The Non-Consumer Advocate

We lent our Sawzall reciprocating saw to a neighbor to cut through a stubborn root from a long forgotten tree, and when he returned it I reminded him that he was welcome to borrow anything from us at any time. He responded with “as are you.”

This isn’t because we live in some naturally occurring utopia, where belongings are all shared amongst neighbors. It’s because I started by giving out bouquets of hydrangeas, (we have so many in the summer!) sharing excess baked goods and watering plants when neighbors were out of town. This resulted in the neighbors feeling comfortable enough to then borrow from us. I guess it helps that we’ve lived on the block longer than anyone else, so we were in a unique situation to set some of the culture.

It’s not transactional, there’s no “one A” for two of your “B’s.” It’s just neighbors knowing they can trust and count on each other.

We hosted my step father’s 73rd birthday at the house, complete with a chicken dinner, rice, roasted carrots and a gluten-free birthday cake, plus a couple episodes of Seinfeld. Why Seinfeld? My step dad is a native New Yorker and loved the show back in the day. His gifts included a chocolate babka and a bag of fusilli pasta, thus giving the night a Seinfeld theme.

The simple frugality of the meal didn’t lessen the evening whatsoever. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to create a special meal for the people in your life.

 My mother is going to let me borrow her car, as we’ve been putting off the purchase of a used car until prices came back down to earth. (She stopped driving a few months ago, so her car isn’t currently being driven.) My husband and I have been sharing a single minivan since last summer, when we lent the Prius to our son for his long commute. He’s going to buy it from us, but we’re having him wait until he turns 25 in a few months, as insurance rates for an under-25 year old man are outrageous. We offered to sell it to him for half the value.

We have the money to buy whatever car we’d want, but that doesn’t mean that we’re eager to overpay. Ideally we’d like to buy another used Prius, as our 2007 model is the best car we’ve ever owned. Borrowing my mother’s car will allow us to be patient and deliberate with the unpleasant task of used car shopping.

• My husband and I installed the new-to-us ceiling fan/light that we scored through our local Buy Nothing group. Buh-bye, boob light!
• I gave away a garment rack, a tote bag and the booby ceiling fan through the Buy Nothing group.
• Our other next door neighbor let us recycle a gargantuan piece of styrofoam with their Ridwell pickup, a service that otherwise costs $12 – $16/month.
• I bought $1/package strawberries and 3/$1 yellow peppers from the dented vegetable store, (Everyday Deals on S.E. 82nd) and quickly chopped and froze them for future use.
• I stocked up on spaghetti noodles at Trader Joe’s as their price of 99¢/pound is now less than Winco!
• I watched a bunch of the ShabazSays Instagram reels, where he points out some of the more ridiculous wealth divide differences. You may have seen his “you can’t do this, you’re a povvo” content before, which always hits the nail on the head.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

Portland got slammed with a dramatic storm, which dumped close to a foot of snow on a day that had been forecasted to receive a “dusting of snow.” This led to nightmare traffic, especially on our hilly streets and freeways. My son’s normal 30 minute commute stretched into two hours, although he was luckier than so many others! The guy across the street? 16 hours sitting immobile on the freeway and eventual abandonment of his car!

Luckily we didn’t lose electricity and had ample supplies on hand. We’re now a couple days past the drama, but are still hovering at the freezing level with dramatic wind gusts so I’m happy to hunker down at home with a cup of tea and my favorite cozy sweater.

Here’s how we kept things frugal:

• We share a snow shovel with our next door neighbors and we took turns using it.
• I wear the same size shoes as my son, so I lent him my heavy duty snow boots.
• I shoveled porch steps for the people across the street, as well as our other next door neighbors.
• A pulled together a big pot of chicken soup, using the last of a Costco rotisserie chicken.
• I hunkered down inside and saved myself an emergency room bill from an avoidable “slip and fall” injury!

My eBay woke up and I made seven sales, despite not listing anything new. I’m utterly and completely baffled with these sales, as they’re all the dustiest of stale inventory and I don’t understand what made them sell mostly on the same day.

