Five Frugal Things -- Free Rejuvenation Light Fixture
1) I went for an evening walk and quickly came across this unassuming "Free Box" that contained a Rejuvenation light fixture. I have no need for it, but am happy to rejuvenate clean it up to list on eBay. I couldn't find this exact model on their website, but it's similar to their Rose City pendant light that sells for $269.
Although Rejuvenation is no longer locally owned, they're still headquartered here in Portland, so it's not unusual to find their fixtures when thrifting or even garbage picking.
My Rejuvenation glass shade was a $2.99 Goodwill find and the porch fixture itself was a splurge from their seconds showroom.
2) I used the plastic polishing products I borrowed from my step father to buff out some of the scratches from my thrifted lucite table and accidentally bonded with it. It's the perfect surface for potted plants as you don't have to worry about water rings and I like how the seethroughiness (real word, I promise!) extends precious sunshine into the room.
We Oregonians live in darkness much of the year, so this is a real issue.
I then took the table it replaced and put it on the curb to be rehomed. It was gone an hour later when I thought to check back. (I don't like to leave furniture out overnight in case it rains.) It came to me from someone's curb, so it seemed fitting.
3) I noticed that a bit of the wool rug in my daughter's old bedroom was fraying, so I took a needle and thread to it for a quick repair to avoid further unraveling.
Perfect? Nope! No longer noticeable? Yup!
4) I sold a thrifted brass and glass vintage side table that I picked up at Goodwill a couple years ago. I forget what I paid, (maybe $7.99?) and sold it for $50.
I've listed it on Facebook Marketplace a couple times before without luck, but this time was the charm as I had inquiries from a couple different people. It's super high quality and gives me a 1970s Scarface vibe.
Say goodbye to my little friend!
5) I refurbished the Frye boots that I pulled from a free box a couple weeks ago. (Saddlesoap, baybee!) As a reminder, this is what they looked like:
Now I just need to identify the specific model and get them up on eBay.
Now your turn, what frugal things have you been up to?
The lucite table and the boots both cleaned up so well. I don't blame you for keeping the table!
1) I gave my rosemary, thyme, and mint plants major haircuts. I dried the herbs for future use.
2) I cut alder poles (saplings growing where they shouldn't) to use as tomato stakes.
3) Getting creative with the rhubarb bounty from the discovered rhubarb patch! I made rhubarb candy -- sliced rhubarb tossed with sugar and chili powder, left to sit for a couple of hours, then dried in the dehydrator. The flavor is sweet & sour, reminiscent of Mexican chamoy candy. Great for snacking (and high in fiber!), and I think it will also be a lovely addition to salads instead of craisens or similar.
4) Our neighbor was away for the weekend, so we decided to surprise him with a clean driveway, as he had mentioned he hated how filthy it was, but he was getting too old to tend to it. It would have been quicker with a power washer, but we used tools we already owned -- a landscape scraper to scrape up the heavy layer of moss, and push broom and hose to finish the job. We then trimmed back the blackberries that were crowding over it. No cost but time, for us, and we hope he is pleased with the surprise!
5) We didn't do anything for Memorial day except catch up on chores around the house, cook and eat at home, and enjoy a couple of beers on the deck.
Your #4...how nice! My "feel good" story of the day.
We have had a low key weekend. We usually go on an overnight trip to Parkersburg/Blennerhasett but decided to stay home. We've been busy getting our garden in and just wanted to slow down and relax instead.
1. We went out to eat Saturday. One of my favorite restaurants, Coopershawk, sent a promo for 2 free glasses of wine and I had a $25 reward for there. I also made the reservation through OpenTable so I could earn their rewards points. I am just one reservation away from a $16 off dining certificate. A splurge made frugal.
2. I made a marked down roast in the crockpot overnight. It will feed us for 3 or 4 days. I then turned the broth into vegetable soup to pack for work lunches.
3. I spent several hours listing items on eBay. Mainly just items from around the house. We are doing a serious declutter, and have a garage sale planned in a couple weeks. Two of the eBay items sold over the weekend.
