Four Frugal Things -- Mostly Garbage
1) The lid to my daughter's kitchen garbage can rusted off and she was complaining me about how expensive replacements were. I told her to hold off from buying a new one until I had a chance to hit up my Buy Nothing group.
I got an offer of one within fifteen minutes of asking!
It was pretty dirty and still had the original sticker in place, but I was able to cleanly remove it with a hair dryer. It's a hack from thrifting, but is surprisingly handy in other areas of my life.
2) I thrifted this Uppdatera Ikea storage bin at the bins, which I'm now using to store my eBay listing/shipping supplies. I love this specific design and have been able to thrift four of them through the years for various usage throughout the house. It supports my theory that "Everything that's ever been manufactured will eventually hit Goodwill."
They also work great for refrigerator organization/storage. Again, all thrifted!
3) I also grabbed this Calphalon pan at the bins, likely ignored by everyone else as it had baked on schmutz.
It took all of four or five minutes of scrubbing to get it looking new! This pan sells for $60, granted that's with the lid. However . . . I already have the matching omelette pan which uses the same size lid! Of course, that pan was also thrifted.
I'll actually keep this pan.
4) Lastly I bought a dozen or so skeins of darning wool from the bins, which were hidden in a nest of tangled yarn and plastic hangers. (They really want you to work for your found treasures sometimes!) I popped them into the freezer as an anti-bug measure and look forward to the darning of many socks.
Now your turn, what frugal things have you been up to?
1. Hit a 'everything free'yard sale which was down to the dregs but I came away with a few things to resell.
2. Altered a Liberty of London shirt that I had picked up in a free pile. It's so much better.
3. Sadly we lost our raspberry patch to a virus but it does free up valuable space to grow more hearty foods. Planted that today.
4. Roasted a chicken, made broth with carcass. This one chicken will make 4 meals plus some meat for sandwiches.
5. Cut up an old quilt to make a couple of throw size quilts. Used fabric from the cut off edges to make a binding. I'll sell one and keep one. Colors are not for me which I why I'm repurposing it. I'm keeping one because it makes a good safety cover for our brick hearth for when our grandchildren are here. Once that need is gone I'll sell the second one .
It is festival time in our small town, which means the opportunity for random spending is heavy. But I’ve managed to limit my spending to one huckleberry lemonade and 3 steak sandwiches. The steak sandwiches benefit our county’s 4H clubs, helping to pay for camp for every member that wants to go.
I received $20.50 back in NBPR rebates just yesterday. All of that went to paying my utility bill. It’s the easiest way for me to use the digital cards they send as payment.
We spent a couple hours visiting on our porch with our daughter and her family and friends and their baby. That is the best part of the festival.
If you haven’t read it yet, may I recommend Theo of Golden? It is a self-published book that ended up being very popular.
I couldn't wait to tell you this one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been needing some slacks, as many of mine were getting "holey." And they are probably old enough to be of legal drinking age, anyway. My tops, shirts and blouses are fine, but the bottoms need replacing. Don't need skirts, hardly ever wear them, but I really needed slacks.
The other day, as previously reported, I thrifted one pair of my favorite brand and size of turquoise blue capris at the GW Boutique aka Goodwill, and was thrilled. But that was nothing!
Today I walked into another, lesser known, local thrift store. They were having a bag sale -- everything you can stuff in one of their Glad drawstring garbage bags you can buy for $10. I went over to the slacks racks. Alfred Dunner, Alfred Dunner, Alfred Dunner -- my favorite brand -- I kept seeing them in both the dressy slacks racks and the jeans and capris racks. Lots of different colors, different fabrics, different styles, but all of them in my size. Most looked brand new and may even have been donated by a dept. store or something.
Bottom line (no pun intended): I bought 13 pair of Alfred Dunner jeans and dress slacks + 1 pair of another brand's capris, all in my size. Tried 'em on at home just now, perfect fit.
I thought I'd have to pay for 2 bags. Didn't mind doing so because this thrift store supports the local food bank, and 20 bucks for over a dozen pairs is still a fantastic buy.
But the lady at the counter squished them all into one bag. I told her to pinch me, I thought I was dreaming, but no, it was for real. Ten bucks.
OK, I had to pay tax, so my total cost was $10.82 for 14 pairs of very good slacks/jeans/capris. That's about 77 cents per pair!!!!!!!!!!!!! Get out the smelling salts. Won 't need to shop for clothes for a lllloooooonnnnnnggggg time!
(They were also doing a free book giveaway, so I snagged some History books for friend's daughter's boyfriend-turning-teacher, and also got myself a Nelson DeMille novel.)
I will definitely be donating either money or items to this store andn its worthy cause in the coming weeks.
That is so awesome! Some shopaholic lady in your size must have had her entire closet donated.
I got three small glass Pyrex kitchen storage containers, two round and one oblong, all with lids, for $6 total at an estate sale near my house. I have been trying to de-plastic my kitchen ware and this will help. I also got a $3 collapsible umbrella as a spare for the car and because it was a rainy morning! I am trying to be practical in my purchases and only buy to fill a need.