Pretty much everything here is reused until it's gone. I'm not going to make a list because so much has already been mentioned. But I just kept adding things that I do myself until now I do almost everything myself.
One of the big things I did that created a huge jump in savings was to stop looking at coupon circulars. When they land on my driveway I throw them directly into the trash. Almost all the coupons were on things that were processed and unhealthy and that I didn't need. But the deals were so good I tended to stock up. I save a ton of money by not being drawn into the grocery store by coupons. Now I don't need much at the grocery store at all.
I get some of my basic organic stock up grocery items online, amazingly. I've got some black beans soaking that I will be canning this morning. When I was shopping for this type of thing two or three years ago and I contacted one of the places that had really good prices about their shipping costs. It's not on their website but they said they would put it in one rate box for me which ended up being about a third of the shipping cost that their online order form gave me. They said they might not be able to fit the entire 25 lbs but would adjust the price. The savings were incredible and I order regularly now. I have to go back to the old fashion way of ordering on the phone.
In the years that I was not in this forum much, one of the things I added was almost obsessive sewing. I have a goal to make pretty much everything I wear. I make a lot of my clothes now.
Sometimes you have to spend in order to save. I was hitting some walls with my sewing and recently decided to get some lessons. I found that there was a nationally known teacher that lived an hour's drive for me so I've gotten 3 private lessons from her so far and we're scheduling at 4th. It cost a pretty penny but I already see the results in that I am very fast and now have several basic patterns that fit me really well. I mean really, really well! This is reducing the number of wadders. I can see that the money spent is going to save me in the long run, probably fairly quickly. I was a fairly competent sewer before these lessons but this is really upping my game and amazing ways.
When learning a new skill I tend to buy a lot of books on used book websites. This way I can find the older books that tend to have information on doing things the old way. Once the skill is part of my life I sort through all the books and donate most of them, keeping the ones I use regularly for reference.
