All blog posts on Frugal Thumb
Every year, I help pick up trash for the International Coastal Cleanup sponsored by Ocean Conservancy. It’s all about cleaning up on beaches and around waterways that eventually lead to the ocean. And this year, I brought my kiddo with me! She was a great helper, making sure we marked down every piece of trash we found. That’s my favorite thing about this particular trash pick up event-everyone tracks their findings and Ocean Conservancy compiles the data and provides the…
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You can get a nice crisp look to your yard even if the grass isn’t perfect by regularly trimming the cement edges in your yard (i.e. sidewalks and driveway). We don’t treat out grass with anything so we gave a lot of clover and weeds that I’ll pull by hand. Even with those “imperfections,” I think the yard looks great when the edges are sharp along the sidewalks and driveway. All it takes to get this clean look is a…
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This recipe has been great for getting my shower clean and, most importantly, keeping it that way! I found this idea on Pinterest and it really works as a soap scum buster. I still had a store bought bottle of soap scum remover so I used that up first and reused the spray bottle (waste not, want not!) to hold the new chemical-free mixture. It’s only two ingredients that I already had in my house-equal parts vinegar and dish soap.…
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Do you spend a lot of time vacuuming your home? Or do you put it off until you see large dust bunnies in the corners or step on something unidentifiable? That pretty much describes how I used to vacuum. I might vacuum consistently for a couple of weeks and then I would put off vacuuming the floors for as long as possible- going weeks without vacuuming the floors. And it showed. But I did not want to spend my time…
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My husband is an elementary school teacher and if there’s one thing that they keep around in abundance in the classrooms, it’s hand sanitizer. If you talk to him, he’ll tell you that it’s a total necessity, but I’ve learned to try to avoid hearing his germ stories from school. In any case, they are always well stocked with hand sanitizer! Because of this, we recently found ourselves the new owners of a LOT of hand sanitizer. I’m talking, A…
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I was in the backyard this week when I heard a commotion in one of the trees. I went closer to check it out, and the neighbor’s cat followed me. We were both staring up in the trees trying to figure out what was going on up there. Leaves were streaming down like rain and I heard screeching. Then I saw an adult squirrel jumping around, and only moments later, a small squirrel fell from the tree only a few…
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Do you have an old wooden flag pole? Does it look battered and stained? Don’t throw it out just yet! Chances are you can get some more life out of it with one simple update. Breathe new life into that old wooden flag pole with a little bit of white spray paint.
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I like looking around on Pinterest for diy ideas to try. Especially when something is going to cost more than I want to pay. Can I make it myself more affordably? We are trying to set our basement up for movie viewing with a projector, but a lot of light comes through two high windows. We really wanted a way to black them out as needed. So I Pinterested and I bought the supplies to make a curtain rod for…
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Every day, I’d notice one of my daughter’s tiny plastic chairs over by the basement door. I asked my husband about it and he said he was doing that so he’d have a place to sit and put on his shoes before leaving for work in the mornings. That got me thinking. How could I make the set up better for him so he didn’t resort to using plastic kiddy chairs? And how could I do it with things We…
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I walked around the house looking for marks on the wall because it’s just so fun to “erase” them with the magic eraser. This is another kind of self-therapy, in my opinion. Examples:
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