This is a picture of our living room the night we moved in. Literal blank space. And SO much carpet.

She has seen some changes over the years, which I've recently been reminded of looking through pictures. For amusement, I'll put the newest picture next to the oldest one for comparison; though it hardly seems fair to do so, given the many years and many iterations this room has been through in that time.

The first change, obviously, was wall paint and adding a chair rail (Dave's birthday present to me the first year in the house). It looked only slightly nicer than a glorified dorm room, thanks to the hodgepodge of furniture (including the couch from MY ACTUAL CHILDHOOD), questionable green curtains, and of course, still lots of white carpet.

The transition from carpet to hardwood was a great improvement, though the wood was a very distinct red oak color that I likely wouldn't choose myself. It also had some significant blemishes that we had to work around by strategically placed area rugs, but it was well worth it to get rid of the W2W carpet. Another simple (yet laborious) step we took was painting all the dark wood trim white. Some houses can get away with dark trim, but this house is SMALL and needs all the "light and airy" it can get.

Speaking of light and airy, the biggest transformation to date has definitely been refinishing the floors. You can see in the before picture how parts of the wood were patched and damaged. After they were repaired and sanded, we had a white stain applied to lighten it, making it look more like white oak than red.

With my sights set on lighter flooring, I also brought the walls to a lighter neutral that was warm enough to work with the couch I found on Facebook Marketplace. (I painted before the refinishing so that I wouldn't be so paranoid about getting paint on the new floors.) I'm sure we'll never arrive at the *true* ending stage of this room (or any room, for that matter), but I at least feel like I can stay here for a little while without itching for the next project. ​

Oh - and you may have noticed the amazing book shelf addition to the top of our wall, which I don't want to gloss over. That was an incredible addition built by my father-in-law, who generously and meticulously measured out (and figured out) how to build a "floating" shelf that would hold our many hundreds of books. I love both how practical it is and how awesome it looks in this room. Definitely gave it a big push in its transformation from dorm room status!

Is there anything more coveted by kids at the grocery store then rejected (by those same kids) at home as yogurt cups? It drives me bananas. #1 because its loaded with sugar ANYWAY, so it's not my first choice for you but YOU BEGGED FOR IT and so I bought it. #2 because it is terrible for the environment to be purchasing all these little containers ANYWAY and then when you don't even finish it? It's even more guilt inducing. I won't fool myself that I'm making either of these things any better by using up the remainder, but I can at least feel like I have salvaged some bit of justification for buying them in the first place.

I've learned in my years of leftover cooking that there's nothing that can't be made into a muffin. And in this house, muffins are something that typically gets eaten. So that's often the route I go. There's nothing special about the recipe I used, just Google "muffins using yogurt" and you'll find something. 

Guess what? My kids ate them. And finished them.  They got a little protein along the way, and I got to send those cute little containers to the sink for rinsing, knowing they had at least delivered every bit of yogurt they were intended to.

It will come as no surprise that I DESPISE paying for checked bags on a flight. I will make many compromises not to do so, such as wearing the same thing more than once, or doing laundry while I'm on vacation, or even shipping items to my destination via the postal system. (It's often less expensive and you have less to travel with.) This Christmas, we went to Florida (including Disney World - not scrappy, but a wonderful gift from the grandparents) for 7 days. I was very proud that everyone in my family was up to the challenge of packing with just one free "personal item" to avoid the fees both to and from our destination.

Ahh...that $0 makes my heart sing....and made spending $200 in airport dining not feel quite as painful. There's also something about having everything I need within eyeshot at all times while traveling that feels somehow comforting to me.

The contents of what we packed in our bags always feels deeply uninteresting to me, but people always want to know what we brought for the week, so here you go! For me: 1 pair of pajamas; 1 sweater; 1 pants romper; 4 dresses; 1 bathing suit; 1 beach cover-up; and undergarments.

For the kids: 4 shirts; 4 shorts; 1 pair of pants; 2 pjs; 2 bathing suits; goggles; crocs/sandals.

