarrassing. My toddler is deeply offended if she is only given half of a banana (she sees big sister with a whole one, and just can't stand it). Of course, this means a lot of bananas with only a couple of bites taken out (usually along the length, because my kid is weird). I've started collecting and freezing them to make for banana bread. This will be for family use only, no gifting. 😉
That is totally something I would do. It gets baked...totally sanitary. 🙂
Exactly!
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I have your same attitude towards food. I won't eat or use anything that's safe, but I've worked hard to learn exactly what's safe and what's not. If in doubt, throw it out, but it's important to know exactly what you can eat and what you can save, and so much can be saved and repurposed!
I wash and reuse freezer bags and reuse tinfoil if it's not gross. (Never anything that contained meat, but most of what we eat is vegetarian, so this isn't normally an issue here.) I've also sewn holes in underwear, and in January I took some knit fabric I wasn't using for anything else and repaired a frayed-to-shreds side strap of a bra I really liked. And like Rachel in the comments, I've totally saved half-eaten fruit for baking and smoothies!
I just finished re-reading The Tightwad Gazette. When I first read it years ago, Amy Dacyzyn’s book was life changing. You are right, Kristen. Her advice is really helpful to those on a super limited budget.
My secret tightwad habit - I walk the dog around the block on garbage eve to see if there is anything worth salvaging. I often resell these items or donate them.
Thank you to those military families who have lost those you love in service to our country. Sending you thoughts of love and peace.
Bee, I love the "walk the dog" trick. After reading Amy's newsletter on dumpster diving I really, really wanted to try it. My best friend did too, but neither one of us would do it alone. Unfortunately, she lived in another state so our dumpster diving experience never came to reality. Sigh.
I cut up dryer sheets into haves it thirds. A whole one is not not needed for the load.
*halves and thirds
I was doing that for awhile and then tried skipping the dryer sheets completely, and I almost never use them now and don't really notice any difference.
I don't use them either. My daughter got me dryer balls and they are great.
I use reusable dryer balls. Much better then dryer sheets.
I am quite curious- we have a dryer but I have no idea what dryer sheets are? Is it for smell or to make the laundry dry faster? For the latter, I use a dry towel that I add to the wet laundry. Is it something American? I'm from Europe.
They're sheets that are scented and are treated to make the laundry not staticky.
I have always found them to be unnecessary; I just use wool dryer balls, and all is well.
Ah I see. I line dry my clothes so never a problem there (my clothes smell of sunshine 🙂 ) and only use my dryer for (bed, bath, kitchen) linens and as they are pure cotton they never get static.
Question answered! Thanks 🙂
Plus the chemicals build up on your towels and make them less absorbent
I can tell the difference when the launderer doesn't use dryer sheets. My clothes feel stiffer, statickier, and less soft.
You can get unscented ones.
I don't use them on towels.
We used to do that but I stopped using them altogether as a test to see if they were really necessary. We haven't noticed a difference except that my skin is LESS itchy and sensitive and we were using the "natural" fragrance free ones! I won't bother buying them ever again.
I used to do that, but then I bought some woolen dryer balls and have not used dryer sheets in a couple years. Of course, I got the balls on sale, so they have paid for themselves over and over again.
I bought some wool dryer balls, but I still have a problem with static when I take the clothes out of the dryer. That has been a huge disappointment to me.
Almost no dryer use = no dryer sheets. Thanks to my collection of drying racks (only one of which I actually paid for), the only times I use the dryer are for bedsheets, which get washed every other week (yeah, that's another one). And I've found that dryer sheets aren't really needed for bedsheets either. Goodbye, Bounce and Snuggle!
As I read through the comments, I think the only thing I haven't done that others have mentioned is the "wee wipes". I guess I see what others think of as an embarrassing frugal habit as good stewardship of what we have been given. Cutting away mold on hard cheese .... reusing foil and ziploc bags .... to me this seems like normal behavior and not doing it is wasteful.
This isn't technically embarrassing, but I'm very much of the opinion that treating what we have carefully to help it last longer and stay nice longer is important.
Is saving and reusing used tea bags embarrassing?
In regards to the first question about attitudes towards frugality changing through the years--yes, we too had less disposable income when our kids were younger, but even so, I feel it's smart to do things frugally from the get-go. Little ones don't really know if their new-to-them toys were purchased at a garage sale, and expensive activities/vacations are lost on them at that age. Set up frugal expectations from the beginning and you won't have to deal with whiny greediness when they hit the teen years. Plus, you can save up money when they are younger to help you deal with those expenses that come with growing up.
Most embarrassing, as in I don't brag about it to my friends: Our office holds some potluck breakfasts and sometimes we are gifted lunches as a thank you. I'm the last one to leave the office, so on Fridays, I take home any leftovers from those occasions left in the fridge. Especially nice when there's been a catered event with crudites or salads, I take home all the veggies that nobody else took, and freeze it for soups. I've also done this at workshops that are catered, I ask the organizer if I can have any leftovers. I scored some whole french Panera loaves once, and big salads.