• A pair of CB2 curtain tie backs, which I bought for $5 and sold for $50.
• A Lego instruction manual that I pulled from the recycling awhile back. Sold for $11.
• A pair of vintage VW hubcaps, which I bought for $15 and sold for $30.
• A set of Journey To The Center of The Earth 3-D glasses, found in the house and sold for $8.
• A video game controller doohickey that I bought so long ago that I don’t know what I paid. Sold for $16. Good riddance!
• An empty box for a Nike Fuel band. Sold for $11.
• A single Adidas shoe. A totally random find that I listed as a “what weird thing can I sell” experiment. I probably took three (four?) years to sell. Sold for $15.

I scored a new to me ceiling fan for our living room through my Buy Nothing group. Yes, I did just curb pick up a perfectly good one just last year, but it’s a “boob light.” It turns out that I can’t stand to look at it, as it features a chain coming directly out of the nipple! I spent 24 years working as a labor and delivery nurse, which included extensive breast feeding education, and I am here to tell you that for me, this ceiling fan is deeply disturbing.

So yes, I jumped on the chance to replace this light fixture with one that won’t give me flashes of intrusive thoughts. But you know, in a frugal fashion.

• I stopped by the Franz Bakery Outlet store and nabbed four loaves of bread, three sleeves of bagels and some English muffins for just $14.
• I listened to Nora Goes Off Script by Annabelle Monaghan through the free Libby app and I read a physical copy of Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey from the library.
• I propagated and planted a couple spider plant starts.
• My husband worked a paramedic shift at the Bruce Springsteen concert, which saved him the cost of an overpriced ticket, plus was a tasty “premium overtime” shift!
• My neighbor across the street gave me two adorable bottles of her homemade vanilla extract.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

I watched a 5-1/2 hour YouTube video series about farming in 17th century Wales. This Tales From The Green Valley BBC video sent me down the deepest of rabbit holes to unapologetically binge watch Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm and am now four episodes into Tudor Monastery Farm, all of which are thankfully on Amazon Prime.

The featured participants in these living history shows are deeply knowledgable archeologists and historians, which make these shows educational but also utterly fascinating. There’s absolutely zero false drama or interpersonal conflict, which is a sharp contrast to how an American version would be produced. Just gently informative content.

How is it that I’ve been able to consume such a gluttonous amount of TV? A combination of an extended cold that knocked me off my feet and cloaked me with brain fog.

I haven’t been thrifting at all and possess zero energy to list on anything on eBay, (I can’t oversell how much this cold has sapped my energy, which is already minimal this time of year) this equates to selling almost nothing on eBay.

• I did sell this handmade wooden boat for $75, which I thrifted at least a year ago for $15.

• I sold a huge stained glass hanging light fixture that my parents commissioned in 1977 for their dining room. My step mother was going to donate it to Goodwill, so I brought it home and listed it on Facebook Marketplace. It took a long time to sell, but it finally went for $250 to someone for his soon to open Cuban restaurant, which I love. I look forward to being able to visit it again.

• I sold the bamboo bar stools that I thrifted earlier this month. I paid $9.99 apiece and sold the pair through Facebook Marketplace for $175.

I may not have sold much, but I’m always happy when the physically large items I bring home to sell actually leave the house. Bringing stuff home without actually selling it is a slippery slope to being a hoarder.

My husband and I spent an afternoon running multiple tiny errands, none of which warranted their own trip, but together added up to a worthy accomplishment. Not only did it save gas to batch our errands, but it was nice to actually leave the house have a buddy for what would’ve otherwise been a dull endeavor. Together we dropped off plastic recycling, returned a glass milk bottle for a $2 deposit, returned and checked out new library books, stopped at a uniform store to order his baseball team’s customized jerseys, dropped off lightbulbs and batteries at Ikea to be recycled, enjoyed Ikea’s $1.15 veggie hotdogs and free coffee and finally stopped at Costco for a $5 rotisserie chicken and food for my husband’s work lunches.

I hate when these tiny tasks build up, so it’s cathartic to cross them from my to-do list.