Oh, and of course....a full Minnie Mouse costume.

Everything else was either on our bodies or our feet during our flight. We did laundry half-way through, and I never once wished I had anything more. I even had a dress I never ended up wearing! So in a way, I guess I over-packed. 

I'll start off with a disclaimer my husband gave me full permission to give: all the expensive things are his fault. He had some very specific items he wanted to purchase, so our Christmas budget was a little heavier than I would have normally cared for (for reference, here was our budget for 2021 and 2022), but hey, I make my family suffer through a lot of frugal decisions, so I'll let this slide.

Most of my son's were also collected from the Swap Shop, given as hand-me-downs, or found at Goodwill/Lots for Tots.

​My daughter had one solitary item on her wish list this year, and that was this GIGANTIC, discontinued, originally $250 LOL Ski Chalet. It is intense. And, of course, the only thing she has wanted for months.  Since you can't even buy it anymore (and I 100% would NOT at $250), I scoured Facebook Marketplace and, like a Christmas miracle, this pristine puppy popped up. Shout out to my dad who took on the massive undertaking of driving several hours to transport it and get it to our home. So yes, it was $60, which exceeds my normal entire budget in a year, but it was so worth it. She was every bit as excited as I hoped she'd be.

Similarly, we had been wanting a keyboard in the house for a while, and my husband managed to find this BRAND NEW, IN THE BOX version of exactly the one we wanted for just $80 on Facebook Marketplace. That place served us well this year.

The two next items were purchased new, and there's really nothing scrappy to highlight here, other than the fact that instead of the framed picture from MLB, we purchased the poster of Yankee Stadium for $35 and sourced the frame on Amazon for $15. The glove is just an expensive glove (in my opinion) but that was the exact one my son wanted and apparently, my husband said he would have just bought it for him for baseball season anyway, so....maybe we saved ourselves some money if we look at it that way?

So all together, our money spent on Christmas presents was $288. I'm offering myself some grace with that number and fighting the urge to see it as a Forever Scrappy failure. It's not $50, but it's also not $500, so for this year, I'll take it.

This past Halloween, my kids started complaining that our house was the "lamest on the block" because we didn't have any decorations out. They weren't wrong. I have a really hard time ponying up to buy decorations for Halloween. We got by on a homemade ghost my son made out of a beach ball and a white sheet, but by the end of the month it was destroyed and had to be thrown away, so I figured we'd be right back where we started next year. UNTIL...

A fateful trip to Goodwill in November proved to be the best stop I could have made to stock up. All the Halloween decor was being sold for 90% off, just to get it out of there. They were practically begging people to take it. To be honest, I wouldn't have even CONSIDERED paying $15 for a corrugated metal ghost cutout, but at $1.50, it actually started to look pretty cute.

So here we have it - what would have been $55 of spooky lawn decor came home with me for $5.50. Assuming I can remember where I store it for the next 11 months, our lawn is going to be lit next Halloween.

The other day I opened the refrigerator and found half a cooked sweet potato, half a can of pumpkin, and 4 completely black bananas. Like with anything I find that has no other discernible purpose at the moment, I immediately tossed them in the Ninja.

This made about 2.5 cups of puree, to which I added 2 cups of flour, some milk, some sugar, baking powder and baking soda, and lots of pumpkin pie spice. After it was baked, it was actually delicious "pumpkin bread" that my kids happily devoured. I'll consider that 6 servings of fruit/veg they wouldn't have consumed otherwise!

Anyone else get SUPER ANNOYED by the crumbs left over by all crunchy snack foods? No one will touch them once they're broken, but I can't bring myself to toss them, so I just quietly seethe each time I open the cupboard, then close the door and not think of it again.

They were just taking up too much valuable space in our cupboards, so something had to be done. I grabbed them (along with some stale crackers also not being touched) and pulsed them up in the Ninja.

Like magic, my cupboard space was freed up, and the leftovers were transformed into useful breadcrumbs.

