roxanna, I like that example of frugal vs cheap!

In winter when taking a shower, I hate to see all that hot water go down the drain. Why should the sewer be nice and warm when I'm cold? So I plug the tub and let the hot water accumulate (and warm my feet nicely). After it's cooled off, I pull the plug and let the water go down the drain.

A frugal person tries to be sensible about necessary lighting but understands neither lighting nor other small power consuming items make much of a difference on a power bill. And understands that if living in a low cost power area, spending much effort or concern thinking about electricity usage doesn't save much money.

A cheap person buys dim bulbs out of a fear that those of adequate brightness might be too expensive to use (!) and spends evenings in dimly lit houses. I had an aunt who followed this practice and left an estate that amounted to 7 digits in value.

I dont have any frugal habits. I sometimes save plastic shopping bags but that is not out of frugality. It is more because they can be useful when I need a small disposable bag. I save big cardboard boxes because SO will break them down and put them under whatever car he is working on. I do not think that is frugal either. I try not to be too wasteful but again, not out of concerns for money. I do not think most habits people have developed in the name of saving money are really worth it in the end.

I buy the drugstore brand of OTC medication. There must be other things but I can’t think of them now.

I think of being frugal as a life choice. I am careful with resources. I dont know why someone would think that being careful in one area of your life would make you profligate in another. I use and reuse what I have. I try to get the most out of what I buy so I dont toss almost empty containers. I recycle thoughtfully, it doesnt save to have to expend too much energy to clean something to reuse. I set thermostats fairly low and put on a sweater or fleece. The one really frugal thing I do and it is an old habit is saving hot water at my sink. I have a very large sink and I keep a container to hold extra hot water when I am washing things. It is surprising how much heat you gain. Since I have zonal heat and keep the kitchen very cool it makes the room comfortable to work in in the winter.

I compare prices on-line side by side to compare prices on groceries. I have two pick-up sites anyway so I save a couple bucks. I buy store brands if they are of equal quality to the name brand. I use no disposable cleaning cloths or swiffers. I have only LED lighting now.

I have a friend who is extremely wealthy who cuts her dryer sheets in half and therefore saves 50% on the cost.

I kind of spend a lot on annuals every year, so this year I'm trying to start everything from seed. I'm home anyway! If it all works out it will save me a lot of money.

I cut the tube of expensive cream I use to get all that remains on the sides. I coupon. I keep the thermostat at 68. I sometimes get clothes at our local thrift shop which carries high end clothing and donate their profits locally.

I'm in Home Depot a lot! I bring competitors coupons with me, they still take them. I once used a 25% off coupon on multiple shower doors & a hot water heater. The cashier called a manager because the discount seemed high. Then another manager, then another. It was a three manager sale. ☺

I'm simply not a 'big' spender. I try not to buy a lot of stuff I don't need. I do buy quality if I need it.

Frugal does not mean cheap. A dictionary definition: characterized by or reflecting economy in the expenditure of resources.

So, if you bought caviar and let none of it go to waste, that's being frugal.

DH goes to the dump rather than pay for a trash service. When the ground isn't frozen, all of our vegetable parings and such go into compost. The town pays to pick up recycling for free, so our trash is quite minimal.

I travel in the off season, never the high season.

Every chicken meal, whole chicken, drumsticks, wings, whatever, has its leftover bones turned into soup.

I put a little water into the empty shampoo and conditioner bottles to shake up and get one last use out of them.

Furniture and appliances get used until they break down. I never buy these items out of a perceived need to renovate or update the “look”.

Same with clothing.

I don’t buy knickknacks. If it doesn’t have a use, I don’t spend money on it.

Theres a million more. My frugal list is too long to think of everything.

I am not particularly frugal, though I try to avoid waste. I do reach for generic brands for most OTC medicines, and things like Ziploc bags and toilet paper (I like the Target brands as a rule.)

My decorating is pretty classic, so that turns out to be frugal, same with how I dress, though in both cases I do occasionally buy an "in" item if I like the current look.