• I gave each of my young adult kids a hundred dollar bill for Valentine’s Day. These were from selling my parents’ hanging light, which felt right.
• My daughter continues to gift me with random high end food items from her grocery store job. This recently included a glass jar of milk and some protein bars.
• I lent my son our new Eufy robot vacuum for his apartment bedroom. This room has wall-to-wall carpet, and although it seemed clean enough, it always smelled a bit stale. He ran it for four or five consecutive nights, each time sucking up an impressive amount from what had seemed like decently clean carpet. His room suddenly smells fresh and clean again and I can only imagine is a healthier breathing environment.
• My husband clamped and glued our son’s roommate’s dining room chair back to functionality.
• I cut some forsythia from the garden to force into bloom. No overpriced Valentine’s Day roses here!
• This cold has turned me into an absolute and utter couch potato, which is a boring but frugal existence. Seriously, just concentrating on writing this blog post is making me feel a bit lightheaded and I think I need to cue up another living history video.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet, not even one from the Tudor period.

I stopped by Goodwill on my way to the dented vegetable store and scored two Ballard Designs counter stools for $9.99 apiece. They’re currently on sale on the Ballard website for $265, but are an almost exact dupe of the $450 Williams-Sonoma’s version.

How did I know to buy them? They stood out as quality pieces of furniture, so I examined them and saw the manufacturer information on the bottoms of the seats. A quick internet search gave me the value and a quick wiggly “sit test” sealed the deal.

I’ve since listed them on Facebook Marketplace for $150 apiece, but will lower the price if I don’t find a buyer after a couple of weeks. Patience is key.

I convinced my doctor to switch me from a name brand medication to the generic. He was hesitant to do so, but the price difference for a 90-day supply is $107.09 vs. just $14.87 for the generic! This is an annual difference of $368.88, so it’s at least worth a try.

I was chatting with my across the street neighbor as she unloaded her grocery order, and she complained about how she’d need to run an extra errand to return the plastic bags back to the store for recycling. Mind you, these were the heavy duty bags designed for multiple use, so I asked her if instead I could have them to use as garbage liners. She happily agreed.

My family doesn’t put out a lot of garbage, which means that we’re able to get away with a small kitchen bin, and this style of grocery bag works perfectly as liners. However, we’re pretty good about remembering to bring reususable bags when shopping, so we don’t actually get plastic bags that often. We are now the proud owners of a half-dozen or so sturdy bags and should be set for a month or two.

• I lent the across the street neighbor a fat stack of Pokémon “early reader” books for her son.
• I remembered to cancel our Paramount+ subscription before the 99¢/month deal expired.
• I scored a huge butternut squash for a buck at the “dented vegetable” store!
• My next door neighbor asked if we’d be interested in taking their TV room fold-out couch, as they’re switching to recliners. I gave it approximately two minutes of thought before accepting their generous offer. I know from experience that anything from their house is sure to be immaculate, and I’d been puzzling how to turn our adult daughter’s old room into a spare bedroom without spending an arm and a leg. A hide-a-bed couch is the perfect solution, as it allows us to reconfigure our current spare bedroom into a TV/family room, yet still have a backup bed for guests. The bed from the old spare bedroom can then be moved upstairs for our daughter’s old room.

Luckily the recliners won’t be delivered until April, which gives me enough time to wrap my brain around the details.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

My son was tasked with picking out a houseplant for his office, so the two of us drove to Portland Nursery to browse their selection. I tagged along to ogle their pretty wares and maybe get a few ideas for my own horticultural menagerie. I have a wide variety of house plants, although most of them are cuttings I’ve snipped and then propagated on a windowsill.

One of my favorite plants to propagate is the above picture, as it grows fast and easily. It thrives in low light and isn’t too picky about how often it gets watered. My mom gave me a cutting a couple years ago and its since provided enough babies for multiple plantings. However . . . I hadn’t known its name until today! Say hello to “Fuzzy Bunny.”

Propagating plants is not for those who need instant gratification, but it is an easy frugal hack for people who enjoy plants but hate wasting money. Want more info about how to propagate? Click HERE for specifics.

I bought two books on eBay:

• The Forgotten Arts & Crafts, by John Seymore. I can thank Rajiv Surendra for this one, as he recommended it in one of his informative YouTube videos. This Dorling Kindersley book is filled with detailed information on everything from the details on historic roof thatching to how peat was cut, dried and then burned to heat homes. The pen and ink illustrations are exhaustively detailed and I highly recommend this fascinating book.

• A blank baby book that’s an exact match to the one I filled out when my oldest was born in 1995. I was leafing through the kids’ baby books the other night and realized the information in my daughter’s book no longer matches her proper name and gender. By recreating the original book, she’ll be able to enjoy this record of her babyhood.