I have to say, they were delicious on baked chicken. Could I have just tossed them out and used storebought breadcrumbs? Yes. But then what in the world would I write about here, anyway? 

Maybe it's a little too on the nose to discuss recycling deposits on a blog about being scrappy, but I feel like I can't NOT bring it up. I've heard there are people who DON'T redeem their bottles for money and to me, the fact that these people exist is about as unbelievable as the existence of gnomes or unicorns. 

Now, of course, I take it farther than most people, because that's just who I am. Yes, of course I save my own bottles from home (duh), but I also am 100% that girl who brings them home from camping trips, AirB&Bs, and (at times) other people's parties. My friends and family will not find this new information.

I know not every state has a program like Clynk, but I think it is amazing and I don't know why anyone who could use it wouldn't do it. It keeps all the money in the account until you want to withdraw it, so I like to wait until it's good and hefty and surprise myself with free groceries every once in a while. I remember when we had babies in diapers I used to play little games with myself : "For every 8 cans I recycle, I can buy another diaper..." Ah, my life is fun, isn't it?

So, drink up! And when you're done, feel free to drop off your empty.

A Polly Pocket playhouse ($0 at the Swap Shop); a jewelry stand ($0 as a hand-me-down from a friend); an LOL art kit + LOL doll ($1 at Dollar Tree and $0 as a hand-me-down from a friend); a Mini Boden butterfly skirt ($3 at Goodwill); and two unicorn shirts ($0 as hand-me-downs from a friend.)

Alice's gift total: $4

Otis's Gifts: 

Like most of this house when we bought it, this bathroom was a beautiful tribute to decades gone by... Nonetheless, it was the targeted selling point for us when we bought the house - none of the other houses we looked at had separate bathrooms off the bedroom, so we were immediately sold. It could definitely stand to have a more extensive upgrade, but as we know, that's not really how this household rolls with renovations, so I pulled out the paint cans and did what I could using the leftover paint in our basement. 

I primed and painted allllll the trim work, the cabinet slats, and the mirror frame. The built in wall shelving is very useful, but realistically, the doors never got closed like they were intended to, so I just took them off and painted the inside a deep blue.

I detested the light fixtures for many years, but I think I waited so long not replacing them that they *might* be on the verge of being back in style again? They don't bother me as much without all the dark wood. The stock faucet fixture, however, was never going to make a style comeback, so we replaced that (which actually ended up being a massive undertaking requiring a new pipe underneath, but...the idea was a simple one).

I mean, CHECK OUT that remnant of wallpaper that once graced the walls of this bathroom! I also hate the scallop sink insert, but my lovely husband (after muscling the corroded faucet fixture out) begged me to just cut my losses and put it back. I did. Again, like the sconces, it doesn't bother me nearly as much with the new faucet in place. 

And there we have it. Nothing earth shattering, but another fabulous example of paint (and a $35 faucet) to the rescue. It makes it just tolerable enough for the 80's sconces and scalloped sink to live to serve us another day...

It was time, yet again, to pull out all the stray rolls, pieces of bread, and hamburger buns to use them up and transform them into something that would actually be eaten by my children. Given the season, I went with some canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, eggs, and milk, with a bit of sugar.

My daughter got the job of tearing apart the bread products and mixing them into the pumpkin mix.

We poured the mixture into mini-loaf pans, and baked them off = pumpkin loaves for breakfast. The kids thought it was great, and no rogue bread product left behind!

I think one of the primary definitions of being "scrappy" for me is making the most of what you have. I hadn't really thought about my packing habits much until recently when I was going on a weekend away with some girlfriends and my sister. When my sister showed up at my house she took one look at my small purse packed with overnight items and said incredulously, "THAT is the bag of things you're bringing this weekend?"

I've long been a very minimalist packer. I like thinking about what the bare minimum is for what I'll need and not bringing one thing extra. Sure, sometimes it backfires on me, and I have to borrow a sweatshirt or wear the same socks twice, but for the most part, I always have everything I need and nothing I don't.