4. The heat and the air are both off and the doors are open. Here in Ohio the weather has been a real rollercoaster ride. 47 one day and 86 the next.
5. The weather looks great this week so I plan to ride my bike to work everyday to save on gas.
We said goodbye to our housguests today and I'm turning over the bedrooms for another set of guests coming in 4 days. Third load of laundry is in the machine, 2 are hanging on the line.
I picked up a free outdoor table and 2 chairs. I'll keep the chairs as they're an upgrade from what I had. Ive already listed the ones I had on FB marketplace.
I unraveled a cardigan I had knitted and used a borrowed yarn winder to make 3 satisfying yarn cakes. I'm not sure what I'll make with the yarn, but at least now I have a raw material again. One of our houseguests this weekend was very chatty and unraveling a knitted object was the perfect thing to keep my hands occupied while I listened.
Gave the garden a deep water with rain water from the barrels.
Picked our own blackberries.
My son's family hosted an impromptu cookout today. I took a frozen key lime pie, but no one ever got around to eating it because we were all too full from the hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. That's okay, I told them to enjoy it later when appetites come back. There was no point in me taking it home, since I'm traveling tomorrow.
I found coupons in the Jewel parking lot that totaled 985 points! That place is a receipt gold mine.
The weather is warmish today, but I won't need air conditioning tonight. That means I don't have to install it -- or pay for the extra electric usage -- for another week, since I'll be gone. Just hope I don't come home to an oven!
1) Drove errands in a circle to save gas.
2) Used birthday money to by new, first hand work clothes from natural fibers. I'm so used to secondhand prices I had a hard time not saying "SIXTY-EIGHT DOLLARS?? For polyester??" and suchlike out loud. I'm learning how to find good fabrics by feel. Only got duped once by "linen" pants that were 80% NOT LINEN. Ugh, put them right back on the rack. Acquired some neutral staples that are harder to source second-hand.
3) Got only freebies or needed items at Wal-mart. I dislike shopping there but it's either that or Beff Jezos and at least the Waltons built a museum with their ill-gotten gains.
4) Made a bread pudding recipe with super stale bagels. They clunked when dropped on the counter! Luckily they were all plain or fruit flavored so I tossed in some raisins and called it good. And it's delicious! Not soggy at all. I let it marinate overnight in the fridge and I think that was the clincher.
5) Planted some herbs I bought with birthday money. Now I have fresh basil to pair with tomatoes and a citronella plant to keep the mosquitoes away. And I got to play in the dirt!
Bonus: It's hot enough for the A/C but that means it's hot enough to dry laundry on the line.
1. Breakfast this morning was über cheap: I made French toast using brioche, milk & eggs, all free from mystery shop, vanilla extract that I made with free vodka nips that I had saved from an airplane trip, maple syrup that came in the free farm-share box, butter that I got on sale, and bacon that I got for free from a different mystery shop.
2. I got an offer from Chase bank that if I open a checking account and have it open, with a balance for 3 months, along with direct deposit, at the end of 3 months, I'll make $900 as a bonus. For a few minutes to transfer the money over and change the direct deposit for part of my paycheck, it is worth the effort to both open it, and then to close it in 3 months.
3. I was able to find the smaller, but much cheaper annuals at a home improvement store, over the garden store. We bought enough to get an additional 10% back. While at the store, I saw a soda can in the trash, so I grabbed that, and I found a penny in the parking lot. So, my multiple "revenue streams" are in play today.
4. I posted only 2 hours before the new post, so I'll repeat that taco dinner tonight is all free from mystery shops/free farm share, except a big jar of salsa from Aldi, that was $2.49 and will be part of this week's dinner, cheese quesadillas, also using all free ingredients except for homemade tortillas.
5. It cleared up, so I'll go run a load of laundry to hang out to dry, thus avoiding our dryer.
The table looks magnificent!