My friend Lise and I hit up Goodwill on 10%-off senior discount day and I bought:

• A pair of $19.99 Blundstone boots in my husband’s size.
• A pair of Museum of Modern Art mugs for 99¢ apiece and a pair of Anthropology mugs for $1.99 apiece.
• A pretty Rejuvenation glass shade for $4.99.

My daughter brought over a pound of bacon and two tubes of biscuits from her grocery job, I cleaned out the fridge and only had to toss a couple of things, I’ve made all meals this week from scratch, I’ve been listening to Agatha Christie Tommy and Tuppence stories through the Libby app, I printed another free label at the library and I mended a split seam on my son’s sweatshirt.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

My daughter continues to gift me with random groceries from her job at a high end grocery store. This week it was two huge hunks of pre-cooked ham. Ham’s not my favorite, (so rubbery!) but I do like how it adds a smoky richness to bean soup. My friend Lise had panic bought a survivalist amount of black eyed peas at the beginning of the pandemic and later foisted a big bag on me.

Free ham + free black eyed peas = a tasty combination.

I cooked up the black eyed peas and added onion, rice, diced carrots, celery, chicken bullion and chopped ham, which created a flavorful, albeit heavy meal. (Or four meals!) I then diced and froze a gallon-size bag and thinly sliced the last of the ham for my husband’s work sandwiches.

My mother gave me $100 for my birthday, which I used to purchase a robot vacuum cleaner, which I’ve secretly coveted since they first rolled off the assembly line. I follow John and Sherry over at Young House Love, and they recently mentioned on social media that the Eufy vacuum they recommend was on sale for just $96. John is an obsessive researcher of products, so I felt I could trust the product.

I’ve used the same plain Jane vacuum cleaner since 2001, with no plans of replacing it for something cuter. However, I’ve grown sensitive to dust and pet hair and felt that a robo-vacuum could better clean under our bed, which collects a shocking amount of dusty grey matter. For reference, the above photo is from the second cycle of cleaning of our clean looking bedroom!

I’m only on day two of using the robot vacuum, but am unabashedly ecstatic with it. The amount of crap that it vacuums up is impressive, not just from areas I know to be dusty, but from other rooms in the house as well. To quote my neatnik father, “It’s not a chore if you’re a clean freak.”

My niece and her boyfriend visited Portland, and although they mostly stayed with my father, I still had them for a couple nights and spent multiple days ferrying them around and hosting dinners at my house. My mom did spring for takeout one night, but I also cooked, including a frugal yet delicious taco buffet night that accommodated their vegan lifestyle.

Thank you, versatility of black beans!

My daughter also brought home three tubes of Pillsbury croissants, I can’t find my laptop charger, so my son is bringing me an backup one to borrow, (which is directly correlated to the lateness of this blog post) I lent my niece some extra hats, gloves and scarves to go cross country skiing, my husband was able to fix our whiny bitch non-functioning oven with a $40 part, I’m almost done listening to Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin through the free Libby app, and one of my husband’s co-workers gave him a dozen eggs from his backyard chickens.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

My 18-year-old niece and her boyfriend are visiting from the East coast, which gave me a proper kick in the tuchus to pull my son’s childhood room back in order. (He moved out last year and absconded with all his bedroom furniture.) I’d already sourced a bed frame from the Buy Nothing Group, to which I added a full-size futon we already owned. I’d added a nubby foam pad last year when my sister visited, but my son is emphatic that it was still uncomfortable. I caved in and splurged on a fluffy $28 mattress pad from Bezos, which should help. I also pulled a chair, table and decor items from around the house and the room is put together once again, but more importantly is back to full function.

My daughter also moved out last year, taking her furniture but left piles of random stuff and a thick layer of dust. My goal for this year is to force her to go through her belongings and gradually gather what is needed to turn it into attractive and functional room. Both kids stop by the house multiple times per week, (the lure of a stocked refrigerator!) and often want the option to chill out  in their old rooms.

Our 1914 house is sizable, with four big bedrooms, a large storage space/attic, as well as a full basement. (Plus the single bathroom!) So it would easy to let the kids’ old bedrooms lie dormant as we have no current need for them, but it bothers me to have unfinished projects and it’s good for the kids to know they have a backup place to rest and recharge their batteries.