Last weekend, we went to NYC for my birthday, and a few nights before I was out with my girlfriends. They were asking me what bag I would pack and I casually pointed to my small backpack/purse I carry daily, saying, "Probably just this." They had doubts. "You're going to put everything you need for the weekend in THAT?" I honestly hadn't thought about it much; it was only 36 hours, how much more could I need? 

So I figured I would document exactly what I DID end up taking for our trip, and prove that that small bag really was all I ended up needing! I will note, I also ended up grabbing an umbrella to take, since a last minute check showed that we were going to get hit by hurricane Ian on our second day there. and also, I severely underestimated how cold it would be and had to purchase an extra layer due to hurricane winds, but aside from unpredictable weather events, I had everything I needed to have a great time!

1) wallet 2) toiletries 3) change of clothes 4) gum 5) AirPods 6) gum 7) snacks 8) phone charger 9) wipes  10) water bottle

(Also on my body were my shoes I wore for the weekend, a coat, and sunglasses)

One of the nice things about having a small space is that it doesn't take much to outfit it with furniture. One of the real nice things about having a small space AND being super scrappy is that you can do it for a few hundred bucks. In looking around my living room the other day, I realized the entire room had been furnished either by cheap deals on Amazon (not proud of that, but hey, it's hard to beat) or found used on Facebook Marketplace. I know there's some squeamishness around buying secondhand furniture, but what I like about Facebook Marketplace is you can kind of vet who you buy from, and in lots of cases, they are people I know or have mutual friends with. That, and I usually try to buy pieces I can wash anyway.

So here's the breakdown:

I have to say that I am MOST proud of my $400 sofa find. I had been eyeing this exact sofa (the Jovie sofa from Home Reserve) for about 6 months and it is amazing: the pieces are interchangeable, you can add additional pieces as you want to grow your sectional, the fabric comes off each piece and is machine washable, and every seat opens up to storage underneath. The layout I wanted was just over $2,000 and I was honestly gearing myself up to just go for it (or at least start to try to convince my husband to consider it), but decided I'd check out Facebook Marketplace just to see if there was anything there first. And there it was, about 10 listings down on my scroll, the Jovie sectional! Barely used, being sold about 45 minutes from me because the woman was moving.

I mean, if this room had cost me over $2,000 I suppose it wouldn't have been the end of the world, but it would have made for a much less interesting blog post. And at just shy of $600, I don't have to feel too precious about this room being punched and prodded and generally treated like an indoor playground. Cheers to second-life furniture.

I LOVE real flowers. I am thrilled every time my husband comes home with them for me, but most of the time I just can't bring myself to purchase them. Something prevents me from purchasing them every time, and I don't necessarily love that about myself, since they do bring me so much happiness and that is well worth $10-$20. In any case, this particular situation was a dance recital for my niece, and I just didn't want to stop at the store with my kids to purchase flowers, quite frankly. So I did a little YouTube surfing and found this awesome and easy tutorial to make flowers out of paper. I will not take any credit for the idea because I just copied her instructions - they truly were easy enough for my kids to do, and use just colored paper and glue.

Here's a perfect example of my weird, resourceful, scrappiness at play: I have a friend who gives me all her leftover packets of napkins/chopsticks/soy sauce when they get takeout, and I am so glad she does. We use the napkins (since we don't buy paper napkins those are a real treat), use the soy sauce in cooking, and use those chopsticks for SO many things. I mean, who knows when you're going to need a stem??

Up close, they are obviously paper, but from a distance they actually looked like a real bouquet, and they will last longer than a week, hopefully. They were a hit with my niece, so the ultimate goal was achieved - free minus the time it spent to make them!

As many of you know, we've never actually purchased a "real bed" - no joke, we slept on a futon for FAR too long after college. We only purchased a real mattress an embarrassingly short amount of time ago, but that futon frame is still here to stay. Needless to say, when you don't have a real bed, you don't have a real headboard, leaving a big empty space above our head for me to ponder nightly as I fall asleep. Yes, these are the things I think about. 

