What's the most extreme example of effort to save a few pennies you have heard of?

[wineoclockthanks]

Lighthearted!!

Mine is someone who buys shirts/t-shirts and asks for the hangers, then returns the clothes minus the hangers.

I did mention that Wilkos sell 10 wire hangers for £1.75 but she was adamant it was worth it.

Please can I stress this is lighthearted, I am also on a tight budget and count my pennies so not judging at all.

My friend used to buy plain cottage cheese, even though she preferred the one with pineapple in, because it was 7p cheaper. She wasn't that hard up!

Re-using gift bags is just good sense. It's not stingy it's being mindful that there are gazillions of gift bags out there and there's no need to buy new, I hate being wasteful (environment and all that). I haven't bought gift bag in ages they're stored in our spare room and I can pretend the stash is a little shop for me to choose them from

Surely everyone reuses giftbags?! And there's no need to keep it for years, just give it away at the next birthday.

I used to work with a man who was famously tight. He was buying something from the vending machine at work when a coin fell out of his hand and rolled under the machine. He insisted that two maintenance guys stop what they were doing immediately to come and move the machine so he could get his money back. It was 2p.

I think everyone knows you're supposed to reuse gift bags, like carrier bags. It's not just because they're expensive. If I buy one to give, I give it hoping the person will be able to reuse it.

Also free McDonald's coffee; you're an idiot if you don't!

redshoe yes - it might catch fire while we're in the kitchen even though I use those cool to touch LED lights

My SIL (their daughter) had a Danish husband for a while - they had real candles on their tree - only lit under close supervision!

Reusing gift bags is completely normal - shiny paper often can't go in recycling. Just make sure you've removed the original tag!

The one I remember from Extreme Cheapskates was the woman who had perfected the art of writing everything in really tiny writing to save ink so her pen lasted longer.

Definitelt reuse gift bags but I do agree but hoarding. I am only just starting to get the balance right and rid our house if piles of crap that might be useful one day

My handwriting is naturally tiny so I hope no one thinks I'm doing that!

Using the string bag off fruit to scrub a pan is an ace idea! I shall use it.

I agree that a lot of people make a kind of religion out of moneysaving and have no actual need to be so parsimonious. An aunt of mine went quite mad and ended up living on boiled potatoes to save money. She got a voluntary job in a charity shop to get free stuff. She did a whole host of other nutty things which made her life truly miserable. She died unexpectedly and left over a million pounds. Her deadbeat son was thrilled and was last heard of trying to start a career as a heavy metal artist (age 45).

Housewife some I know used to save all her showers for the office shower. She was NOT poor. I once caught her also taking a pint of office milk home. (And not on a Friday either, which may have made sense if the milk would not last over the weekend, but during the week).

I know someone who, when rolling out marzipan for the Christmas cake, refuses to use icing sugar to dust the surface and stop it sticking. She uses flour instead. When I expressed surprise, she said it was because flour is cheaper so it seems very wasteful to use icing sugar. So yes, her cake is coated in a fine layer of uncooked flour because she doesn't want to go to the expense of using an extra spoonful of sugar. At Christmas.

The McD's coffee thing will probably get me accused of stealing but....

I found that if you order via drive thru with other things as well as the coffee they often dont ask for the loyalty card. I didnt do it on purpose the first time, but when I realised I didnt offer it after that I waited until it was asked for. Had loads of free coffees from one loyalty card that way! I have one thats full, not like I am lying but I wait until I am asked to hand it over. Got another full loyalty card from my previous one once, was gutted when I had to hand it over

But reusing gift bags is normal surely?
Some of these are 😳

@PastysPrincess I watched an extreme cheapskates where this guy would have one week every month where they wouldnt spend anything on food.

There's actually logic to the first part of this.
We mostly all do a weekly shop, right?

So if you push your shop back a day each week, without any effort after 7 weeks you have saved a week's shopping! (Unless you are shopping to the exact penny and have nothing else at home, of course)

I also reuse food bags and foil etc, but because I can't bear the thought of just adding to landfill so needlessly.

