Are Salvage Grocery Stores Extreme?

Is it extremely frugal to shop at salvage grocery stores? I got into a conversation with someone who thought so. She thought the food there was out of date, crunched cans and ripped packages. I tried to tell her that the government didn't allow food like that to be sold for human consumption.

So... do you shop at salvage grocery stores? I do. And I don't think it's extreme, but I think it's smart.

Whiten clothes for free

Here's one that might gross you out, but I'm told it works (no, I haven't tried it).

To get white clothes really white, soak them in human urine.

That may not even strike some as extreme, but it will cause a few "ewwws" out there. I can hear it.

Dibs and dabs

Do you save the salt from the pretzel bag? How about the sugar from a package of candied ginger? Cookie crumbs? Bread crumbs? Those things add up faster than you might think if you have a special place to put them. And USE them. There's no sense in keeping dibs and dabs if you don't use them.

The last package of candied ginger I used yielded enough sugar to sweeten a cup of tea. Why not? I paid for it.

Hang laundry wherever...

If you can't hang the laundry outside, hang it inside. Okay, so that's not so extreme. But if you don't have a place for it inside, put it on wire hangers and hang those from doorways, from dresser knobs, from the backs of chairs, from lamp shades... wherever a hanger will fit. Of course you don't want to weight a lamp so it turns over or cause damage to anything. Put heavier items in the doorways.