Artwork always felt weird there since it was just floating above our pillows with nothing to anchor it to our bed. The answer was so simple; using peel-and-stick wallpaper was super easy, super cheap, and removable (in case we change where the bed is in our room).

Just drew a line with a level, lined the top of the paper up with the line, and peeled off the backing. Smoothed it out with a little smoothing tool, and it's done!

Lining up the repeat was the trickiest thing, but it was pretty forgiving. Hence the "removable" part of peel-and-stick wallpaper, a couple of times I just peeled it back up and tried again. Once it was up in the shape I wanted, I cut some basic trim board to the right size for the sides and the top, and painted them white.

Lined them on the edges of the wallpaper, and nailed them in with finishing nails. 

I hardly ever bake unless I'm inspired to use something up before it goes bad - which is to say, I end up baking a decent amount. I know those three bagels and extra ends of baguette are hard as rocks and only cost about $.50 (since they were purchased in clearance section to begin with), but I still can't bring myself to compost them. 

I also had this jug of half-and-half that I can never seem to get through fast enough, and the expiration was fast approaching. So naturally, bread product + dairy product = some form of bread pudding (my dad is classic for bringing bread pudding to our house and my kids love it).

I chopped the bagels and baguette up, added in the half-and-half, a couple eggs, some cinnamon, and some vanilla. And, because sprinkles are the secret ingredient to get kids to try literally anything, I tossed in sprinkles. Some of the bagels were "tie-dye" colored anyway, so the color scheme was already a little wacky.

Baked them off, and I have to tell you - they were a total hit. I actually ate one out of curiosity and was kind of surprised by how delicious they were. The kids and their friends devoured them, and I dodged my guilt of throwing any food away for yet another day.

I'm not sure this was an extremely savvy move financially, but it sure bought me a whole lot of room in our house and some serious peace of mind. Any parent of young children knows the stuff just accumulates and appears to always be coming in the door, not out. I am constantly finding pieces of toys scattered absolutely everywhere. And in a small house, it takes so little to make the place look trashed.

I started removing some of the toys that I realized weren't being used much on a regular basis. Slowly, I'd add them to bins in the basement which were out of sight. It may be hard to see here, but there are HUNDREDS of little cars and plastic toys and random pieces within these bins.

This happened very slowly over the course of several months, and no one seemed to notice or ask for anything I had put into the bins. I tried at one point going through it with the kids, but of course, every single item was the most special to them and couldn't possibly leave the home (even if they didn't even realize it was there). So I let the toys continue to sit there - and yes, I'm sure you're thinking, "Why didn't you just bring them to Goodwill immediately?" but I once did that and my then 4 year old said in the sweetest, most respectful tone, "Mom, before you give anything away, can you please ask me first?" Which honestly, feels like a reasonable request for how to treat another human sharing a home with you.

I wanted them out of the house, but I also wanted the kids to have some autonomy over the decision, both out of respect and also as a tangible lesson in letting go of STUFF. So one snowy day when we were all home, we made a deal with them: they could pick out ANY item (under $20) in exchange for all the toys being donated. They were hesitant, looking through all the toys in the bins, but I could tell they were intrigued. We sat down at the computer together, looking online at things they might want to buy. They became so excited in the process that letting go of the toys felt like a very small price to pay. Alice wanted a "rainbow unicorn princess dress" and Otis wanted a Pokemon stuffed animal. 

Before we hit "purchase," we talked about it one more time: "So this means that if we buy these, all the items here will leave our house and go to other kids for them to play with. Do you agree?" Of course, the allure of the new things was so strong, that it was an easy yes. So we clicked, immediately brought the bins of toys out of the house and into the car, and we've heard no regrets since. It felt like a conscious family decision that everyone was actually excited about, the kids got a little lesson in prioritization and letting go, and $40 felt like a small price to pay for such a massive cleaning out.

