Five Tiniest Frugal Things
by Katy on July 20, 2025 · 53 comments
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I filled the neighbor’s small canning jars with freshly snipped mint before returning them. Perhaps not as tasty as the watermelon sorbet they previously contained, but still better than empty. One got chocolate mint, while the other — standard mint. I grow both these plants in individual backyard flowerpots to avoid their rampant spread.
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I watched the first two episodes of Back to The Frontier through my parents’ HBO account. The producers obviously borrowed greatly from PBS’ Frontier House, but I hold out hope that there’ll be some new value to the show. It’s definitely more reality TV than documentary, (complete with obvious false conflict) but I’ll keeping watching as the episodes come out. I appreciate that one of the three families is queer, as that’s unfortunately considered a bold casting decision on a show that would otherwise appeal to the right wing prepper community. Thank you, HBO!
By the way, I found a Making Frontier House segment from 2001 that I was able to watch for free through the PBS app on my Roku.
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I sold a thrifted cast iron skillet for $30 through Facebook Marketplace and then a pair of Børn booties for $25 through eBay. The shoes may be the item I’ve had on eBay the longest, (maybe six years?) which goes to show that it can be worth letting your “inventory” sit, even if it’s annoying to do so. Of course, it helps that I have the physical space in my house to store inventory without having to look at it on a daily basis. Mind you, I much prefer when things sell immediately!
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I wrote a four page letter to my college best friend who just turned sixty, using thrifted stationary from 1974. Super cute, but I definitely shouldn’t have licked the envelope. Blegh!!!! It reminded me of George Costanza’s ill-fated fiancé on Seinfeld. The price was right, the flavor was wrong!
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I didn’t spend $600 on Coldpay concert tickets, only to humiliate myself on a “kiss cam” and watch my entire personal and profesional life crumble into pieces.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
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{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
I think it’s more embarrassing to let it be known that you’re at a Coldplay concert than that you’re having an affair.
I don’t understand the hate for Coldplay. I like them.
I’ve seen this jab joke around the internet a lot the past few days, but we enjoyed ourselves when we saw them a while back. We lucked into great tickets from a promotion for a sold out concert. Frugal fun!
I find Coldplay unbelievably dull. I used to see Chris Martin around town a lot, often walking barefoot in the middle of the street. Why? I have no idea.
That said, Son served him a number of times when he was a waiter at a fancy local restaurant and says he was really nice and tipped well, which is more than you can say for a lot of celebrities. I’m looking at you, “Dollar Billy” Joel (who I find even more boring than Coldplay).
Katy’s husband was once pictured here in a Descendents T-shirt which is much more style.
Hi, Rose,
That is so funny about “Dollar Billy” Joel. Used to love his music–until I went to a concert of his. He flatly refused to play “Piano Man,” even though it is the tune that put him on the map and people were begging for it. Found his whole show dull, and have not enjoyed his music much since then.
Cheers!
Beth Ann
Friends of mine, a husband and wife duo, she sings, he plays the piano, on the Manhattan cabaret circuit, says that without fail, every time they are asked to play “Piano Man.” They hate it but they need the tips! Oh well, at least they’re working performers.
1) While digging in the freezer for something I came across a gallon freezer bag with 5 blueberry toaster waffles in it that had fallen to the back. Ate 2 for breakfast. Will have them gone by tomorrow.
2) A few people yesterday mentioned phone issues (phone itself, not the carrier). I haven’t checked into it myself yet, but I heard about an inexpensive carrier called Tello on Dave Ramsey’s page. Currently, we use Straight Talk (a lot cheaper than Verizon), but I am going to investigate Tello further. If it’s reliable and less expensive than what we have now, we will most likely make the switch.
3) Managed to not get coffee or syrup on my new top I got on clearance. The first time I wear something, food/beverage usually bounces down my chest and my belly and I end up with a stain (or 2, or 3, or …).
4) Going to make a loaf of banana bread after church today for my sister. Her oven hasn’t worked in over 4 years. She’s told the landlord about it twice and has since given up. On one hand, I’d like to rip her landlord a new one (my sister is too stubborn and is letting it go). On the other hand, she’s 81, having vision issues and memory issues, so I’m kind of glad it doesn’t work, for safety’s sake. I usually take her leftovers she can reheat in the microwave so she at least gets a few home-cooked meals; or, if I bake something, I take her some when I take her for groceries and errands (every other week as she lives 45 minutes away one way).
5) Going to take care of a friend from Tuesday – Saturday while my DH goes with her DH to Philadelphia for a series of Dr appts. Her DH has to have someone with him, and his DW can’t go because DC (Dear Canine) has a vet appointment and my friend has an appointment as well. Due to her current mobility issues, she is unable to get her own meals. I’m planning easy meals of things she will like that her DH doesn’t. (Lasagna with spicy spaghetti sauce, Egg Roll in a Bowl, General Tso’s Cauliflower, anything with fruit, etc.)
