Freaky Frugalite

I saw this posted at Forced Green- a great blog- and had to pass this on. Some of these I’ve tried, but others I haven’t. Wow! I’m going to try some of these! Here are my favorites, and I’ve added a few comments.

• Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

Cool! I look forward to trying this, as the kids refuse to eat overripe bananas. I usually throw them (the bananas, not the kids) in the freezer for baking banana bread… but I don’t bake banana bread so much anymore… so it’s gotten to the point where whenever I open my freezer, all these frozen bananas come shooting out. Woe to the person with bare feet!

• Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Hm. Wouldn’t the cheese absorb the taste or odor of aluminum foil?

• Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

I do that, and it works.

• To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich, add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

My husband, who makes great omelets (but cannot cook anything else) adds regular milk.

• Expanding Frosting. When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

Oh my gosh that is a great tip.

• Newspaper keeps weeds away. Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers, put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

I’m a gardener, and this is effective. It also helps to lay newspaper down before laying mulch down. However– be SURE to punch a few holes in the newspaper. A plant’s roots need oxygen and water– solid layers of newspaper may suffocate your plant.

• No More Mosquitoes. Place a dryer sheet in your pocket.It will keep the mosquitoes away.

This I have GOT to try. I’m desperate and will try anything. Although, here in the Northeast we have more of a problem with blackflies than mosquitoes. They are NASTY creatures.

• Squirrel Away! To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

I’ve heard this and I also heard that sometimes a squirrel will be stupid by touching the cayenne pepper and then rubbing his eyes. This causes the poor squirrel intense pain and may even blind him. So I don’t use pepper. Squirrels eat bulbs, which are under the soil. I have found that if you lay chicken wire in the ground (above the bulbs but below the soil), the squirrels can’t scratch through to get your bulbs. I’ve also heard that if you plant daffodils (which squirrels hate) next to your tulips and lilies (which squirrels love), they will be less inclined to dig up your plants.

• Reopening envelope. If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.

I am ALWAYS forgetting to include something so I waste a lot of envelopes. This is a great tip.

• Conditioner. Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair.

Question: won’t this dull the razor blade? Here’s an extra tip– to make your blades last longer, dry the blades when you are done.

• Goodbye Fruit Flies. To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2? with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

Ah! Fruit flies are the plague of WalMart. We never have fruit flies until I buy WalMart produce! Since WalMart has effectively killed off competition and it is now the only store I can shop, I’m stuck with fruit flies. I can’t wait to try this tip!

• Get Rid of Ants. Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants They eat it, take it home, they can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

I’ve heard this same tip with using grits. The ants never went with my grits, so I’ll try cornmeal. We are having an invasion of ants currently– it’s massive and like something from a horror movie– I’m looking forward to trying this, too!

I have learned my lesson. I never, never, never buy anything online without checking for coupon codes, promo codes, and discount codes first. I never used to do it (laziness) but then I realized that my laziness was keeping me from saving our hard-earned cash! So I have a folder of bookmarks of websites that have coupons and promo codes. And here’s another to add: Coupon Ninja. This has stuff from “name brand” stores like Papa Joe’s, Target, Old Navy, HP, OfficeMax, WalMart, and HobbyTron! Because we homeschool, we absolutely love HobbyTron. (HobbyTron has a neat gel ant farm on sale for $20, and Coupon Ninja has a 15% off coupon code!). Coupon Ninja has 872 coupons for educational-based shops! This is a good site to bookmark, frugal moms!

Sigh. I wanted to go traveling this year, perhaps out of state, but right now the prospects are bleak. I have been promising my brother that we really, really WILL visit him in Virginia! But getting away has proved to be difficult. It’s been a very long time since I traveled south (or outside of the state, for that matter). Last time I went through i was 14 years old! I took a trip with an adult friend all the way to Florida and back, by Greyhound bus. It was quite an experience for a young lady. It was the first time I was away from home like that, and there was a limitless roster of things to do in Orlando! We got to see Disney World (the rides were absolutely wild and crazy!), the new Epcot center, and the Museum of Wax in the city. It was a great time! Of course, my friend made all the plans and this was long before the Internet was available. Back then, we relied on brochures, if we could get them, and word of mouth. I prefer having everything on the Internet at my fingertips, today.

