Tricks of Being Cheap

I know that I sound like a broken record but I love being cheap. A lot of people may say that it's not politically correct to say cheap. They say you should call yourself someone who looks for deals, thrifty, frugal or perhaps financially conscious. But no matter what way you look at it, it still comes back to me being cheap.

In my quest for doing everything as cheaply as I can; I have found a few tricks (besides using coupons) that have helped me stretch my money. Although most of these things may seem small when you add them up they really will save money.



Trick 1:
I cut my son's hair in the summer. This saves us so much money because his hair grows so fast and kids haircuts are ridiculously priced (especially for boys).
When he was littler I was able to cut his hair all year round. But now that he's older and is in school my hair cutting skills are not up to par. But in the summer we keep his hair short and it is easier to not mess up his hair. So he doesn't mind. (I really do understand his thinking because I am not very good at cutting hair. This is why my husband won't even let me look his way with a pair of clippers. He's says that it is better for our marriage.)
I just use clippers that I got from Walmart for about 10.00 and looked up how to do it on the internet. One great tip if you want to do it yourself is to pull a kitchen chair outside onto a patio and do it. The clean up is so much easier.



Trick 2:
Buy a foaming dish soap and refill it. I bought my first foaming dish soap about two years ago. Since we have a dishwasher we don't need that much dish soap. But I found that with regular dish soap we tended to use way more than we needed because that is how it is dispensed. Well, after using the foaming kind I noticed that we used so much less. What I do is I fill the empty foaming dish soap container with about 3/4 of an inch of regular dish soap. Then I fill the rest of the container with really hot tap water. I put the lid on and shake it around until it is combined.
It works just as great as the expensive foaming kind but since I use regular dish soap then it comes out to be so much cheaper. Doing it this way at our house we only go through about 1 bottle of dish soap every 3-4 months as apposed to 1-2 a month. This saves us about 30.00 a year (if we bought it without coupons).




Trick 3:
Cut your dryer sheets in half. You still get the same result as full size dryer sheet. So if you cut all the sheets in box of 70 sheet in half; it just turned it into a box of 140.




Trick 4:
Make your own dish washer detergent. It is so simple and cheap. Here's my recipe:

Equal Parts :
Borax (found in laundry isle and is a natural substance)
Baking Soda

Put in a large bowel and mix well . Store in an air tight container. I put mine in an old ice cream bucket that we had.

*Remember to keep away from children and pets. Even a small amount can be very poisonous.

Also since both ingredients are natural substances they don't have the same impact on the environment as regular detergent.
I have found that this works just as great as the store brand. However, everyone's dishwasher and water is a little different so equal parts of the ingredients may not work for everyone. I had to add more baking soda to the mix because it was leaving a film on my dishes. I would try it out before you do a large load to see if you have the ratio's right.
I made it about 1 1/2 years ago and we still have some left. I only paid about 5.00 for all the ingredients. Very cheap!



Trick 5:
Use cloth napkins and cloth rags. I hardly ever buy napkins or paper towels. I find it hard to pay money for something that was intended to throw away. My kids make so many messes during the day that I can't tell you how many we used to go through. So last year, I found a bunch of cloth napkins on clearance for about .50 each and I had some old shirts of my husbands that I cut up to make rags. I do have to do about 1 extra load of wash a week but we figured that it is still cheaper than to use paper products.

A big bonus of doing this is that we are having less of an impact on the environment. I find that most things that you do to be cheap have this type of a side effect. You've got to love it!




Does anyone have tricks to be cheap too? I would love to hear your ideas.