One of my spending quirks is eschewing the middle range of things. My furniture, for example is either IKEA, or brands like Baker and Hickory Chair or good antiques.

I use dry cleaning plastic bags to line my waste baskets.

I am known to rip paper towels into halves or quarters.

I have really thick napkins from Costco. I I cut them in half twice.

I make sure to use the last drop of anything.

This all said, if you asked me how much bread or milk cost, I can not tell you.

My budget is the greater picture. I try to stay within a certain parameter.

We are well enough off, but certainly the sky is not the limit.

My youngest DD gets everything on FB Market Place or Craig’s list.

She sold her coffee table for $5 to someone just so that she didn’t throw it away.

Annie, I have saved particularly apropos ones for DH but he doesn’t realize or recognize them.

Fun that you do it as a team effort.

I grew up with parents who would water down the last bit of ketchup to get the last drop out of the bottle. They reused not only the coffee filters by rinsing them out until they were falling apart, but they reused the coffee grounds. We used paper bags for garbage bags and if we were lucky, they would hold together until we got them to the trash can out behind the house.

So what do I do that's frugal? Nada thing. LOL

Americans have been taught to *need* a lot of items for which their advertising companies had to invent a need. Listen to Terry O'Reilly's radio broadcasts on marketing.

I'll always remember the National Geographic photographs showing families all over the globe, posing with all their possessions. The American family required two pages, with goods strewn out across broad lawns, while families in many other parts of the world had about a dozen items.

Cosmetics are the ultimate in rip-offs. Look at the ingredients in face creams; first one is *water*. I just read a comment from some woman who was impressed with how fast her cream 'soaked in'. Hah! Our skin's job is to keep the outside...outside. The water in her cream *evaporated*.

Elizabeth, I tear my dryer sheets in half, but it actually isn't out of frugality but because half a sheet is enough even for a full load (for static control), and I dislike the way a full sheet scents and leaves my clothes.

When the bottle of dish soap gets to the bottom and takes too long to pour out, I always put water in it and that gets me three or four more washing out of it. I always scrape out the peanut butter jar...I like peanut butter so don't waste any of it! When drawing water for dishes I would usually just let it go down the drain until it gets hot. Lately I had been having trouble with the water pump so instead of wasting the water, I would fill up some gallon jugs just in case. I'm finding I waste a lot of water!! When the makeup bottle gets 'empty', I use a qtip to get out several more days of useage!

I forgot we compost and always have even though we have always had a disposal.

I have one of the original spray-less Swifer flat mop thingy-bops. One is supposed to put the disposable Swifer cleaning rags on it and go around the floors. I thought that wasteful and from the beginning put a cloth rag on the mop then toss the dirty rag in with the rag laundry. I still use it during snow season when snow and ice gets tracked in the house. Once melted, I push the Swifter with a dry cloth rag around the floor to sop up the melted snow and bonus, get a quick light mopping out it too. :)

We put all of our kitchen veggie waste out in the garden year round even though we have snow as the earth takes it in in due time. We also put our eggshells in the garden year round. The stellar jays will eat the shells. When the robins return in the spring, they eat the shells too. The raccoons step on them and move them around the garden helping me to spread the goodness to the garden. Eggshells are good for the soil. I've read they also keep slugs under control.

We re-use dryer sheets a few times since I learned that after one use, they usually have more anti-static abilities. Then I use the worn out dryer sheets for quick dusting around the house. They are good to pick up loose dust that I usually would have to moist dust to keep from flying around, like around the gas fireplace.

When we get to the part of shampoo and such that the pumper will not pump out anymore I get out a funnel and put the bottle upside down inside the funnel and place into a bottle without a pumper and walk away to do something else. When I come back later, all the shampoo is inside the other bottle that I can turn upside down to get every last drop of shampoo from. I try to only buy bottles that can stand upside down, but a few pumper bottles do make their way into the house. That's when I go looking for the funnel. This is more of a matter of principal for me as the manufacturers design the pumper bottles so you can't get all the product to use. I say to heck with that. I'll use my funnel you varmints and get the last drop.

