Tightwad tips I don’t use

I don’t know if anyone remembers the book byAmy Dacyczyn (sounds like decision), “The tightwad Gazette” (1993).  I was looking through it this morning while I rode on my exercycle watching TV (I was multi-tasking, but had to stop to write this.) Here are two I won’t do. 

1) Turn the return envelopes you don’t need inside out and use the plain side.  At the cost of a box of envelopes (and the fact that few people even mail things these days), this sounded like a huge waste of time, and time is money too. What I have done is buy a box of Christmas cards at 36 for a dollar, and just use the envelopes (since we make our own, we don’t need commercial cards).

2) Empty the vacuum cleaner bag by opening the bottom and reuse it by carefully stapling the bottom glued fold. Whoa!  I remember emptying the cloth bag on a newspaper of the old Hoover an aunt passed along to us in 1960.  The amount of dust that is reintroduced to the air (or your lungs) just isn’t worth it.  Besides, the cat hair in the bag would make this difficult.  Amy really doesn’t describe how to get the dust out of the used bag.

I never took a photo of the Hoover Aunt Marg gave us, but it sort of looked like this one I found on the Internet.  Until you actually do a search on the images, you have no idea how many models there are. I think we might have given the old Hoover to our son for his first apartment. I’m sure it was over 50 years old by that time.

Human hair is a natural deer repellant—just thought I’d throw that in just in case you’re saving money by giving the family home hair cuts.