A spice-related life hack: if you use a lot of vanilla extract (or even if you don’t), make your own instead of buying it. My wife often has warm milk with a little vanilla in it before bed. So we were going through a lot of it. The artificial stuff is cheap, but doesn’t taste as good.
OTOH, real vanilla extract is very expensive: store brand is about $3.50/oz ($450/gal) and Penzey’s cheapest is well over twice that.
But you can buy vanilla beans for about $13, slice them down the middle, then put them in an 8-oz bottle with some vodka, wait a couple of months, and presto! Vanilla extract for well under half the price of store-brand, and it tastes much, much better. (Some places say you have to wait six months or a year, but we’ve found that two months is plenty.)
But wait, there’s more! As you use the extract, just keep topping up the bottle with more vodka. So a practically bottomless bottle of real vanilla extract for $13 plus the price of some vodka (and you don’t have to use particularly good vodka). I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, and haven’t reached the point of depleting the beans.