One year my boss joked that he could follow the cherry tomato trail to my car, I had taken a big tray of veggies and some spilled out.
I take home the leftovers also. Since I do it so often, I usually wait a few days to see if anyone else wants something first.
Oh man, between being frugally, environmentally and health minded, I routinely do basically all the things your readers have mentioned so far-reuse food that's been nibbled, cut up dryer sheets, rescue things from the trash, etc. The one potentially embarrassing thing I do that I haven't seen here yet is I will re-wear clothing items until they offend me before washing. When going to work I try to switch things around so it's not noticeable that I'm wearing the same clothes, but in quarantine-forget it! No can smell me on zoom! Ha! Also, I do buy new clothes occasionally, but I rarely get rid of the old things, and will definitely wear a pair of underwear that is 20 years old, for example. No one but my husband sees that anyway, and he knows who he married! The one thing I haven't done yet is reusable bathroom cloth because my husband put his foot down (or would that be his rear end?) but when I first bought my house and was trying to save up money for repairs (it was a foreclosure) I made cat litter by shredding up junk mail-I did have to change the box every day and it was definitely smellier, so I do buy litter now, but it's nice to have that trick in my back pocket if I ever run out, and it's also nice that my cats are cooperative during hard times.
Just remembered another living in a foreclosure house thing: when I first moved in, the shower drain leaked into the basement, so when I showered, I had to carefully collect the grey water in a bucket which I later used to flush the toilet. Ten years and three kids later, I have neither the time nor the patience for that level of making-do, but man I miss those early water bills that were practically nothing!!!
During the Great Recession, my old cat was so accommodating about junk mail kitty litter. He was usually a grumpy, set in his ways dude, but he took one for the team when it really helped.
Definite YES on the wearing clothes for more than one day before washing them! Especially since we're all not around people very much anyway! AND I said the other night, "I'm pretty sure this pair of underwear is 15 years old..." LOL! Hey, they still look nice!
We also will put back food from our plates that didn't get eaten. If there's extra rice and beans and you just got full, why waste it? Eat it tomorrow!
We had a gas line run to the fireplace in this house a few years ago and it had to be dropped through the ceiling of our bedroom and run down the wall. After a few months of trying to figure out an affordable way to box it in without blocking the air register, I saved up gift wrap and paper towel cardboard cores and created a cover very similar to the wrap on old style radiator pipes, then painted it to match the wall and trim.
I have also taken chicken bones off my family's plates and boiled the dickens out of them to make stock for another meal. Boiling kills all germs!
I do the chicken bones too. On Thanksgiving I do all of the turkey bones. My daughter's boyfriend was a little horrified the first time. Now they are engaged and he is used to it.
So do I! We save the bones from restaurant meals as well for this. I bring my own container so I don't have to worry about funny looks when there is no meat left on the bone. One time a very lovely and charming waitress insisted we take home the bone from a Porterhouse steak we shared and make stock, that sparked the habit.
I feel a little star struck as the inspiration for this topic 🙂 One less than admirable frugal thing I did a few weeks ago was take the cheese off of a pre-made hoagie (thank you teacher appreciation week free food!) and saved it for cheesy mashed potatoes later that night. A little avocado spread and shredded lettuce stuck to the cheese went completely unnoticed in the potatoes. Unwanted food from one source is a free secret ingredient for another dish!
I will admit to reusing my tea leaves to make a second cup either later in the day or the next day. And I have been known to keep used paper towels for wiping out the slime in the bottom of the garbage can after it’s emptied.
The tea leaves can get better with the second brew! The paper towels are kinda gross though. 😛
Hmmm. I hoard old clothes a bit. Or a lot. I keep wanting to find a use for them. And sometimes I do find a use for them. Recently our town's high school band has been collecting rags or old clothes to recycle (for a fundraiser), and I am now sorting things out of my collection for that.
Sometimes when my neighbors put their trash on the curb the evening before trash pickup and there is something totally useful sitting out, I will sneak out and rescue it and either sell or freecycle it to prevent it from going to the landfill. But I can't do that too much, because we don't have that much room in the garage to store (hide) it. It was easier to do pre-pandemic because I could see everything sitting out when taking my son to school and pick it up on my way home. Now that everyone is home all the time, I find it harder to be stealth about it. Lol. My husband lovingly calls me "Trash Panda". I have also been known to pick out large cardboard boxes or totally obvious recyclables out of my neighbors trash cans to put into the recycling bin. I can't stand to see people trash perfectly recyclable items. But I won't go digging around for them, just what is easy to move. At church events, I used to take home all the recyclables instead of seeing everyone put them in the trash. Hmm, I sense a theme here.
If Trash Panda is Debbie's name, then I'm the Baby Trash Panda. I don't take neighbor's recyclables, but I have dumped my trash cans out on the grass when others throw them in my trash can, not the "Obvious Big Yellow Recycle" can. Daughters think I'm obsessed. But I'm the one hauling two large bins to the edge of the driveway on trash/recycle day. And I also keep a plastic grocery bag hanging from a door knob to hold all the other recyclable plastic bags/dry cleaning bags. When it's full, it goes into the car for the next trip to the grocery store that has a recyclable bin out front. I, too, would take home that stuff from a church function. Why fill the dumpster that the church pays for? I, or another lady can get rid of them for free.
