What is your craziest penny pinching habit?

I am sort of weird I guess, but. . . I cut lotion bottles in half (which is NOT easy) in order to scrape out the last little drop of lotion. I usually have an empty loose powder container that I put the excess lotion in. You'd be amazed at how much lotion you will still have. I also scrape out the lipstick that is too low to just rub on your lips. I have a little tiny round container that I put it into. Then, in the morning when I get ready for work, I use my lip brush to put it on. I could go on, but I DO save money!!

I have used the paper wrapper from Scott toilet paper for gift wrapping paper. I onlyhave used it when the gift was something that I could roll to about the size of the toilet paper roll. I would get my son's friends goofy t-shirts for birthday gifts and then roll the tshirts in the paper. The kids all thought it was hysterical. The other think is my son was into origami...he would make origami frogs..that hopped when you pushed down on them. I would write 'Have a Hoppy Birthday' . These 2 things would easily save $5 or $6 on a gift - the stuff that would end up in the garbage in 2 minutes anyhow.

I have a few lol. One is that every small appliance, etc, that is no longer usable, I take the screws out for other repairs along the line. Have to laugh, I probably haven't purchased screws, etc, in a zillion years. There's lots of pieces parts that can be salvaged from stuff, o-rings, clips, and such, to name a few. Why throw it in the dump when there's nothing wrong with the parts you can salvage. Another thing I do is to save those big wire ties that they use to tie up toys, and all kinds of things, into the display box they come in. I reuse those for tying up things in the garage to hang from the pegboard, and to neatly keep things straight. I swear every toy my grandson got had a whole slew of those 6-10 inch ties securing the toys in their packaging. I also use those ties when I'm making wreaths at Christmas, and for holding up plants on stakes. Very handy, and better because they're plastic coated. I also keep foam packaging material, the plastic shipping 'peanuts' and the flat foam wraps. I use those not only for mailing items, but I also use the foam sheets cut to size for storing my grammas old china to keep it from chipping in the cabinet. Sometimes I'll use the peanuts in the bottom of a plant container. If the pretty container's just a little too tall for the plant, I put them in first to elevate the plant. And it's nice too because if you over-water, the plant's not sitting in a pool of water rotting it's roots. That's just a few of the wacky things I recycle to penny-pinch.

I heard about a lady that would save the dryer lint, spin it into thread, weave it into cloth, and make clothes for her children. Seems kind of labor-intensive to me. I guess it takes all kinds to make a world. What do you think? I've been known to put a brick in the bottom of the toilet tank to save on water usage.

I don't think I have any crazy penny pinching habits. I just do pretty normal stuff to save money. I don't go out of my way to go crazy with penny pinching, just seems rather crazy to me. I'd rather do sane, normal things that save me cash instead of going out of my way to save cash. It should be easy to do, not difficult.

This is my wife area. I only tend to do because she clamps on me or that I know we need to save some money, I've done things like eat nothing for a few days because I couldn't be bothered buying anything or eating what we had... lol ~Joey

I wash my plastic food storage/freezer bags and re-use them. The only ones I throw away are the ones that I had stored meat in.

Crazy nurse, I would have to say.. and this is not mine but my husbands, he saves the sliver of a soap bars and puts them in a small bowl so that he can rub his nail brush across it to scrub his hands. Its always a mess and ugly to look at, I would rather just toss it and have him use the bath bar we are using but he will not hear of it.

I used to melt broken up crayons down to reuse, I would use a metal icecube tray for a mold. I add a bit of applecider or other nice vinegar to presumably empty ketchup bottles and shake hard - it gets all the ketchup off the sides of the bottle and you end up with a fair amount - enough to dress a couple salads with anyhow (pst.. I do the same with salad dressings)

The cheapest man on earth dims the lights to save off the electric bill. He reuses paper towels. He separates one sheet of bathroom tissue into two thinner sheets of bathroom tissue. He does not reuse his bathroom tissue. Chris Rock's dad use to unplug the clock when he sleeps because his dad says you can't tell time when you are asleep.

I have one. When I receive mail with stamps and they have not been stamped. I soak them off with water. Then, I reuse them on my mail and put a bit of glue to hold the stamp. They then look brand new and no-one is the wiser.

One thing I often do is add a bit of water to the dish detergent. My mother has a bad habit of squeezing out a lot of detergent, which is just plain wasteful. So by adding water to it, she ends up not wasting as much as usual. (And no, she isn't using so much b/c I add water. I started adding water after I noticed her doing that.)

Take everything in the garbage out and go through it to make sure there is nothing I can sell in some form or another, sometimes even going through other people's garbage. Hey, you can take a shower after.