I am known to rip paper towels into halves or quarters.

I do that also. and I think the perfs on it are already a 1/3 of a regular sheet. I did the same with dryer sheets when I had a dryer (or at the laundromat).

I don't catch shower water but I do have a faucet that drips and I keep a bowl under it and when that is full I dump it into a bucket next to the counter. Then I use it to clean or to backflush the toilet. living in the desert I'm very aware of wasting it.

I use the plastic grocery bags in my small wastebaskets and to send things to my sister's house for her. She sends things to me in them also. (bil comes by about once a week to drop things off here and pick things up).

Years ago I would use coupons and go to different groceries but now I just go to 2 different stores (usually different wks) and I keep a list of what to buy at each store. One I get meat, bakery, eggs and most of my produce. the other I get canned goods, house needs, pup's food, cleaning products (W). things are cheaper there. But if I really need something and I'm at the other store I will buy it there if they have it. I'll pay the higher price because it's worth it to me not to go to 2 different stores (they're in different directions from my house).

I don't have whole house heat. It's only really cold enough to need heat maybe 2 wks a yr so I just use a space heater. The a/c I keep around the mid 80s in the summer.

I seldom buy clothes because I really don't need much.

In Los Angeles, I set the thermostat where I want it, which is cooler at night. In winter I have the heat set to 70° during the day and 66° at night, and the rest of the year, I have the A/C set to cool the house to 74° day and 70° night. Our utility bills here are extremely low, as the temperature does not vary much from winter to summer - mean winter temperature is 58° and mean summer temperature is 70°. We turn the thermostat off when we go out of town. We're still using a bit of heat in L.A. right now (This week it will be raining), but we had to switch to A/C in Cathedral City by the end of February.

In Cathedral City, we have solar panels, and the electric company now owes me $1,700.00 because we generate more electricity than we use. Our heating is gas, and I do heat the pool to 85° in the winter, but only when the air temperature is above 75° for at least three consecutive days. We get a high gas bill for one or two months (depending on how long we stay there), but otherwise it is also very low.

I make some of my own (and my brother's) clothes, but I don't consider that to be very frugal, as fabric is rather expensive. However, I make things that I could not buy or easily find, and this way they fit they way I want them to.

Lately I've been baking almost all of our bread, and I also make mustard and sauerkraut that I keep on hand. I grow citrus fruit and herbs so that I do not have to buy them, but I do not grow herbs in the desert. We do have a seemingly endless supply of lemons in Cathedral City, however.

Why would you line a wastebasket? (Maybe we just don't put anything wet in ours?) I collect trash from each in one, then dump it all.

Our house has a recirculating pump on the hot water line. I wait only seconds for hot water at any faucet in the house.

I compare the per unit/per pound/per sqft price before buying.

I don't use many paper goods, especially anything advertised as "Use and Toss". (We all know not to put anything other than toilet paper (and body waste) into a toilet, right?)

I use bar soap, not water-diluted soap in a pump bottle that's also full of parabens. I use granular detergent, not water-diluted. Why would I carry water home when I already have it there?

I try to think 'outside the box'. Sometimes it's smarter to start over or buy new than try to reconfigure or adjust. One example is finding a more suitable home that is all-of-a-piece rather than remodeling the one you're livng in.

Being 'trendy' is an expense I can skip.

Just musing on why people are frugal. For my grandparents and parents, saving money was the big motivator. "A penny saved is a penny earned," was their motto. In more affluent times, I'm not so worried about pennies, as I am the environment. "Reduce, reuse, recycle" is our motto today.

I really hate waste. A lot of people live in apartments where the hydro (electricity) is included in the rent. Having no idea how much hydro they use, it's not coming out of their pocket and they waste it.

Things like cooking 1 baked potato in the oven. Leaving lights on all day long, patio lights all day and night, etc etc.

