Penny pinching is second nature.
It seems sometimes that I've tried just about every hint I've heard (clip the coupons, shop the sales!) and that new and realistic ways to stretch the ol' dinero are scarcer than hen's teeth. These two minor efforts from this week do fall outside of the normal tightwad suggestions; maybe they'll spark some different ideas for you.
1. The garden needed watering, I needed to do laundry and I remembered that we are now paying for water (last 3 houses had wells).
So:
Our washing machine is a portable that you hook up to the faucet and drain into the sink. These buckets are just a portion of the rinse water from one load. It was a lot of schlepping back and forth out to the garden, but I feel better for not just letting the PAID FOR water go down the drain.
2. And this:
Anyone who has talked to us recently, knows our big summer project involves digging drainage. HAND digging. We've got a long mound of dirt snaking along the back yard but some of it we have sifted (our "sifter" is a plastic grate we found in the garbage pile on our property), giving us screened topsoil. Soil for raised beds and pots that we don't have to buy.
Both of these are what I consider extreme frugality measures--they're time consuming and back breaking, not something we will do consistently. I'm all for saving money, however, sometimes the spirit is willing but the aged flesh is weak.
How about you? Any outside the coupon-box type of ideas for reigning in the spending? We all could use some inspiration from the hive-mind!
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