A "poor person hack"

bobcat said:
I do this all the time when I'm painting. In between coats, instead of washing out the brush or 4" roller, I just put them in a zip lock sandwich bag and squeeze the air out. They will last for several days, so no need to rush or rinse.

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I do the same thing.. also with brushes I wrap foil around them if I'm going to be using them again in an hour or 2
 
hollydolly said:
I do the same thing.. also with brushes I wrap foil around them if I'm going to be using them again in an hour or 2
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When my father in law was alive he was a self-employed painter/decorator. He kept a jam jar half full of water, and when he wanted a break from painting he'd drop the brush into the jar. The water stopped the oil based paint from drying out and when he wanted to restart, he'd wrap the brush in old newspaper to soak the water off, then use a dry bit of newspaper to get the rest of the water, and paint off, before starting to paint again.

Worked well, and we've done that many times when redecorating.
 
I use grain bags to store kindling for the wood burner that I'll pick up after splitting wood. I'll also use for trash in the barn & tie the bag shut with bailing twine. I collect the bailing twine from opened bales on a hook that can be used for a lot of things: replacing broken horse blanket straps, tying gates open to the fence, tying hog panels to t-posts in the garden, tying hoses up for winter storage, making a loop to go around an item & hanging up on the wall out of the way, etc.

Glass bottles are used for food storage & gift giving. Plastic food containers are used for storing small items, giving away leftovers, refilling with oil/grease for disposal, refilling ketchup bottles w/home-made BBQ taken to parties. Good cardboard boxes are kept for shipping gifts & the local grocery will give you the grid-bottle dividers after they stock the liquor shelves which I use to store my empty canning jars.

For food, I like to buy 50# bags of flour & other things at the local bulk food store. I also can or freeze what we grow in our garden. Fruits I buy in bulk & either make jam or freeze for pies later. Buying your meat like a side of beef & a whole hog keeps expenses down too.
 
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hollydolly said:
I would hope it was because duck has to be served Pink....
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I'm thinking it was the crispy skin, but I will await the answer.

Personally I don't care for duck served pink, but that's me, well and everyone I know and shared duck with. Never have been served any duck that was pink in a restaurant. That could be because I'm in the US. We usually have duck at home on special occasions. My wife does a pretty good job, but no where near the amount of dishes that the chef in the video did.

Now I'm sitting here thinking how good potatoes fried in duck fat are, and why aren't I can't have any.
 
Flarbalard said:
I'm thinking it was the crispy skin, but I will await the answer.

Personally I don't care for duck served pink, but that's me, well and everyone I know and shared duck with. Never have been served any duck that was pink in a restaurant. That could be because I'm in the US. We usually have duck at home on special occasions. My wife does a pretty good job, but no where near the amount of dishes that the chef in the video did.

Now I'm sitting here thinking how good potatoes fried in duck fat are, and why aren't I can't have any.
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Potatoes roasted in Duck fat or Goose fat are absolutely amazing!
 
StarSong said:
I have all manner of tricks to shave pennies, then unexpected budget busters come along and the money goes out by the hundreds or thousands.
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I think that comes under the heading of Murphy’s Law lol lol. Just when I think I’m ahead, with all my penny saving hacks, something happens to spend what I saved.

The other way to look at that is, we’re smart enough to save the money here, so when something happens there, we have extra 😇😇
 
I've found that toothpaste tubes never run out. Literally never. If you lived for 1000 years, and kept using that same tube, it would still always provide toothpaste if you squeezed it in the right place.

I'm still using the same tube my parents bought in 1928. I plan to hand it down to my great-grandchildren. I think there's probably some little-known law of physics at play here, that we don't know about yet. Maybe A-I could figure it out.

So why do people keep spending money on new tubes of toothpaste, just because it seems to be getting a little low? Trust me, it will never run out. And the prices keep going up, so it's a great poor person hack to know about.
 
OK, so I exaggerated a little bit about the 1928 part. But most of it is true. 😄

Here's one that really is true. We were once invited over to a neighbor's home to join a group of friends for dinner. They had the table beatifully set with everything looking pretty spiffy... except for one thing. Instead of napkins (paper or linen), everybody had a piece of paper toweling, the kind that comes in a roll. They said they use it instead of napkins because it's cheaper. Seemed kind of bizarre to me. And I wonder if they really saved anything. This was about 20 years ago, but right now, our local market seems to be charging insane prices for paper towels. And those huge packages of napkins are still pretty cheap at Costco.
 
When finances were tight I stopped buying books and fully relied on my public library. I never reverted to my old ways. Saves a lot of money and avoids so much clutter. Bonus: when 50 pages into a book that I'm not finding worthwhile, I'm fine with cutting bait and returning it because I have no financial investment.
 
StarSong said:
When finances were tight I stopped buying books and fully relied on my public library. I never reverted to my old ways. Saves a lot of money and avoids so much clutter. Bonus: when 50 pages into a book that I'm not finding worthwhile, I'm fine with cutting bait and returning it because I have no financial investment.
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I used to love the library , all my life I've used the library since being a child, then they closed our beautiful town library and opened up a tiny new one that holds very little stock.... to get to another bigger library I have to drive to another town.. where they have replaced almost all their stock except fiction and chidren's books.. with computers for use by students.. so I buy books now
 
hollydolly said:
I used to love the library , all my life I've used the library since being a child, then they closed our beautiful town library and opened up a tiny new one that holds very little stock.... to get to another bigger library I have to drive to another town.. where they have replaced almost all their stock except fiction and chidren's books.. with computers for use by students.. so I buy books now
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I'm very lucky as our local high school shares it's parking lot with a county library branch and it's five minutes from my house. I'm actually heading there in a few minutes.
 
hollydolly said:
I used to love the library , all my life I've used the library since being a child, then they closed our beautiful town library and opened up a tiny new one that holds very little stock.... to get to another bigger library I have to drive to another town.. where they have replaced almost all their stock except fiction and chidren's books.. with computers for use by students.. so I buy books now
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In Missouri we can have books transferred from other libraries to our local library and pick them up locally.
 
StarSong said:
When finances were tight I stopped buying books and fully relied on my public library. I never reverted to my old ways. Saves a lot of money and avoids so much clutter. Bonus: when 50 pages into a book that I'm not finding worthwhile, I'm fine with cutting bait and returning it because I have no financial investment.
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I've started doing that lately, too, although the selection at my local library is pretty dismal. It doesn't look like they've updated the collection since the early 90s.
 
We have a wonderful library in my town. The receipt they give you when you check out books always list how much money you saved by using the library. I’m amazed every time as it’s always well over $100. I could never afford to buy new hardbacks. Considering I read at least 100 books a year that’s a lot of savings..

Of course, if someone somewhere is not buying books, publishing businesses suffer and pretty soon the library won’t have new books either. I sincerely thank all of you who are willing to purchase books.
 
hollydolly said:
I used to love the library , all my life I've used the library since being a child, then they closed our beautiful town library and opened up a tiny new one that holds very little stock.... to get to another bigger library I have to drive to another town.. where they have replaced almost all their stock except fiction and chidren's books.. with computers for use by students.. so I buy books now
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I'm a big reader and foreign film (DVD) watcher too. We are fortunate because our local library is on a large 'network' and we can search and order books and DVD's from about a dozen different libraries and they will be delivered to our local library. Might have to wait up to a week to get your request, but worth it. No cost for that service.
 

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