3 years ago we bought our Cuisinart countertop oven. It's big enough that I can bake 2 loaves of bread in it; my 10" cast iron skillet fits in it; casserole dishes etc.

I seldom have to turn my large oven on, and when I do, I don't bake an orphan. I cook other things in with whatever I'm making even if it's a few baked potatoes.

Remember Grainlady? She had some amazing frugal ideas.

She always seemed more compulsively cheap than thoughtfully frugal to me.

I remembered her tales of buying products in bulk for a two person household, grinding her own grain, dry milk in bulk instead of fresh milk ("it really tastes the same" (!?) )seemingly portioning out daily food rations with a thimble, yada yada, all to avoid spending money. I once asked her how long she spent with all the things she had searched to find as alternatives that seemed like needless make-work. She answered that she spent 30-35 hours a week but her efforts saved $100 a week in spending. When I suggested that was a poor hourly return for her time, and that spending half as much time at even a minimum wage job would far exceed the savings number and contribute much more to the household budget, her response was something like "then who would do the work I'm doing now?"

Grainlady was a font of information. This ^^^ is the kind of questioning that drove her away, and we are the less for it.

Yes, I miss her.

This ^^^ is the kind of questioning that drove her away, and we are the less for it.

How unfortunate she could not stand up to a simple question about time, effort and money. I did not know her, but how hard is it to say, This is a lifestyle choice for me. It's not about the money.

I just ordered two different hair dyes to mix together... So guess my answer would be dye my own hair?

I also cut it, but I'm thinking of getting a professional to do it, because I'm going from my shoulders to a pixie cut??? If I get brave enough.

Zalco, perhaps she didn't find it hard so much as tiresome. Grainlady is one of the persons I'll remember fondly for a long long time. I hope she realizes how much of a positive difference she made for many of us.

Elmer, we've been through this before, no need to rehash how memories differ.

Find the discussion I just mentioned if it matters to anyone. Or don't. I think my recollection is reasonably accurate but if not, I'll welcome a correction.

I agree the topic of this former participant has been rehashed a few times. Just like nostalgic memories some have about their childhood or the "good old days", I've found that some may have selective recollections. Remembering only things they liked and omitting or downplaying negatives about the same past topics or people.

Some of her suggestions were outrageously impractical or needlessly time consuming, for little or no benefit other than to save a few pennies. Literally so. My take on her practices was that she was bored and had little to do so she developed any possible make work task to take up available time and justified any and all if there was a contribution to the aversion to spending money. Like sorting frozen vegetables. That''s just my opinion too. If there were some pearls to find on the otherwise rocky beach, fine. I simply found her attitude sadly compulsive more than helpful.

I don't always agree with you Elmer but I kinda do about Grainlady. The last time I remember "talking" to her here, I felt almost harrassed. I basically told her there was no way I was going to spend the time doing whatever it was we were talking about and she just wouldn't let it go. May have been about buying cereal grains in bulk and making my own. I have a vague memory about that.

Back to the topic, I quit buying bottled water mostly because of the environment but it has saved me a lot of money.

Quit buying paper towels also. My exchange student just bought a giant pack because I don't use them.

I compost everything I can and there have been a lot with 5 people in my house this Winter. I may not need to buy any compost this spring.

All of my utilities and food bills have tripled though. I may do the tub in the shower thing to reuse in flushing my toilet. I'll be glad when Spring comes and I can turn the heat off completely.

I have tons of plastic bags due to covid and shopping a lot by delivery and not bringing my cloth bags in now that I go in person. I use them in my small garbage cans and to pick up the dog droppings.

I use shampoo bars and conditioners, less plastic waste and they last me a long time.

I start most of my seeds now and will do flowers too this year instead of buying plants.

Oh!!

I stopped using shampoo 4 years ago. I use baking soda to wash my hair with.

And for over 30 years I use conditioner to shave with. Conditioner softens hair, so why not use it for shaving? Works like a charm.