OK, I can see I'm going to have to admit to something really shocking to impress this crowd. I do almost everything everyone else does that isn't child-related (no kids), except for "wee wipes"--and I still have that worn-out LL Bean flannel bathrobe waiting for me to have enough time on my hands to cut it up for that purpose. (Until I finally retire altogether from my telecommuting job in August, this may not happen.)
Someone mentioned getting pasta sauce Mason jars out of other folks' recycling. Until last week, we had a neighbor who was heavily into limited-edition liquor (fancy bourbon, vodka, etc.). Those bottles have made *really* great containers for my homemade herb vinegars. I'm not going to miss this neighbor much himself, but I sure am going to miss his recycling.
And if I've made something for dinner that involves frying bacon or sausage, I'll just shove the frying pan into the oven overnight (with a Post-it on the oven door as a reminder) and use it for breakfast eggs the next day. It saves on the washing up, and we're not dead yet. (OK now, you can say "Eeeew" if you want to!)
I don't think the bacon grease overnight is even remotely gross. Ha.
Growing up in the South, I knew a lot of people who had a jar of saved bacon grease on their counter.
🙂 I live in Canada (admittedly, my father is American and from the South) and there is a jar of bacon grease in my fridge. My husband was so confused when I asked him to pour his bacon grease in a jar (especially because I’m pretty much a vegetarian) but now he loves that he gets food with a hint of bacon flavour pretty regularly.
I re-use pans all the time if they just have some grease in them from frying eggs or whatever. That's not gross--it's the proper way to season your pans. 🙂
No, not gross -
1) uses something most people would toss,
2) saves by preventing grease from going down the drain, which even in small amount can build up, &
3) almost everything tastes great fried in bacon grease!
I love your candor! (I also really love bacon grease, so that one doesn't bother me in the least.)
The truest truth. Very little food is not made better by bacon grease!
I think using the fat from one dish to cook another, is standard chef stuff. Using bacon grease for the next dish is not only OK, but positively encouraged by those of us who like flavor.
When I cook something that makes a flavorful grease or fond (not just bacon, but also pork chops or searing steaks), I aim to serve a veggie that tastes good cooked in that. Examples include green beans, broccoli, and asparagus. It's all part of the plan!
We save bacon grease but store it in the refrigerator. It's good to cook in green beans. We also use it for eggs & other things. If one is from the south where there is poke salad, bacon grease is used for cooking that.
Yep, I always have a jar of bacon grease in my fridge. I used it to cook some pancakes just today!
I save bacon grease, as well as all meat drippings, ham, chicken, pork drippings and keep in the refrigerator. They are great for adding flavor to any foods, i.e. vegetables, adding to soups, etc. Read this from a chef who said any good cook never throws out met drippings as this is gold! And has proven a great tip as we have enjoyed great tasting food!
What embarrasses me most is that I don't find any of these embarrassing
We use our coffee filters twice, just adding more grounds on top of the old for the second brew. We also never pour out coffee, and my first cup of the day is almost always warmed up leftover from the previous day.
And...I've had the same disposable razor for as long as I can remember.
How do you keep your disposable razor sharp?
I was wondering that too! I can keep a razor (non-disposable) for a long time because my leg hair is pretty fine and sparse. But even I have to change my razor blade every now and then.
Uh. Well. My hair is pretty fine, so it hasn't been much of an issue, I guess. I keep shaving and the hair keeps coming off.
However, my husband thinks my disposable razor usage is absurd, and he regularly pokes fun at it. Not long ago he said my leg hair must just get embarrassed and pluck itself out when it sees my razor coming.
Always dry razors after using them to lengthen their use time.
(Or store them in water, though that confuses me somehow).
Lauren, I totally agree about not thinking any of these efforts are embarrassing! I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but we kicked the coffee filter “habit” by buying a reusable filter. Obvious more expensive up front, but we’ve saved a lot since then.
Guilty of most of these too ; )
I shower only twice a week, when I need to wash my hair.
I use cloth wipes and cloth pads. Not 100% of the time on the wipes but I do think they work a lot better than toilet paper.
Not sure it gets more embarrassing than that!
I use 100% organic cloth pads. They are so comfortable. 🙂
This is such an interesting topic! I’m learning so many tips and feeling like I’m eavesdropping...Please ask more of these types of questions Kristen. So interesting!
I use cloth pads too (and lunette cup)!
Amazing!!
I'm right there with ya! The monetary and environment savings!! ♥️you are NOT alone!
My husband went back to school full time when our kids were 5, 4, and 1. We lived on savings and family help for 4 years. During that time my grandmother moved into a care home and needed to get rid of most things. She had a fabric stash that was fairly extensive (some really old) and a fair bit of it was ugly. I took it all and have made pajama pants with it for my kids whole lives. My son still had a pair from her fabric 15 years later. I always said that my kids had the ugliest pajamas ever. But they were free and it was one of many blessings during that time. My fashion-conscious youngest daughter (20 year old now) recently said her goal was to buy a MATCHING pajama set. She said she had never had a matching set of pajamas, they were all either homemade, or hand-me down. I was so surprised, but I thought for a moment, and she is right!
