Five Frugal Things -- A Helpful eBay Buying Tip

The blog has been running slowly and even straight up not loading recently, so I worked with my hosting company to investigate what was going on behind the scenes. It turns out the blog was "undergoing a pretty extensive attack," but they were able to work their magic/tech knowledge to put better protections in place. Things seem back to normal and they even rebooted my "server into faster CPUs" for free, which is great.

Hopefully the blog will load better, stronger, faster ("Bionic Man" anyone?) instead of software engineering.

1) I sold the pair of $2.99 eyeglasses that I thrifted from Goodwill last week. I had them listed at $150, but was more than happy to accept the $95 offer.

Not only does this keep them out of the landfill, but the buyer got a bargain, as the frames cost around $350 new! Everyone's a winner!

Click HERE to see the listing.

2) I pulled everything out of my pantry (hardly a pantry) two nights ago, as I was sure there was a can of coconut milk hiding in there somewhere. (Spoiler . . . there was not.) This escalated into an entire reorganization project, which A) took much longer than anticipated; and B) was highly satisfying.

This "pantry" (not a pantry) is a weird tall kitchen cabinet that at first looks like a broom closet, except that it's too short to hold a broom. My husband extended the weirdly deep shelves forward a number of years ago and we've "made do" ever since. Unfortunately the narrow 20-inch deep back shelves are notorious for hiding food items, which inevitably go to waste.

I kid you not:

I'm done with this wasteful cycle, so I reorganized the pantry, (not a pantry) to no longer store food on the back shelves. The oddly deep bits are now dedicated to non-food items. Aluminum foil, parchment paper and Ziplocs on the top shelf and canning/storage jars on the lower shelf.

I wiped everything down and then added some shelf liner I had leftover from another project.

The best part is that moving the canning/storage jars opened up a normal kitchen shelf, which is in a much more convenient spot.

My photos will never hit anyone's Pinterest inspiration boards, but it's real life in a wonky old house.

3) I did a big Winco grocery shop and picked up a few items not on my shopping list, like these 16-oz bags of penne pasta. 98¢ used to be the standard price for a pound of dried pasta, but those days are in the rear view mirror.

I grabbed three bags.

4) I messaged a $85 offer to an eBay seller for the above brass heat register cover and then clicked "buy," when they sent that offer to my inbox. (They sell new for $139 and the seller was asking $94.95.) I'd seen one in an Instagram video a couple months ago and started thinking it would be an upgrade from what's currently in our dining room:

Ya'll know that I NEVER splurge on aesthetic things, so this is outside my normal shopping habits. (Although it's still within my "buy nothing new" edict.) Our register covers were all rusty with multiple coats of random paint colors when we bought the house in 1996, and young broke Katy was very excited when a preschool mom friend mentioned how she'd used "Hammerite" spray paint for the registers on a house she and her husband were flipping.

It was a $4.99 home improvement that took the register covers from "eyesore" to "something that'll never catch your eye." Very little in our fixer-upper house was cheap to fix, so it was a miracle at the time.

I'm excited to add this pretty element to our house!

Did you know that you can message eBay sellers to offer a lower price, even when they don't have "Make an offer" as an option? It's an excellent frugality hack!

5) I listed a drone remote control on eBay that I picked up from a garage sale "free pile." I'm only asking $10, but I might as well make a few bucks while keeping it out of the landfill. There's a 0% chance that someone looking for this specific item would've come across it.

Click HERE to see the listing.

Now your turn, what frugal things have you been up to?

Katy Wolk-Stanley 

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

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This blog post contains eBay referral links.