Tightwad Gazette, Book Three: It's been a year!

I was doing an occasional series, revisiting The Complete Tightwad Gazette, but when I started my nursing job, I inadvertently put this series on pause. Ha.

But I'm taking a break from chemistry hell to peruse the Tightwad Bible (this will be much more fun and much less stressful for me. Heh.)

I'm beginning where I left off, around page 598. Let's see what we find this time!

Decide first, then shop

Amy tells the story of a diet book author who recommended figuring out what food would be satisfying to you before you load up your plate from a buffet table, the point being that sometimes we eat food just because it's there, not because we really, truly want it.

Amy draws an analogy to shopping, and of course, her take is that we should figure out what we want before we go to a store. Otherwise, we might buy things just because they are there. At that point in time, 70% of adults visited a mall weekly, and there were 30,000 shopping malls in the U.S. So, she said there were lots of opportunities to mindlessly buy things just because they were there in the mall, and you happened to be at the mall.

Well...imagine what she'd say now! We don't even have to get into our cars and drive to a mall in order to mindlessly buy things; we can do it from our computers in our homes. Heck, we can even do it from our phones, in our beds.

So, how much more true is it that we should take steps to avoid mindlessly buying things!

That's too cheap for me: DIY pillow making

I am extremely picky about my pillow situation. To be specific, I like my pillow to be quite flat, and I like the material to be shapeable, so I can kind of move it around to support my neck. For this reason, I loathe fiber-fill pillows, and I only use them in shams.

The current pillow I have is a pretty cheap jobbie from IKEA, and it is perfection in my book. Chef's kiss.

Anyway, Amy said she and her family had exactly one pillow per person (reluctantly purchased new for $5 at a salvage store, since the supply of used pillows was thin in her neck of the woods*).

(*I'm not very squeamish but even I would draw a line at a used pillow!)

Unfortunately, her son puked on his pillow, and when she washed it, it came out in a lumpy trapezoid.

So, she took apart the pillow, tore apart the filling into little pieces, stuffed a spare pillowcase with the small pieces of filling, and ended up with a "slightly lumpy, but serviceable pillow".

For me personally, this would be frugality gone too far. I'd maybe do this for a pillow to put in a sham, but not for one to sleep on. Even for a kid.

Part of my hesitation with this one also stems from the fact that pillows are very occasional purchases; it's not like you need to buy them every six months! Saving $5 on a repeated expense is much more effective than saving $5 on a once-every-few-years expense.

To each their own, but for me, this would be cheap, not frugal.

(Also of note: I employed both waterproof mattress covers and waterproof pillow covers on my kids' beds when they were little. Kids are leaky, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.)

A sign of the times: a universal casserole recipe

For pretty much all of my childhood, casseroles were a mainstay, and I know my household was not unique in this because my mom's cookbooks had casserole recipes aplenty.

The Tightwad Gazette offers up a universal version for the purpose of using up odds and ends in your fridge, and it probably works very well if you are still a casserole fan.

What would the modern equivalent be? A universal "bowl" recipe? Like, a cup of starch, ½ cup of a protein, a cup of veggies, ½ cup of sauce, and some crunchy toppings.

That's the type of thing I turn to when I have odds and ends; a bowl (or a salad) can be a single serving, whereas a casserole is generally not.

A Yes and a No

From a collection of Tightwad Gazette reader tips:

Yes: a broccoli rubber band use

A reader wrote in to suggest using broccoli rubber bands as a jar opener, and I fully support this tip. I do this all the time, and it works great; you just put the band around the lid, and it gives you enough grip to open the jar.

No: a glue/mustard bottle reuse

A reader says she saves mustard bottles and white glue bottles to fill with frosting for use in cake decorating.

The mustard bottle is at least made of food-safe plastic (although it is questionable whether one could ever get the mustard smell fully out), but the glue bottle? I wouldn't ever put food in it.

Also, I cannot imagine that it is an easy task to get the frosting into these bottles unless it's a liquid frosting like confectioner's frosting.

Definitely a nope for me!

Popcorn/Potato Chip Bag Curling Ribbon

For our last little Tightwad Gazette nugget: a reader suggests using Mylar snack bags to make curling ribbon for gift packages.

This piqued my curiosity (does it really work?) and I had a freshly empty bag of Aldi's cheddar popcorn (their version of SmartPop, I believe).

I mistakenly cut open the bag to make it easier to wipe it out, but realized that a cut bag cannot produce a long piece of ribbon. Whoops.

I did discover a few things. Crinkled parts of the bag do not curl very well:

A narrower strip curls better, thus doing a better job of hiding the packaging printing on the other side.

HOWEVER. I personally would not use this on a gift unless it was kind of a joke. For instance, I have a coworker who is obsessed with SmartPop, and I would definitely make a gift ribbon for her out of a popcorn bag.

Or I would do this to wrap a gift for my friend Katy because I feel she would appreciate it.

But in general, I think this veers into "cheap, not frugal" territory, mainly because it affects someone else. Also, curling ribbon is very inexpensive, so to me, the savings would not be worth possibly offending someone.

After all, there are a million and one other ways to save money, and it's generally more considerate to use frugal tactics that affect you, not others.

(Also: if money were so tight that I couldn't afford curling ribbon, I might also think it was too tight for me to afford snack foods such as potato chips and popcorn.)

Do you agree or disagree with my opinion on these frugal ideas? Gimme your take!