There are many ways to cut expenses during an economic crisis. Lately everyone is offering advice on what we could do without. But while some people are turning to public transportation or depriving themselves of dinner at a restaurant or a movie in a theater, I say you need not look further than your own living space to reestablish some degree of monetary freedom.
My grandparents came of age during The Great Depression, and my parents experienced the hardships of rationing during World War II. As a result, I’ve inherited coping skills designed to get me through tough fiscal times like the current recession. These evolutionary adaptive talents are as much a part of me as blue eyes and skinny ankles. I rarely think about them. But, for those whose ancestral lineage did not prepare them for financial hardship, I offer my family’s top ten practices for stretching those thinning dollars and cents...
1 - Household cleaners - just add water
I grew up believing the end portion of every household cleaner was super-concentrated. This was due to the fact that whenever a bottle of Windex, Ivory Liquid, Tide, or Pine Sol was running low, my mom began diluting it with water. According to her, as long as there were bubbles present, the product’s cleaning potential remained at maximum-strength.
* Also works with liquid soap and shampoo
estimated annual savings: $3.94 ($4.30 - $.36 for water)
2 - Scotch Tape - choose a conservative-length, standard-sized strip and stick with it
This one I figured out on my own. We used Scotch Tape for everything from wrapping gifts to mending tattered book bindings. When the roll was new, we unraveled generous strips two and three times the necessary length required for the task at hand. But as the roll got smaller, we suddenly became tape-preserving activists using quarter-inch micro-strips that barely stuck to anything after being pried from our finger tips. All this effort was to avoid buying a new roll. These days I treat every roll of tape as if it were my last from the beginning, carefully measuring each strip with the end in mind.
*This same principal should be applied to every roll of toilet paper.
estimated annual savings: $1.19
3 - Wrapping Paper - extreme recycling
The Christmases and birthdays of my youth were filled with great joy; lots of presents to open - some easier than others depending on availability of tape. It was during these times, however, that my mother’s normally passive frugality bordered on hysteria. Unable to fully concentrate on the giving and receiving of gifts, she would hover about the room pouncing on discarded scraps of wrapping paper like a linebacker on a fumble. Me and my brothers and father liked to wad the oldest reused paper in balls and toss them away before she could react. "That’s a perfectly fine piece of wrapping paper," she’d say after fishing them out of the trash, smoothing them out, and adding them to the pile of remnants that would be used on next year’s gifts.
estimated annual savings: $2 - $3 depending on the size of your family
4 - Fabric Softener Sheets - die or live free
This one’s simple. Fabric softener sheets were used repeatedly until one of two things happened: They a) disintegrated in the dryer from overuse, or b) escaped the house Trojan-Horse-style by stowing away in a pant leg or shirt sleeve.
estimated annual savings: $.88
5 - The Refrigerator Door - if you open it, he will come
No matter where he was in the house, my father had an uncanny ability to sense when someone was looking in the refrigerator. It was as if a "DOOR AJAR" signal went off in his head. If you took longer than 3 seconds to make up your mind, he would be there like a cat to the can opener. "Let’s go, that’s a refrigerator not an air conditioner," he’d say. Apparently, anything over three seconds was too much of a burden on the unit’s compressor; at that point we were just "throwing money out the window". Today, I own my own energy-efficient refrigerator, and whenever I open the door, I still feel like a basketball player in the paint trying to avoid a 3-second call.
estimated annual savings: $.01 (based on 5 minutes of excess open-door time at $.12 per kwh)
6 - Solid antiperspirant - No pain? No stain
This one’s designed to test how committed you are to saving a little money.
We used our stick deodorants until they no longer maintained contact with our armpits. Even when the surface had recessed below the applicator line, we applied the necessary pressure and endured the pain of skin-scraping, hair-removing plastic edges for that last hint of "Arctic Blast" or "Coral Reef". After the initial scars heal, your armpits will become sweet-smelling, concave calluses that no longer sweat, thus, eliminating the need for deodorant.
estimated annual savings: $3 - $4 depending on your pain threshold
7 - Magic Markers - let it bleed
When a marker began losing its magic, we turned it upside-down, placed it in a pencil cup, and waited. After a few days, gravity produced about enough ink for a four-letter word. You could usually complete a sentence in a month.
*also works with ketchup and salad dressing, and shampoo right up until the time you start adding water
estimated annual savings: $.14
8 - Bar Soap - a cleaning coalition
When a bar of soap got small enough to slip down the drain, we opened a new bar. But we didn’t get rid of the old one, we fused the bars into one. This was achieved by rubbing them together under warm water until they adhered to one another, then leaving them to bond in the soap dish overnight. Unlike some animal species thrown together to mate in cages, the bars of soap never rejected one another.
estimated annual savings: $1.15
9 - Flashlights - It’s all about the batteries
A flashlight’s capacity for sustained illumination is greatly determined by the quality and freshness of the batteries used to power it. But, as I learned early in life, most flashlights withhold light prematurely in hopes of being fed new power cells. So, before giving in, we put the flashlight through some tests. First, we beat the hell out of it, flogging it mercilessly with our bare hands. When that failed to produce a brightened beam, we attempted to fool the weakened flashlight by removing the batteries and reinserting them in different sequence.
*reshuffling batteries can also buy additional hours of channel surfing with the cable remote
estimated annual savings: $3.33
10 - Postage Stamps - Do you feel lucky?
When I was a kid, my mom saved envelopes with uncancelled postage. She then extracted the stamps by dangling them over a whistling tea kettle or soaking them in warm water. After laying them to dry, she’d glue them to letters she intended to mail, simultaneously reusing the postage and committing a federal crime. I admired her efforts back then, but as a twenty-four year employee of the postal service, where part of my job is to return mail with re-used stamps, I am no longer in favor of a custom that adds to my employer’s nearly $2 billion deficit. It sounds cool to screw the postal service, but don’t forget, I’ll be watching, and as you can see, I know all the tricks.
So stick to numbers 1 - 9. They’re legal, and if you practice them faithfully, you’ll end up saving enough money for that movie you were thinking of not going to.
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