1. I walked an hour early this morning1.
2. I continued to read my “beachy book” I bought from the local library for 50 cents.
3. I made a bean burger out of the baked beans and it was pretty good. I baked it in the oven.
4. I have watched the birds enjoy the rain outside my window and listened to their songs.
5. I packed my beach attire for a trip I am making to attend a legal seminar next week.
FFT, NDN1's Nephew's Visit:
(1) The main event this week is that NDN1's nephew (the only blood relative she has who's of any use) is coming in tomorrow for a brief visit. (He's the president of a small college down South and recently married off a daughter, so this is the first chance he's had to come up.) Among other things, he, I, and CF have an appointment with NDN1's lawyer Wednesday morning, plan to visit her bank after that, and need to spend some time going through the house and deciding what to do about it and its contents. Pretty tall order; wish us all luck. (For those who haven't been following this saga, NDN1 is my 87-year-old former next-door neighbor who's now in assisted living, and CF is her only other close friend. CF, the nephew, and I are NDN1's joint DPOAs.)
(2) It **finally** stopped raining here this noon after 48 more or less straight hours of downpour, so I've opened a few windows and am enjoying the sunlight. The garden's too waterlogged for me even to think about doing much for the next couple of days, even if I had the time.
(3) I've returned a few items that didn't work out for me: two bras I ordered online (and this is absolutely the **last** time I order bras online!), and two 8-packs of Gatorade I bought by mistake at Price Chopper (I meant to get Gatorade Zero, but decided I didn't really need that either).
(4) I've moved the last of my self-started seedlings out to my mini greenhouse and have shut off the lights I've been keeping on over them. Modest savings on electricity.
(5) And I'm not squirming around on accepting a peace deal with Iran that will probably be worse than the situation I started out with. 😛
Best of luck with the nephew's visit and I hope you and the neighbor's friend can get to the point of calling a clean-out company soon.
1. I spent the whole day with my friend at her in-laws house cleaning it out. It was a very long tiresome day. My friend brought leftovers for us to have as lunch. She told me ahead of time or I would have brought something. She sent me home with the extra mac n cheese.
2. I cooked dinner even thought I didn't want to. I pulled out pork chops before I left. My son and I had the mac n cheese. Hubby had a packet of rice. I made carrots too. Nothing hard.
3. My friend told friends and family to come to the house and take what they wanted. There were lots of people coming and going. My son came and got 2 jackets, 2 ball caps, some Pyrex, paper napkins, binoculars, bungee cords, and some open spices.
4. Today I got 3 cloth table cloths with matching napkins, a small Dutch oven in a beautiful yellow, a brownie pan, open Ziplock's, open parchment paper, open foil, open wax paper, 8 boxes of tissues, hand soap, open spices, 2 cans of tuna, a jar of low salt sauce, 3 packs of Crystal Light iced tea, a pair of scissors, a can opener, and lots of partially used cleaners.
It was very funny to me that people had no problem taking closed spices, Ziplock bags, foil or parchment paper but no one wanted the open boxes. It wasn't a strangers house. We all knew them and knew they were clean. I made sure to fill my friend's car with stuff I know she will use like tissues, foil, tide, dishwasher pods. She has been through a lot these last 2 years and is very overwhelmed.
I brought my neighbors the Crystal Light iced tea because I know they drink it and no one else wanted it. They were happy to take it.
5. Hubby unclogged the shower drain and did some other chores around the house. He then went to visit his dad.
“Accidentally bonded”. Made me laugh!
My friend continues to bring over items from her mom's estate. I enjoy finding homes for everything and listed the following on Buy Nothing. All were snapped up quickly.
- Oodles of takeout utensil packets that I opened, sorted and marketed for a grad party, road trip or camping trip (as it turned out, I gave them to someone who wanted them for her dad's end-of-life celebration)
- Shelves and brackets
- Office/school supplies
- Waterproof tote bags
- Cleaning supplies - multiples of multiples
Her mom also had numerous cloth grocery bags that I used to bag up Buy Nothing pickups.
We have a long bench outside our front door for pickups. I like to put out a box of miscellaneous items with a "Freebies in box - please take anything you'd like!" sign so recipients of posted items can grab some additional stuff. It often works!
