2026, Family, Health, home, Uncategorized

Waste Not, Want Not

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This is clean up week in our town, and people have loads of debris piled on the curbs outside their houses. The city will come this week to collect it all and take it to the landfill.

We moved a twin bed frame and mattress/box spring here from ND with the hope our son and DIL could use it for their daughter in a couple of years. It was the bed our daughter slept on about 25 years ago. Despite its age it is very clean and in perfect condition. Well, the offer of the bed was politely declined, which is fine with us, but now we are left with a twin bed in our basement with no one to sleep in it.

No charity organization will take mattresses. I understand their reluctance given hygiene issues. I don’t have the energy to try to sell it, so I decided to pay the city $30 to haul away the mattress. It just burns me to have to do this, since it seems like such a waste. When did bedbugs and vermin become such a problem?

Had we more friends and family in the I know we would have found someone to take the mattress. I am keeping the headboard, footboard, and bed frame to either give away or sell in the future. It disassembles nicely and doesn’t take up much room. It is a lovely Ethan Allen piece. I know my ancestors are looking disapprovingly at me now. What a waste!

How did your family practice frugality? In what ways are you frugle?

23 thoughts on “Waste Not, Want Not”

      2. Regardless of any bedbug issue, when you buy a used mattress you are buying their accumulation of deposited dead skin cells and undisclosed bodily fluids.

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  2. Rise and Shine,Baboons,

    Did my family practice frugality? It was the coin of the realm! Coupon clipping, shopping sales, and using/re-using things until they fell apart was the standard. Mom made the world’s worst Kool-Aid, skimping on the sugar and adding generous amounts of extra water. That was actually a gift, given the effects of sugar and food dyes on health.

    Mattresses were used until they had a deep valley in the middle, complete with lumps and holes in the cover. Grandma made all her own pillows from the goose down of geese she raised. That goose down was placed in pillow covers made of flour sacks. The flour sacks were also used for towels and sewn together for sheets. When I cleaned out Mom’s house in 2009, readying it for sale, she still had a set of those sheets, frayed and with holes but she could not discard them. We had those sheets and pillows when I was a child.

    One of my high school friends moved her extremely elderly parents to Phoenix where her brothers live. (Her mother is still alive, age 102 years). Their apartment was infested with bed bugs. They bit her father which threw him into a health crisis. It took her months of work to rid the place of them and to nurse her father back to health. He was in his 90s at the time. My understanding is that bed bugs have always been a problem, but that hotels and used furniture stores in warm places breed them. Here you can avoid them by placing upholstered furniture in the sun or in the cold to kill them. I never buy used upholstered furniture which can harbor them unless I know the party selling them treat the furniture for bed bugs.

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  3. Similar to Jacque, “Frugal” could be my middle name. Mom was the money manager in the house and clipped coupons, collected box tops and Gold Bond stamps, and made most dinners from scratch. Even Hamburger Helper was a rare “treat.” She also sewed and made a lot of clothing for herself and some for the rest of us. Even a couple of suits for Dad!

    I’m my mother’s son. I keep track of finances down to the dollar now. I used to track literally every penny. Inflation, you know. Pennies don’t really count anymore. I’ve always been a saver, going back to the grade school bank accounts most of us boomers were exposed to and encouraged to open.

    I used to teach a community ed class in Bloomington called “The Frugal Wine Gourmet.” I specialized in helping students find excellent wines under $5.00. This was back in the late 1980s when lots of drinkable wines (not Boone’s Farm!) could be bought for as little as $2. Lots of high quality wines could be bought for $10. So finding excellent wine for $5 was a passion of mine.

    I always consult Consumer Reports for larger purchases. I’ll comparison shop at least a little bit. I have stopped worrying about nickels and dimes at the grocery store. I don’t do coupons much anymore, but if something I buy regularly is on sale, I’ll stock up.

    Bottom line: frugal people rarely have to worry about money in their old age as much as spendthrifts do. 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. Yes, my folks clipped some coupons, collected S&H Green and Gold Bond stamps… Watched for sales, used left-overs, didn’t eat out much. My mom sewed some of our (and all of our dolls’) clothing.

    I am a little over the top – I’ve told how I don’t let anyone at my restaurant table throw away the unused napkins – I use them in the kitchen to wipe up spills…

    I was in a Walmart the other day (manage to avoid it except maybe once a year) and was just appalled at the quantity of shelves of stuff that no one will ever buy. I buy very few things retail, thrift shops provide a lot. On the other hand, we don’t need much at this point besides food.

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  6. My mom was extremely frugal. She taught me about washing and re-using ziplock bags and aluminum foil. I still do it. We always re-used or re-purposed things.

    I still re-use and re-purpose things. I feel guilty about plastics and I try to find a use for all those single use containers. It gets to the point where I have a cupboard full of recyclables and I will finally decide to recycle them.

    I’m not so frugal in other ways. I like to buy beautiful things and I can be terribly impulsive.

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  8. Husband has a mission, it seems, to use up leftovers any way he can, even if it means making what I term as “glop” which means he combines foods you really shouldn’t combine. That is how he is frugal.

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  9. I’m sometimes frugal, sometimes not. I don’t like to waste things, on the other hand, quality is also important to me. At the local farmers’ market, for instance, especially early in the season, I will spend extravagantly on fresh veggies. I’ll also buy fresh flowers every week simply because I enjoy them so much. Local honey, home made tortillas, fresh eggs, goats’ milk soap, cheese, and maple syrup are examples of items I’ll pay more for than what I would pay at the local supermarket, simply because of superior taste and freshness. Also, I like to support local entrepreneurs.

    Water is one resource we’re very aware of not wasting. No fifteen minute showers at our house, and I have to say that I often wonder about the wisdom of washing plastic bags. On the other hand, my old PT Cruiser didn’t get good gas mileage. I justified driving it because I drove only roughly 1,000 miles per year. It’s hard being a purist.

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      1. I am, by nature, a cheapskate. I recognize that in myself, so there are sometimes I intentionally “turn off” that setting, but I have to tell myself that intentionally, otherwise I revert to my default settings.

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  11. To sell a used mattress in this state it has to have been thoroughly sanitized, have its original label declaring contents, be free of all stains and rips, etc. Charity shops just won’t take them.
    Clyde, 75% of the way through a move.

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  12. I remember feeling some regret when my sister and I cleaned out my mother’s apartment after she died. She was quite good about getting rid of things throughout her life; she didn’t accumulate. Very little had to be thrown away. It was mostly nice enough to be sold at garage sales or donated. There was no home to be found for her mattress and box spring, though, so those had to be leaned up against the dumpster, to be hauled away, and it made me rather sad.

    I knew the history of those furnishings, though, and I know they were 35 years old. In a less frugal home, they wouldn’t have lasted that long.

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  13. My folks were depression babies so, like others here, frugal was just a way of life. I still carry some of that around with me…. work hard not to throw out food (although “glop” is not happening here), I wash out plastic bags, recycle (including plastic bags up to a reciptacle at Kowolskis. I do draw the line at saving wrapping paper (which my mother did when I was young).

    And although “frugal” is a perfectly acceptable word, I don’t like to apply it to myself because I associate it with wasband #1; he gave “frugal” a bad name.

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