Fabric is a big part of my family culture and now I can share that fun with my little etsy shop
https://www.etsy.com/shop/fabricspeaks/
Except now the fabric is CUTE!
I reuse Q-Tips. If the q-tip wasn't used for something really gross, I rinse them and then store them in a toilet paper tube under the sink. I will use these grey Q-tips to gather up hair/gunk in different places in the bathroom then spray and clean. I will also use them to get dust or bugs out of areas before I clean.
Hahaha!!! I'm not sure what's grosser, the idea of reusing my q-tips, or the admission that I have never in ten years cleaned anything in this house that might have required a q-tip...the bugs are super secure here, haha!!!
I do so many of these. I don't think they are embarrassing at all. The one I came up with that isn't mentioned is I hate buying bags for trash so I use whatever comes into the house. Currently I have a bag from topsoil as our kitchen garbage. I use bags from pillows, dog food bags bags from the dry cleaner. My sisters and parents save them for me. I will also use any type of bag to pick up dog poop. I go for walks with the dog and have run into friends carry an english muffin bag, the bag that dried beans were in, a bag from chocolate chips. Its going into the garbage so why pay money to buy them.
I do this, too! I once took giant dog food bags from a neighbor's garbage pile. He saw me so now he saves them and brings them over when he has a dozen or so (He has three Great Danes, so goes through a lot of food in a month). My husband was mortified when he learned I had been appropriating the neighbor's garbage.
I just read this comment as I cut up mango to freeze in an English muffin bag. Reuse, reuse, reuse!
If you buy TP or paper towels at warehouse clubs, the outer bag is good for reuse. Just cut the side of the package carefully and voila, a new bag.
Here in Michigan, we pay a 10-cent deposit on bottles and cans (for carbonated drinks only). I've been known to fish deposit containers out of trash cans -- at work, at the gas station, at public events. I won't root around in a trash bin, but if a container is sitting right on top, I feel no shame in rescuing it.
At one point I calculated my "hourly wage" (thank you, Amy Dacyczyn!) for taking back returnables, and it worked out to $50 - $60 / hour, depending on how quickly I could feed containers in the return machines. Not bad.
Both my brother and sister go on walks and collect cans and bottles. I mean, why not?
You earn money and you help the environment. Win-win!
I worked at a place that had weekly Friday potlucks. I used to take home any aluminum pans people brought in and were ready to discard. They washed up nicely and went on to have longer lives in our house.
A friend of mine ran a large Head Start, where they had stringent rules about never reusing food that had been on a child's lunch tray---even if it was a fruit cup that had not been opened or a fruit like an orange. I asked her to have the kitchen staff throw edibles into a five gallon bucket that I would collect on my way home every afternoon; we fed those remains to my chickens and our hog. I found out later the staff thought we were so poor I was feeding the food remains to my family! (That is what you get when you drive an old pickup into the ground and never wash it. Plus, I am not exactly a fashionable dresser and have been known to wear my husband's shirts in a pinch. They added 1 + 1 and got 3...)
Reusing foil pans made me smile and describing your style made me giggle. To me, all of this is so logical. Why can't the rest of the world think like us! haha
I can a LOT of applesauce each year. My MIL taught me to can and she always got the apple drops to get her apples inexpensively. I can't find "drops" anywhere around here, so I get what I believe to be the drops... animal apples. That's what the orchard calls them. I do put them through a soak to get rid of whatever chemicals I can, but it feels weird to tell people that I'm making all of my applesauce from "animal apples". (They're about 1/3 of the price of seconds!)
It's hard to keep up with laundry with 3 little kids and we have a bunch of washcloths specifically for cleaning faces and hands after meals, but the younger 2 often share a washcloth because we'll run low and I don't want to buy more cloths. I at least try to give the second kid a clean spot on the cloth, though I figure they share all kinds of germs anyways.
My husband likes liquid hand soap. So, I have made liquid hand soap out of bar soap by grating two bars and boiling them in a large pot of water. Once it is completely melted I let it cool overnight and then blend it with my immersion blender the next day. This gives me like five or six large refill containers of liquid soap. I was able to get quite a few bars of soap for free after coupons, so quite a savings. I haven't done that in a long time and just buy the refill bottles now. But, just thought of it. I had one friend look at me like I was nuts! She was like, "Just buy the refill bottles." I was also trying to stay out of debt.
That’s a big savings!!! I may try this!
It was a long time before I agreed to buy the regular sized bars of soap which my roommate prefers. I traveled so much that I had plenty of soap by bringing home hotel bars. Heck, I traveled enough that bringing home just the bars I'd used was enough.
Lol! I started bringing home the coffee packets/cups etc. from hotels when I travel. I don't go anywhere very often, but it adds up fast. I put them in my desk at work. When I need a caffeine pick me up in the afternoon, I just soak the coffee packet like a tea bag and voila! Coffee is served. Yes that is a great idea to bring home the bars of soap, shampoo etc.