A free "box" is an excellent way to re-home items that would otherwise end up in the landfill. There comes a time when one cannot in good conscience charge for an item but knows the item still has useful life.
1. DH and I went out for icecream at the stand a couple of miles away. They are only open from the middle of May until September when the danger of frost creeps in so we go once every couple of weeks while we can. But that wasn't the end of our date. After enjoying our small size ice cream, DH took me looking for stray golf balls as a golf course and driving range are part of the property. He found 3 golf balls, in good condition (they were) worth $1 each. I found a 5 cent deposit cans.
2. I got a notification from the library another book I had on hold came in. I will pick it up in the next couple of days. Waiting to batch some errands before venturing out.
3. After the rain pulled out, I read a library book on the deck while sipping a cup of tea.
4. I hung up an old picture that was in my great grandmother's house when I was a kid. I forgot I had it until I deep cleaned and found it under a bed where I had stashed it when we painted the upstairs. Nice to see it again although the room it was in in her house always creeped me out a little as a child. This is the room my daughter slept in as a small child when we lived there and where she saw a figure waving at her every night! She didn't tell me until she got older...I guess it didn't scare her.
5. We're still eating down that big pot of American Chop Suey.
Well done breathing fresh life into those boots! They look great.
1) Caught up on homework for the class I'm taking (that my employer is paying for). I don't know if I'll use this skill, but it comes with a certification (likely valuable in the future) & it's a Stanford class, so high quality content. Future me will likely appreciate that I'm staying on top of the homework as well.
2) Heated up leftovers from Saturday's dinner for DS20 & myself for lunch. And, we still had additional leftovers. This is all from one absolutely enormous piece of chicken parmesan. For real, it was enormous.
3) Booked flights for our anniversary in September (combo hiking in Utah + Las Vegas trip) & used up a few small Southwest gift card values. It was still super pricey. Then noticed that I have an expiring Southwest credit (that's a new rule, btw, they used to not expire), so I've made a note & have a few frugal hacks I'll try to use to extend it.
4) DH made a triple batch of grilled chicken for dinner tonight, so we will have leftovers. The frugal part is that he saved (froze) the marinade from the last batch, so the marinade is doing double duty.
5) DH finished up our dinner leftovers for lunch today, I posted a new item on eBay, and we researched free activities for our overnight hotel stay next weekend (booked with points!)
1. Threw another blanket on my bed instead of fooling with the heat. The weird temperatures here have made for some chilly nights.
2. Have been shopping my freezer to use stuff up before I move.
3. Met a friend for dinner in the park- he'd gotten a B1G1F perk from Dominos Pizza. We ate one & he gave me the other one to bring home since he's going out of town for work tomorrow.
4. Promptly gave half the Pizza to my neighbor when he flagged me down when I got home. He asked if I would take his trash to the dumpster (he can't manage it in his wheelchair) with mine. I do that for him periodically and have asked another neighbor to check on him after I move. He commented that it smelled delicious, so I offered to share.
5. Recycling boxes from my last move for this one. I kept them in my shed just in case and they've been quite useful.
The Lucite table turned out so pretty! Great job also on spiffing up those little boots.
Today I did a minor tune up of my sewing machine and then zigzag stitched around the fraying edges of a couple of dishtowels. Took a big bag of plastic bags to the grocery store for recycling and stopped at Dollar Tree for root veggie chips, almond milk and a box of cake mix that was on sale for $1.
The damp weather has mightily aggravated arthritis in my hands, knees and back, so I paid for a badly needed car wash today instead of doing it myself.
Those stirrup boots were popular when I was a teenager in the 1970's. My boyfriend in HS had a pair. I don't remember girls wearing them. I bought a pair for myself in a thrift store a few years ago. I had to get them reheeled. Mine are black leather & I love to wear them w/ jeans. Mine were made by a shoe company in the UK and retailed for around 250$ US.
On Memorial Day, I went to Ollie's Outlet 2 days before the 10% coupon expires. I wanted to use the coupon to stock up on doggie bones for Snuggles. Ollie's usually has a bunch of bones that are reasonably priced...or at least cheaper than other stores. Alas, they were out of their usual huge supply of big basted bones. They had a few ginormous bones, that were maybe the length of my upper legs, selling for $9.99 each. I bought one for Snug and will give it to him later.
