One Frugal Things — Thrifted Curtains
by Katy on October 17, 2025 · 23 comments
My daughter is currently looking for a new roommate, so I offered to come over and help spruce the place up in the name of making it as appealing as possible. One thing I noticed was that the cheap mini plastic blinds in the living room were broken and bent up. Hardly an appealing aesthetic. I also noticed a rod above them, so I offered to thrift some curtains for her.
It took maybe ten minutes at the main Goodwill to find this pair of $12.99 Orla Kiely lined curtains, which were the perfect size and super cute. I wasn’t sure if she’d like the pattern and color, but I knew that I could flip them on eBay for at least $100 if she didn’t. Luckily she loves the updated look!
I should’ve taken a “before” picture, but it was late by the time I picked her up from work and sometimes I forget that I’m a blogger and should be fully documenting these things.
Here are her new curtains, the perfect size and coincidentally matching the back of her throw pillows. For $12.99!
People criticize Goodwill, but our ones in Oregon are frankly amazing!* Now, let’s get a new roommate in there!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
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{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Great find. These curtains look fabulous!
The fabric looks really nice with the fabric on the futon.
Thank you, I’m so pleased with how good they look. Plus, I’m always happy when I can solve a problem by thrifting!
The curtains look great in the space and with the furniture! Nice find!
Wow, the whole setup is beautiful! Good job, mama!
That is such a cute and cozy room now. Well done, Mama!
I rack-dried most of my laundry on the porch. Used up some plain white rice to make rice pudding with raisins. Went to book club and had a fine time for no money spent.
Gosh thinking about rice pudding reminds me of my late mom. Hers was so special. Now I need to make some myself!
I’m super jealous of those curtains! I have a matching purse from (you guessed it) the Goodwill bins.
I am signed up for my flu and covid shots at Fred Meyer and will get $20 worth of groceries for my trouble.
Great find! They fit the windows so well!
I went out to brunch again with a friend. Again, it was too much. When did brunch get so expensive? Again, I brought home leftovers and I think I will be able to make a tasty casserole from the leftovers of the past few days.
We went to a Goodwill afterwards in an affluent town that used to be so good, but today’s trip was disappointing. I did come home with a nice pair of black pants from J. Crew, a small laminate tray, and a wooden box.
The curtains look fabulous!
The only place I drove today (2.5 miles) was the local farm store to buy $2.15 worth of cover crop seeds for my garden. This was the grand total of my spending today.
I rode my bike 2 miles round trip to the UPS store to do returns for my daughter. She’s having a hard week.
Nice find on the curtains, they look perfect in the space.
My one frugal thing today was remembering the coupon from the hair cut place before I pulled out of my neighborhood, so I was able to quickly double back and get it.
You storing the original window “dressings” in the event your daughter moves?
1. My husband’s fb marketplace sale went well yesterday! He has another that he’s meeting tomorrow. Cha-ching
2. My mom is coming over tomorrow to watch our kids while we have a date for our anniversary.
3. We’re going to an escape room for anniversary and which isn’t overly expensive. They also have a wrecking room and accept glass items and small appliances so we’re going to be bringing a couple of boxes of junk and our beloved Dyson vacuum that crapped out. We have a punch card so for every 10 “boxes” of smashables we bring in we’ll get a free wreck room session. We earned 5 the first time we visited so fingers crossed we’ll fill the card.
4. We walked around a farmer’s market with the kiddos and only walked away with some kettle corn and honey. Our oldest was not loving the number of dogs so we packed up the food we brought with us and headed home before we could find anything else to tempt us.
5. Our house is on the market (eeek!) so I have been cleaning nonstop and decluttering even more. Our donate piles have been slowly making their way out of the house and it feels fantastic.
I’m jealous…our thrift stores in this area RARELY have the “good stuff” in. They’re pretty much unwanted garbage IMHO. Guess I nred to move to Portland.
Actually saw, for the first in a while, a blue recliner at the curb with “FREE” on it. We don’t have room for any more furniture, but I wouldn’t have picked it up anyway as it was raining and getting drenched. I’m sure someone out there will snatch it up, but it won’t be me.
