Hey, that’s a good one! I used to put a plastic grocery bag in the leftover boxes from soda 12-packs when I was in art school (and in need of a trash can every couple feet of my apartment.)
I re-use bread bags when packing chips or peanuts in my husband’s lunch. And re-use Snapple bottles for homemade sun tea. (Plastic Gatorade bottles if we’re going to a ballgame where you can’t bring glass.)
My entire sewing room is organized with about a million Altoids tins, and I’ve saved every old sheet, robe, pair of jeans, etc thinking “I’ll make something out of that someday!” (I inherited this from my mom.) Actually, that’s not true – I recently took 4 boxes of old sheets and towels (we’d received several sets of hand-me-down sheets/towels when we first bought our house and we just couldn’t use them all) to the animal shelter and they were estatic to get them. I did save the flannel sheets and a couple robes to make stuff out of though.
I made a solar oven a couple summers ago, but seldom use it as it requires too much planning and attention, but it’s supposed to be in the 100’s on Monday so I’m going to use it to fix some beans or something, I think.
The carryboxes that 6-packs of bottled beer come in make great organizers for under the sink (cleaning supplies), condiments, silverware, etc. They’d be great for Barbies/GI Joes depending on how hung-up you are on having beer logos all over your kid’s room, haha. (You could cover them with construction paper or something I guess.)
There’s more I’m sure, but that’s what I can think of now.
voguevixen said - I made a solar oven a couple summers ago,
oooo, there’s something I’ve been wanting to do. (And I’m in the process of buying a house with a garage, so it may happen some time.) I want to make a solar oven using aol discs as the reflector. I’ll prowl the internet for good oven designs. But if anyone has a good one, let me know.
Whenever my mom and dad stay at a hotel, my mom won’t let my dad use the soaps that the hotels provide. She instead hands my dad some soap she brought from home. She then takes the toiletries provided home and saves them. When she gets enough small soaps saved up, she puts a pot of water on the stove and melts all of the soaps together and comes up with this gelatinous mess that she and my dad use. It’s nasty and doesn’t work as well as liquid hand soap, but she’s proud of saving money. At Christmas time, mom divides up the sewing kits, shoeshine kits, and eyeshades and gives them to us as part of our Christmas gifts.
Actually what I did is used AOL discs as reflectors inside the oven, then bought a tilting vanity-top mirror at the thrift store for $2. A good site to check out solar ovens is www.solarcooking.org . I’ll take a pic of mine when I haul it out on Monday and post a link to it if anyone’s interested.
I do about the same thing, Medstar. I don’t boil mine though.
I’ve had the same soap dispenser (bought from the Dollar Tree) for at least seven years. Every time I’m at the bottom of a shampoo, conditioner, lotion, or even dish soap bottle, the remains go into the soap dispenser along with bits of cake soap I have gotten over the years in hotels.
I figure it saves about ten bucks a year!
I also save any plastic ware. My butter dish is an old parkay container (I only buy sticks -cheaper). My sugar bowl is an old parkay container. My tea bags are stored in a large parkay container. My make-up is separated in parkay containers.
These containers were my grandmother’s. I’ve never bought parkay! Too expensive!
I’ve never bought plastic garbage can liners. I get about a dozen every week at the store. Cat litter cardboard boxes become school book dividers and cat toy containers. Coke bottles store water and milk jugs are just right for seedlings and mixing plant food. A cut-across milk jug makes food and water dishes for my cats.
Condiment packets? Taco Bell rules! I always grab a handfull of each kind. They are great for my homemade chili and rotel chicken…and they make ramen noodles extra special.
I dust with used fabric sheets. The dust clings to them better than rags or paper towels. Newspaper is used as a litter box liner and a ferret cage liner, but I save sunday comics for birthday wrap.
Any stained or otherwise unusable shirt goes into the ferret’s blankie box. My daughter has made a denim tunnel out of her old jeans. The cats and ferret enjoy that and the cereal box tower she adds onto every few months.
I know, I’m cheap. But at least I don’t have an aluminum foil ball like some people!
My grandma washes the styrofoam trays that meat comes on and uses those covered in plastic or foil when she gives leftovers to her guests or takes baked goods somewhere. I cannot bring myself to do that, but I have no fear of eating what she gives me- I am sure that one could safely lay out surgical instruments on those trays when my grandma gets through with them.
