Frugal living will have you excited about literal trash.
I wanted to share a frugal activity I did over the weekend – turning rubbish into something useful. With being frugal, I love shopping second-hand. Op and thrift shops are where I get a lot of my clothes, bags, furniture, decor and more.
However, sometimes I become extra-frugal and look to things people have thrown out. We have found great pieces of furniture on the side of the road!
I love living frugally as it allows me to save money while also saving the planet.
On a lazy Sunday, my partner brought me a gift. While he was taking our bins out, he came across an item discarded near the bins by one of our neighbours.
Now, a normal woman might recoil in disgust “Babe, you brought me a gift from the trash?!”
But, not me! I was super excited!
He brough me a spice organisation tray with twelve little jars. A way to organise my spices was something I was looking to invest in, so getting it for free was amazing! Best of all, it was rather clean in great condition.
My previous spice situation was okay, but not great. Of course, being the frugal person I am, I’ve been storing my spices in old glass jars from pastas and sauces.
While this method was frugal, functional and reduced waste – it was pretty ugly. All my jars were different sizes and colours so it didn’t look aesthetic. So, you can imagine how excited I was to see 12 identical storage jars.
The process of turning trash to treasure
While the organiser was in pretty good shape, it needed a bit of work.
Here’s how I turned it from trash to treasure.
I started with giving the wooden tray a wipe and removing all the sticky labels from each jar, as I wanted to customise it for my spices. For this, I just used a butter knife to slowly peel off each label. Although they were pretty clean, I still ran them through the dishwasher to make sure they were sparkling.
While they were in the dishwasher, I looked through my spices to decide who would live in each of the little jars. I then made a note of the 12 spices.
Next, I created my own custom jar labels just using some coloured paper, pen and tape. I kept one of the original labels, using that to trace out the shape on some paper. I then cut the pieces out, and wrote down the name of each spice. Also added little hearts for a cute touch. Sure, I could have bought labels or stickers but I wanted to use what I had to keep things extra frugal. Why spend money when you don’t have to, right?
Once my jars were sparkling, I attached my homemade labels using small pieces of tape. Finally, I filled the jars with the spices.
The final result looked great!
Frugal living is fun!
Throughout this entire process, I had a lot of fun.
It was a wonderful Sunday afternoon activity to set up my new spices and I enjoyed customising it.
Often times, people think that being frugal means you have to live a boring and sad life just to save some money. However, I find that is not the case!
I love the thrill of coming across an amazing second-hand find – it is so satisfying, almost like a real-life treasure hunt. Frugal DIY projects are fun and help spark creativity. Here is my coffee table which I transformed earlier this year for $11:
If you want to start being more frugal, I highly recommend it! You can learn more about living a frugal life by checking out some of my blog posts below: