Five Frugal Things
by Katy on May 5, 2025 · 21 comments
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I went to my youngest’s soccer game and came home with two 10¢ returnable water bottles and a discarded soccer mom chair that looked to need nothing more than a handful of stitches to repair.
Seriously.
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I spent the afternoon prepping meals from the random food in my refrigerator and pantry. I made:
• Red Thai curry with tofu, broccoli, cabbage and peppers.
• Rice.
• Pinto beans, which I smashed up for refried beans.
• A dozen or so chicken drumsticks, which I marinated in gochuchang, soy sauce, honey and garlic.
• A batch of sweet chili sauce.
The tofu was a couple days past the sell-by date and the veggies all needed a mission, so this was a very frugal endeavor.
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My neighbors put another Bonne Maman jar in their recycling, which was good since I’d just used these two jars for the sweet chili sauce.
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My Japanese iris started blooming today, which is the beginning of a very beautiful couple of weeks. I think I planted just a few of these flowers in 1998 or so and they’ve slowly but surely spread throughout the front garden. There are now so many that I’ve been able to share with neighbors for their gardens.
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I’m not using AI to create insane images of myself.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
That chair is in such great shape. I’m glad you saved it from the landfill.
1. Found a receipt on the ground to scan into my fetch app. I now have 34,000 points to eventually cash in for a gift card of my choosing.
2. Made a lunch of rice topped with sautéed onion, carrot, zucchini and yellow squash. All of the produce was marked down and the overall cost was $1.30 per serving.
3. Took a weekend trip to Holland, MI with free lodging and free tickets to see the tulips gardens for my husband, daughter and I ($17 a piece). My husband is on a business trip there and his boss said his family could come for the weekend. His boss bought us to tulip field tickets. So all it cost me was gas and food for my daughter and I. His food was expensed through work.
4. Found a nickel and 2 pennies.
5. I listened to my Libby audiobook while I mowed the lawn, planted seeds I collected in the fall as well as a few from dollar tree, cleaned the litter boxes, and did a load of laundry.
I love the tulip festival.
What a fun trip, made extra fun with your frugal creativity!
1. I visited my niece and her SO up north where they are now living. It’s wonderful to have her so close. Well, 3.5 hrs drive but who’s counting? They put us up in the AirBnb they had leased short term for the winter and had just moved out of. They have a few more weeks before the lease runs out. I did buy them dinner as a thank you.
2. Their town was having bulk trash pick up. I found a brand new looking laundry rack in a pile. I’ll give this to one of my daughters or list in on FBMP.
3. I visited the Goodwill and found an All-Clad spatula that I’ll list on Ebay.
4. We brought drinks, snacks for the road and bagels for breakfast. I also brought coffee and creamer.
5. My daughter and Son-IL watched my dog for me. We always trade dog sitting. I bought them a small gift as a thank you.
How fun to get out of town and visit with family!
1. Helped my sister with her garage sale as it was citywide weekend. She made $2100
2. With her permission I took some art work, a new springform pan, and some clothes. I’ll regift the spring form pan as a gift. Art work to refresh my walls
3. Received $22 in class action settlements
4. Attended Derby Day party and won $40
5. Off to cardio rehab for free exercise and water
Whoa, you sister must have had a lot to sell!
Ate food from home during the weekend shifts.
Scavenged 6 pieces of heavy plywood from a Dumpster.
Washed up winter carhardts and will store until.winter comes back.
Dh and ds planted Cole crops and tomatoes. Topped them with milk jugs to soften the transition from house to garden. Our potatoes need hilling.
Found .02
My free iris from last year are blooming. The oak leaf hydrangea is still alive. I will share the extra garden plants with coworkers.
Batching errands.
Plywood is super expensive right now, that was an excellent score!
1. Spent a lovely weekend at my in-laws, including family photos. Wore an outfit I knew I liked, did my own hair/makeup/nails, and the pictures were taken at a free spot outside. These all may seem like givens to the more frugal fans here but add up quickly if you prefer them!
2. We stopped at a grocery store on the drive home with better produce and cheaper prices and stocked up. While the bill was high we found incredible prices on both chicken and pork so it was worth the expense to fill the fridge and freezer.
3. Stopped by Marshall’s and got good deals on some needed outdoor clothes – we are doing a camping trip in a few weeks and I was missing good long pants for warm weather. Found a pair that fit well and was on a steep discount. Very relieved to have a solution for mosquitoes at night!
4. Found a free pilates class for this Friday that I’m going to with a friend. Free entertainment and some fun!
5. Frugal fail – DH didn’t realize the bag in the freezer was for soup scraps, not compost, and dumped coffee grounds in it. Didn’t feel like making coffee broth. Oh well. It was taking up a lot of space and I hadn’t gotten to it in months so at least it’s out of the freezer and into the compost bin.
Love those irises.
1. Had a yard sale this weekend and made $186!
2. My parents had the five of us over for dinner yesterday for my birthday – no cooking for me and we came home with leftovers too. Including birthday cake, which I should freeze for a future treat.
3. Gifted my excess tomato plants to my SIL.
4. Scored free wood chips from a neighbor’s excessive “Chip Drop.”
5. Husband finished building a fence around my garden. Materials were nearly all free. Just labor (of love). I’m so happy that everything is protected from the dog now.
I have that same curry paste in my freezer, it makes very tasty curries!
1) I made red lentil almond curry and a vegetable farro soup to use up some vegetables and replenish my freezer meal stash.
2) I’ve stopped buying all meat at this point. I don’t eat it myself, and I grocery shop and cook for the rest of the family so they aren’t getting many meat dinners either anymore. My kids can choose to get lunch at school which usually has meat and my husband can buy meat and prepare it if he wants it, which he hasnt opted to do yet, his desire to not cook wins out over any desire for meat apparently!
3) I’m restarting our weekly beach picnics now that it’s slightly warming up. We ride bikes to the beach after I get home from work and play and eat a picnic dinner there. The kids get so excited, it’s free, good exercise and a night off cooking for me, since I pack the picnic in the morning.
4) My daughter is extremely extroverted (which is quite challenging as an introvert myself) She wanted to invite her entire class(which is a nice sentiment but costly), plus some additional friends from outside school to her birthday party. I worked with her to narrow it down since the place we booked for a party has a limit (if you go over, you have to pay more for each additional kid). I told her next year if she picked a public park or something for her party, it would be possible to invite more friends, so something to keep in mind for next year.
5) My son asked for a new book series that he’d read at school , I’m going to check out a bunch from the library for him.
Ack, I don’t know why my posts come out as replies!
FFT, “Better Than a Poke in the Eye with a Sharp Stick” Edition:
“Better than a poke…” was what DH used to say when he’d encounter modest pieces of good luck (a sort of “ward off the evil eye” thing, I suppose). Anyway, I’ve had several modest–well, OK, some not so modest–pieces of good luck this morning:
(1) I started the day with a bang by finding a $20 bill and a $10 bill in the middle of a street on my Monday morning walk route (as well as a penny and $1 in NY State deposit containers on the rest of the walk). So, as Katy would say, I’ve come into some money–and I may have taken the early lead in the 2025 Found Change Challenge.
(2) My first stop during a morning out was my local bank branch, where I was able to roll over a 6-month CD at 4.00% (which was better than I did last time). I still may put much of my regular savings account there into a higher-earning online account, but I left the CD where it is, since it’s also important to me to maintain local customer relations. (The branch manager went to high school with DH’s nephews.)
(3) Next stop was Second Time Around (the pop-up thrift shop that operates out of a vacant bowling alley on Mondays in aid of a local food pantry). I scored a like-new Vera Bradley bag for my JASNA Panera friend (who has only two requirements for purses: they must be VB and they must be big enough to accommodate the ton of stuff she schleps around), and a new pair of Vermont Country Store adjustable-wrap bedroom slippers, for $8.
(4) Second Time Around also had the usual freebies at the end of the checkout counter. Today’s were a pair of LED light bulbs suitable for enclosed fixtures, and a 4-pack of day-old Wegmans Portuguese rolls ($4.25 if bought fresh from Wegmans).
(5) And for lunch, I will be luxuriously dunking one of the rolls into the sort of clam chowder I made yesterday, with more homemade stock, a couple of potatoes that needed to be used, and a couple of cans of minced clams. As DH also would have said, “Could be worse!”
(6) And this just in from the wilds of Central NY: a personally witnessed turkey vulture mating! I saw two of them alight on a neighbor’s rooftop, and, thank goodness, had binoculars handy to grab. The male sidled up to the female for all the world like Arte Johnson as Tyrone F. Horneigh sidling up to Ruth Buzzi as Gladys Ormphby on Laugh-In (see my earlier “RIP Ruth Buzzi” comment)–and then, unlike Tyrone and Gladys, they actually did go at it. I almost fell out of my recliner laughing!
Lucky you! They roost communally this time of year, then disperse to lay eggs and raise young. Nature’s cleanup crew
My latest:
1. I keep getting ads or suggestions to buy expensive and complicated items for my garden, but I am fully able to move chunks of chicken wire, tomato cages, sticks, and pinecones around to protect my seedlings from cats using the garden bed as a litter box; crushed eggshells, to protect from snails; used coffee grounds, sprinkles of cinnamon and red pepper flakes to protect from squirrels, and my homemade chili oil spray to protect from beetles or whatever is nibbling at my seedlings. So far it’s all working. So far, it is all “garbage” that I put to use.
2. I continue to make my own hummingbird food without the use of red food dye. They like it just fine as is.
3. I have been planning to make dandelion jelly, because it is supposed to taste like honey. But I missed the first flush of dandelions because I didn’t have all of my equipment and prep. Now I have everything I needed, but I still have to collect 3 to 4 cups of dandelion blossoms. I will report back. Needless to say, isn’t it, that dandelions are free?
4. I have reached the time of year when I can open my windows at night and the air is deliciously fresh and cool, not freezing cold. I absolutely love waking up to this free “air conditioning.“ It reminds me of sleeping in the backyard as a child.
5. I don’t see many butterflies, but I do get a lot of dragonflies and damselflies in my backyard. I also have an impressive number of pollinators. I absolutely love the free show of carpenter bees, bumblebees, honeybees, other native bees, plus beautiful sapphire blue damselflies and metallic red Dragonflies. I take my morning coffee outside and enjoy the flying jewels.
6. My new hens have given me four eggs so far, indicating that at least two of them are laying. I’ve switched them from the “kibble“ they had been eating in town to my fresh clover, dandelion greens and grass, sunflower seeds, crushed eggshell, and table scraps. I don’t know what’s in the kibble, but I prefer that their food looks like food. Why should their diet be any different than mine? And aside from sunflower seeds, which I am growing as well, you can see that it is not a big expense for them to eat healthier and produce eggs.
(Note: I also put in two ceramic eggs to encourage them to lay. Those are Antiques from the chicken ranch I grew up on.)
I’m intrigued by the dandelion jelly. I have a ton of those things. The ceramic eggs for laying is very interesting. I wonder who thought up that idea?
1. Retrieved and planted 35 more perennials from Buy Nothing which brings the total this year to an amazing 75 (35 hosta, 20 sedum and 20 ferns). Then I attacked the weeds in all of our landscape beds. My whole body is sore.
2. Scheduled my pup’s ophthalmology and vet appointments back to back so she only needs to take her sedation meds once.
3. Menu planned around what we needed to use up: Southern Creole sauce went into a concoction of brown rice, sauteed peppers, onions, corn and kidney beans. Vegetarian Reuben sandwiches with mushrooms, cabbage and sauerkraut. Quesadillas with avocadoes, salsa, corn, black beans and sour cream. Noodles with peanut oil, tofu, peas and carrots. Broccoli mushroom casserole (the only dish with a recipe to follow).
4. Made iced tea using tea bags received from Buy Nothing.
5. Made muffins for a friend in need with supplies on hand – one batch of lemon blueberry and one batch of almond poppyseed.
Great chair find! Those are easily $50-$100 new!
1. I was craving takeout burgers, so I watched a fun YouTube video to distract me. Then I ate my leftovers for lunch.
2. Deposited a paycheck I received for covering a family member’s business while they were away.
3. Filled a generic prescription for less than $5. Love me some generics.
4. Cleaned the connectors of my sporadically-sputtering electric tea kettle. It’s working again.
5. Gave my dog a bath, cleaned her ears, brushed her teeth, and trimmed her nails at home.
1. While visiting my parents (2 hour drive away), I went to a local greenhouse that sells wholesale and retail. Prices are MUCH better than my local ones. My uncle also gave me 4 tomato plant starts.
2. I also went out for dinner one night with my parents while I was staying with them & I shared an entree with my mom; we both drank water. My parents paid. I paid them back by making dinner for them one night. All of the food came from their freezer or produce drawer (and was wilting!).
3. Bartered cleaning supplies (free from mystery shops) for free-range eggs and 2 tomato starts from my sister. I also shared with her some basil starts, as our garden is tiny, and hers is giant, but the greenhouse only sold basil in 6 packs.
4. I was able to get some Solomon’s Seal from my mom’s garden. I also was able to harvest from rhubarb from their garden, which I cut up and froze for when I want to make rhubarb-raspberry crisp. I also shared cleaning supplies with them.
5. Back home, I made chicken stock from scraps, and then I made parsnip soup, from parsnips from the free CSA box. Free lunch for two plus dinner for me tomorrow night! Partner also brought home a bouquet of tulips, as someone with a CSA flower subscription didn’t pick them up.