I save little packets of condiments, given out at fast food restaurants, in a plastic container in my fridge. I have filled many a squeeze bottle of ketchup with said packets, many a bottle of soy sauce, etc. The other odd ones I keep in the plastic container until they are needed.
Trust me, the above mentioned quirk is the first one that came to mind…there are many more.
Not necessarily along the thrifty line but more the ecological line…I recycle all boxes…cereal, cracker, pasta, cigarette, you name it…we have a cardboard recycle bin in my town…and I take total advantage!!! I even recycle all pieces of paper I have in my house.
Please tell me that there are others here who run along these same lines!!
whenever i run across little packets of salt in fast food restaurants, i stash a handful in my purse. i am a salt fiend, and i have used them lots of times when in a pinch. (pinch? pich of salt? oh, the cleverness of me.)
other than that, my family keeps taco bell hot sauce on reserve in a bowl in the fridge, and we recycle like obsessive freaks. the city gave every house a giant blue trash can on wheels for recyclables only, and we cart ours out to the curb full to the top every week. i think we may still be in that “50 simple things you can do to save the earth” mode of the early nineties.
Heck, why throw out the condiment packets when they give you way too many to use at once?
My town doesn’t recycle, unfortunately.
My mother, sister and I used to dumpster-dive every day, just in the middle-class apartment complex we used to live in. When I broke my foot and couldn’t work, we supported ourselves by cleaning and repairing items and selling them at the local swap meet–you’d be amazed at what people throw out! I call this “urban recycling”. After all, why should perfectly usable items go into a landfill?
You people who save condiment packages…would you like a whole bunch more? See, I can’t bring myself to throw them away, and yet I have no use for them. (Except, on occasion, the soy sauce packets, if they’re the good kind. Oh, and chilli oil. I admit I’ve stopped buying it, and just started using the little containers we get with our take-out curry.)
I have - I am not kidding - a kitchen drawer FULL of little condiment packages, neatly divided (by age and type) into plastic baggies. Some of the baggies contain condiment packages that have come with me through three moves and are probably vintage items resellable on eBay. I’m starting to feel like one of those people you read about in weird news collections. (Los Angeles, AP – When a local house collapsed under the weight of a condiment collection, neighbors were shocked. “They were quiet,” said one resident, “y’know, kept to themselves. Who’d’ve thought they were up to something like this behind closed doors?”)
As for thrifty habits, I save and reuse twist ties and dishwashable plastic containers. Does this count?
We have nearly a dozen string bags that we use for groceries and other shopping. Currently, I’m saving the caps of my insulin needles (the cover that goes over the plunger, NOT the needle), so that I can drill them and use them for beads. I also use my used syringes (after I clean them) to open zits and remove ingrown hairs, and to apply the teensiest dab of glue in my craft projects. I wash and reuse all sorts of glass and plastic containers. Not margarine tubs, though, as I don’t buy margarine in tubs. Cheaper to buy it in sticks. I hang my underwear and bathing suits up to dry inside. I don’t hang them outside because the dogs regard all laundry as chew toys.
And, of course, I save the extra condiment packages. And we do use them.
My dad always hated food shopping, so when we were teenagers, he would give the entire food budget for the week($40.00) to my sister and tell her, that any change she had left, she could keep, so that he wouldn’t have to do it.
She would go to the store and by 20 boxes of macaroni and cheese at 3 for a $1.00, and that’s it.
She didn’t buy any milk or butter to mix it with, just the mac and cheese. She would make it by just mixing it with water.
Thank Goodness, I worked in the food court at the time.
I used to bring home hotel amenities like soaps and shampoos. But had to give many away because there were too many. I still save some more selectively.
A friend said she saved paper towels from work – the ones she had used to dry her hands. She would allow them to dry off, then she would bring them home! I shouldn’t knock this because she was able to later buy a house as a single woman on a secretary salary.
I reuse all sorts of glass and plastic containers, because they’re handy, and then if I make something to bring to a potluck, I don’t feel badly about leaving the container.