Hasn’t been terribly frugal this week. Did the largest grocery shop I’ve done in almost a year…$77. DH did snag a bag of flour that was half price because the bag got torn open. Have to bake a bunch of cookies for an election day luncheon/bake sale at a polling place. The group that is doing the food is a therapeutic horseback riding center, and the proceeds will benefit the center. I donated cookies last year and they were a huge hit, especially the pineapple ones. They are “Cheater Cookies”. 1 cake mix + 2 eggs + 1/2 cup oil + any mix-ins you want (chips, nuts, raisins, etc.) Roll into balls, bake at 359 12-15 minutes. I use a pineapple cake mix and put a red candied cherry in the center of the dough before baking. You can use any cake mix you like, except angel food. Makes roughly 2 dozen cookies. I’ve been watching for cake mixes and mix-ins (coconut, chips, M&M’s, raisins, nuts, icing that I use on the spice cookies and the carrot cake cookies, etc.) on sale and have picked up quite a few. Still need a few more to make a nice donation.
Mama Bear,
Thank you for what you’re doing for the therapy riding charity. You’re going to make a good difference in somebody’s (or several somebodies’) life. And I’m sure many hungry poll workers and voters will be grateful for the snacks….at last, something both sides can agree upon!
Great job Mama Bear. I’m sure the curtains made a world of difference in the look of the apartment. I hope your daughter finds a roommate soon.
We attended day 2 of a local church rummage sale. Almost everything was half price or you could fill a kitchen trash bag for $5. DH and I each filled one. I picked up a few puzzles, flannel pajama bottoms, and some things to hang on walls.
Neighbors four houses down are having a big multi-family yard sale. I put some unwanted items at our curb with a Free sign to capitalize on their advertising.
So charming! I am sure your daughter will be welcoming a new roommate very soon! Thrifting is so much fun! Much more fun than going into a Target and getting what everyone else has, usually poor quality goods,too. I love that i can get good brands for cheap..and I LOVE the thrill of “the hunt.”
This works for my clothing habit too.I am frugal, but I do like a nice purse, and a few nice pieces of clothing every year when summer and then winter roll around..my fave consignment store offers me good quality pieces, unique styles, for pennies on the dollar and it’s much more FUN that a big box store or amazon!
Lucky you! I’ve been looking for curtains all over town and so far, no luck.
But those look great!
This morning I went to the No Kings protest in our city. We had to stand on the public sidewalk, not the parking lot, and we were right next to the busiest street in town. This particular “Freedom Corner” is in a strip shopping center, along one corner where the busiest street and second-busiest street intersect. Well, we easily had a thousand people show up, and I’d say 95% of people driving by honked and gave us a thumbs up. (Only one potentially nasty/scary incident when a redneck in a huge “pick ’em up” (pickup) truck honked and shouted “Trump” and swerved like he was going to run us over. Thank God for concrete medians!) (But a whole lot of red-neck looking guys also drove by, honked and gave us a thumbs up.) The local TV stations were there. It was supposed to have been from 10 until noon, but I got there at 9:20 and it was already happening. By 10 a.m., there were hundreds of protestors there — no exaggeration! — and we took up the entire front of the shopping center and stretched around to at least half of the block on the side. I’ve never been so proud to be an American as today! I held a huge sign that said FREE SPEECH–FREE PRESS and brought my “scary Trumpkin,” “Democracy doesn’t die in the dark. Republicans are killing it in broad daylight,” “Save Social Security and Medicare” and “Loyalty to the Constitution, Not the President” signs along with a big flag leftover from the campaign that said “Vote for Democracy, Not A Dictatorship!” My free speech sign comes up to my shoulders and the TV stations definitely got a shot of it (and me) in the crowd. Several folks took cell phone photos of the “Scary Trumpkin” and “Democracy doesn’t die” signs and said they plan to post them on their social media feeds, esp. the Trumpkin one (which has a big ugly cartoon drawing: an orange face of you-know-who on a jack-o’-lantern, with a shock of ugly hair on top). I asked them to share that one on Halloween. I guess the frugal part was that I used a flag that I already had, and the protest was free to attend. Oh, and there were many homemade signs there that were truly works of art. [BTW if anyone watches KWTX, Fox 44, or other Central Texas (Wac0-Temple-Killeen) stations, I’m the short-haired gal holding a huge black and white Free Speech-Free Press sign. The last 45 minutes or so, I’m wearing a sparkly full brimmed yard hat.]
My more traditional frugals:
1. Bought a gallon of organic milk on clearance for $1.99 last night before I clocked out at the store. It was organic milk, its expiration date was for today, and the store didn’t want to throw all those jugs of $6.61 milk out. So they marked them down. It also saved me a trip to the supermarket, where I’d planned to go after work. Our milk (both organic and regular) is priced too high, and normally, I never buy it at the store.
