avatarJenn M. Wilson

Summary

The article describes various life hacks and money-saving tips learned from the author's mother.

Abstract

The article, "Weird but Effective Life Hacks I Learned From My Mom," shares unconventional yet effective life lessons and money-saving tips that the author learned from their mother. These lessons include being extremely frugal, maximizing the use of products, repurposing containers for storage, saving cheese by cutting off moldy parts, investing in a chest freezer, freezing various food items, saving buttons from old clothes, and organizing closets efficiently. The author emphasizes that these practices have helped them save a significant amount of money and resources.

Opinions

  • The author's mother has a unique and frugal approach to life.
  • Being ultra-frugal requires mental negotiations on item necessity.
  • Repurposing containers for storage is a cost-effective solution.
  • Saving cheese by cutting off moldy parts is a practical and money-saving tip.
  • Investing in a chest freezer can be beneficial for storing perishable foods.
  • Freezing various food items can help reduce waste and save time.
  • Saving buttons from old clothes is a smart and resourceful habit.
  • Organizing closets efficiently can save both time and sanity.

Weird but Effective Life Hacks I Learned From My Mom

She’s strange but she gets the job done.

This is my mother’s version of heaven. (Photo from HealthyLaps.com)

Growing up, I envied my friends for their cool and understanding mothers. The ones that taught them how to put a condom on a banana or excitedly took their daughter’s prom pictures. The moms who allowed them to go to concerts and have sleepovers. I was jealous of my friends whose moms would splurge and order Pizza Hut instead of attempting to make pizza from scratch (it never tasted quite right because she doused black pepper over the cheese).

As an adult with moderate levels of maturity, I have since learned to appreciate some of my mother’s oddball ways of living. Thanks to her, I have leveled up my way of life with the following life lessons.

If you’re going to be cheap, go balls in

This mantra is the underlying basis for most of the hacks I’ve learned. You can’t just clip coupons to save money; you need to treat every 99 cent purchase like you’re choosing between a dollar or your kidney.

The trick to being ultra frugal is to take the item you want and carry it around with you in the store. Don’t feel guilty that it’s in your shopping cart. As you walk around, regularly look in the cart. You’ll find that you can easily talk yourself out of anything if it’s not an absolute essential. Like, kidney-level essential. Alternatively, I’ll tell myself I have to put back 3 things from the cart. Doesn’t matter what 3, just pick three things. Your brain becomes accustomed to mental negotiations on item necessity.

I’ve become an expert saver as a result. It shocks me that people use their tax returns as their method of saving for a rainy day. Every time I reject buying something, no matter how small, I put those funds into my savings. Twenty bucks from not buying a top or five bucks from not buying mascara when it’s not on sale. I’ve saved thousands from this strategy.

Cut those tubes in half

How to get a few more days out of your product (Photo: My Cell Phone)

When you’re not buying as much, you need to max out what you’ve already got. When you can’t squeeze anything more out of a tube, don’t toss the package and pat yourself on the back for using it up. Cut the tube in half and scrape out the stuff on the inside. I guarantee you can stretch out that product a couple of more days to even a few weeks. To store it, tuck one end of the cut tube into the other side.

Anything can be a storage container

You know on Pinterest or HGTV when organized people have matchy-matchy organizers for their pantry or closet? That kind of wild and reckless spending kills my mother’s soul. When she uses up a product, she re-purposes the container for storage.

She stores her checkbooks in a Tampax box with the top cut off. Empty tissue boxes with the tops removed are scattered throughout her house to hold hairbrushes, vitamin bottles, and office supplies. Growing up, my mom helped me organize my tiny Barbie accessories in former cold cream jars.

If my mother saw you giving away leftovers with inexpensive Gladware, she’d laugh at your rookie behavior. She saves plastic containers with lids from sour cream, peanut butter, and yogurt for that (in hindsight, she may be consuming too much yogurt). She freezes massive batches of stews in extra-large plastic ice cream tubs. You know, the crappy ice cream that is only served to guests at large birthday parties. Did you know you can put peanut butter jars in the dishwasher to thoroughly clean them? Only my mother would take a gamble like that and have it pay off.

I’m sure I’ve saved a small fortune with this strategy. My socks, underwear, and bras are organized in drawers using empty Kleenex boxes. My daughter wanted a bed for her little toy ponies; I repurposed the box and lid from an electronics purchase for her to decorate instead of buying. Maybe this makes me cheap, but Rainbow Dash now has a super dope canopy bed.

Save the cheese at all costs

Of course, my mother bought food in bulk. That means cheese in my childhood fridge was in blocks the size of a man’s shoe. If it didn’t get used up quickly it would inevitably get mold on it. Since cheese is made from mold (or whatever the magic of cheese making is that involves mold), she used to slice off the moldy part and use the rest.

As a kid, I vowed never to do something so gross. As an adult, when I discovered a big block of cheese was $8, you’re damn right I sliced off the moldy parts and used the rest. It’s fine and I’m not risking death as a result of saving money and cheese.

Always get name-brand popcorn

When an ultra-frugal person tells you to spend money on something, heed their advice. My mother feels passionate that if it’s not Orville Redenbacher popcorn, it’s trash. She could write a college thesis on why generic brand popcorn kernels are inferior.

While I do love saving with store-brand items, she’s right. You can’t compare Orville Redenbacher or Smart Pop to Target’s Market Pantry brand of popcorn. It’s like comparing a Lamborghini to a pair of old running shoes. When it comes to snacks, get the real deal.

Investing in a chest freezer pays off

The downside to buying food in bulk is the storage needed for those items. That poses a problem for perishable foods. Insert your new best friend: the chest freezer. My mother has two in her basement: a small one for freezing meat and a massive one for everything else.