I'm going to tell you what we spent on Christmas presents this year, which I know runs the risk of being tacky AF. But I'm going to do it anyway for a few reasons. #1, This is a blog about being scrappy, so obviously I don't care about being tacky all that much, and #2, I think we need to get over our inclination to connect spending a lot with caring a lot.

​If anything, trying to remain within a tight fiscal goal forced me to  think about each gift that much more. I love the excitement and the presentation of gifts, so I really focused on that this year; I know for a fact that the thought I put into each of these gifts was significant, even if what I spent was minimal. 

I'll note that we don't really buy our kids much for Christmas. We are lucky that they have a lot of people in their lives that buy them gifts and I don't feel the need to inundate them with tons more. So I tried to focus on little things that would be fun to open but that don't have a giant footprint (or price-tag).

Here are our daughter's gifts:

And here are our son's gifts:

A dreamcatcher ($0 at the Swap Shop; a "worry stone" in a little velvet bag (given to us in a box of hand me downs from a friend $0); Dog Man book ($.95 at Goodwill); a frisbee ($3 at Goodwill); a pack of Peanuts Band-Aids ($1 on clearance); and Uglydoll book and a Big Nate book ($0 at the Swap Shop); a collector's Pokemon metal card ($11 on Amazon); and a bunch of EX cards he's been begging for (found used on Facebook marketplace for $15 total). Otis's gift total: $30.95

I consider it a game every season to decorate for as little money as possible - of course I could NOT decorate and that would be free, but I mean, what are we doing here, right? Each year it looks a little different, but this year it's simple but festive - here's how I broke it all down: 

The wreath was in someone else's discarded holiday items, so that was free; it's obviously fake but looks pretty convincing, so we use it every year and dress it up differently. This year we got a $1 buffalo check bow from Dollar Tree and added in some battery-operated fairy lights ($5 on Amazon and they are operated by remote! And they actually have lasted through multiple seasons).

The planters are actually just the leftover mums I purchased at the end of summer. When the blossoms died, I cut them all back so it was just the greens for a while. 

My plan was to pull them out and put something new in for Christmas, but instead of doing that, I just decided to pump it up a bit by sticking in $1 decorations and branches from the bottom of our Christmas tree.

I added some more fairy lights to the planters, and done!

We are NOT gentle on our couch. It was purchased when my 6 year old was an infant and it has endured more abuse than most pieces of furniture will see in their lifetime. It gets jumped on so often that every one of the support beams are actually broken. The springs are legit not even connected to anything anymore.

Not only is this wildly uncomfortable, it also makes it inevitable that any item that goes near the couch will disappear into the deep, dark, recesses of the couch's innards. This is the actual FLOOR you can see when you lift up a cushion. It's not pretty. And it's definitely not comfortable.  

All that is going on structurally, but above ground, it's not better. The cushions have been ripped open SO many times, in SO many different places, stuffing everywhere, and I just keep sewing them back together. 

Ew. Ew ew ew ew.

So, is it time to buy a new couch? It's fair to say we're way past due. Have I been spending hours pouring over pictures of new sofas? Without a doubt. Here's the one I'm pining after: 

It's leather, and soft, and beautiful...and also $3,000. Which, as my husband points out, is not that much less than we've previously spent on cars. My dad notes that we could finance it interest free, and he's not wrong - and then my mom replies, "You know that's not the way she does things!" and she's not wrong either.  And though I know we could prioritize this beautiful thing and use some savings to buy it, there's a little voice in my mind that says not to - because as soon as we do I know the roof will start leaking or the refrigerator will give out and I just feel a bit safer having extra cushion (pun intended, of course) for when that inevitably happens. 

So until the day comes when I feel comfortable letting go of an extra $3,000, we'll make do. I started by wrangling up some spare wood pieces from the basement to stabilize under the cushions. 

Now that we weren't actually sinking into it, and I had sewn up the obvious rips, I just needed a way to cover the entire thing so we weren't constantly losing things into it. Oh, and to cover up how horrendous it looked. 

