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.

Be more panda - I let the bathwSter go cold then water the front plants with it. I have occasionally done thensvk garden but it is a lot of traipsing up and down stairs. There is a special hose you can get. It uses a squeeze pump thing to get the water flowing and the gradient (dropping it out of the window) does Therese to water the garden.

Also you don't have to fill up the cistern. You can just pour a bucket of water down the loo to flush it. Pour it from up high abs it is s much stronger flush than the toilet. We had the worlds worst flushing loo when I was s teenager. All poos had to be flushed this way 😂

We have elderly friends who don't use a fridge. The stuff is put in the side. They never get ill. I don't understand it. They have been like this for years. My
Mum thinks they have evolved into being tolerant to sour milk and orange juice etc.

Countess The probably just shop every day or so and keep it somewhere cool so like they did before everyone had fridges. Their house is probably not as hot as a lot of younger people either. Fresh food doesn't turn into poison if it is unfridgerated for a day or so.

his Dad posted them second class

now that is cheap!

I keep picnic freezer blocks in the freezer at all times. Supposedly to cut down energy consumption.

I have different sized notepads (A5 or A6) made of paper that's still white on one side. Using a hole punch + a piece of ribbon from the neckline of a top + cereal packet cover makes an exercise book! For my own use, obviously- I don't want people reading my bills etc.

And I put fresh bars of soap in clothes drawers for the perfume and use the dried up ones in the shower as they last longer.

No apologies!

I am poor and can't afford heating/hot water, I shower with a bowl in with me which I use to flush the loo, boil a kettle to wash up every two days and use that water to flush the loo too (water meter). I reuse bags for sandwiches/dog poo (NOT the same bags), and buy cheap food in the shop where I work when the reductions go on. But even I don't reuse teabags!

This is a great thread!

I like to think I'm reasonably frugal but some of these are just bonkers on another level

DM used to re-use Christmas wrap. It was quite cheering to see the same designs come out year after year. I wash out the dregs of the shower gel and use it as shampoo. This practice has been slated here before but I aintent bald yet

MIL can't walk more than a few yards so has a blue badge. Local national park charges for parking, so when we visit and plan to go there, FIL and MIL will spend a good hour arguing about which combination of people will go in their car, be dropped at the barrier, then drive home, then pick up everyone else, then drive back, then MIL will park in the free blue badge area, FIL will then drive to her, bring her home, then when we want to go home we should find the one phone box as no mobile reception, and FIL will drive MIL back to her car and then drive out, MIL will ferry four people to FIL's car and then collect the others.

Meanwhile MrNC and I get the kids ready, lob entire family in the people carrier, and go pay £6. FIL can't believe we pay for parking. I tell him I'm not paying for parking, I'm paying to avoid listening to him and MIL arguing over parking! He conceded that might make sense...

MIL and FIL are both war babies with a bit of a hoarding problem - BIL and I clear out the back of the fridge every few months, mainly so it's not a danger every time you open it as usually you get a glass jar or plastic box on your foot. Definitely a shoes-on house!

I really hate water waste, so have enthusiastically taken on some of these tips.

I have been enjoying the Mean Queen blog mentioned upthread..... some of the tips are great, some seem to tip over into th outright bizarre and miserly, but I know we are way too wasteful generally as a household so I am going to incorporate some of the tips.

I sometimes cut open tubes of cream to get the last of it out. When it starts to feel empty, there is often about 10/20% of the product left, so a lot to throw away. I scrape the face cream into a tiny pot and then use it for travelling.

I also bought sundae spoons from the pound shop for getting the last of the peanut butter out of the jar. The Sunpat jar seems designed to make it hard to get the last of it out of the jar.

"I re use gift bags, why would you throw them away? . Seems really wasteful! "

I don't have enough space to keep things for years just in case I might re-use it. The 'just in case' mentality is where hoarding begins.

Gwen but don't you have a small stock of a few sheets of wrapping paper somewhere? Re-using gift bags is just like that. And unless you get given hundreds of presents in gift bags a year, and never give anyone else presents, then you aren't "keeping things for years", just something the thickness of a magazine for a few months until you give the next present. It's really wasteful to just throw gift bags away.

We cut the toothpaste open with nail scissors to us every last drop.

Use

Going back to the original lighthearted tone of the thread, I try not to let DP use caster sugar bought for baking in his coffee because it costs more than twice the price of granulated sugar but it's not the end of the world if he does.

Luckily we have space to store both granulated and caster sugar and two types of brown sugar and icing sugar and the granulated sugar lives with the tea and coffee and the other sugars live in the baking cupboard, which DP never thinks to look in anyway.

If we have run out of caster or icing sugar, I sometimes grind down granulated sugar in the food processor instead of going out to buy caster sugar and congratulate myself for saving a few pence in the process.

I'm amazed that some of these things are thought of as being miserly! I always reuse teabags, cut off the laddered legs of tights, turn off the shower while soaping, save non-soapy water from the kitchen for the garden, reuse wrapping paper etc. However, even I draw the line at stealing eg loo paper, and also do give generously to charity.

We are such a consumerist society, so why would you not reduce your consumption where you can?

My mean streak is that I don't use black bin sacks, but instead use plastic bags the food comes in for my kitchen rubbish, and just drop it in the wheelie bin each night.

If we have run out of caster or icing sugar, I sometimes grind down granulated sugar in the food processor
My DM always did this in the 1970s, as I think there was probably a bigger difference in price then.

QuiteUnfit agreed!

I'd happily spend actual money on broccoli that was all stalks - I don't like the florets, only the stalks. (But not stalks that have had a thumbnail dug into them to snap them off - ugh!)

On the trimming of veg before you put it in your trolley - do those of you that do that feel able to do so because nobody is watching? To me it's like going to the hot food counter, ordering a chicken, digging around in it to remove the bones, then demanding they reweigh it to get a better unboned price.

I've done the taking food from the breakfast buffet for lunch, but only because I'm not a breakfast person and while dh is merrily eating his way through a few pigs I struggle to eat a piece of toast. I wrap up a croissant or two and have them with a coffee for lunch.

In my broke student days, I had a flatmate who was exceedingly careful with money. When I first started seeing DH, and got through rather a lot of condoms, she insisted that I should be paying her for the extra loo roll we were getting through.

barbara I always cook with granulated sugar anyway. I bake a lot and I can't tell any difference.

I only use caster sugar for Victoria sponge and meringues.

I'll often use one teabag to make two cups of tea, especially as DP likes his really weak so it would be a waste to throw one away after it has barely met water. Though when we were living in university halls he would leave his teabag on the side of the sink for me, which I didn't really appreciate (though would use nonetheless!).

Like a pp I also love brocolli stalks, or rather, by guineas and rabbits too. Never seem to find discarded stalks in our supermarket though, but will start looking. Am sure I'd be allowed to take them for free if I did find some.

I don't reuse wrapping paper, but all paper and card gets thrown onto a fire rather than going into a bin, and food scraps go into the compost, which means out bins go out about once every six weeks. 99% of both our waste and recycling is plastic.

Someone earlier mentioned a friend taking bones off plates to make stock with - I do that, but only from DP and my own plates, and I only serve the resulting stock / gravy to ourselves. I've not killed us yet.

I always use second class.
If everyone did the same....as in everyone...there would be no first class would there?

Some gift bags are just too pretty to throw away anyway.

I gave sil a birthday present two weeks ago, after he thanked me he said ..would you like the bag back...aye go on then , I said!

I had a disaster at school making meringue, the granulated sugar wasn't ground down enough