Frugal Confessions Friday!
Posted on | February 19, 2010 | 8 Comments
Happy Friday!!! If you are new to this series, check out the intro here.
Here is my frugal confession of the week:
The first project Paul and I did to our house when we moved in was to paint the bedrooms upstairs (lots of spackling, steamed off some old border wallpaper, and removed a really ancient, inactive intercom system in each of the rooms). It took several weeks, but was absolutely worth it. Unfortunately…Paul would occasionally wear some of his nice clothes to paint in (I guess when he came home from work and needed to paint some more, he didn’t feel like changing first??).
Anyway, last weekend I resuscitated several of his clothes by googling how to remove paint from clothing, and then spending about two hours scrubbing my heart out. The products that I used to do it with were all items I had around the house (glad I finally found a use for that bottle of hairspray I bought several years ago) and included hairspray, rubbing alcohol, and nail polish remover. Fortunately, I was able to salvage two of his favorite shirts, a pair of nice jeans, and a pair of nice shorts. What I couldn’t salvage was another pair of shorts, and a pair of lounge pants that he wears around the house anyway.
What is your frugal confession of the week? I’d love to hear it!!!
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8 Responses to “Frugal Confessions Friday!”
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February 19th, 2010 @ 1:01 pm
haha, that is really funny because Scott always gets on my case for painting, gardening and other messy home-improvement stuff in my good clothes! I know I should, but I just don’t feel like changing when I become inspired to paint, garden, or whatever it is I want to do.
Anyway, my frugal confession this week: free tv online! Its amazing how many shows are available for free on hulu in addition to networks putting their shows online like NBC, PBS, etc. All we paid for was a $2 cable that hooks from our laptop to our TV so we can watch the shows on our television. This month we also have a 30-day Netflix trial and many of the movies and tv shows you can watch instantly online! If eventually we find we run out of free material on other websites, I may consider a Netflix subscription so we can have the on-demand access for much less than a cable subscription. But the way its looking right now, there’s tons of stuff out there! Last week we were watching a few different home renovation shows on hulu, it was great!
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February 20th, 2010 @ 2:35 am
Out of work for almost a year. Wife is out-of-town taking care of ailing mother. She will kill me if she finds out:
1) Thermostat is set at 53 degrees but the house hardly gets that cool. Yes, I’m dressed in layers.
2) Water heater is set to “Vacation mode” for most of the day. The water can keep hot for at least 2 days — I discovered this when I forgot to return it to normal mode before taking a shower. Water was still hot enough to finish.
3) Opened doors and windows today, it reached 60 degrees.
Result: So far this winter, gas bill is roughly 1/3 of last year’s. The gas company sent somebody over to check the gas meter for tampering.
And that’s just the gas bill. Stay tuned, more confessions next Friday…
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February 20th, 2010 @ 8:55 am
Hello Peter! So sorry to hear you have been out of work for so long. Also please give my best to your wife and her mother.
Although your changes have been drastic, you are taking your finances into your hands, so good for you! Keep wrapped up in blankets, and I look forward to hearing more of your frugal confessions.
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February 20th, 2010 @ 10:14 am
I always ruin my clothes around the house…so I have 2 sets of designated chore clothes.
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February 21st, 2010 @ 9:00 am
(Sorry for being tardy…)
My frugal confession this week is that 2 weeks ago I asked my son where he wanted to go to dinner for his 16th birthday. Knowing that it would cost over $100 for dinner for 6-8 people, I headed over to http://www.plasticjungle.com to buy a discounted gift card to pay for the evening out. Outback Steakhouse gift cards were 13% off!
It felt good to save a little…especially since the next morning we woke up and found that someone had stolen out credit card number last week and spent over $800 on our card! ARG!
Have a great week!
Momma J
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February 21st, 2010 @ 12:14 pm
Oh no Momma J!!! I can’t believe someone stole your credit card numbers. I hope you were able to fix that with the credit card company. Great job on the 13% savings while still taking your son to the place of his choice on his birthday!
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February 21st, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
Cindy–great job on the two sets of household chore clothes. I will have to get Paul into the same habit:).
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February 21st, 2010 @ 7:45 pm
Our favorite artwork is a three piece set that we created ourselves for less than $25.
We bought five yards of burlap in three pieces, multiple colors of spray paint, and three cheap wooden frames used to stretch fabric.
We went outside, scrunched up the burlap, and spray painted like crazy with one color. Then we unscrunched, rescrunched, and sprayed like crazy with a different color. We did that for about 45 minutes until we were really happy with the colors.
After the three pieces dried, we stapled them onto their frames.
Even though we have spent a couple of thousand of dollars on 8 other prints and paintings in the last 4 years, those colored burlap pieces have always been our favorite.
P.S. Remind Paul to change first, lol!
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