Five Frugal Things -- Trader Joe Plums & Smithereens -

1) I popped into Trader Joe's to pick up a few things for my youngest's refrigerator after their long vacation. (I knew they'd be back late and then off to work early.) What can I say? I love spoiling my kids!

I bought cereal, milk, hummus, apples, carrots, frozen taquitos, potstickers, pasta, pasta sauce and peanut butter caramel popcorn as a treat.

I was not the only person to come up with the great idea to hit Trader Joe's on Labor Day, so I ended up parking along a side street that abuts the parking lot.

Hello, is that a plum tree, dropping its bountiful fruit to the ground?

I ended up grabbing four plums off the ground, which I ate on the drive home!

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this tree!

2) I finished reading my library copy of Kathryn Stockett's The Calamity Club in under three days, mostly on day two. This may not seem like much of an accomplishment, until you learn that it's 656 pages long! This is one of those books that makes you feel like you're inside the story.

I followed that up by putting a dozen or so books on hold through the library website. I seem to be getting a lot book recommendation reels on Instagram, which I save to look at later.

Future Katy is a very lucky woman!

3) I sold my late mother-in-law's high end wooden easel on Facebook Marketplace for $200, which'll go towards reimbursing us for the money we paid of pocket to deal with their estate. I took a couple months to sell, but it only takes a few seconds to renew the listing.

This prompted my husband to pull more stuff from the basement, this time -- unused painting canvases and handmade art paper.

We think we can easily sell the canvases, but we're going to donate the paper to our kids' old high school art department. Each sheet of that paper cost around $5 .

It's good to get everything into the hands of people who'll actually use these art supplies.

4) My sister left a few items behind from her recent trip, so I packaged everything up to mail back to her. This included three impressively heavy rocks she gathered from the Oregon coast. Note that the above photo shows her in her "happy place," as she's an earth science teacher.

I chose a USPS "Flat Rate" padded envelope which brought the shipping to $11.02, down from $15.65 had it been boxed. Mind you, these are the discounted PirateShip.com rates and it would've cost $14 to go directly through USPS. They also offer discounted UPS shipping.

I know that "Pirate Ship" makes it sound like a sketchy, but I promise that it's a perfectly acceptable way for anyone to get commercial discounted shipping rates. No subscriptions or fees. This is not a referral.

Now . . . let's see if the rocks arrive without being smashed to smithereens.

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