Frugal Friday

I can't stand paying for kitchen trash bags and have been trying to come up with a suitable alternative. When I ordered a coat for my son for Christmas, the envelope it arrived in was more like a large plastic bag. I was thrilled because I realized I could recycle this "envelope" and use it as a trash bag. (It takes very little to thrill me.) Ladies (and gents), we just have to be on our toes and be creative!

Another way to save on kitchen trash bags is to just have less trash. My church has a dumpster in the parking lot for recycling paper. The church gets a certain amount of money for every pound of paper it collects. So I can stretch my dollars, save the environment and "give" to my church in one fell swoop!

I also like to find creative ways to disguise birthday and Christmas gifts for my children. At Christmas I used a round tube like box that originally held dishwasher detergent concentrated packs. I put the gift in the box with some tissue paper for padding and wrapped it up. I've saved the box for future use. I think I may be able to make a sort of gift bag out of it if I put a handle on it and cover the box with some pretty wrapping paper. I've also saved an empty racquet ball container that I'll probably use to put a gift card and some candy in the next time one of my kids has a birthday party to go to. I am not an unusually creative person, so if I can think of these things, so can you!

Oh, scroll down to my post entitled Kings and Queens of Cheap to see what a few people in my local area are doing to save some dough.