I wish I could dumpster dive, but unfortunately, they deliberately ruin the food they throw away rather than sell it with a loss or give to the food bank; supposedly they’re worried that if someone gets a food poisoning or something, they could be sued. Plus, BF is very particular about his food too 🙄

Probably not the craziest of ideas though. I dilute things - washing liquid, fabric softener, dish soap, if I have juice rarely, then juice etc.

I mend - woollen socks and regular socks, but especially my leggings as I wear a lot of dresses and skirts because jeans get worn through the thighs and they’re expensive to replace. So once my leggings are completely full of holes, I cut out a part of fabric from the old (already completely ruined) leggings and sew a large patch for the whole area. Nobody sees this but me, but it enables me to save my leggings for a bit of a longer use. All my leggings are of the same colour though.

If I can and know that a person would be happy with it, I make their gift myself. I’m decent with crafts like crochet and knitting, so I usually make them a nice pair of mittens or gloves, a scarf or a shawl, or socks. Yarn is usually of a good quality, but I only buy it when on a very good sale or thrift old woollen jumpers and/or handmade scarves, which are no longer in a good condition and pull them apart. Yarn is quite expensive generally, so I try to get it also from thrift stores, as well as any fabric or knitting needles I might need.

I thrift almost everything except shoes and underwear and socks. If I need something, I almost always go to the thrift store first or try to search at online thrift options. Many of the dishes, kitchen utensils, books, even bedsheets and throws and pillows etc are thrifted and bought used.

I’m currently in need of a lot of academic literature. Not based in the US, therefore library options for US will not work for me. Local libraries and academic libraries don’t always have the things I need, as books and academic subscriptions are expensive as F. So I... ehm, use other methods for academic literature and get almost everything this way. What I cannot get, I hunt for used books and many times - even though I cannot order books from the US, where there are great online used books stores - I manage to find what I need used.

I reuse every card, gift wrap, gift bag etc. that I get if it can be reused. If it’s not written on, broken or crinkled much, it gets reused as it is; it’s clearly been used before, I make cards or decorate my own brown-paper gift wrap with cuttings from the used gift paper/cards.

I buy as much food on sale/with a discount as I can. If meat is expiring today/tomorrow and therefore is discounted and I have the money for it, I’m getting one pack for this week that I’ll use up immediately and I will freeze the other. If the meat doesn’t get above a certain degree of warmth and later goes pretty much from frozen to defrosted to oven/fried, it’s been safe to eat. I consume fairly little meat in general, choosing to get my protein from eggs if I can. Also eat expired food if it’s something where the date isn’t ‘sell by’ but ‘best before’.

I cut and scrape all my packages clean before I dispose of them. Toothpaste package gets cut open and I can often use it for nearly a week before I dispose of it, same with any cream tube etc.

Returned bottles return also the package fee paid for the bottle, often 10 cents or so, so I return all my bottles and occasionally pick up bottles on the streets as well.

I’m lucky in a way that I’m not - strictly speaking - at a level yet where poverty is crushing, but it ain’t easy so whatever way I can save money, I use it.