2022 2nd Q Tightwad and Frugal Tips

Today's the first of the month, so I'm taking a moment before I go sit down and pay bills. But I had good news a day or two ago from my internet provider.

I've been having problems for YEARS with my DSL. I'm told it's old copper wires, which break and short. The company tells me that they're switching over to fiber optic lines, but we won't get ours until probably 2023. In the meantime, it shorts out often during spring or fall rains. The worst part is that the land line attached would dial 911 without me touching anything. That made me crazy! When it happened for the fifth time, I called to try and get my land line disconnected. I don't really use it anymore, but I'd been told years ago that it was a package-- no landline, no internet. But dang, this is beyond absurd.

So I called, told my story, and asked for a disconnection.

Apparently in the intervening years, the policy changed. My bill went from $109 a month to $46 with just internet, and she took off $10 a month for a year for my troubles, bringing it to $35. Then she offered paperless billing for another $5 off, which would bring me to $30; so I set it up with my credit card, which pays back 3%, bringing my bill for internet service to $29.10. That, plus the savings I got from DirecTV earlier this month brings my media savings to $1009.20 over the next year.

Moral of the Story:  QUESTION EVERYTHING!  EVERY EXPENDITURE!  Separate needs and wants, and make sure it's the best use of your resources.  I got a little lazy but my daughter got me back on track when she offered that the amount I was paying for media was "insane."

Cabbage is what I forgot at the mega grocery yesterday... I eat it some.. Sweetie doesn't care for it... It is cheap to shred up fine as a treat for the chickens..

Yesterday being the last Thursday of the month, there were specials and discounts at a number of places in town.. We got 10 kilo paper bag sugar, limit 4, on special for $6.99.... We have the storage space, so this worked out well..

The mega grocery and there drug store chain have a rewards points on a card program.. Yesterday was also extra points for some grocery items.. All things we use and can, do store regularly.. So pretty much a win, win....

Well, after doing very little - and I mean VERY LITTLE - grocery shopping last month, the freezers are still pretty full; the pantries are almost that full as well. So I'm going to do month two of minimal grocery shopping, with the amount of the food budget that I don't spend sent in a check to the food pantry. So many people are being squeezed far worse than I am by the incredible rising food prices.

I'm happy to bypass grocery shopping, especially with all the not-really-a-sale sale prices (got that?) The "sales" are worse this week than last, with the "sale prices" of a number of items being higher this week than they were last week. I download sale ads and I'm not the best at deleting old ones; that's how I know all this price info. NOT because I have a fantastic memory - I sure don't.

That being said, there were a couple of relatively good deals that came home with me. My formerly huge supply of potatoes purchased from the potato truck this past fall are really dwindling, so I did suck it up and buy a 5 pound bag of grocery store potatoes for $1. I hate buying potatoes at the store because they generally are the opposite of fresh, but I was getting desperate for "fresh" potatoes (I have lots of bags of mashed potatoes and french fries in the freezer). $1 for 5 pounds of potatoes isn't the best price up here, but it's an okay one. And like I said - desperation...

The markdown shelves had bags of three giant red peppers for 99 cents per bag. Since the price of red/yellow/orange peppers at that store has jumped from 99 cents each to $1.25 each, I'm calling 3/.99 an even more fantastic deal. I immediately cut up and froze what I wouldn't be using in the near future when I got home.

People often leave the register-printed coupons behind at the self checkouts - a LOT. I always take a minute to look at what's there to see if I can use any of them. Last week I found a free product coupon - for a can of Bush's beans Sidekicks. Which I'd never heard of. This week I checked out what they were, and picked up a can of taco fiesta black beans. This wouldn't have been my first choice, but my bean-hating husband actually will eat black beans so I'm taking one for the team here.

Michigan Gal , remember that question you had for meandtk ,? I think you might have to ask susannah.

feather, can you point me to your recipe for kim chi? thanks.

My savings today was I opened a new big bucket of cat litter and took the plastic strip from around the lid, cut it into 6 lengths, pointed on one end and used a paint marker to make plant markers for the garden.

Wow, folks! This month's tightwad tips are off to a great start!

feather , Thanks for the kimchee recipe. I'll at least do a quart of it. Nice to have on a bed of assorted greens with a handful of beans and rice thrown in for a salad--no dressing, just kimchee.

Hit the jackpot on vacation in a little coastal resort community and found two high-end thrift stores! I list the finds, not to make you jealous but to think of things you need that you might look for at thrift stores:

The best find was a Kitchenaid Mixer (sans bowl($50). I am excited to make pasta and bread with it. Have already ordered the pasta attachments!

I found a valuable ironstone tureen with lid ($6) as a wedding present for a friend's daughter. I was looking for something to put a check in, but this was so beautiful, I had to get it. She loves antiques so I hope she will like it! I looked up the value and it is worth many, many more times what I paid (150-200$)

Vioxx flip flops and crocs flats--I love these for the summer because they can be washed in the washer!

