Second Frugal Friday of October 2025

Frugal Friday

 Welcome to Frugal Friday

My Frugal Week

We went to the People Helping People bag sale on Friday. You can fill a bag of clothing and hard goods for $15, so Bailey and I both filled a bag. We also picked up our free bread products. We picked thin keto bagels as Bailey uses them for her breakfast. I put several math workbooks in my bag for the students I’m tutoring. 
Great Clips had a haircut sale for $7.99 last week, so I got my hair trimmed. 
The other day I went into the Dollar General to look at their window cleaner. It’s been a few years since I’ve been in a DG and so I was pleasantly surprised to see their $1.00 aisle. Several items we buy at the Dollar Tree were located here and cheaper. I love finding cheaper sources of the items we normally buy. 
Speaking of window cleaner, I didn’t buy any as it was $3.00 and up in price. There is a tree where I park my car in our driveway that gives off a sticky sap at this time of year and it has made a mess of my car windows. So, I came home and got a bucket of hot soapy water and a scrub brush and cleaned the windows, which ended up not costing me anything. 
Since I was trying not to spend any unnecessary money in September, I was reusing my garbage bags all over the house. I would get the kitchen garbage bag out and simply empty the other garbage cans into this big garbage bag and save the bags already in those other garbage cans. So, I was only using one bag per week. I liked this money saving tip so much that I am continuing it for October too. 
On Wednesday I woke up early and started processing for Bailey, which entails weighing, measuring, and packing each piece of her inventory individually. She recently created over 150 tie-dye pieces and she just finished steaming and photographing them. So, I spent a little over five hours processing over 100 items for her. 
Amazon Account Issues
I’ve been locked out of my Amazon account for over three weeks now. I’ve made multiple phones calls and they say they’ll check into this and get back to me. But, when they do that, their instructions haven’t worked to resolve my account. They sent a mail over the weekend that they’re closing my Amazon Prime account. Ugh. 
I think I could resolve the issue with another phone call, but I find them discouraging and unfruitful. I’ve only ordered two items from Amazon all year and don’t think I’ll miss it. Bailey uses it to watch shows and says she’ll miss it. I told her she can get her own subscription and I would pay for it. I’m tired of dealing with them and getting the same canned responses with nothing ever resolved.
Saving Money with Coupons
Last Friday I took my car for an oil change and saved $20 using a coupon from their website, which lowered the price from $67 to $47. Afterwards I used my $10 off $20 coupon from CVS, which they gave me after my flu shot. I also scanned my CVS card into their kiosk and received a $6 coupon that I also used. 
Making Money with Side Hustles 
I listed an item for sale on eBay and it sold the next day. I love it when that happens. 
The $15 gift card I earned from a survey came this week, so I picked a Walmart card. I used it to buy a present for Bailey who has a birthday later this month. 
Yard Sale Saturday 
There were so many yard sales with the cooler weather on Saturday that we started the day with thirty-one sales on our Google maps list. I lost count of how many we actually went to and sometimes we go rogue from the GPS, but at 3:30 they started closing down and we were getting tired, so we called it a day. 
When I got home that day I had walked over 7,000 steps just from yard sales. 
Both of us were able to pick up some fantastic bargains and even found clothes as low as fifty cents each. I found several items such as books, pencils, dry erase markers, and treasure box items for the students I’m tutoring. 
Here is a partial list of the items I found: 
- disposable aluminum pans for 25 cents, perfect for the upcoming holidays - 2 new rolls of Christmas wrapping paper for 50 cents - floor lamp for $1.00- several containers with lids for free, perfect for the two open buckets of liquid I need to dispose of downstairs - a free Gamewright story cubes game like this one - several adorable reusable grocery bags for free- a bathrobe for $1.00- container to corral new tooth brushes for 50 cents- new bottle of rubbing alcohol for 25 cents - new 50 ounce bottle of hand soap refill for 50 cents- several books with one sale selling them at four books for 25 cents (wow!)- several brand new boxes of disposable gloves for $1- new to me clothes in my size for 50 cents each (including some warm long sleeve shirts for winter) - two movies on DVD for 25 cents each 
My Healthy Lifestyle 
On Sunday I walked 11,234 steps, which is in keeping with my goal of getting in 10,000 steps each day. What helped was going to the walking track at our local school and walking in the cool of the morning. 
The Great Clean Out Continues 
On Sunday I went downstairs and using some of those free yard sale containers, poured from an open bucket of some kind of liquid and filled up five of those free containers and disposed of them and the dirty bucket. 
I used Google to figure out how to open the light fixture above the shower down there and changed out the bulb. Now I can see in there and need to give that shower a good scrubbing! I even used the washer down there and did a load of laundry. 
I asked on the local Facebook group in my community about ways of getting rid of tires here.  I had several suggestions and learned the convenience center allows residents to bring five tires a month to drop off for free. 
Even better though, I had a gentleman come over who is working out a barter with me. He is going to take all the tires (12, I think) for me in exchange for a small refrigerator Dad has downstairs, which is a win-win situation in my book. 
He also came on Monday to haul off a lot of the old scrap metal here. He hauled off the back of a trailer and the back of his pickup truck both full of metal trash. He took it to the recycling place and I told him he could keep whatever money they gave him for it. The place already looks so much better with that much stuff gone. 
*Update: The gentleman received $84 from the recycling center, which means there was 1,400 pounds of scrap metal removed. Isn’t that wonderful? I’m doing the happy dance over here. 
While he was here I used the opportunity to clean in the shed next to the pole barn. One of the things my Dad saved was plastic Walmart bags. Bags and bags of them are stuffed into this shed. And the bad part is they disintegrate, so each bag crumbles into thousands of pieces of micro plastics when I pick them up to dispose. Ugh. 
Please don’t save these bags for someone to deal with after you’ve gone. I don’t even want any more plastic bags here. I already use reusable grocery bags, but this has sealed the deal for me. No more plastic bags will come into our home. That is my public service announcement for this week. 
I filled the trunk of my car with more unusable items, so I took my car to the convenience center and dropped them in the dumpster. You can back right up to it and unload and drop items into the dumpster. It’s so much easier than trying to lift a bag into a tall dumpster. 
On Thursday I was back outside and back at it again with this shed. I took my clippers, weed eater plus extra battery and trimmed the weeds around the building. Then I worked inside and hauled off five more contractor bags full of garbage, a second box of hats, and an old seat from his old Chevy truck. The other seat is still in there, but has to be unburied first. That’ll have to wait for another day as I was worn out. 
To save money, I emptied the contents of the contractor bags right into the dumpster and brought the bags back home and put them in the shed to be reused in the same manner. At a cost of fifty cents here, this will save money.
Would You Do This?
I overheard a conversation between a mother and her grown daughter this week. The daughter was talking about donating blood in order to get some money to go out to eat at McDonald’s. I’ve not thought about doing that, but if I did my frugality would win out and I’d buy groceries with the money because it would stretch farther. 
How was your week? I hope it’s been filled with good things and you’ve made hay while the sun shines. 

Thank you for dropping by my frugal blog, you are always welcome here. 
We would love to hear all about your week in the comment section.

Belinda 🫶 💕 Homemaker at Heart 💕 ~ Living within our Means ~My Linktree
~ She looketh well to the ways of her household ~Proverbs 31:27