9 Quick Money Saving Tips

Today I'm sharing a few Money Saving tips that I use. This will be the beginning of some quick posts I'll be doing from here on.

1. Use Coupons - No need to hunt them down, if you have them, use them.
   
2. Reuse Dryer sheets - Continue to use dryer sheets, after using three times, use it to remove dust from your furniture or other surfaces. They literally attract dust. Use them to wipe your TV or Computer monitor screens.
   
3. Reuse Paper Towels - If you clean a water spill and the towel is in good shape, let it dry and reuse it. Save trees and the environment.
   
4. Reuse Plastic Utensils - I've reused plastic forks and spoons time and again. I have about 5 forks that I have been using for well over several months now. I wash them with my dishes.
   
5. Visit Dollar stores - every so often I find great deals. Not everything is a great deal, so if you are the shopping type, don't visit too often. I recently picked up a pack of Dora the Explorer playing cards, great for young kids to learn numbers with as well.
   
6. Use Baking Soda as an all purpose cleaner. I've cleaned greasy pans successfully with this multi purpose cleanser. You can find 75 uses for it here.
   
7. Freeze your over ripe bananas and make your own Banana bread. Some great banana bread recipes here.
   
8. Buy Used - Most things depreciate very quickly, especially technology. If you can buy used, do so. You will save a lot of money this way.
   
9. Bring Your Own Lunch - If your job has the right facilities, bringing your lunch can save you a lot of money. Assuming you spend about $7 a lunch on average, after 300 days you will have saved over $2000. You can buy a nice TV with that money.

I hope you have found these tips helpful. What quick money saving tips do you have? Please share them in the comments.

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Photo by Refracted Moments

Where Does Your Recycled Items Go?

I dropped off two expired cell phone batteries at CVS this morning, they had a collection box for old cell phone batteries. It makes me wonder where this e-waste actually goes after it's dropped off. I'm glad they are lending a helping hand and are doing the collections, but where does this actually end up?

I try to be environmentally conscious. I reuse plastic utencils, takeout containers, plastic cups and anything that can be reused with a quick clean and rinse. I try and use durable goods as much as possible, anything that does not go in a landfill can effectively reduce the junk that goes into our landfills.

I encourage you all to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle whatever you can. If each of you uses one less plastic fork a day and spread the message and ask others to do the same, together we can make a big impact. I'm not an environmentalist nor am I asking anyone to become an environmentalist, though I do respect environmentalists and their ideals. I'm just sharing my thought on one small step we can all take to improve our environment and the planet we live on. There are many other steps we can take to reduce waste and make this a better world for ourselves and our future generations, and I may go into that in a future post.

If you know where CVS, Best Buy, Target, Walmart or any other chain store sends their collected e-waste, let us know in the comments. I'm always interested in learning a little more. Thanks for reading. For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add FrugalNYC to your RSS reader.

Photo courtesy of Gaetan Lee

5 Uses For Twisty Ties

I've got a lot of twisty ties. They mostly come from other consumer packaging like, toys, electronics, bread among others.
I'm sure most of you throw them out, after you unpack your

1. Organize your computer wiring. All those cables under your desk can be organized by reusing these twisty ties.
2. Tie Wrap bags of chips, cookies and other snacks you do not finish right away.
3. Tie it on a hook or cabinet handle in the kitchen. You can hand rubber bands off them, an easy way to organize spare rubberbands.
4. Wrap up spare cables and wires before you store it, it will make it easier for you to sort through the cables when you need them.
5. Art, get kids involved and have them tie up as many twisty ties as possible and hang them up!

Instead of throwing some much into our landfills, why not reuse? Do you have any other uses for your space twisty ties? List your creative ways of using twisty ties in the comments below.

Origami - The Art of Saving Paper!

Its amazing what you can do with just paper. Origami is the art of paper folding. Its basic concept is to take a square piece of paper and make something creative out of it. One of the most popular is the paper crane.

I started my interest with origami when I was very young. Though it was only an interest I occasionally spent time on. This time, I started again because I didn't want to see so much printed paper wasted (office paper, ads, any other 8 1/2 x 11 paper).

There are many styles of origami, and recently I've found a great way to put nearly all waste paper to use, using a technique called modular origami. There are many videos on youtube showing different creations using origami, both traditional and modular. If you are at all interested, I suggest you check it out.

For great resources you can check your local library for origami books. You can check my library blog post about some good library branches to visit. The Donnell library has origami exhibits yearly if not more often.

Recycle, reuse, don't throw good paper away!

Do you enjoy origami as well? How did you get started in Origami?
What other creative ways of using "used" paper do you suggest?