This past week's posts have been filled with how-tos. And frankly I'm about exhausted by all the how-tos. But I wanted to get them out there, for anyone else needing the information.
A lot of what we read on these frugal living blogs is how to do something you normally do, but for less. This information is all helpful. But in reality, most of our frugal living is not activity-oriented.
When I think of all the things that I don't do, that wind up saving us money, the list looks something like this:
1) I sometimes don't get around to replacing a burned-out light bulb for a long while. (Sorry, girls, that bathroom light bulb will eventually get changed out.)
2) Some weeks, cooking is not-so-creative and meals look like this -- breakfast: oatmeal, lunch: peanut butter on bread, dinner: a huge pot of soup that winds up feeding the 5 of us for 3 different dinners.
3) I keep myself out of stores, and save, save, save -- no coupons required when you're not shopping.
4) Old and worn towels take up life in the rag pile. I don't even cut them up. Large towels are great for wiping down the car, after a wash. Medium size towels make great mop-heads for my Swiffer. And the washcloths and fingertip towels are the perfect size for cleaning up kitchen spills.
5) I probably only get one or two professional haircuts per year, some years, not at all. The in-between times, I take a small pair of scissors and trim up every few weeks. And this takes me less time than driving to a salon -- about 10 minutes. (A note, I have thick and curly hair. A self-haircut doesn't show ragged edges on my type of hair.)
6) In summer, we sometimes skip a week of mowing the back lawn. Our mower is rechargeable electric, so this does result in less electricity used.
7) We stick with our ancient technology gadgets, like our phone. It's tethered to the wall, no portable phone for our house. We've had this phone for about 25 years, and it still works, so why replace it.
8) We've accepted hand-me-downs for probably 75% of our furniture. We didn't have to do anything to fill our house, but open the front door.
9) In the flower gardens, I plant almost all perennials or flowering evergreens. Plant once, and they come back year after year. Plus, I've learned to embrace the color green.
You see, what we don't do easily saves us as much money as what we do do. Maybe it sounds like we're lazy. But I like to think that we're just very busy, and don't have time to do everything.
How about you? Do you think that you save more money in the doing, or in the not-doing?