My mom gos crazy, though, washing and reusing even the plastic bags that you get when you buy fruit and vegetables at the produce stand. She also reuses what are supposed to be disposable plastic dishes and utensils. One year I got her a birthday card that said, “Mom, it’s your birthday: Go crazy! Throw away the plastic forks!” My sister about died laughing.
One day when I was in college, I discovered some folded newspaper under the bathroom sink. When I asked my (weird) roommate about it, she said, “Oh, I use that to wrap my sanitary napkins in, because toilet paper is so expensive.”
She also washed and reused plastic sandwich bags, which still grosses me out.
My family saves the plastic containers from dairy products-which is great because we always have tons of leftovers. Just put it in the container, find a lid, and there you go.
Whenever I get food to go from the diner around the corner, or any other restaurant, I take handfuls of salt & pepper packets. The reason? The cafeterias where I work keep the condiments virtually under lock and key, and if you haven’t bought your lunch, they’ll try to charge you for anything. So I have a ton of S&P packets in my lunch bag. Not thrifty, but I also bring a small container of Parmesan or Romano cheese, because I like it on the pasta I usually have for lunch. The cafeteria’s Parmesan is … well, not Parmesan, but a simulation thereof. And I’d be charged for it.
And yes, I save condiment packets in the fridge (but not sorted!). They can come in handy.
Squish, we may be soulmates. Every morning I deliver newspapers, and I have found LOTS of cool, free stuff left by the dumpsters…bookshelves, plants, a great woven rug, lamps, books, all kinds of goodies. I try to grab most of it and either use it myself or take it to the battered women’s shelter.
I’m also a recycling fiend, drives my husband crazy. Heh. We have a wonderful recycling center here–there are bins for everything AND (the best part) a sidewalk exchange program. It’s basically a free yard sale. So I take a huge load of stuff to give away, then I find some great free clothes, books, toys, etc to bring home.
And don’t even get me started on yardsales…
~karol
I’m feeling so nostalgic, here. My dear Grandma Lil, rest her, used to do some heavy thrift saving. My sisters and I used to get care packages from her with condiments and straws and other things she had saved. She went to KFC a lot, so we alway got a bunch of the unused spork-knife-napkin packets and the handy pre-moistened towelettes.
Although the tendency was clearly inheritable, down through three generations, no one else in the family could touch her. We marveled when we cleaned her house out.
I’ve recently been cutting the tops off of the plastic, pourable containers of clumping kitty litter and making waste baskets out of them. I realise that this is excessive, but I’m too cheap to by as many wastebaskets as I’d like.
I think mkmiller99 has the right idea with the condiments. The stuff doesn’t get used as quickly if you leave it in the packets.
sniff Now I’m going to have to phone my Mom or something.
hehe my family takes all the hotel shampoo and soap (we have pounds of the stuff), my dad empties ketchup packets into the big ketchup bottle, and i eat the end slices of bread (i feel sorry for them because nobody else will eat them). i’m also very anal about wasting food. i make my nana proud.
Isn’t it mind-boggling what people will throw out? TVs, VCRs, boomboxes, answering machines, telephones, jewelry, perfectly good clothes, furniture–the list goes on and on. Perfectly shameful to have it go into a landfill.
Oh, another ‘reusable’: I save glass mayonnaise and pickle jars and use them as ‘shakers’ to mix up salad dressings and gravy.
Well, I read an article in the paper a few months ago that probably beats anyone on this or any other board. This guy actually won a “Cheapskate of the Year” award. He describes himself as “frugal flosser” and has one of the strangest habits I’ve ever heard of. He not ony reuses his floss (which I find gross, but apparently a lot of cheap people do it) but goes a step further. Instead of wasting the ends of the floss by winding it around his fingers, he makes a loop of floss and uses the entire length, soaks it in alcohol overnight, and reuses it. He says he gets about 4 days out of one piece of floss. The guy who wrote the article figured up the yearly savings for this method, and I think it was in the neighborhood of $3. Of course, he didn’t figure in the cost of the rubbing alcohol.
