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I did a sweep through the house and chose to pass along the Pottery Barn rug that I curb picked in June. You remember, this one:
There were still a few stains that I’d been unable to remove, (even though it photographed beautifully HERE) so I decided it was time to curb it along to someone new. I stapled a sign onto the rug that said “FREE Pottery Barn rug” and it was gone by the time I checked on it a few hours later. Nature is healing.
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My daughter’s boots had a busted zipper, so I dropped them off at a locally owned shoe repair place. It’ll cost $45, but I’d prefer to repair our belongings instead of tossing them into a landfill. The throwaway mentality we practice creates a world I don’t want to live in; and if we don’t support repair shops, they’ll continue to disappear.
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I stopped by the Portland Convention Center to pick up my FinCon Expo name tag a day early. I declined the low quality branded tote bag. Events like these invariably offer branded freebies that become garbage within a week or two. It’s okay to “just say no” to wasteful swag.
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I ran into Safeway to grab a couple thick plastic bags from their recycling bin, as they’re the perfect size and strength for our kitchen garbage cab. (It’s hard to get ahead financially when all your money is tied up in bin liners!) I also took a loop past their clearance section, which rarely provides anything worth buying. I did grab four 50¢ cans of La Croix seltzer to have on hand for guests. I’m nothing if not an elite hostess. And yes, I’ll keep the price tags in place.
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I use the last 45¢ of my Red Cross Safeway gift card, which means I finally spent every single cent from my blood and platelet donations!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
Five Tiny Frugal Things
Previous post: A Couple of Zero Dollar Home Updates
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Kudos for supporting your local shoe repair shop!
1. The used power bank that I recently bought on Ebay seems to have gotten lost in transit, it was never delivered. The seller did not send it tracked and we got a refund from Paypal. My son advised us against buying a used power bank in the meantime as the battery performance declines over time. So we ended up buying a new one unfortunately but it still beats buying new phones or having the phone batteries replaced! (The batteries on our phones don’t last that long any more, that’s why we need a power bank to keep us going on days out.)
2. I sold a crepe maker on Vinted and shipped it in a large shoe box.
3. The latest TooGoodToGo box from Aldi (4 Euro) was excellent value: 2 lean beef burgers, 2 chicken breast fillets, 1 packet of deli style crumbed ham, 16 pork sausages, steak and vegetable family pie, 1 avocado, a packet of 6 chocolate macarons, 4 quick fry BBQ beef steaks. Froze most of the meat except for the beef steaks and the sliced ham for future use.
4. I chose not to participate in a once off work event/competition that would have required the purchase of a specific item of clothing that I would have never used again.
5. I will receive a fennel plant through my local plant swap group, giving away an agapanthus plant in exchange.
Logged our exercise in to get each of us our $10 United healthcare rewards. I also filled out an online survey so another $5 I can use at Walmart to
pick up odds and ends. Our big shopping day is Friday for our Costco and grocery store run. It’s been old mother hubbards cupboard here since last Saturday.
I sold a couple of things and should get $$ this week
Hubby gets his SS check on Friday. Big error on my part time job paycheck as in less $$. Hope it gets resolved today.
Not so frugal I’m meeting a friend who is in town for a coffee today at a downtown hotel. Very few people I know come to OKCity on business
1. Today is my grocery shopping day but I’m forgoing it, because I’m going to visit a friend Friday through Monday. I’m out of many items, but I will make do.
2. I picked up the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter from the library. So far I haven’t really learned anything new, but there are recipes I want to try.
3. While at the library I went into a panic because I couldn’t find my Ride Free card (which I had used to get there). I decided to go to the station and ask the attendant what to do. Before I got far, I got a call from the library. Someone had turned in my card. Felt like the universe was responding to my recent attempts to return lost things to their owners!
4. My new haircut — which wasn’t cheap, but also wasn’t done at one of the tonier places — is permitting me to just wash and wear — and I don’t even need conditioner. So much easier, and more frugal in a small way.