Good for you I think that's great - my mum taught me to dilute liquid soap with water to make it go further & now the non-soap one I use takes a decent wash to rinse off so diluting it also saves water at the sink.
We have several things that we have found over the years. I have a pair of kitchen scissors that I found in two pieces on a road. I have an old fleece that my husband found dirty and in a ball at a playground years ago and a beach towel found its way to our home the same way.
Kristen, thank you so much for replying to my questions! Embarrassing or not, it really helps to know that there are like-minded people around who struggle with the same things or even enjoy the process of saving money through frugality! Consumerism has marketing on its side, but it's much harder to market abstaining from consumerism or consuming more mindfully.
Our lives have had a very similar trajectory, with older children and larger budgets, but also some larger expenses as a consequence. Although I try to remind myself how far we have come and what we have achieved, you are right that sometimes comparison is the thief of joy. It's also easy to fall into internalizing shame from having less, and to think there must be something wrong with me as a person to have caused it.
It really is easy to feel a lot of shame around not having 4 years' worth of college expenses saved for each kid. It feels like there's a lot of cultural pressure around that.
But here's the thing: Us having some years of low income is not something I believe was outside of God's plan for us. We were working hard and doing our best, and money just was not in abundance. It was what it was, and because of that, we are now in a place of not having 16 years' worth of college tuition saved. This is not an accident, though; somehow, it's in God's good plan for us and our kids, and there's some relief in resting in that.
(I think I remember that you are a believer; if not, then pardon my above paragraph!)
I'm late to this but I had to say, we have dumpster dived.
My husband crawled into a dumpster and removed several of the roll-up maps from a school that closed, with me cheering him on.
Also, one time I emptied an entire trash can outside a K-Mart to find my daughter's retainer where she had thrown it out by accident with the napkin she had wrapped it in when eating a snack on the way there. I had their permission to go through the trash, and I put all the trash back in and cleaned up when I was done. It was so disgusting to go through that trash, but my other option was to pay for a new retainer out of pocket. You can imagine the lecture my daughter got later. Her orthodontist told me how to sanitize it, and he told me I wasn't the first parent to dig a retainer out of a public trash can.
Nope - not the first! Lol
In Iowa in the 1970s, there were a group of us who had to go through the lunchroom trash cans to recover our retainers- we knew our families could not afford to replace them! It was gross and humbling, but a valuable lesson in life!
Way to go on the maps!!
I had to go thru my entire grade school cafeteria trash can when i accidentally threw out my retainer (wrapped in a napkin.) That was 40 years ago and I am still afraid to tell my parents about what I did...
I love watching dumpster diving videos on YouTube. It's stunning what stores throw away!
I agree Mary, I enjoy watching them too, usually it is stuff that I just recently purchased myself. I am astonished at the blatant waste. Where I live, it's against the law to dumpster dive, or I'd be doing it too.
I worked at Fazoli's approx 8 years ago. I remember someone throwing away a retainer. I actually put gloves on and went through the trash in front of the family, to help them find it. I brought another trash bag out, so I could transfer trash as I went through it.
I cloth diapered my girls when they were babies. I use their old diaper inserts (100% cotton) as dust cloths - they work REALLY well. I also use their old burp cloths and wash cloths around the house too. My mom cloth diapered my brother (he's 45) and she still has some of those cloth diapers in use so I guess that's where I got it from! I had also used their old washcloths as wipes to cut back on the number of disposable wipes we needed to buy and trash. I recognize that so many parts of this entry is gross for some people but I feel proud of us for reducing the amount of waste we put into landfills. Different strokes for different folks!
I erased pages out of my older daughter's handwriting books so my younger could use them for practice. The older one hadn't done the whole book so I didn't want to buy a new one.
I wash my plastic forks and knives at work so I always have something to use. Maybe that's not frugal but it's not wasteful so in the same neighborhood of thoughts.
I reuse yogurt containers, pasta sauce jars, and costco sized containers to store all kinds of stuff. My cabinets are not instagram worthy but they are organized, eco-friendly and frugal!
Oooh! I save yogurt, sour cream, coffees and jelly jars oooh and nut/pretzel containers. YOU ARE NOT ALONE!! Resourceful! Works just as good!
We cloth diapered (until our medically complex kiddo arrived), and we loved it. Still are using the flat diapers for cleaning and mopping up messes, and I wish I still had the baby washcloth wipes I used to have because they're the perfect size for certain things. Other people thought it was gross, but I think it's easier to keep stink down with cloth diapers than disposable.
I was a cloth diapered baby! Luckily I grew up using cloth diapers as dust cloths - they are the best!! And I inherited a few when I left for college...I also took a receiving blanket because that makes the best dish drying towel imo.
One of my friends in MS where I now live is considering cloth diapering and some folks understand and some folks really don’t. Boy have cloth diapers changed!!!