I didn’t think I needed one until I purchased a small one to store my pumped breastmilk after my second child (since my regular freezer was stocked with chicken nuggets for the first kid). Surprisingly they aren’t very expensive off Amazon or Costco. Once I finished breastfeeding my mind was blown with how indispensable it became as part of my grocery haul.

If you live someplace with a basement, then having a chest freezer is a no-brainer. If you live somewhere like I do where there are no basements, then find a way to buy a small one and cram it into your garage. If you live someplace warm like California you can even store it outside in your backyard.

Buying large quantity items then dividing them up into smaller bags or containers before freezing helps if, like myself, you are forced to buy a smaller chest freezer. It’s worth it.

Anything can be frozen

Speaking of freezers, there is nothing my mom can’t freeze. Half of her freezer is full of blocks of cream cheese for all the times she whips up cheesecake for guests. Do you know you can freeze milk? Shake it up well when it’s thawed (it’s worth noting that she lives in Canada where milk is bagged; not sure how that would work with milk in plastic jugs).

In her freezer door, she has an open yogurt container filled with Serrano chili peppers. They’re thin enough that when adding them to a recipe, you can chop them when frozen. This saves time and money on something that you probably don’t regularly buy during grocery shopping but need to sporadically add to recipes. If you aren’t adding Serrano chilis to your scrambled eggs, you aren’t living.

When I have items in the fridge that I know are on the verge of going to waste, I ask myself if I can freeze them. I have bags of chopped onions in my freezer, ready to be added to recipes calling for a portion of an onion. When I see my lemons going bad, I’ll grate the rind to freeze as well as freeze the juice in an ice cube tray.

This has saved my sanity for all the times I have all the ingredients but one in my fridge to whip up a recipe; no one likes running to the store to get “juice from one lemon”.

Save those buttons

I’m all for donating and re-purposing clothes when possible. Sometimes though, you have to admit it’s time to toss a shirt in the trash due to stains or damage. My mother has taught me that All Buttons Matter; don’t throw out a shirt without saving the buttons.

Later, when your favorite shirt has lost a button, you’ll be happy that you have an empty jam jar (you’re reusing them, right?) full of buttons to fix that shirt before going out. If you wait until you get around to buying a button, trust me, you’ll have that empty-buttoned shirt sitting in your closet forever.

One of my life hacks I should add: gob some clear nail polish on the threads on a button. It reduces the chances of the thread coming loose and losing the button in the first place.

Don’t lug out the ironing board

Ironing sucks. It just plain sucks. It sucks so much that my life hack is to use Downy Wrinkle Releaser and not iron at all.

But when I’m forced to iron something, I often use my mother’s ironing strategy instead of lugging out the big ironing board (which, for me, is the biggest deterrent to ironing).

She keeps her iron in an open-top box (repurposed, obviously) with a folded up plain bedsheet. When it’s time to iron, she pulls out the box from the shelf, lays the folded sheet on her bed, and unfolds it once or twice. The sheet is unfolded just enough to fit the wrinkled shirt but still has a few layers of sheet folded up. This is where she does the ironing. When she’s done, she quickly re-folds the sheet (since it’s already mostly folded, it’s usually just two more folds), tosses it in the box, and then later tosses the iron in the box when it’s cooled down.

The first time I moved out on my own, I bought an ironing board. After a few uses and dozens of curse words, that ironing board found a new home and I now iron old-school with a folded bedsheet on a table or bed.

Organize your closet like a pro

Frugality and organization go hand-in-hand. My mother’s organization skills would make Martha Stewart weep in shame. Sometimes it felt a little excessive. As a teenager, I wanted my closet organized my way. Which meant not organized at all. I may have fought tooth and nail about some things but I did cave when it came to closet organization.

I’m glad I did. As it turns out, organization skills are difficult to learn as an adult.

I knew my friends as teenagers had closets that looked like the aftermath of an Old Navy sale. Yet when I visited friends’ homes as an adult I discovered that not a whole lot had changed. I helped a friend merge her kids’ closets after a divorce. I did what I thought was standard closet organization 101, like making sure hangers all hung in the same direction. My friend’s mind was blown when she saw the organized result.

Later I learned from someone in the movie industry that clothing organization is not a habit many are familiar with. As someone who works with clothes all day, she knows the value of an organized closet to save both time and sanity.

Here are the general guidelines I learned for clothes organization:

  • Face hangers in the same direction (the curved part facing you).
  • Goes without saying: NO WIRE HANGERS.
  • Fold heavy and rarely-used items in drawers. With rarely-used clothes (such as dress shirts), over time hanging them on a hanger will stretch the fabric in the shoulders and sleeves.
  • You wear something for even a short time, do not hang it back up in the closet. The fabric already has your body oils and lotion on it. Hang it behind your closet door or elsewhere so that you can wear it in the immediate future.
  • Organize items first by type, then by color. That means t-shirts stick with t-shirts and blouses stay with blouses. When looking at your closet it should be very clear where the red t-shirts are compared to the white blouses. You’ll be happy when you’re in a pinch to find “that black t-shirt with the doughnut image” from just 5 other black t-shirts compared to a sea of 20 t-shirts of varying colors. This also allows you to see what you can get rid of; if you get tired of seeing 5 yellow blouses when hanging up the 6th blouse, you’ll realize it’s time to clean shop.

What will I pass on to my kids?

One day my daughter will sit at the holographic screen and using the chip implanted in her brain, she’ll prattle on about her oddball mother. Midway through her rant, she’ll realize her feet are cold .

I bet she’ll grab her socks from the cu- up tissue box in her dresser. My mother’s weird life hacks will continue to pass on through the generations.

Life
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Money
Self
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