Melissa, I can relate to your #3 and #4. Re: the #3, I’m pretty good at spilling things down my rather zaftig front myself–as were both my mother and my MIL, may they rest in peace. (On the rare occasions when my mother and my MIL met, my DH and I used to place a private, naughty bet on which mother would do the food spill thing first. My mom usually won.)
And re: your #4, my next-door neighbor with the early-stage dementia (NDN1) has a stove that isn’t working right either, and her other close friend (CF) and I aren’t hustling to get it fixed, for similar reasons. So we are all sticking to things NDN1 can heat in the microwave, too.
Another member of the “If I eat it, I will spill it” club. I do not own a white shirt for that very reason.
Oh yes, no white shirts here either. But when I’m home, my apron is old flannel shirts. I can spill anything on them.
Since I use cloth napkins and non-paper towels, my solution is to tuck one or the other under my chin. Of course, that doesn’t work when company dines with me. I’m lucky that my best friend prefers to tuck a towel under his chin, too!
Susan Urban wrote a song called “If You Can’t Wear it, Then Don’t Eat It”. It advocates wearing clothing that is the same color as what you intend to eat. She ends up deciding that more brown clothes are needed – think gravy, chocolate, coffee…
At our house we say, “If it’s good enough to eat, it’s good enough to wear.”
1. 2 colleagues and I spent the day together working on a project yesterday. I brought pulled pork and rolls. The pulled pork was leftover from a party (2+ years ago! [but was still perfectly fine in the freezer]) and rolls were free from mystery shop. I also brought cherries (free, mystery shop) and a pack of cookies (75% off at the store).
2. Less frugal, I ordered a bagel with cream cheese and bacon from a local cafe. When I got home to eat the bagel, they hadn’t added the bacon. I ended up returning to the cafe to ask for a refund for the bacon. They tried to refund me the entire cost, but I insisted that they only refund me for the bacon.
3. I’m staying at the work apartment this weekend, so I’m saving on gas for not driving 3.5 hours to get home this week.
4. I picked up a pork butt for $.99 per pound. I’ll make more carnitas/pulled pork and freeze in 1-lb portions.
5. I’m giving a talk at a retirement community tomorrow. They can’t pay me, but they are feeding me dinner…. so… free food!
Betta,
What will your talk at the retirement community be on?
Did my every-so-often clean up of trash at the two entrances to our neighborhood this morning and really wished this state had a bottle/can return law, as the secluded side had bunches of beer cans and vodka bottles.
DH excels at getting food all over his shorts, and I managed to organize my laundry to have a load of whites to which I could add his pale khaki and pale gray shorts that had many splotches of ketchup and chocolate.
Not cooking because it’s quite hot. We have some sale cooked ham and lots of fresh veggies courtesy of the container garden.
Ruby, I think I remember those entrances to your neighborhood. I had a high school friend who lived there, possibly even in or near your current house (we’ll have to compare notes sometime). And I too wish that your state had a container return law, but under current governance, it doesn’t seem very likely.
After that heroic effort in the ’70s to clean up the city, it has a real problem with litter now. I imagine little imps will ice skate to work before the current crop of state leaders does anything, though.
1. Cleaning out kitchen cabinets as we pack for our renovation which starts in mid-August. I donated cookbooks to our library bookstore (yes, it is a separate store that sells secondhand books and is run by volunteers). I also donated a big box of kitchen items to Habitat for Humanity.
2, I am keeping cookbooks handy that have recipes that require little or no oven: microwave cookbooks, a dutch oven cookbook, barbecue/grilling cookbook. slow cooker cookbook, and a solar cookbook. Have told myself I only have to worry about one meal at a time.
3. Planning to stay in our home while undergoing this big renovation. We have an upstairs so we can sleep there. Will fix a breakfast area upstairs so we don’t have to come down until we are dressed. Will be storing half the house in the other half to save on renting storage. Will go camping if it gets “too much”.
4. Eating only from the garden as it is too hot for much else. Sharing extra produce with friends, they are sharing theirs with us.
5.Repairing/altering three items in my wardrobe today so that I can continue to wear them instead of buying new clothes.
That sounds like a huge project, but it also sounds like you’re being very intentional about it.
When we did a huge kitchen renovation of my house, gotta say it got reeeeeeeeeally old washing dishes in the bathroom sink. Why I didn’t just use paper plates etc I have no idea. It just never occurs to me.
I see your dishes in the bathroom sink and raise you … dishes in the bathtub while pregnant! Paper plates weren’t an option.
