Wednesday, January 14, 2009

How Thrifty Are You?

I just pulled a corn casserole out of the freezer for dinner tonight and I realized that I'd reused some foil to cover it before I froze it. Despite my best intentions, I have officially become my mother.

So how thrifty are you? Here are some things around the house I do to pinch pennies.
Reuse foil (if it did not have meat on it the first time)
  • Wash and reuse zip loc bags (if they did not contain meat the first time)
  • Save gift bags and tissue paper
  • Mash old bars of soap with new bars of soap in bathtub
  • Use spatula to get the last of anything out of a jar (i.e. peanut butter)
  • Save plastic containers from yogurt, sour cream, etc to use as tupper ware
  • Use old burp cloths to dust rather than disposable paper towels
  • Wash sponges in washing machine to use them until they fall apart
  • Only use cold water cycles for laundry
  • Keep the same old tub of wet wipes and put in soft refill bags.
  • Make stained knit clothing my newest crafts or dust rags.
  • Make soup out of just about anything and chicken or beef stock
  • Make my own bath and body scrubs/salts (not that I've had time or ability to sit in a bath anytime recently).
  • Excercise as rarely as possible so as to preserve the tread on my New Balance tennis shoes (purchased in June of 2005, just before Little Philip was born - Big Philip had to tie the laces for me since I couldn't bend over)

7 comments:

Steph said...

Oh, I am every bit that bad - I do most of that stuff on the list. But I am not turning into my mother - I'm turning into my mother-in-law (Mom's a Boomer, M-I-L is Depression-era). That depression-era "save everything because it might someday be useful" mentality. And I end up reusing a whole lot of it, too.

Melissa and David Miller said...
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BAMA_GIRL_205 said...
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Beth Pruitt said...

Funny! I do at least 8 of your 13 listed. I also will squeeze every last bit out of a tube of toothpaste, but stop short of cutting the tube open to get any that I can't force out of the opening, like my Dad does! While Scott likes the fact that I'm good about saving money wherever I can, he ridicules me for many of these. (Ok, ridicules is a bit strong. Makes fun of me. Rolls his eyes at me. You get the picture.) He also refuses to participate in some of these rituals with me, but will hand me the almost empty mayo jar so that I can scrape it out with a spatula, so as not to deprive me of any pleasure that I get from doing it. Gotta love him!

Eric and Sarah said...

Hmmm...
- I RARELY clean in order to save money on expensive cleaning products.
- We use clothe napkins instead of disposable.
- Wash my hair every other day to save on shampoo.
- And, I have actually rinsed the ketchup off a piece of hotdog Emory left behind at dinner so that I could save it for another meal.

Hilary said...

I've done a great job preserving my 2005 NB shoes too...we're so frugal. ;)

The Hoppers said...

I do several of those things too! I stll love my paper napkins though. But we don't use paper towels at all. My tread on my shoes is doing well too. I bought mine before Lawson was born so we are at 1 1/2 years.:) To be honest though, the soap thing is a little weird!:) You need to check out the books "The Tightwad Gazette" from the librbary. (thus saving more money!)