5. Will be using up perishables before my weekend trip, so lots of potatoes and mushrooms on the menu.
Lecroix must be rebranding or something. We bought a six pack last weekend for $1.50 at Fry’s/Kroger.
Keeping it simple this week and saving money doing so. I’ve been staying at home a lot the last two weeks and it has not only helped me feel more relaxed, it’s saved me a lot of money.
1. I brought a kids frozen dinner to work today. No one has eaten this in probably six months. Today, I make the sacrifice to use it up.
2. We have eaten at home all week. Proud of myself and my son. Our fridge doesn’t look so crowded and we still have a lot of food to go. A lot of simple meals and a lot of meal prepping. It feels good to take a break from grocery shopping and eating out.
3. I have looped all errands into driving and haven’t had to fill my gas tank up in over a week. Probably will need to tonight or tomorrow.
4. Started reading a book someone recommended from the library. Thankful for our great library systems.
5. My son mowed and I did some bush trimming this week. Saving the cost of lawncare if we had hired it out.
“Nature heals!” I love it LOL.
1. I had to return a pair of shoes that didn’t fit, so I opted to turn them in at Staples, which is near my school, so I could do that errand on my bike commute. I had planned to bungee cord the box to my bike rack, but it actually fit perfectly in my backpack. I hate driving to return things, so this worked out great.
–The family has been wanting to re-watch The X Files, and at first the kids were excited to report it was on our Disney+ feed. (Eventually we will get rid of this subscription when all the kids grow out of watching Star Wars stuff.) Then the Mouse yanked the rug out from under us and said we needed a Hulu subscription to keep watching. DH decided that it would be cheaper to order the DVD set. We’ve done this with what we consider “legacy” shows that we’ll watch again and which sometimes get taken off of streaming without warning (looking at you, Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek). Apparently they’re not making US region DVDs anymore for X Files, because the only sets he could find were exorbitantly priced. He opted for the non-US region set, because he has an all-region DVD player driver on his computer, which he can hook up to the TV. It works perfectly and everyone is delighted to explore the spooky world of Mulder and Scully. We ration ourselves to two episodes a week of a show, in general, so these 11 seasons will last a while! DH crunched the numbers and it’s 75 cents an episode.
3. I have managed, through sheer willpower and fortitude, to avoid buying anything from the vending machines at school. I avail myself of the free coffee and tea bar, along with my packed breakfast.
4. Thanks to this blog I’ve been making a point of checking out the marked-down produce cart every week, and was rewarded today with four perfectly lovely apples and four nectarines, the latter of which greatly delighted one of my sons.
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One silly luxury I look forward to when I shop at Winco, is the 50 cent LaCroixs they sell from the vending machine at the exit. Ice cold! I’m so sad when the machine is out of order.
I ran into the grocery store to pick up a few things to get us to the next grocery shore run and found bargains in the marked down meat section.
I had a similar zipper incident with my son last week. His Jansport backpack zipper was broken, and he let us know at about 8 pm that he needed a backpack for school the next day (teens!). Since all of our kids bike to school, he truly did need something to hold his stuff en route. Thankfully, my husband had a new-with-tags backpack that he wasn’t using (we work in the aforementioned promotional/swag industry), and our kid was able to make it work. It’s actually a nice bag that is bigger than the Jansport pack he’d been using.
But, it didn’t sit well with us to throw away a not even one-year-old backpack. I looked into JanSport’s warranty, and they have a lifetime warranty program. I submitted the warranty request and (im)patiently waited a week to hear back. The repair request was received, and yes, I spent $9 on postage to ship it to them, but we will receive this backpack back with a new zipper hopefully sometime in the next month or two. Now that our son is using the new-to-him backpack, I’m not sure if he’ll want to go back to his original bag, but at least we will have an extra and kept the backpack out of the landfill.