Great post and comments! Not one of these seemed unusual or gross to me. Here are a couple others: 1. In pre-pandemic days, when I'd go out to eat with family or friends, I'd bring small glass jars for decanting any leftover dressings, condiments, etc. (e.g., uneaten peanut sauce makes a delicious stir-fry addition). These jars were in addition to larger metal or glass containers for leftover food. 2. I use a French press for my daily coffee and I do not clean it after each use; on the following day(s), I add to the grounds that are already at the bottom. My husband thinks it's disgusting, but I am the only one that drinks coffee. And I'm not dead yet!
If you garden, coffee grounds are a natural fertilizer. Spread them around the tomato plants or other hungry plants. Just make sure they are spread out well, or premix with some compost/soil, because large chunks of coffee will get moldy.
That's a great tip, thank you!
Apparently you can start a bag of coffee grounds, and banana peels and when you’ve got a bunch spread that out - it’s a great fertilizer. I’m not a banana person but at least the coffee helps the smell!
It's probably not embarrassing at all to other frugal friends, but it mortifies my children. We shop for winter coats/sweatshirts/shoes/boots @ blowout clearance sales in summer(size up of coarse). I get so excited when they finally fit.
And this is totally NOT embarrassing to me, but when people come over they act like WE should be embarrassed. We don't use paper towels, only rags. So if there's a spill or I clean table/counters after dinner I get a rag and that just seems to confuse and mortify most people.
I also snag condiments in excess from restaurants and use them in the kids lunches (bbq,ketchup,mustard etc)..this also embarrass the kids but no complaints when using them at school...super handy
We dont' use paper napkins or paper towels either, and we've had so many looks of astonishment when I offer a kitchen towel to clean up a spill (but won't it ruin the towel???) or cloth napkins, or even real dishes. It's surprising to me that people think it's so odd.
We use cloths and rags too. We also use napkins. I loved it when a visiting kid said, “I love eating with y’all! The food is good, and you have fancy napkins!”
The fancy napkins are a resale sheet I cut and hemmed to make a bunch of matching cotton napkins. He said his mom just uses regular napkins (paper). Lol!
I don’t use paper towels either. My father in law (MS) - me from WA meanwhile -has purchased them for me when he visits monthly because it isn’t sanitary to use clean dish rags on a spill or a separate clean dish rag if you have washed your hands thoroughly after touching meat.
I grew up knowing which texture rags were for drying dishes, washing clean hands, and cleaning spills.
My parents pay for their water (town water/sewer) so they have always "caught" their water - meaning waiting for hot water, they'd catch the cold water in a milk jug to water plants, etc. I grew up doing that too. We don't always flush if it's ahem, yellow. (I still do that on a septic tank) I don't wash my clothes until they are stretched out or smelly (excluding undies). I, as soon as I get home from work, change into "house" clothes, which keeps my "good" clothes nice longer. I brought that from childhood as well. We NEVER walk on our floors in shoes, so our hardwood floors look like they day they were installed. Also, one doesn't have to vacuum as often doing that. I happily skip showering here and there on the weekends, saving soap, water, my skin. 🙂
If I can make it instead of buying it I will, over the years I have learned to make a lot of products, and I now make all of my cleaning products, my personal hygiene products including toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, hand soap, bar soap, facial oils etc.
I reuse a lot of the small jars I save, for these products, I have also used many of these homemade things as xmas gifts because you can really personalize them with scent or for a certain skin type. I started doing it because I have chemical sensitivity and later realized how much money it saves every month.
I would love to have any information/tips/recipes for how to make personal hygiene products (besides soap). I have a ton a soap from my husband’s cousin & she makes goat soap.
My 8 and 5 year-olds always leave some milk in their glasses, like 1/3 to 1/2 cup, no matter how little I give them. I refuse to pour it down the drain. I keep it in the fridge and they either drink it the next meal (they don't know they're drinking their leftover milk) or I put it in my toddler's bottle. We go through milk too fast as it is, to be wasting it.
And with 5 of us home all day every day, we go through way too many dishes to be washing everything every single time. If it's only lightly used (a drinking glass, a water bottle, a spoon used to eat yogurt or stir coffee, etc.) it gets a nice rinse and laid out to dry for next time. I already feel like I spend all day cooking and cleaning up, so anything I can skip washing is a help!
When my kids were little, I purchased smaller insulated water bottles in different colors. Each child was assigned a color. That water bottle was used all day, (only used for ice water - never anything that would spoil) and just washed at night. it saved me SO many dishes!! hope it helps.
Paying for water and sewer bills have made adapting to 'If it's yellow let it mellow' very easy. I have a brick in the water reservoir of our toilet as well. I am saving the water that runs from our roof for watering our garden. I dump out the water that gets collected from our dehumidifier into the washing machine, every little bit helps. I also hang out our laundry to dry, and hang it to dry in the basement on winter/cloudy days. I usually don't share these tidbits outside of our family as some might view it as weird, but I am not embarrassed by these things, as they are saving us significant amounts of money, I tend to be more embarrassed at Wasting Resources.
