Liquid laundry detergent

When your liquid laundry detergent bottle is empty, do you toss it? Don't. Use a butter knife or screwdriver to take out the nondrip spout and you'll sometimes find enough detergent to do another load. When you use that, pour a little water in the emptier contaner, swish it around and dump it in a bucket or bowl to use for mopping floors or other cleaning.

Popcorn salt

You used to be able to buy salt that was finely ground to use on popcorn or nuts, but it's not common any more. You don't need as much finely ground salt when you use it on snacks, so to save a little money and lower the salt content too, put regular salt through a coffee grinder or a blender.

Ok, here we go again...

Back at it. I moved Extremely Frugal to Blogger.com because I kept wanting to post to it and couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to migrate to another URL.

Anyway... tip of the day? Don't. Just don't. Don't window shop; that's dangerous to your budget. Don't get so thirsty that visions of Colas and Snow Cones dance in your head. Drink a big glass of water before you get to that point. Don't get so busy and hungry that the thought of a McD's hamburger makes you swoon.

Believe it or not, just keeping ahead of things, and NOT allowing yourself to go too far will save money.

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How to save water, tip number 1,452

So you know to turn off the water when you brush your teeth, you flush the toilet with your bath water, water the house plants with leftover water. Do you use dish water to mop the kitchen? If you use a dishwasher, it may be harder to do, but on the occasion when you make up a pan or sink of dish water, don't let it go to waste. If there are suds left, it will clean your kitchen floor. Saves water and soap.

Cheap meat tenderizer

Frugally priced beef and pork is often tough, but you can make it as tender as the most expensive roast or steak by marinating or cooking it with vinegar. That can taste a lot better than it sounds! Barbecue sauce made with vinegar or mustard sauces with vinegar will do the trick, as well as cooking pork with sauerkraut. For a nice roast, though, splash a little plain apple cider vinegar over it before you add spices or salt and pepper. The taste will go away, but the vinegar will nicely tenderize the meat.

Quick floor cloth

Need a quick and cheap way to brighten up a room? Use a floor cloth... or rather, a blanket as a floor cloth. Some blankets are quite pretty and stylize, especially the nonwoven kind. If you don't have any extras handy, thrift stores often have them. Even if you have to buy one new, they're cheaper than buying a floor cloth or area rug.

Frying bacon without curling

Ok, I'm back... just couldn't stand it when I have only a little to say. :)

You could buy something to hold the bacon flat when you're frying it (it can curl even in the microwave, I've found!), but simpler and cheaper because you don't have to buy anything extra: Lightly dust the bacon strips with flour before frying. The fat will fry out of it, and the flour will lightly crust and make the bacon hold its shape. It tastes great, too!

Look over there...

I have enjoyed writing this blog, but time just gets away from me and I haven't been posting nearly as often as I intended. So... I am going to ignore this one for awhile, and maybe permanently. I will post extremely frugal tips on my original blog when I can. I might change my mind and if so, I'll post that on my other blog.

Thanks to all of you who have followed me here. I'll see you over there!

Treating laundry stains

The cheapest way to get stains from fabric is to use bar soap and scrub. It will remove "ring around the collar," grease stains, ball point ink stains and a lot more. Wet the fabric, rub the bar soap into it, scrunch the fabric and scrub it against itself hard. It may take a little work, but most of the time it will happen.

(Do NOT dry a stained item in a dryer as the heat will set a lot of stains so they'll never come out.)