2. Took a huge contractor’s bag of recycling and turned it in. Five pounds of soda pop cans earned me $3.25. Oh, wow, I came into some money.
3. Brewed myself a gallon of iced tea instead of buying a jug at the grocery store. I’ve gotten lazy over the summer, and I need to quit buying what I can make at home.
4. Ate at home instead of going out to eat after the protest.
5. Paid extra on the car payment, trying to mow that sucker down. Won’t be long until it’s paid off.
I just returned from my No Kings as well, wow it was so inspiring and gives me such hope, I was almost in tears it felt so nice to see the turnout and realize most people do not support what is going on!
I saw a sign on social media that said “Honk if you’re not in the Epstein files.”
Update: the county Democratic party released a head count as to our No Kings protest. There were more than 1,200 people participating! On Trump’s birthday, they had a similar protest — same Bat time, same Bat station — and counted 800 people there (in 90-degree weather). The first protest right after Trump’s inauguration only had 40 people. So the movement is growing! Our county population estimate for 2025 is more than 273,000 people; we are not a huge metropolitan area. Yet, here we are in a very “red” state and county, and still we had quite a crowd turn out.
1. I added a can of black beans to the ground beef for tacos for dinner. The meat and cheese were free (mystery shop), the lettuce and cilantro wer free (CSA box that partner gets free from work), and the taco shells were from the dented box shelf. Homemade taco seasoning.
2. Lunch today was BLTs. Bacon, bread, and mayo were all free from mystery shops, lettuce free (from CSA), tomatoes free (last from the garden) and even the toaster was free from local Buy Nothing group.
3. I got some free McDonald’s monopoly playing tokens free online and ended up with quite a lot of free food and drink that I may use for 2 upcoming long car trips (3+ hours each way).
4. I got a flu shot at Walgreens and received a 20% off coupon, which I applied to 4 cases of ginger ale, which were bogo. We don’t drink a lot of soda, but my partner occasionally brings one to work, or we like having one if we have a stomach ache, etc. Each can came to $0.36 cents which is okay for a splurge. I also found $0.01 in the parking lot.
5. “No heat ’til trick or treat” is still in play, even with temps being in the low 40s at night. Hopefully, I can be successful this year.
Great curtain find, Katy!
1. I bagged up the big dehydrator load of apples, and put in two trays of bananas from a $1.99 discount bag.
There were some bananas just too mucky to dehydrate so I froze those in 1 cup batches – the freezer is full of fruit!
2. Broth made in the instant pot with the chicken carcass from earlier this week, (I made Chicken Marbella!! from a whole chicken). There were some carcasses in the freezer that I pulled out to fill the pot.
The broth has now been strained, and I am eyeing up a couple of leeks I purchased as well as some potatoes that need attention. Soup it is.
3. 10 pound bags of onions were discounted, so I picked up one each of yellow and red. I am using more onions these days, as they are good for us as well as frugal. Going to make some pickled onions in the fridge, always a treat with salads and sandwiches.
4. Like Katy, I got in for my free Covid and Flu shots.
No discount coupons offered, but it was in a different pharmacy for me so, I learned something new: the pharmacist and helper were both Ukrainian, which is of interest to me as I have a young Ukrainian friend moving into the area this month, I am going to encourage her to go meet them.
5. Went to a fleece and fibre fair and filled my eyes with beauty, felt many interesting and delicious fibres, and came away empty handed. I have enough fibre to keep me busy and I am like others in this community, reading is more attractive to me right now.
6. My daughter offloaded a non-functioning fluorescent light fixture on her loving mom. She had removed the ballast, so I had the lens and the metal case and three long bulbs. I took the lens to the local Habitat ReStore, as I know they are in high demand. A lady came by with a ceiling fixture and the man said he wouldn’t take that. I offered to take the metal to recycling, and suggested she keep the pretty frosted glass for her garden. She lit up and said that the smaller birds were drinking out of her dog’s water bowl, so she was going to make a tiny birdbath with the glass. We took the fixture apart and I still have it in my car. I took the two LED light bulbs out and offered them to her but she doesn’t have any lights that would use them, so I have brought them in to my house where they WILL get used! Win for us all. I do have to finish the chore of delivering the bulbs and metal to my local recycle place but that will happen soon.
Wow, her room looks amazing!!!Love it!!!!