Ugh. At one exceedingly lean point in the 1970s, when we couldn’t afford to get our washer fixed, Mom washed all the clothes for a family of six in the bathtub.
Tiny things do add up –
1. Used some of those never ending CVS coupons to buy something I would have purchased anyway. Bonus that it was on sale too.
2. We watered a neighbors plants for 3 weeks while they were on vacation. They brought us a little taste of Greece sampler as a thank you and it is all things we will eat.
3. Continue to be able to run the dishwasher and do laundry only during lower electrical rate times, only read library books and so on.
4. Did a happy dance that the flickering kitchen can light was due to the LED bulb starting to fail not an electrical problem. We have been in this house 2 1/2 years so any new problem is always potentially an expensive one as we don’t know everything the prior owner did or how well it was done. I am spending to buy enough new LED bulbs to replace all 5 in the kitchen as the ones that came with the house are all the same age.
5. I’m not planning to spend billions to convert Alcatraz from a historic site to an operating prison.
Hooray for avoiding BIG expensive home maintenance projects!
As for your #5, Juhli, I think Alcatraz would make a dandy new permanent home for the current White House resident and his MAGAts. We can call it Mir-A-Lago West. And he can take all his tacky gold leaf fireplace decorations with him, and do up his cell with that.
And don’t even get me started on Alligator Alcatraz. I have deep family roots in Florida and went to college there, and I hope that Ron DeSantis joins the Orange Ogre in the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno.
I second that!
I prefer the name Alligator Auschwitz.
Yes it is an Auschwitz, no alligator needed. Do NOT call it anything else.
As a current Floridian, I second your sentiments A Marie! I loathe Little Ronnie D, as much as the orange toilet brush in DC.
1. My neighbor has been cleaning out his house for a garage sale and put a handful of Rubbermaid storage bins at the curb. I zipped over and nabbed them.
2. Stopped at a garage sale on Friday that had no prices and a jumbled mess. I was going to leave, but she said everything was under $1 and all clothing was a quarter, so I started rummaging. I ended up finding some really good stuff and paid $6.
3. Walked to a neighborhood condo sale yesterday and three sales were fruitless. Picked up a couple card games at the last sale, and a big bag of chocolate molds and a quilted bag out of the free pile.
4. Walked over to an Open House a couple blocks away with a neighbor for a tour on a house we have to intention of buying.
5. Sorted through some of my stuff to be listed in the basement and organized it better with my new bins.
I had missed several of Katy’s previous posts and enjoyed reading them.
1. Went to three different grocery stores this AM. I really know my prices so was able to buy the items where they were cheapest at each store.
2. Met DIL, her Mom and sister for an early breakfast and ordered off the ” breakfast appetizer” menu and was signifantly cheaper than ordering off the regular menu. I’m happy to be included in their monthly get together.
3. Went to spend a day with my sister. We worked on a project to organize her bookshelves. I took some to a thrift store for donation nd others to a bookstore where she can get credit. She made tuna sandwiches for lunch and it was a nice day spent together.
4. Organizing pantry and fridge to avoid food waste.
5. Bought tickets to visit son and DIL in WY. We will travel with a bookbag each and bring snacks.
Re#1 – I sometimes wonder if going to multiple stores is really worth it (unless they’re less than a mile from each other)? How does the price of gas + wear and tear on vehicle stack up to the grocery savings on grocery items?
I believe hitting multiple stores can be worth it. It has to be very intentional. Our local Kroger (that I don’t normally shop at) had butter for $2 99 a pound. That’s something I would go out of my way for if I’m stocking up. I do try to time my trips with other errands. I look at the local grocery store ands every Wednesday and maybe every other month I make some targeted trips for specific items.
I am only cooking for DH of myself, but when I had a bigger household, I did go to other grocery stores a couple times a month because I just had to stretch the money further and had a lot more to buy.
I have that $2.99/pound butter on my shopping list and will buy the limit of five. Even better, I have a $25 gift card for using the Fetch app.
1. Trimmed the tops of my 100 plus leeks, which encourages them to get fatter. Used the trimmings, which are still young enough to be tender, as a substitute for chives in a recipe.
2. Thinned my carrots. Too tiny to eat, more like tendrils than carrots at this stage, but used the greenery to add to basil pesto. I always make basil with two-thirds the recipe and use things like carrot tops or lambs’ quarters for the remaining third. The basil is always strong enough to flavor the other ingredient and it makes it cheaper and also if I use lambs’ quarters or chickweed it ups the nutrients in the pesto. Those weeds are more nutritious than some of the purchased commercial greens.
