I spent most of Sunday mudding my mom’s hallway and while I was there, it got me thinking nostalgically about all the hours I’ve spent doing this or that around here home. Since our fixer is mostly fixed (knock on wood), the bulk of our home improvement efforts have been at Babci’s 120 year old home. This got me thinking of babci’s less glamorous side of her frugal craziness. I do often portray her as an eccentric frugal goddess extraordinaire, but today I’m going to share some of the more frustrating aspects of her quest to save a buck.
Pack ratting her way to Huge Trash Pickup Fees
The first and most obvious example was when we moved Babci to town with us. Not only was the process cumbersome, but I also moved her on my first son’s due date. Yes, I was in my 40th week of pregnancy on the day of her move. Pregnant people get crazy especially with their first child. Nesting instincts are strong and part of my mental to do list was to move grandma to town. Moving day was nutty. One of my friends was in charge of “fabric”. She moved about 30 garbage bags of fabric. Luckily the house we bought came furnished so there wasn’t that much furniture we needed to move, but she still took a lot with her. Then came the jars. Surprisingly she was okay with ditching her particle board furniture, but we battled over the jars. She literally had over 500 jars of which she used about 30 on a regular basis. I was okay moving the real ball mason jars, but how many mayonnaise jars does one really need? Hint, it’s not 3 garbage bags worth. Finally just when I was about to concede, one of the bags I tried to move had a broken jar in it, and I cut my leg open. I refused to take the bloody bag of mayo jars with us. Into the trash pile it went. Babci still talks about those stupid jars. Is she ever short on jars? Of course not. She’s garbage picked a whole new collection of jars that we’re tripping over in the basement all over again.
The move itself was tense, but the aftermath was even worse. Next we scheduled her garden move which actually went very smoothly and was done in a day. I had some awesome friends who came out with me with their pickup and helped me dig it all out in a day. The tough part was when it was time to sell her property 2 years later. The attic, basement and various sheds were stuffed to the gills. I had already done one garbage pickup on moving day, but with the others, that packrattery cost about $800 in trash pickup fees. It also took countless hours to remove these items from every nook and cranny of the house. Since I lived 2 hours away, there were many many weekends I spent getting the house ready for sale. It was so great when we finally had that place sold and one less property to worry about.
Turning something useful into useless
Another time I was knee deep in some project at Babci’s house. I was through the demo phase and I needed to clean up. Luckily a few weeks prior I decided to stock babci’s house with some basic things needed for home improvement. Tools, those thick 3 mil contractor clean up bags, our shop vac, etc. Anyway, I couldn’t find the garbage bags and I asked babci where they were. “Oh, those. I fixed them for you, let me get them.” Fixed them? Oh this can’t be good. She comes back with a my bags, but she decided they were too big to be useful and that I would be much better off if she turned my 1 big bag into 3 little ones with a diameter of about a foot each. Did she just do one bag? Oh no, she converted the whole pack into these pygmy sized useless bags. ARRRRRGG!!! Do you know how much construction debris you can fit into those tiny bags? None. Nothing ruffles my feathers more than a home depot trip that could have been avoided as it’s an automatic hour wasted for every trip. That, plus the fact that contractor bags are WAY WAY more expensive than kitchen bags and now that’s the only thing they functioned as. My blood pressure still rises about 10 points when I think of her attempt to “help” save some money by making my giant bags more functional. To this day, she still can’t give me a good reason what possessed her to mess with those bags. It’s not like I deprive her of kitchen bags. She had a new pack of 80 kitchen bags still unopened in her cupboard.
Buying Perishable Food in Bulk
This one I just don’t get. My uncle did it too. When fruit is on sale, she gets way more than she needs and she’s always trying to pass rotten fruit my way. Babci, I don’t want your rotten fruit or the fruit flies buzzing around them. Next time instead of buying 25 pears, just buy5. I’ve often told her. For about 2 years when she moved here, she also had a habit of buying for her and for us, then trying to give me excess food. I went shopping with her, she saw me buying bananas, so why did she buy extra for us? She just wasn’t listening when I told her to only shop for her own needs and not ours. Of course babci equates food with love, so she was always trying to gift us food, even though it was me that was paying for it at check out. She refused to change her ways and I was sick of fighting every week about not taking her rotting food, so I finally asked her why she’s throwing so much money away. She said she didn’t throw money away. I handed her a $20 bill while we were driving rolled down the window and told her that if she likes wasting money so much, to save herself a step and just throw it out outright. I egged her on, DO it! She refused and thought I was being crazy to throw money away. I asked her how it was any different throwing food away every week? She finally got the point. I told her it kills me to throw away food because it’s like throwing away money. We go shopping every week. Even though she doesn’t drive, she has no need to stock up on things that go bad.
Not using something to make it last longer
I know for sure that Babci isn’t the only old person guilty of this. My aunt and my great in laws all had items that they didn’t want to use because they didn’t want to wear them out. As a result, when they passed, there were all kinds of items still in their boxes, unused like new. There were couches that were never sat on, dishes that never got eaten on, comforters that were never slept on. If you have stuff, use it. There is no point in having fancy dishes if you’re too afraid to break one during the holidays. I personally never got china because I break stuff like crazy, so I just have everyday dishes. I know I’d be that person that felt bad for breaking that $25 dish.
Taking Something Just because it’s FREE
Since frequenting yard sales is a favorite summer past time for Babci and I, this problem crops up on a regular basis. Not only does babci go through people’s trash on trash day, but she can’t resist the free piles at yard sales. She often takes home things that she has absolutely no use for. One time, she came to the car with a 5 gallon bucket full of rusty files. “Don’t you have wood files at home? ” “Yes, but these were FREE” “Yes, but why do you need 50 more of them?” Those ended up in the $800 trash heap. I suppose I could have sold them for scrap metal, but that house was 2 hours away, I was a new mom and in those days, my time was extremely limited, so off to the trash they went.
Not using the Correct Products on Something
Babci is rough on her stuff. I’ve had the same circulon non-stick pots and pans in my kitchen for the last 15 years. They still look like new. A couple of years ago, I decided that I had too many of them, so I gave a couple to babci. I warned her to only use wood or plastic on the frying pans so she doesn’t damage the finish. At first, she loved those pans and gave me nothing but praise, but after 3 months, she told me that the pans were poisoning her and she threw them out. The finish was flaking off and she chucked them. Well, scrambling eggs in the pan with her shiv isn’t exactly what I’d call using according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Using something in a way it was not supposed to be used
Babci’s 5 year old lawnmower broke this year. It’s engine cracked. Lawnmowers are meant to last a lot longer than that. She’s always breaking lawnmowers and frustratingly declaring them all as JUNK! We couldn’t figure it out until one day, my husband and I happen upon babci while she was using her “JUNK lawnmower”. She was in the middle of her garden with a dust cloud all around her. Upon closer inspection, we realized she was using her lawnmower as a wood chipper. She had a big pile of debris that she was running over multiple times to mulch it up into a form she could bury in her garden. Me thinks this is definitely not what the manufacturers had in mind when they described this unit as a mulching mower. Mystery solved. No wonder it’s always breaking. It’s meant to cut grass, not brambles. On a similar note, not performing maintenance on those items like changing the oil also plays a role in their early demise.
Well, those are the main examples I could think of today. So remember, in your quest for frugal living. Don’t take it so far that you end up costing yourself more money in the long run. Take care of your stuff, take home only what you need and enjoy life.
Do you or someone you know have a bad case of misguided frugal tendencies that end up costing you more in the end? If you have stories to share, I’d love to hear them.
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