This morning I was making Buddy a couple of waffles for breakfast (yesterday I had a “waffle day“). The margarine container looked like it was totally played out-so without even thinking about it I grabbed one of my handy dandy spatulas and scraped enough off of the side and bottom to butter two waffles.
That just goes to show how deeply ingrained some frugal habits can become. 6 years ago it never would have occured to me to grab a spatula to get the last little bit out. I would have just tossed the container in the trash. Now it wouldn’t occur to me to NOT get every last bit out of the container.
Will that little bit of margarine make the difference in my journey in frugality? Probably not 🙂 But it is indicitive of a though process. I don’t see the point in waste, be it of money or of resources. I paid for that margarine-why should I throw it away? It doesn’t really take any special effort to scrape it out. In the long run all those little tiny ways of saving just a bit do add up.
In all honesty, I can’t claim personal brilliance on the spatula deal-I had to read about that tip in “The Complete Tightwad Gazette“. I remember Amy D writing “You’d be surprised how many times you can get enough peanut butter out of the jar for one more peanut butter sandwich”.
I’ll give you another butter hint. If you can only scrape out enough for one waffle–just press that waffle up against the unbuttered one. The heat of the waffles melts the butter and there will be enough for two!
And I don’t blame you one iota for getting out every last bit. I just ran out of all the butter I had in the freezer, so I had to buy the cheapest whipped butter I could find just to have something in the house for English Muffins. I hope it goes on sale again soon!