While I applaud your water saving ideas I have read on several reliable websites that it's not ideal to use a brick and that over time it can break apart and damage the toilet mechanism. The same sites recommend using a filled and sealed plastic or glass jar instead.
Your tips are very smart and savvy, not weird at all. A relative of mine said she knew of someone who rinsed out, dried on a line, and reused toilet paper that had only been used to wipe urine. Now that's weird!!
1. I didn’t forget to use my CVS coupons and cash back and bought milk, eggs, and bread without spending very much at all.
2. I am reupholstering my dining room chairs myself. I have done this before and I purchase my fabric at an outlet store. It costs a small fraction of what a professional would charge. I am thinking about trying a bigger upholstery project soon. I just need to study up on the techniques of tufting.
3. I repainted the bathroom myself with a feathery design. It turned out very well if I do say so myself.
4. When I had to go out of town for a dentist appointment I stopped at a local Dollar Tree to find some items that I had not been able to find anywhere else. They had what I had been looking for and of course I didn’t spend much on them.
5. As many of your readers can probably attest to, the prices of beef have been raising extravagantly. My husband and I, along with our oldest daughter and her family, and my son and his family, went in together and purchased a large steer. We all spent the day butchering the meat, making hamburger, slicing steaks, and wrapping. Each family got approximately 200 lbs of beef for their freezers at a fraction of what it would cost to buy it in the store. By processing the steer ourselves we also cut out the cost of the middle man. It was well worth it.
I unplug tv, chargers & anything that is not in use. If something has a little light on, it is using electricity. I use the blank sides of statements or bills to cut up & use for scratch paper & grocery lists. Lots of good ideas here.
Milk that is starting to sour is perfect for sauces, soups, pudding, yogurt, and any baking(anything that calls for buttermilk too). That's what our grandparents did. I've explained to people that there's a difference between sour and rancid. I'm not really embarrassed by any frugal things I do. I learned a lot of things from my grandma. I know people are surprised I use the walnuts from my black walnut tree. I've picked dandelions for jelly. And taken the turkey carcass from a family get together. (Nobody else wanted it). I need to work on my retirement. I'm late too, as a single parent money was super tight in the beginning. I'll have to look through your posts to see if you've already posted about this
Ohh, I would hate to see someone throw away a turkey carcass. I'd rescue it too!
We are late saving for retirement as well, due to a lot of years of lower income. Here's a post I wrote about that: https://www.thefrugalgirl.com/late-to-the-retirement-savings-game-me-too-heres-what-i-tell-myself/
I once convinced my mother-in-law to give me the bone from her ham, she was going to give it to a friend's dog. I told her I'd take it and give her some split pea soup in return. Thankfully she loves split pea soup!
I love making dandelion jam as well! Foraging is so fun and rewarding. I also love wild violet jam and simple syrup.
If I have embarrassing frugal habits . . . I'll never tell. 😉
The question about changing ideas of frugality over time has got me thinking though. I think as I have aged I have introspected and tried to address problematic ways of thinking and things that hold me back from being happy and serving others. One of those issues was that I came out of childhood thinking that if I wasn't extremely frugal I would starve because I would never make a lot of money. I have since learned that I have at least some control over my career and that if I focus as much on climbing in my career as I do on being frugal I could maybe loosen up a little. I think I had to realize that I was worth more than I was giving myself credit for.
Making more has allowed our family to be less cheap but just as frugal, ie doing major home repairs correctly instead of finding a cheap fix, paying a cleaning lady an hourly wage she deserves instead of finding who will work for cheap or just living in an environment less clean than I would like. Tithing instead of just swallowing the guilt of giving what felt like a "good amount."
My husband and I have been pretty frugal from the beginning of our marriage--he was in the Navy so money was tight. Now, we've celebrated our 28th anniversary, we have made it a goal to keep finding new ways to save money. I'll admit that it is now a competition between us. We've even gotten our 4 children involved. I regularly find furniture for free, do a little fix-up and sell it for a nice profit. I will save knobs and handles from pieces that can't be saved to use on other projects. We dumpster dive--I know that some people are embarrassed by that--I'm not. I've come to realize that most people don't even look at someone in the dumpster. When someone is moving out in our town, they usually leave things near the street--everyone helps themselves. We've even taken frozen food that they were going to throw away--it was frozen and sealed so no one was in any danger. My husband got a Speed Queen washer and dryer for free when he worked part-time at an appliance store--customers were getting new appliances and the old ones worked fine but were old and they decided to up-grade (I got some stoves and fridges, too!) I was most excited about the Speed Queen because we collect rain water and this washer allows you to add it to the washer--even the rinse cycle--saving a ton of money on our water bill! I could list for hours all of the things we do that other people find embarrassing and refuse to do. But the bottom line is that living this way is why we are going to closing on our 4th house to also be rented out as income. Something you do that others see as gross/weird could be what helps you and your family get through a difficult time--like a pandemic--without adding to your debt.
Those are some pretty hard-core frugal habits!
I like what you said in the end: I am in a steady, decent paying job, but I accumulated a lot of student loan debt that I'm working to pay off. People assume I have a lot of cash and wonder why I'm so frugal. We never know what someone else's situation is, and its smart to be frugal, invest, pay debt, instead of wasting our resources.