I always reuse gift bags.
I have a walk in closet which is lined floor to ceiling with Ikea tubs and drawers. I keep in one drawer gift bags, ribbons ,wrapping paper, tissue paper so I've always got something if I had to get a last minute present.
It's not so much thrift as convenience.

I asked mr Dowser what's the most skinflinty thing he does and he said wash plastic bags...so there you go.

I told him , he'd better not have had anything messy or nasty in there or he's dumped. He said no, I buy cheap ones for that and throw them away!

So, there you go. That's why we have millions in the bank. Who'd have thunk it!

I must give him heart palpitations reaching in the drawer and getting an expensive zip lock bag if I need one for something messy.

A friend of mine lost her mother quite early on. Several years later and quite unexpectedly her dad started dating again and she acquired a new step mum whom she never took to. One reason being, she made a cream cake and used a full carton of cream on it! My friend would have made that do two!

I reckon the woman was doomed from the start!
( yes they did divorce)

It's just daft not to re-use a gift bag. I never throw them out and I only have about 4 in the cupboard, not exactly a hoard. I noted recently a local charity shop was selling them, so if you don't want to re-use - give them away to charity.

Used to scoop out the baby's bathwater to water the garden. Not on a water meter, just don't like waste. And the bathroom was by the back door.

I used to work in the local pub as a pot washer when I was a teenager. Most of the meals were served with a side dish of veg, part of my job was to scrape left over veg into an old ice cream box so it could be turned into tomorrow's soup of the day.

I collect the free McD coffee stickers, and will nab them from cups left behind by people who don't clear their tables when they leave.
I've just spent 6 months in a rental property with no internet, so several times a week I had a McD breakfast and a couple of free coffees whilst using their Wi-Fi.
Before that, when I worked in London, I gave the coupons to homeless people sleeping at the station.
I come from a frugal (1st world war babies) family and a lot of things on this thread are 2nd nature to me (I was born in the 60s, but we still had gas lights, a cold press and a well in the cellar).
But my Dad, even when he was in sheltered housing with all bills included in the rent, made his first pot of tea with the warm water out of his hot water bottle.
My uncle carefully unwrapped the sugar bag to get the last few grains trapped in the folds.
And he also bought condensed milk as diluting it worked out cheaper than normal milk, and woe betide me and my brothers if we were caught having a crafty spoonful...
Every coffee jar etc was swilled with hot water to get the last molecule out.
My (5) brothers shoes were handed down as they outgrew them, as I was the youngest there was no one else to give them to so mum cut the toes out when they got a bit tight and called them sandals!

We have family gift bags
Me, MIL and SIL all keep the gift bags to reuse and every so often we'll swap different size bags. If MIL has to buy new ones she always gets bags with designs on that she knows we'll all like to use again.
Some of the really nice ones have been going round the family for a few years now.

I was born n 52 and we had all mod cons ...I reckon I was very lucky.

Some of these frugal stories sound like health hazards.

apples My knife!

A lot of the water saving ones will be from people who lived through the 1976 drought. I think you could get fined for wasting water so if you wanted to water your garden you had to use old water to do it.

Also using old bathwater to flush the toilet is totally sensible. Half the world doesn't have access to clean safe drinking water and we have so much of it that we use it to flush our toilets. There should be grants available to install grey water systems in houses and all new houses should collect either used water or rainwater for toilet flushing at least.

We should appreciate how fortunate we are to be able to afford to use things so frivalously rather than laughing at people who try not to be wasteful.

Do people really throw away gift bags after one use? Even in places like Card Factory they start at a pound each and I dread to think how much they are in WH Smith and Clintons. Of course they should be reused. So wasteful not to, both in money and resources.

I know someone at uni who wore very strong prescription glasses. They were so old and absolutely knackered, and eventually a lens fell out. He just carried on with one lens for weeks! Then the other lens fell out - he asked his Dad to send his spare pair from home and his Dad posted them second class he couldn't see anything until they arrived!