I do sort of remember the discussion about sorting the frozen mixed vegetable. I was never really quite sure how it would save money. In my experience, those kind of frozen vegetables are about the same price per bag whether you’re getting the mixed or a single kind. Where you save money on those is buying store brand

Actually, I just checked my local grocery store sales. 16oz of frozen mixed vegetables is $1.25. 16oz of frozen corn is $1.25. 16oz of frozen peas is $1.25, 16oz of frozen green beans is $1.25. It would save you precisely $0.00 to buy a bag of mixed veggies and sort it out by hand.

I am pretty sure that Grainlady taught classes so that was her passion! I do miss her but did take a lot of suggestions just with a grain of salt. She was very knowledgeable! She also took note of the electricity consumption it took to cook things etc.

For me, I am very frugal out of necessity and upbringing. Mostly I am just careful about not buy unnecessary things. Do I need another pair of jeans when I already have 4 pairs? How many shirts can one person wear? I see so many people talk about owning 100 pairs of shoes..ridiculous and wasteful. How many thousands of dollars do people waste on unnecessary purchases? I also make sure when I do buy things, I get the best price and use coupon codes if I can find them.

I haul kitchen warm up water out the back door and pour it under a youngish magnolia tree. It is at least 3 gallons a day. It’s a nuisance, but it pains me to see that water go down the drain. We haven’t had a very wet winter, so will have to be careful of water use the summer. I want the tree to be well hydrated as we move into summer.

I don’t care of my car is dirty. I’ve washed it once or twice in the last year, but I am attentive to the windows.

I cut open tubes and bottles of product to scrape out the last amount. It’s surprising how much is still there.

I use quarter paper towels. Wish we didn’t use any.

Grainlady's suggestions were just that--suggestions. Take them or leave them. If a suggestion works for you, great. If not, just move on. Like telling someone that walking is a great exercise. Oops, you're in a wheelchair? Nevermind.

As I recall the context of the case in the frozen veggie kerfluffle, she had given the advice to someone who was on a fixed income & who had limited freezer space...just a small freezer compartment over a refrigerator. The theory being that a large bag of frozen vegetables is a better value per ounce than smaller bags. So, rather than buying a huge bag of corn and eating just corn all month, the subject 'could' buy a huge bag of mixed veggies and separate them.

If it wasn't something that worked for you, move on. If your mom's hands are crippled with arthritis, move on. Requires too much time & effort? OK. We know that you won't be buying fresh peas & shelling them, peeling & dicing carrots, cutting fresh corn off the cob, or stringing fresh green beans & slicing them. Move on.

If I wanted a few raisins for my oatmeal & was out of raisins, would I rob some out of DH's Raisin Bran or my pkg of trail mix? vs jumping in the car & driving to store (I'm still in my jammies & it is 8 degrees outside)? You betcha'. So her advice would work for me as a matter of pure convenience.

I liked Grainlady and got some good advice from her, but I did find her a bit pedantic, although that is probably because she had been a teacher so long. However, she did tend to treat everyone like they were her students, and that could come across as being a bit condescending. Still, she had a lot of good information, but I had to sift through quite a bit of stuff that I considered elementary before I could get to something that was of value to me, but I'm okay with that. She convinced me to buy a dehydrator, and I'm glad I did. I learned nothing about baking bread from her, however.

She liked to give advice but not take it. That was her main flaw, I think. She also always seemed to think that she knew better and more than anyone else, and this could bother some people, but this is what I took with a grain of salt. Anyway, I do miss her, but you can still find a lot of her posts, if you search for them. It is possible that she said everything that she had to say before she left, as she was a prolific poster.

I'm sure there have been studies showing how work expands to fill the time available. I thought about that when a newly wed friend's DH expected her to keep house the same way his DM did in rural England. His DM stripped, washed and ironed the linens for three family beds *daily*. She may also have swept the roof every morning, too! She had plenty of time, unlike my friend, who communted to a full time job in addition to 'keeping house'.