Nitrile gloves (20/$1) I like these for transplanting my seedlings. Wouldn't buy them for full price.

One thrift store supported the local little hospital and sold locally made cranberry salsa. I bought several for gifts.

Metal coffee carafe - Plan to use when having my hopefully regular coffee chats with friends ("Let's Go Covid!")
---------------
Starting 12 eggs in my incubator today--wish me luck! I hope to get to the point of selling chicks and fertilized eggs.
-------------
I'm seeing a lot of youtube gardening videos where people are using the recycled styrofoam boxes from fish stores. If you need good containers for seedlings, or even growing, try those! Free is good!
-----------
The ginger has started to bud, so I'll plant those this week. The Chayote--well, one is rotting and other is not doing anything. I will plant the rotting one and maybe it will put out a vine?

So many good tips already! I like the tip for turning the tear strip from the cat litter bucket into plant stake labels. I use vinyl miniblinds for stakes/labels. I will try the paint pens with them. Sharpie markers fade in the sun, and pencils work well, but don't write on damp plastic. Of course, pencils are cheaper, and damp plastic can be wiped dry....

After cleaning out the kitchen pantry, I was inspired to clean out the cabinet under the microwave, where Abby's tea and coffee collection shares space with mason jars, misc kitchen gadgets and lots more. It had become such a cluttered mess that it was impossible to find what you were looking for. I removed a box full of extra drink bottles, jars and other misc that could be better stored in the big pantry (bedroom we turned into a pantry). I moved the various coffees to the kitchen pantry, and organized the teas into a plastic tub to corral them. I organized the mason jars, putting a lid on each one to keep them clean, so that when I need one, it's ready to go, put the French presses and tea infuser pot in a common spot, in the front where we will spot them and use them.  It's so nice to look at organized shelves!

Looking at the tea collection, Abby could drink tea daily and not run out of various herbal teas for literally YEARS! I think she kept buying more because she couldn't find the ones she already had. That's not very frugal. I've tried very hard to pass on my frugal grocery shopping ways on to her, but when she gets SNAP benefits, aka free food, she tends to splurge on higher dollar items that I would NEVER buy. She hasn't had her SNAP benefits since February, so she needs to be frugal until the problem gets straightened out and she gets them back. I'm not buying more than milk, bread, crackers (I'm on a cheese and crackers kick) and produce these days, and I think she's surprised at how long we can go without buying much more than that. As I mentioned before, we have plenty of food in the freezers and pantry.

I am wondering if the ice cream supply survived the power outage yesterday. I don't want to check until I'm sure everything has had a chance to freeze hard again. I kept all the freezers closed, but I think Abby opened the fridge, so it's possible that the milk won't last as long as it would normally. I see pudding in our future!

With summer coming, I thought I'd mention a tip I've used to repair cooler hinges. The hinges seem to be the weak point on most coolers. They will eventually snap at the point where they bend. The repair is pretty simple. Use a plastic bleach or vinegar bottle to cut replacement pieces, using the original hinge as a template. They are attached with screws, so removing them is easy, and then you can just place the new plastic between the original hinge and the cooler body, and screw right through the new plastic when you replace the screws. Works a treat!

feather , I do grow and dry many herbs, but Abby likes to buy fancy frou-frou teas. Picture me rolling my eyes here. She has tea balls, tea bags for putting loose tea in, and a teapot with an infuser in it. She also buys a lot of different Stash brand bagged teas. I'm not a huge fan of herbal teas, or even regular tea, for that matter. I like coffee, but it doesn't like me back, so I try to stick to icy cold water. I've gotten lazy and back in the habit of drinking a bottle or two of soda many days - not good for my wallet OR my health. I treated myself to a mug of mint cocoa yesterday, but even with taking Lactaid with it, my gut wasn't really very happy with my decision.

Speaking of the tea bags you can buy to put loose tea in, I have another use for them. I put a small amount of rice in them and tie them shut, then place them in jars of sugar to attract moisture and keep the sugar from clumping. While our climate isn't humid in summer, like so much of the country, we do get tons of rain about 9 months out of the year, and all that rain means high humidity. You could just sew small bags from cotton (good use for worn-out sheets) if you don't have teabags on hand, but since I have them, I use them.

Produce prices are definitely up, so we are also using less fresh produce and more frozen veggies. We stocked up on them before the prices spiked, so it makes sense to use them now, while the garden is still dormant. I'm really looking forward to fresh garden goodies.

feather , I'm seeing people make grow bags out of those shopping bags. They need to have at least some air circulation as that is what roots need, apparently. I'd do it, but boy, the watering!

I'm squeezing the grape tomato seeds (great deal on grape and cherry tomatoes) before putting on our hummus toast today. I'm putting them in the garden. Free tomato plants!

I'm thinking of making fabric bread bags for hm breads--anyone do this? If they work well, I'll make some for Christmas presents.

