Frugality
I’m not the most frugal person, but I do my part in little ways. I’ve been having a fight with my conscious about it, so I need to remind myself that I do make some effort to be frugal, even if it is just little things.
- I make coffee every morning.
- I take lunch to work.
- We eat at home every night.
- I shop for clothes infrequently and when I do it’s on gift cards or at discount stores.
- I purchase my daughter’s clothes at consignment sales.
- Most of our bulbs are CFL
- We traded in our truck for a more fuel-efficient compact car
- We don’t travel much
- We have a programmable thermostat and set it higher/lower when we aren’t there using it
- We have a new energy efficient A/C unit
- I don’t get regular manicures or hair cuts
- DH cuts his own hair
- We don’t go to the movies
- I’m working on making my own dish rags so we can stop using paper towels.
- We use our towels more than once before washing them.
- I always dry clothes on medium heat.
- I always wash clothes in cold water, except towels, which we only do a load of about once a month, because we re-use so it takes a while to build up enough towels for a load.
- We only ever do a max of 3 (sometimes 4 loads) of laundry in a week.
- I take showers, not baths (I used to take lots of baths)
- We don’t water our yard (yes our yard turns brown and yucky, but we save a buttload by not watering)
- We wash our own cars, but not often and when we do, we have a pressure washer so the water isn’t constantly running out of the hose.
There are many things I could do better at, and I’m trying. And then there are some things that won’t change or are not feasible to change, like commuting. Public transportation here isn’t like in many other areas in the country. My job won’t let me telecommute as much as I’d like to. And my DH won’t give up his HD cable and DVR. But we try in other ways.
In what ways do you try to be or are frugal?
