If you grew up poor, or non-wealthy, I'm sure that you or your parents have done some pretty strange things to conserve money. After all, there's no such thing as a wealth tree, is there? Actually, there probably was at one point in time, but all the Billionaires devoured them like the locusts they are, and now that variety of plant life is extinct.
Anyway, I digress. What are some of the things that you do that might be considered strange to people who have enough money to not sweat bullets every time they're in the grocery store? Like I do the following things:
- Wash out and save pasta sauce jars.
- When my dish soap, or any other liquid soap gets 1/8 full, I'll fill the container with water, shake and use that watered violated substance to stretch every last drop of detergent cleaning power. This may extend the life of that bottle by another month!
- Hesitate to discard Zip-lock bags, bread ties, and other plastic bags. Oh, and rubber bands. I'll even tie broken ones into knots to get extra life out of them.
- Save tiny scraps of leftovers and create new meals from multiple containers. An American Hotpot, so to speak.
- Buy non-perishables in bulk. Like 50 pounds of rice, 25 pounds of sugar, 50 pounds of beans.
- I have a box full of random screws, washers, nuts, and other miscellaneous hardware, including an entire assortment of those stupid disposable Allen wrenches that come with IKEA furniture that you have to know Mandarin to read the instructions correctly.
- When I drank soda, I used to nurse a 20 oz bottle over a couple of days, even if the beverage went flat.
- Speaking of beverages, I'll drink day-old coffee, in an effort to conserve coffee beans.
- I've attempted (and failed) several times to grow plants using indoor buckets. I'll try to grow from the left ver roots of scallions, potatoes that have large eyes protruding, garlic, ginger, and I recently discovered turmeric. I've also got seeds of many common herbs, such as sage, basil, thyme, oregano, etc...
- I've made my own alcohol. It's called Meade, and it's surprisingly easy to make. Someday I'll try making Dandelion wine too.
I'm sure I'll remember a bunch of things over time to add to this list, but what things have you done to stretch a dollar?