I always have GREAT plans of turning old torn jeans into a purse for my DD or a quilt or something grand. I don’t even own a sewing machine. And even if I did, I don’t really even know how to use one. So, it’s the space and effort to “try” and save them, thinking about using them, etc. Just to be decluttering and throw them away…

I wasn’t planning on having a third baby – especially given the divorce, so when I moved out on my own I started purging baby stuff slowly, the girls being 2 and 4. A year after I got rid of the last of it? My new husband and I had been together for 2, and found ourselves expecting again.

I didn’t replace most of it, but was sad to have liquidated my cloth diaper stash :/

My last house came with a circa 1970 gold colored stove/oven. We had no money to purchase new appliances for the foreseeable future so I decided that I would improve the appearance of this appliance by giving it a really good cleaning. I spent the better part of one day cleaning the oven, the stove element rings, etc. I even removed the glass window from the front of the oven, took it apart and cleaned the drips that were between the 2 panes of glass. The stove was looking pretty good, however, the first time I turned on the oven the glass window broke. I managed to find a replacement (which I could not afford and unfortunately, I had to borrow money to buy!!!!). The appliance repair shop told me that one pane of glass in a stove is tempered and one is not and it will brake if you put put the untempered side of the window on the inside of your oven. It just goes to show no good deed goes unpunished….

We hired my hubby’s drinking buddy who is a carpenter to help us renovate our house because, he wouldn’t charge us much since he was a friend. Big mistake! Because he was paid cheaply, and because he was a drinking buddy, (they spend most of their working time drinking and working half corked )most of the work was half ass done or sloppily and we are now redoing everything! 10′s of thousands of $$ down the drain!

Can’t think of any great failure, but I always manage to leave my coupons at home for anything not large grocery shopping related.

After Christmas my husband and I and our 5 month old were traveling from the middle of the US to the east coast to visit his family. (They really wanted to see there grandaughter.)Because of the long trip with a nursing baby we knew we would have to spend the night half way. It was just way too long of a trip expecially with the added time of having to stop every three hours to feed a baby. So I did the frugalish thing (I know the really frugal thing would have been to not even need an hotel but we had decided it was a essential to have rest and be in one peice when we got to our destination.) and bid on a hotel from priceline. I put in a low big and landed a room for $35 at a Holiday Inn! I was really excited! i decided that we didn’t need to spend the extra $5 on incase we need to cancel. But I didn’t foresee the snow! We followed a snow storm the whole way the first day and had to pull off 2-3 hours before we got to our hotel and find another one because the roads were so hazardous. So instead of paying an extra $5 so we could change the hotel we paid $80 for an extra room when we had to stop.

There have been more than a few but my most typical frugal failing is going to the market with a couple of coupons that were expiring and were really a good deal and walking out of the store with far too many items that I did not need to buy just then.

The moral of the story: Sometimes frugality can cost more than it can save.

Last week I dropped $40 out of my pocket at the farmer’s market because I didn’t feel like lugging my purse. So, I had to go the ATM to get more cash and paid $6 in fees. Ugh! I also keep intending to shop at thrift stores and talk myself out of it when I see great sales online.

Well, maybe I should blushingly admit that my worst frugal move has been to NOT have this book.

But I think my hubby and I would agree that the worst mistake we made was going in with a friend on a cow. Half a beef in our freezer, and we hated every bite (not having a taste at the time for grass-fed beef). I would say that close to 200 pounds of it went *gulp* into the dogs’ dish or the garbage. So many other things we could have done with it…such an embarrassing memory.

I researched and bought some Austrees on ebay for a good price. I watered them every day because I didn’t want them to die. That was until I got a $200 water bill!!!! opps! My cheap trees suddenly weren’t so cheap!

One week I decided to try to make a caramel pie otherwise the only place I could get it was at %5.00 a slice at a restaurant. I tried using my grandmothers recipe where you can place Eagle Brand milk can in boiling water. I got busy and let the boiling water dry up as it takes several hours to make this caramelize. I heard a loud bang from upstairs. When I got downstairs immediately I saw the can of Eagle Brand Milk in the next room empty. The caramel was on the stove, cabinets, ceiling, and floor. I took me weeks to clean this all up as thick sticky caramel as it is hard to get up. I even had to repaint the ceiling. From now on when I try to make this recipe I set a timer for every 30 minutes to check the water level.