Instead of getting our prints framed, we buy cheapo frames at K-Mart or Target. Sometimes I luck out and find a tacky picture with a nice frame that is the size I need at a garage sale or thrift shop. Pitch the picture; use the frame.
I’m going to start saving my Altoids tins. That’s a killer idea.
There are a lot of specific things I save for craft projects for work (I teach Kindergarten), but for my own Thrifty cough weird cough stuff, let’s see…
[ul]I wash and reuse the heavy-duty Ziploc bags.
I rinse and refill brand-name water bottles with tap water.
I use the bags the newspaper comes in to scoop out the litter boxes. I have a scooper that the longs bags fit on perfectly. You’re supposed to buy the “special brand bags” for that scooper, but the newspaper bags work just fine and they’re free.
I use the grocery store bags for lots of things, mostly as trash can liners.
When shampoo and conditioner get down to that very last bit, I add some water and get at least one more use, usually two uses, out of it. Ditto for liquid laundry detergent.
Add me to the condiment reusers. Try asking for Sweet & Low in the drive-thru at McD’s. They give you millions![/ul]
I always hand the extra condiments back. I have a few extra soy sauce packets, but I bought a bottle of kikkoman that I like better than the freebies. I use the empty plastic grocery sacks for many things. I have five dogs, and haven’t bought garbage bags in 8 years. I put my trash in the empty dogfood bags. I buy the cheap ziplock bags at the $1.00. I buy my canned vegetables at Aldi’s for less than a quarter a can. I shop at Big Lots often. I buy namebrand papertowels and napkins, but I buy the holiday prints after the holiday is over and they’re clearancing them out.
There are a few things I won’t skimp on. I buy Puffs Plus. When you have allergies you can’t bear to have cheap scratchy tissue against your nose.
I’m fairly thrifty, but clearly not up to the standards of some of the above posters! My father was extremely uptight and thrifty–his big thing was that subscribing to the newspaper cost too much, so he would go through the recycling bins in Metro on his way home to collect the daily paper.
When I change the oil in my car, I save it and use it in lieu of 2-stroke oil in my lawnmower, leafblower, and weedwacker.
Also, I found a neat way of recharging those little button batteries in wristwatches and stuff.
Take the button, a 9-volt battery, and a paperclip.
Straighten out the clip, place the + terminal of the button on the + terminal of the 9-volt, and arc the clip between the - terminals.
When the button gets hot, stop and let cool down.
Repeat the cycle until the button dosen’t get noticeably hot any more.
VogueVixen a cool thing to do with old (supersoft) flannel is to cut out fat-waisted figure eight shapes about 18" long. Put two together, right sides out and serge around the edge.
A friend gave me six of them when I was preggers and they make great burp cloths/shoulder protectors. I even saved them in case I have another kid.
As for me, beyond some not so weird stuff like condiment packets and plastic tubs, I’m pretty normal. Well, except for the lavendar drying in the garage so I can make bath sachets out of it.
I’m a heavy duty recycler though. Our city has a great program and I can recycle most everything. Glass, tin, metal, old electronics, plastics (1-7 plus grocery bags), cloth, paper, newsprint, wood, etc. The city even has green recycling, so you just leave your lawn clippings/formerly living plants on the street every week for them to come pick up with a special tcactor and truck. I bitch about it all the time because it takes a lot of time…but I still do it every week.
Hmm, I grew up in a home with a Mennonite mother, and there is almost nothing in this thread that wasn’t just a matter of course in our house (I call plastic food containers “Mennonite Tupperware”). I never even realized that being this thrifty was unusual until I got out on my own. And now I do most of the same things, because it’s trendy now to reduce, re-use, recycle. IMO, Mennonites were the original Green people.
I too:
[ul]
[li]Wash and dry my used zip-lock bags (haven’t bought a new box in over a year!)[/li][li]Use plastic bags (those that haven’t made it back to the store to be recycled) in my wastebaskets[/li][li]Keep all twist-ties[/li][/ul]
In addition, I also:
[ul]
[li]Reuse foil[/li][li]Keep all safety pins, paper clips, nails, screws, etc. that I find around the house, in a little 50 drawer organizer[/li][li]Reuse frying oil[/li][li]Keep things that can’t be recycled, or would serve some other purpose to use for crafts…little springs from broken pens, pen casings, broken VCR tapes, etc.[/li][/ul]
Most of my closets are filled with plastic containers organizing everything. I have always wanted to start my own organization consultation company!