Just found your blog, this is great. I try to reuse everything especially packing that food comes in, primarily for the environmental impact but also to save money. Recently I have started reusing bread bags to put our sandwiches in when we go hiking. I try to most other non recycleable bags into a plastic container (is milk jug) for eco bricks.
These are all great habits, but I don't think any of them are embarrassing. My grandmother (who was a teenager during the Depression) washed cling wrap and hung it on clothes lines on her porch to dry so she could reuse it. I thought that was weird, but now I rarely even use cling wrap because it's a pain compared to using containers with lids.
My "embarrassing" frugal habit is not showering unless I'm smelly. I only wash my hair when my hair is oily and smelly. I didn't start this to be frugal but to save my skin and hair.
Don't know why but just remembered going to a trivia night where the host yelled out "Come & play! Tens of dollars of prizes!" I think the first prize in the comp was a small fake fish tank with plastic fish that lit up as multi-coloured lights when you switched it on -
Any-hoo, most embarrassing frugal habit isn't embarrassing anymore - stopped caring what people think when I buy one of something eg one honey soy chicken kebab at the deli so I can have one serve of noodles, 5 pieces of different fruit for the week, my fave was the reaction I got buying one slice of corned beef to put in the one bread roll I bought at the supermarket to have for lunch when shopping - the deli lady was really stroppy! I don't care I held my head high & got lunch for $1.20
I'm definitely less embarrassed by my frugal habits than my non-frugal habits. I'm very fortunate to have disposable income, and I realize that everyone prioritizes their money differently, so I try very hard not to judge how others choose to spend or save their money. So please don't judge me when you see me at the thrift store with my ridiculously over-priced designer handbag (bought used and authenticated, of course). If you're behind me in line at the Dollar Tree, you can see me whip out my coupons, too! 🙂
I'm not embarrassed about it but I bring my own maple syrup to restaurants. I refuse to waste the carbs and calories of good pancakes or french toast by topping it with fake maple syrup, (there oughta be a law banning it), and I refuse to pay extra for the real stuff now that a lot of restaurants charge for it. My husband even bought me a monogrammed flask for our anniversary!
I re-wear my clothes as often as I can, (underwear excluded), since we pay per load in our building laundry room, more wears, less wash.
If I'm dining out with close friends or family I will take their leftovers if they don't want them. One time we got an extra steak dinner as the couple next to us were from out of town and couldn't take their leftovers. They asked if we wanted them as they hated to see food wasted. I figured as long as we reheated thoroughly we were safe.
I save the salt and pepper packets from takeout and cut them open and put them in our shakers.
I reuse zip lock bags. I buy them infrequently, preferring to use my glass leftover containers, but If i somehow have to use a plastic bag, that puppy is gonna get washed and rescued multiple times.
I wear my clothes a couple of days in a row.i don’t sweat much,I swear.
I use up old food, in soups mostly. No one can tell! The veggies fulfil their earthly purpose!!
During Covid I am only washing my hair every 3 days (OMG!!!!!)
I am an old hippie.We did not wear underwear.Not gonna say any more about that.
My husband reuses floss—eeewwww....
I use the conditioner from my hair color box as shaving cream to shave my legs.
I am letting my gray grow out (I think..) so may not even have hair color boxes anymore!!
We have used cloth diapers with our babies and so I also have made cloth wipes to clean them since it all gets washed in the same pile. Well during these stages of our kids I use cloth wipes for myself and just wash it with the kids diaper laundry (but only for #1 use). It saves toilet paper, which is actually really useful right now!
I am right there with you. I had four zucchini the other day that were getting a bit hmm...slimy, shall we say? and I washed them, peeled them and chopped them up to put in a sauce. I've cut mold off cheese or strawberries and used the rest.And I totally use milk or yogurt that's a bit off color to bake or cook with. I grew up in a family that is very wasteful so I am actually proud of myself for wasting less in my adult life.
I'm generally not embarrassed by my habits, but some people think they are strange. A few people I know wonder why I even bother making veggie stock, which I think is a pretty standard action.
Some of my more "extreme" things include blowing my nose into cut up old cotton shirts, using reusable feminine hygiene products, considering using family cloth to save on toilet paper, peeling my lemons so I can use all of the rind, making "pulled pork" out of organic banana peels, making vinegar from scratch with fruit scraps, water, and sugar, and scraping my bowl or plate to eat every last bit of food.
We also were very frugal when we had our two sons, 18 months apart in age. I found Amy Dacyczyn online and they were asking for ways to save money. So, I answered and put in so many ways to save money and the crazy things that happened when we put our ideas to the test, so to speak. Amy and her staff had just made the decision to shut down their online blog that day and all were very sad. My email went in to their mail box just after their decision. My note back told from them was saddening; however, they also told me that my email had them laughing and "rolling in stitches". Apparently, there was a contest and I won! What I did learn by being frugal was an amazing 'toolkit' of skills. Hope you have a Dream Worthy day.