I worked the late evening shift and after coming home, I tuned in to Jimmy Kimmel Live. (Not CBS.) It was a rerun from the day before Colbert's last show and Kimmel said some very nice things about Colbert. And some very accurate things about Trump.
1. A local ice cream place gives points for purchases. We don't go there often but we had enough points that the delicious two scoop cup that my husband and I split cost all of .16.
2. I picked all the spinach in the garden box. It was starting to go to seed. I planted more beans in its place.
3. We had a fireplace cleaning and inspection and a very expensive treatment was recommended. We are getting a second opinion which is supposed to be free.
4. I got a notice that a book I checked out in February was overdue. I explained to the librarian that I was sure I had returned it and she found it on the shelf.
5. We shopped at Aldi. Their watermelons are always good so we got two. At the register, I pointed out that I had watermelons, while moving them to the cart out groceries were going into. The cashier said "two" . Then I think she got distracted by the next person in line who didn't separate their groceries from ours. When I looked at the receipt later, the melons were not on it. I was feeling guilty until I discovered that both large cartons of yogurt I got were spoiled, in spite of being sealed and still in date. Now I think it all evens out.
1. Cooked down my sale-bought blackberries into a compote. They'll last longer and taste great in yogurt!
2. Made a cold salad to get us through the next few days from fridge refugees - chicken, couscous, tomatoes, mozzarella pearls, and some other stuff. It'll fill us up for lunch and avoid a grocery trip.
3. Put out a free box of items languishing in my home office including old headphones freebies from previous jobs. Some of them have value but I'm rapidly losing patience trying to resell them. I hope whoever nabs them gets good use or a good price!
4. The company that makes my fave hair product changed the formula. Bummer! I've opted to use up all my other subpar hair products before buying anything new. I fell upon an incredible combo that, combined with a rainy weekend, gave me superb curl definition. The products clear out won't be as bad as I thought.
5. Finishing up some crochet projects including learning how to put a border on a baby blanket. I have loved learning this new skill! And given cost of new items I'm happy to spend my time making this future kiddo gift. If I have yarn left in the colors I'm going to try to make a hat and booties as well. If you hear me cussing at youtube, you know I'm learning. 🙂
Those appear to be the Frye Harness 12R boots, good pick
Thank you!
No Frugal Things and No Ebay Sales! 🙁
I've finished the gardening / hardcore laboring on our little forest of huge evergreens along side our driveway. I had actually received an email estimate for this task but I never saw it as I was too busy. $2,000.00 plus removal. So I saved us a ton of money. We had a pool leak that was fixed a couple months ago. Part of the patio had to be torn up for access. The patio has settled over the years and is getting consistently worse and serious. Whole patio will be redone by a mason. Initially done 20 years ago by a landscaper, in hindsight not the best decision. Dreading the estimate but it has to be done and no short cuts. Our pool was full of kids almost every day for 15 years and we love it for the 2 of us now. But what a money pit it is becoming.
No time for ebay lately so it's really slowed down.
I love the image of all the kids playing in your pool!
Perhaps some saddle soap is what a couple pair of my circa 1997 Doc Martens need. I've not read any good reviews of the current "model" of both shoes.
Frugal *maybe* - recycled a ton a boxes from the basement - if Katy or other resellers lived close by, I'd have re-homed. On the fence frugal given the abysmal "leadership" in DC, filled space previously partially occupied by aforementioned boxes after a trip to the store. Will make another trip as the one shelf can hold double what I bought and partial space of another shelf another couple packs of "x = y" rolls of TP. Cost per roll is 2.5 cents per roll (of the current era size).
Prices aren't going to go down any time soon. Nor is the cost of fuel.
Sibling is going to list a couple of items on FB marketplace - will split the selling price with sibling. Frees up space in my basement and keeps items out of the landfill. Plus the one item isn't available for sale these days.