She'd said repeatedly that her "teaching" was at a food bank in her town. Not unlike evangelical missionary trips to impoverished locations with people needing help, in the hope that extreme messages might be more likely to be considered among an audience hoping for better things in their lives. But it didn't seem to be the case because she expressed frustration with it. I don't doubt but that she had few "converts" otherwise to the lifestyle she had and advocated others to follow. Not unlike the religiously motivated soup kitchens in poor urban districts where patrons need to listen to a sermon before being fed (about which it's been said homeless people avoid when there's a choice), people go to food banks for food, not for lectures.

I sometimes questioned the practicality and need for her practices. Often suggesting that even people of limited financial means may not find her labor intensive, hours consuming practices to be of interest, or even have time for same if working and caring for children. Neither of which she did. As others have correctly mentioned in this thread, she was not tolerant of anyone questioning what she said or suggesting her practices were excessive, impractical or too time consuming to follow.

I did some poking around and came upon a thread discussing her exit from this forum. In which one person speculated that I was the cause and, more humorously, that I had been banned from the site because of it and had reappeared using a different name. To repeat, I was not a participant in the thread with the silly frozen food suggestion that people pushed back on that caused her to blow her stack, call people names, and then disappear. Nor was I ever sanctioned for disagreeing with her. As I've said many times before, it was my own choice to change my name from one cartoon character (Snidely Whiplash) to another because of people childishly trying to taunt me about it.

Not that it matters.

Grainlady certainly left an impression, as do many prolific posters. Towards the end, I got the impression she was about burned out with teaching, whether by social media or in person. It's been a long time but I remember her posts as more instructive than purely social. One of the most useful things I learned from her was about bread dough, and the correlation between pan size, amount of flour, and pounds of dough. Not saying she originated it, but I copied & pasted her chart and still have it taped inside my baking cupboard door.

I wasn't here for too long before she left, but I always got the feeling that she might be part of a religious group that stores years' worth of food for survival (and health and thrift). People who do that often cook with many of the methods she did so as to be able to store ingredients that will last a long time in storage, as well as being able to use them in rotation to keep fresh ingredients being rotated in. Like storing whole wheat berries is better than trying to store flour, because they don't get rancid. But you have to grind flour for bread to do that. Growing your own food and home canning it is another way to be self sufficient and store healthy food.

Perhaps she was a teacher in her church of all of those methods, as well as at the food bank. It's not a bad way to live if you want to store food for survival. Recently, I'll bet some in Texas wished they'd planned for an unimaginable disaster. But to go all in like she did requires a tremendous commitment, regardless of her reasons for doing so. I'm glad people here benefited from her knowledge and experience.

HA HA! Elmer, it wasn't you! It was a regular member that is one of the nicest members that is here and I cannot understand why she took such offense because I'm sure that member did not mean a simple comment to turn into a big thing. There is always someone that can pick a comment apart...one has to just grin and bear it. Maybe there was something else going on with her that we didn't know about!?

I just came back to this thread and was amused to remember I did something like sorting frozen vegetables. I would not do that by the way. How would you keep them frozen? I sorted some beans. We had been given one of those soup in a jar things (huge jar) and there it sat in the pantry. Not only did it have everything from huge beans to split peas (that isnt going to work), there was a huge amount of dried garlic and onions included that I cant eat so I sieved out the small stuff and then poured it all out on a sheet pan and pushed them around into heap of big beans and medium beans and then the split peas. Washed them all and put the big beans on to cook for a while and then dumped in the medium beans. I still had some of the medium varieties split open from being overcooked. It was not something I would do normally. I just couldnt bring myself to toss them. I still have the split peas. I did do this while I was keeping an eye on a pot on the stove. Did you know you can use peas to make leavening for making bread? DH does that sort of thing for fun and makes his own cooked cereal mix but it isnt to save anything. He wants a specific flavor and consistency and has time on his hands. He milled lentils for his bread. Recipe from Pliny the elder.

For many years my brother and I sent the same birthday card to each other.