3. Am constructing a new raised bed that will be used for vegetables next year. It is 3 feet tall so that I can garden from my wheelchair on bad days, and that also keeps the voles out. The first year (as in this summer) I use it as a compost bin but lately the compost has not been as plentiful so I want to a local mushroom farmer who had a ton of spent host soil that he cannot use again. Gave it to me for free and used his farm equipment to load it into my pickup. We were able to back the truck up to the bed and shovel it straight in, so no back breaking labor involved.
4. the zucchini got out of control. I put aside what we will use this coming week (and there are more tiny ones on the plants!) and gave some to the neighbor who now saves his 40 lb. dog food bags so I can give them a second life as garbage bags, as well as the neighbor who took over our chickens and cook when it got too much to go out t 40 below to try and collect eggs before they froze. She gave me three dozen eggs in return.
5. Donated some items that would have been too big to sell and then send, to the local drama club. They will make good use of them and I got a tax write-off.
Took over our coop, not cook.
Glad to hear that you’re keeping on keeping on, Lindsey, despite all the health challenges. I’ve had to give up growing leeks because of a new pest called “allium leaf miner,” but I’m glad it hasn’t made it as far as Alaska yet. Love as always to you, the husband, Houndini, and Clobber Paws.
All my garden beds are waist high or so. I’m just too disabled to garden in the ground much if at all.
I was reading something today about “this is a great recipe for a fall day where you’re spending the day outside putting the garden to bed” and I just felt depressed because I simply can’t do that. I could for a couple hours before long Covid, but theses days, getting dressed after a shower leaves me exhausted.
Pity party! All welcomed! No tomatoes yet for Bloodys because this year hasn’t had enough sun and warmth, but I have hopes for soon.
Re: less expensive pesto items, I started using sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts. Much less expensive and no one has even noticed the difference
I use walnuts in my pesto. Pine nuts are so expensive.
we use almonds (with skins). not much difference in taste and much cheaper!
I made a “use from the pantry” cake for church. I went to Dollar Tree & they were out of yellow cake mix. I had some X-mas cake mixes I bought for 48 cents at Walmart. I sifted the white cake mix to remove the red & green candy pellets. I had some eggs given to me when my neighbors returned home. I had a container of sour cream in the freezer. I used some mayo from the pantry for the rest of the fat. I used 2 cake mixes & made a gigantic size cake. It came out moist & good. I had some leftover frosting in the fridge. I made a glaze w/ that.
Texasilver, your ingenuity takes the cake!
HA! HA!!!
Very impressed with your ingenuity. That’s a kind of thing that makes me feel so proud. Well done!
TY fellow frugalistas! It is satisfying to take odds & ends & make something useful (as we know).
Those tickets are gonna cost him more than $600. Signed a former divorce lawyer… lol
1. Today was our quarterly church luncheon, a “cold” potluck (bc they don’t want to fire up the commercial oven, which would heat up the entire building and put a strain on the AC…and our electric bill.) Not having a working oven at home or much room to cook, I managed to find two trays of cold cuts (ham or salami wrapped around cheese sticks) at Aldi to take. (I got 2 bc the rector told us the Altar Guild ladies missed out on eating at the last luncheon bc we hadn’t brought enough food. and he wanted us to bring more.) Came back with one whole tray that was untouched. They’d already peeled off the plastic lid, so I can’t take it back to the store for a refund. Therefore, I guess I’ll be eating on that for the next week or so!
2. Got a free lunch at church featuring especially delicious cold salads and fried okra and a genuine Czech sausage kolache (no wonder my cold cuts weren’t all eaten up!).
3. My supper was leftover salad from yesterday + some cut-up cold cuts from the Aldi tray.
4. Bought Blue Bell Ice Cream while it was on sale.
5. Did not make a worse fool out of myself suing news media publications and reporters right and left just bc they tell the truth about me.
Letter-writing is a lost art! My college best friend and I still send a few letters a year to one another.
I think I actually had the stationary when I was a mere 7–8-year-old writing to a pen-pal in England. Where is a good place to find Vintage stationary?
I think the whole Coldplay thing is ridiculous… yes the guy is scum but the amount of people sharing it and making fun of it have no heart. He has kids and I am sure they are humiliated enough without people making jokes out of it… disgraceful
these kinds of posts remind me to amp up my frugal-ness!
1. darned a sock for my dad
2. donating some of dad’s no longer needed “like new” used clothing to a long-term care facility that has a free table
3. seeded a too large zucchini and placed in my 1.5 quart crock pot with some seasonings to cook it up for lunch. (LUV that little crock…so easy to make small batch soups or veggie sides)
4. DH tried unsuccessfully to fix a little (free) flashlight, so he took it apart to add the appropriate pieces to his mixed metals box, which every so often he takes to the recycler to earn some price/pound
5. trying extra hard to not waste water…not turning the faucet on full bore if just a trickle will get the job done