These couch covers are a far cry from the gorgeous leather sectional I want, but they are covering up a multitude of uglinesses. And for a total project cost of $100, we can let that extra $2,900 sit in our savings account and let our dog roll her furry body all over this couch for a while longer. 

I had a little love affair with curbside grocery pickup during the height of the pandemic, but part of why I was eager to get back in there myself was to visit my favorite section of every grocery store: THE DISCOUNT SECTION.

Sometimes I mention the discount section to people and they respond, "Huh. I don't think I've ever noticed a discount section." To which I stare at them blankly, wondering how anyone could miss the most exciting spot in the store. It's always different. Always a surprise. Always discounted. Sometimes almost expired.

I base entire weeks of meals on what I can find in the discount bins/shelves. Which is why menu planning doesn't totally suit me...I might find this pack of hamburger buns on clearance with an expiration date of tomorrow, and then guess what? We're having burgers tonight.

Come to think about it, as I scan my pantry, there's rarely a time when we have bread products in the house that don't have these stickers on them.

And it's a real treat when I get to have a fancy brand of coffee that I would never splurge on otherwise, or find an ENTIRE BOX of Lara bars marked down in bulk, or find this entire section of new books marked down to $3.99 each - I stock up on them and put them in my gift drawer for when I need to pull something out quickly. 

Grocery shopping can be less than exciting, so I love the thrill of seeing what I'll find on the discount aisles and how that might steer our menu for the week. So give me all your dinged up cans, dented boxes, and nearly expired grocery offerings - because hey, at 50% off, I'll even splurge on name brand pasta.

I know. It's making you uncomfortable just thinking about purchasing consumables for your family at the same place that you can also purchase a $1 pregnancy test. I generally feel this way also. But once in a while I will feel somewhat compelled to purchase an item from the Dollar Tree's food section, and I've actually been pleasantly surprised a few times lately. 

Next up, these giant soft pretzels, sold frozen and heated up in the microwave. This is a nutritionally vapid food no matter where you purchase it, but my kids LOVE them and one could do worse as an afternoon snack. ​

Next up, these raviolis. I know, getting into dairy items at DT may be too much of a stretch for you, but these are sold frozen, have a pretty transparent ingredient list, and are actually delicious. I especially love that they are jumbo, and there are a decent number of them in each bag. Plus, I trust the Pede Brothers, whoever they may be. They've apparently been ravioliing since '67.

Last on my list (for now) is this giant bag of Himalayan pink salt. Is it actually from the Himalayas? I'm not betting my dinner on it. But it is a nice texture, looks beautiful, and tastes great. I guess I don't ask much of salt, but this certainly exceeds my expectations of what $1 will get me in that department. 

I don't expect you to rush to Dollar Tree for dinner items after reading this, but maybe it will make you at least a LITTLE curious to consider a glance towards the food section next time you're buying your gift bags or scotch tape. Just stay away from the $1 pregnancy tests. Those are worth splurging on name brand for.

We go on a lot of camping trips. I won't call us super hard-core, since we're usually not gone for more than 2-3 nights, and we are typically not more than a couple miles to the nearest chain restaurant or grocery store, but still. My dad likes to call what we do "car-camping," meaning no, we did not trek all our equipment and supplies into the camp site, we drove them there, and our cars are ready to go when we need to dash out for more supplies. 

There is plenty we spend way too much money on when we're camping (i.e. food and drinks - but hey, it's cheaper than eating out!) but I definitely have established my own scrappy hacks for how to save money everywhere else. First off is our tent: it's massive, technically sleeps 12, and gives our family of 4 + dog extensive room. Purchased new, this would have felt kind of silly, but guess what? People are constantly realizing that they actually don't use those tents they purchased and so there are ALWAYS tents being sold secondhand. We got ours on Facebook Marketplace for $115 and the kicker is it HADN'T EVEN BEEN OPENED. 

