Small Things We Do & Some Thrift Store Finds

I bet you can't guess what's in that second drawer.

Yep, that's foil! I wash and reuse my foil. I haven't had to buy a new roll in quite some time. I also wash and reuse plastic baggies. I personally don't do this with anything that's held meat, but I know others who still wash those and reuse them. Whatever you're comfortable with!

I had my husband install one of those retractable clotheslines under our deck and we now hang most things to dry. This saves on our water and electric bill. We did three loads of laundry today (energy/water saving front loader) and we only dried one. That was towels and sheets. We tried using line dried towels and it's like using a loofah! Also my daughter does her own laundry once a week and she uses the dryer (heh I'm just glad she does her own laundry!).

For the next thing you have to understand how our water bill is set up in my town. First you get charged for water usage on a tier system. The more water you use after the base tier the more expensive it is. THEN for sewage they charge you double whatever your water usage was. So you get charged three times for the water you use. You could be watering your yard or filling your pool and it still gets charged as sewer also! So we are very motivated to keep our water usage as low as possible.

I keep a bowl in the sink and a bucket on the floor next to it. When we wash our hands, rinse veggies & fruit, when I drain pasta water, when I rinse out the coffee pot etc the water gets collected in the bowl. When that gets full it gets dumped in the bucket. When the bucket is full I use the water mainly to water my flowers in the front yard (we have watering restrictions anyway with the hose).

If I have excess water I can't use to water my flowers I use it to flush the toilet. Not to gross anyone out but we use the "if it's yellow it mellow, if it's brown flush it down" rule. That is my husband and myself. My daughter won't have any of that and fortunately she has her own bathroom anyway! We also have rainbarrells, so when we've had lots of rain and they're full we fill up buckets and bring those up to our bathroom. This may seem extreme but, it has really helped with the water bill!

I also use every bit of food. We eat leftovers for lunch or repackage into something else for dinner. I just don't waste any food anymore. I haven't thrown any food in the garbage in a long time. It takes a bit of doing staying on top of what's in the fridge, what's about to go bad, what going to expire etc. But I consider it a part of my job as a homemaker.

I use to be a magazine junkie and I've cut waaaaayy back on those. Most of the time I go to Barnes & Nobles and read them there while enjoying a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee is cheaper than a magazine. My library also has a good collection of mags and I often will stop there before picking up my daughter from school and read some of the current issue. They also sell mags that people donate for 10 cents! I've scored new issues of several magazines that way.

Those are just a couple of things we do to make our dollars stretch. I'll talk about some of the others another time.

I wanted to share some thrift store finds with you. Can you believe I got this lampshade (and it looks brand new) for $3 !!

It's toile - I couldn't believe it was at the thrift store. The funny thing is I just made a pillow with some yellow and red toile!

Then I found this pretty tin. It's that a beautiful scene on the front! I don't know what I'm going to do with it but for 75 cents I couldn't pass it up.

I really like the sides too. I think it'll go very nicely with all my red toile which I'll bring back out when I decorate for fall in a couple of weeks. I think I did pretty good for under $5 dollars! I passed up quite a few things - they had Mary Englebreit plates, new vinyl runners still in the package, tons of really nice pictures, lots of things. This Goodwill has been a real asset to our community. Our other thrift stores have mostly junk.

I also found this frame for $1 brand new from Kirklands. I'm going to spray paint it since that gold isn't going to work for me.

If you have a money saving tip you'd like to share please leave it in the comments and I'll compile a post later on with everyone's tips. Thanks!