You reminded me that my mint is up and I want to include more in my cooking, especially bean salads. I use a lot of celery and I need to start some so it can reseed. My onions (Either potato or walking) are putting on tops in my next to the house herb garden.

manygoatsnomore , Love the repair idea on coolers! I'll add to that to store them with some junk mail inside to prevent mold from forming.

Given the world situation, gas prices and the inevitable higher grocery prices, we are planning a big garden. I am going to bulk buy rice and beans and store like I did at the beginning of covid in 5 gal buckets.

Until we have lettuce and greens fresh in the garden, we will be having more bean salads and cole slaw.

Tim Horton , That does sound interesting about the receipt scanning, I'll have to look into it!

midtnmama, I'd forgotten the "junk mail in the cooler to prevent mold" tip - thanks for refreshing my memory!

feather, when I wash my ziplock bags, I hang them to dry with clothespins. I clip from the middle of the zip edge, adding another clothespin to the other side of the zip edge to weigh it down and hold the bag open to air dry. I can add as many bags as I need to dry, by clipping the next bag to the lower clothespin, repeating until I have a string of bags, always ending with a final clothespin to hold the bottom bag open. I don't know if this would work with the bags you're talking about, but it works with sandwich bags, which are pretty flimsy.

I mentioned on the Daily Journal thread that I made "new" candles today. Years ago, I bought a lot of those big triple wicked candles at garage sales, usually for less than a dollar, as well as collections of taper candles for a similar price, and I always checked the free boxes because there were often a broken candle or a votive holder hiding in them. Over time, I amassed quite a collection of candles and wax, with very little cash outlay. I also bought glass cylinder candles at Dollar Tree - some of the ones they sell are "saint's candles", but they also carry clear glass ones without any decoration. I buy the clear glass ones. They burn a very long time and are pretty safe around cats, especially if you anchor them to the underlying surface with poster putty (the candles, not the cats). When the candles burn down to within an inch of the bottom, I don't like to continue to burn them because the cylinder can break if the flame gets too low and overheats the glass. However, a new candle can be made pretty easily from a taper candle (look for one with a thick wick) and melted wax. I have lots of both!

On the topic of washing/drying zip bags, in the past I was at a loss for where to dry them. I don't have much counter space and to be honest, I kind of hated the look of zip locks hanging out in the kitchen to dry . However, our guest bathroom tub/shower only gets used when we have guests. And it has one of those spring loaded corner shelf thingies to hold toiletries that also has six little rods for holding...wash cloths, I guess (they have never been used for that purpose, or for any purpose prior to this). They do a fantastic job of holding washed zip locks until they're dried, and I just close the shower curtain so I don't have to look at the bags. It doesn't work when we have guests of course, but covid has pretty severely cut down on the guest factor. So this works well most days.

Since we just got back from vacation, I guess I'll do a few "how I keep the cost of the vacation lower" tips, and will add more tomorrow because oh my gosh I am tired! Between time changes, strange beds, and double the amount of hiking we do most days, I think this natural born insomniac is going to sleep good tonight. Anyway...

As always, before we left we set the thermostat at 60 degrees and turned the water heater down. No sense in using "normal" amounts of energy if we're not going to be here. The basement garden didn't even notice, since the basement is always at 58 to 60 degrees in winter. Natural air conditioning.

Because we no longer camp (sleeping on the ground started losing its charm around the time we hit 50) we decided if we were going to hotel it, we'd pick a hotel chain and use that wherever possible. That saved us the cost of two hotel stays in Minnesota this trip, since we used our points from previous stays to pay for the cost of those two nights.

The hotel had free breakfast, and neither one of us is a breakfast eater. Except for coffee, so we filled our travel mugs with that. But since we do eat lunch, we grabbed breakfast sandwiches and fresh fruit both days and tossed them in the cooler. Free lunches!

We try to stay in cabins or condos whenever possible because...kitchen facilities. We've been doing this for years and years, not just to save money but because we honestly have found very few restaurants where the food is better than what we cook ourselves (in our opinions, of course). We stayed in a cabin near the Badlands that not only had a cook top, refrigerator and microwave but both gas and charcoal grills. We LIVE to grill, I think. Well, my husband does anyway.

More vacation tips will follow - I'm just really starting to hit the wall right now.

Pineapples at PicknSave, with card, $1/large pineapple. That's a delicious treat. We might have to get some to eat, possibly to dehydrate....I'm not sure yet.

The pineapples are really nice and large, all green hints of yellow, tops green, with a Chiquita label strapped to the top, distributed out of Florida.
They are sweet, no rotting, definitely not over ripe. I'm getting 3 pineapples to fill 4 trays. I'll get 8 trays in the dehydrator today and we'll eat some too.
susannah, I hope you can get some sweet ones where you are.
I think we'll go back tomorrow to get 6 more while the sale holds. Hopefully more stores will have them on sale in the next few weeks.