I’m a big fan of Trusted Tours & Attractions for finding stuff online and when I need discount tickets for sightseeing tours, they are the first place to go. They have the best listings and discounts I have ever seen for the 23 most popular cities to see in the United States. I’ve even signed up for their newsletter, for when we do decide to travel (we also have plans to see Boston and maybe check out things to do in Atlanta, too). The newsletter is great. They have a promotion going on now: sign up for their newsletter by May 31st, and you’re entered in a contest to win a free $150 iTunes gift card.

Hey, have any printing needs? Business cards, cards, notes, stationery, rubber stamps, invitations, announcements (whew!), and more? VistaPrint has it! I love VistaPrint and I have been a customer of VistaPrint for several years now. I’ve had all my business cards printed through them (they allow complete customization, which is what I love best about them) and I encourage all my family members to go through them. Their stationery is beautiful (yes, I am one of those weirdos who still do write letters), and their card selection is really neat. They allow for complete customization. I am a real stickler for that! I must customize, because I don’t like the “cookie cutter” cards and stationery that more expensive places churn out. And VistaPrint is a fast shipper. I’ve always received my stuff in a few days. I am so impressed with the company that I really can’t sing their praises enough.

And guess what? I’ve got a link where you can find vistaprint coupons for you to save even more money! Check it out. I have personally bought stuff from VistaPrint and I love them! I think you will, too!

I don’t know WHAT it is with my telephone number, but I get about 12 or more telemarketing calls A DAY. I screen everything through my answering machine so I don’t have to deal with them. However, they are pretty nasty in that they wait for the answering machine message to finish, then they hang up. Sometimes they don’t hang up correctly, and I get that recording from the phone company “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again” and it beeps and beeps. Quite loudly. I’m ranting, I know, but I am so sick and tired of it!! GRRR. I did register with the National No Call Registry, but I don’t know that it did much. I heard that the list expires after a few years! There’s got to be a better National No Call Registry system, somewhere.

Somebody gave me a link to a Reverse Cell Phone Lookup. Heh heh. What an interesting and useful little tool this can be! It’s free to use. I like the zip code list, too, because I am always wondering what state I’m calling for some of those online orders I make.

I’ve bought eyeglasses online. Yes I have! They’ve worked out very well. But I’m sick of wearing glasses. I’m dabbling– for the first time in my life after wearing glasses for 35 years!– into the liberating world of contact lenses! I’ve been shopping around and came across Acuvue Oasys at 1-800-GET-LENS. What a difference! Why pay full retail price when I could get them from a direct-to-consumer marketer for up to 70% less than my doctor’s office? I’ve been very displeased with the so-called “service” I’ve been getting from the eyeglass store in my optometrist’s office. :-p Time to shop around. The eyeglass store has told me they would charge me about $200 per contact per eye. Not including tax! Holy cow! I could buy a car with that money! Most of the cost comes from expensive middle-men and handling. No way.

I know I couldn’t just get any old contact lenses; plus, I’m more comfortable with a “name brand” familiar company who has been in the business for a while. I found out that the Acuvue Oasys are made by Johnson & Johnson, a long established company. And the lenses are slightly tinted so that they can detected when sitting in the solution. This makes it easy for blind-bats like me to find the lenses! And the contact lenses have something called “Hydraclear Plus technology” to keep eyes from drying out. So they seem very high-quality.

These lenses are tinted for ease of handling and will not change the color of your eye. The tint is simply designed to facilitate locating the contact lenses in solution. And I saw lenses as low as $17 a box! I’ve been seriously thinking about contact lenses, but it has always been the extremely high retail price that made me skittish. The lenses at 1-800-GET-LENS look spectacular.

Has anyone ever ordered contact lenses online? I’d love to know how it went!

I heard about a free bottle of liquid foundation, from Maybelline. It’s that mineral power liquid foundation I’ve been hearing about, so I signed the information to get a free bottle. If you want some, go here to fill out a form.

Thanks to Coffee Can Cash (my new favorite site!), I heard about free WalMart samples. Go here to see what WalMart is giving away. All you need to do is enter your mailing address and birthdate. My only regret is that the Maybelline Mineral Foundation makeup is not available online; you have to find the sample at the store. That will be like finding a needle in a haystack. :-p. But I did manage to get some Dove shampoo and conditioner and some Curel hand lotion. Try it out and see! Tip: refresh the page to see more offers.