I finally broke down and got a haircut. Ideally I would’ve returned to my beloved Supercuts training center for a sweet free cut, but they appear to have changed the way they put the word out for potential clients. (It used to be a Facebook page, but it seems to have been abandoned.) Anyway, I was scrolling Facebook and came across an ad for a $10.99 haircut at Great Clips, which is apparently my price point.

$15.99 later ($5 tip) and my freshly bobbed hair is approximately 8 inches shorter and can now stop wrapping around my throat at night.

• I made a batch of Hasselbeck potatoes with some potatoes that were thisclose to hitting the compost.
• I sold a $35 stuffed animal, a $25 security blanket/plush and a pair of Victorian style boots for $90 on eBay. Update: I mailed out the wrong security blanket and will lose some money paying for the return. I’ll mail the correct one out and eat the cost as an apology.
• I continue to print my eBay labels at the library for free.
• I donated a small bag of stuff to Goodwill and made sure to get a donation receipt for next year’s taxes. Sometimes people put random stuff like picture frames, bulky toys, etc in my Little Free Library, so I donate them for the tax deduction. Books, people. Little free libraries only have room for books!
• Enjoying the seventh season of Shetland through my sister’s trial subscription to Britbox. • My son and I drove through a Dutch Bros. kiosk and redeemed my free birthday coffee, which I had them split into two cups.
• I washed a load of my daughter’s laundry as her apartment complex’s dryer isn’t working. I found three socks with holes so I darned them for her.
• My husband changed the oil on both cars and was even able to find sale price motor oil.

My #4 is a deliberate “frugal fail.” I’ve spent a fair amount of money on restaurant meals this week, as I wanted to be able to treat my niece and her boyfriend to some of Portland’s restaurant culture. Save money where you can so you can splurge in other areas.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.

I turned 55 this week, which is especially exciting as I now quality for a 10%-off senior discount at Goodwill. (At least on Wednesdays.) As is our custom, we celebrated my birthday by eating stuff and doing stuff.

Here’s what we ate:
• Dim sum at Excellent Cuisine for brunch. (So so so good!)
• Tacos from our friendly neighborhood Mexican food cart. (Also so so so good!)
• A Costco cheesecake, which might actually have been cheaper than making one from scratch.

Here’s what we did:
• Hit up three different Goodwills.
• Stopped at a Starbucks for a free birthday drink, which was then split into two cups.
• Found a sopping wet fleece neck gaiter, which I washed and added to our winter gear basket.

I prefer to not receive much in the way of gifts, but my husband did order me a two-pack of Dundee orange marmalade, (my favorite) which should arrive at any moment.

I sadly didn’t find anything all that interesting while out thrifting, but it was still fun to scour the Goodwill shelves while on a birthday high. Wednesdays just got a whole lot more interesting!

My dad spent an entire day with me as his car was being serviced by a nearby mechanic. He brought over a loaf of homemade bread, which is his signature dish. He also packed a book of Chekov short stories in case the day ran long, but instead we filled the day chatting, playing cribbage and eating toast. Very frugal.

My mom and I spent a day together that was supposed to center on hitting the Goodwill Outlet/bins. Unfortunately the parking lot at the bins was 100% full, with six competing cars for every potential spot. We circled and circled and finally gave up. After all, we are still mid-pandemic and a crammed parking lot equals a crammed Goodwill.

Instead I drove my mom to my house and placated her with fish tacos, McVitie’s digestive biscuits and multiple episodes of Resident Alien. I then assembled a simple dinner of omelettes with Swiss cheese, mushrooms and sautéed greens. Very frugal.

I went to the dented vegetable store and scored two big-ass packages of organic mixed greens for $2 apiece and five enormous avocados priced at 5/$1 (I gave one of the salad mixes to my friend Lise and one of the avocados to my father) I found a penny and then a dime on the ground, (11¢ in 2023 so far!) my daughter brought me three packages of pancetta from her grocery store, I bought five jars of half-price Bonne Maman mixed berry jam for $3.98 each, my neighbor let me put out an extra yard debris bin with her pickup and my friend Lise brought me a birthday goodie bag filled with handmade crackers, cookies, chocolates and cheese.

I didn’t buy a Lear Jet.