The camping qualm that may irritate me most is keeping food cold and not soggy. I also absolutely despise purchasing bags of ice. I know they are cheap, but it just drives me crazy to have to purchase them EVERY time we go camping, and then replenish them daily since it melts so fast. Also, I don't love for our food containers to sit in pools of water, so I have trained myself to prepare ahead of time and freeze gallons of water (which I usually purchase for our first camping trip and reuse through the summer until our last camping trip).

These giant blocks of ice keep the cooler cold, don't melt for several days, and don't result in water all over the cooler. Plus, you can drink the water as it melts, should you want/need to. I also have some freezer packs that come in those delivery meal kits that work perfectly in food coolers. (No, I never purchase these, for the record, but enough people have given me free coupons to try them out that I now have a bunch of the cold packs which I OBVIOUSLY am not throwing away or "recycling" as they suggest.) The trick with these is to freeze them flat ahead of time so that they fit perfectly in the cooler and you're not finagling with a rock solid odd shape that just takes up more room. Also, I do typically wrap them in a plastic grocery bag so that if they should leak, nothing gets on the food. 

While I've got you absolutely ENTHRALLED with ice and water vessels, I'll also share my tip of purchasing a spouted water jug at the beginning of the summer which we use to fill our cups, and refill throughout the summer. I know there are ones that you can purchase that are actually reusable, made of silicone or plastic, and this may be my next purchase. But until then, I figure I can justify reusing the $3.99 one all summer.

These next two are really scrappy, even for me, but I can't help myself. Yes, I keep every napkin ever given to me that I don't end up using - Dunkin Donuts, wrapped around those packs of utensils when you get food to go, left over from one of my kid's birthday parties...yep, all those napkins end up in a bag, which comes camping with us to clean up spills or marshmallows or whatever.

Same goes for any sort of plastic bag we've got hanging around. For someone who doesn't buy Ziplocs, I sure feel like I end up with a lot of them. People are often giving us things in Ziploc bags and I keep all of them to bring camping.

They come in very useful for leftover food (which I just can't bear to waste) and can just be tossed back into the cooler. Yes, I made Dave hold up the bag with leftover food in it so I could take a picture to prove this point:

So, my next mission is to figure out a way to really utilize all these cooler bags that we had hanging around...I brought a few camping and we put drinks in them, which kept them decently cold, but it wasn't a perfect system. I saw somewhere that you can make a cooler cover out of them which extends the coldness of your cooler even longer, so I'm thinking that will be my next project. 'Til then - happy camping!

You know how watermelon is SO GOOD when you first cut it, and no one can get enough of it that first day? And then you know how watermelon suddenly becomes the least desirable thing as soon as it's been placed in the fridge for even one day? Yeah. I know that too.

I'm pretty good at using up leftovers, but I have to say, I struggled with leftover watermelon...

​Until I realized it was the all time perfect smoothie base. It's so watery anyway, and actually has a great flavor that you can't really get from other fruits. Throw in some frozen cherries, some banana, and whatever else you have hanging around, and POOF, it's brought back to life and your fridge space is clear.

I'm sure by now it comes as no surprise that I don't buy many things new. Secondhand things are so much a part of my life that I almost didn't write this post because I thought, "Who DOESN'T shop secondhand, anyway??"

I grew up on secondhand, since Goodwill was where we did all our shopping, so I come by it very honestly. I love walking in not knowing what you're going to find. I love the thrill of the hunt. And I love the fact that not everything is "on trend" and therefore going to be what I see on every other person I see. I have always been able to completely lose myself in a thrift store, looking over everything.

I have to admit, most of my clothes are not actually purchased secondhand, they are mostly just straight-up hand-me-downs from other people that I don't pay for. Let's be honest, THAT is my favorite way of acquiring clothing. But I'm highlighting here some purchases I made either via Goodwill or consignment, because they are particularly good scores.

And yes, I love the frugal part of secondhand shopping, but I also am highly motivated by the fact that it eliminates the need to bring new crap into the world. Don't get me wrong, I LOOOOOVE clothes, but there's plenty of "stuff" in the world already, and being the second (or third, or fourth) owner of something reduces the need for more to be made unnecessarily.