Psst, I make money on some of the links in this post at no cost to you. It keeps the lights on around here. Amazon links are affiliate. 

The phrase “life hacks” is everywhere on the internet. I’ve seen it used so much that, frankly, sometimes I forget what it even means. That said, there are plenty of actionable, fun hacks that Frugal people and frugal-aspiring people can do to save more money.

After a little poking around, I’ve compiled all of my favorite frugal life hacks in one place. See one I missed? Add it in the comments!

Easy frugal life hacks

Braiding hair

This one’s for the ladies (and gents who like to style their Hair, I suppose). I HATE waking up in the morning and styling my hair for work. Instead of chopping off my hair, I choose to style it in quick, no-fuss ways.

For this easy braid hack, you can either a) braid your hair before bed when it’s slightly damp, so that you’ll have wavy hair in the morning, or b) braid your hair as a work ‘do. You would be shocked at how many compliments I get on my appearance when I wear my hair in a single braid down my back. It takes 20 seconds and requires zero styling tools or sprays.

Here are a few fun five-minute braids. Just practice them on the weekends and you’ll have them work-ready in no time!

Clean showers

Have you ever looked up while you’re taking a shower and realized how nasty your shower is? I have.

After that fateful day, I keep a dish scrubber filled with Dawn and vinegar in the showers. After each shower, we give the shower walls and faucets a scrub-down. It reduces the need for annoying deep-cleans, which I always appreciate.

Yogurt

I couldn’t leave this one off the list!

DIY yogurt obviously takes more time than store bought yogurt, but I really believe it’s tastier and more delicious. I use yogurt for everything–here are a few of my favorite ideas! 

Wanna make your own yogurt? It’s not scary or dangerous, I promise. Check out this recipe. 

Sunday cleaning checklist

I hate having a dirty house. I feel like the dirt is on me, and it’s hard to be productive or happy if my house is a disaster zone. The downside is that I’m way too busy to scrub my house from floor to ceiling every day.

I had to arrive at a cleaning compromise.

The result? What we call the “Sunday Clean.”

Mr. Picky Pincher and I share a checklist on Google Keep with our Sunday cleaning to-dos for each room. We typically carve out an hour on Sunday afternoons to blitz through the list and clean the house. When we split it up, it’s not much work at all.

That means we get to enjoy a cleaner home with less fuss. And hey, regular cleaning keeps our possessions in pristine shape, saving money in the long term.

Vinegar!

I can’t just pick one hack for vinegar. This potent ingredient is cheap and it has so many frugal applications around the home.

Here are just a few of my fave uses for vinegar:

• Cleaning: I use diluted vinegar as an all-purpose cleaner.
• Fruit rinse: No matter how clean they look, fruit and veggies need to be washed. Put the produce in a large bowl with half a cup of vinegar and fill it with cold water. Let sit for 15 minutes and rinse.
• Descaler: We have really hard water, and it affects how our appliances function. Our dishwasher, showerhead, and espresso machine are gunked up easily by calcium buildup. We use vinegar to descale these appliances to keep them running well.

Rubber bands

How come it feels like every time I need a rubber band, I can’t find one?

No more! Now I save the rubber bands that come on produce, like celery and cilantro. I don’t often need rubber bands, and it doesn’t make sense to buy any. So when I need one, the odd handful saved from produce work like a charm.

Ice cubes

Ice cube trays aren’t just for ice cubes. You can use them to freeze and store a number of things. I’ve seen people freeze herbs, sauces, and more with the humble $1 ice cube tray.

Personally, I like to freeze coffee in large cubes (Amazon link here). Whenever I want coffee in a hurry, I defrost a cube in my mug and have coffee in 30 seconds.

Veggie stock

Once upon a time, I used to throw away the tops of bell peppers, bottoms of carrots, and onion skins. I’ve since discovered that these veggie odds and ends make for an amazingly rich and complex stock.

I just fill up a gallon Ziploc with veggie scraps until it’s full. At that point, I toss the veggies in a large soup pot and boil them down for three hours. (My blogger friend, Mr. Tako, also notes that you can cook this down in a pressure cooker or Instant Pot in less time)

The veggies stew until they’re brown and soft. At that point, I strain out the veggie scraps and add them to our compost bin. The remaining chestnut brown liquid is frozen and used to cook dinner.

Instant speaker

I really don’t like spending money. If I need something, I usually have to prove to myself that I need to spend money on it in the first place. In the case of great sound, Mr. Picky Pincher is an audiophile, but I couldn’t care less about sound quality.

In fact, in college I learned this great hack to avoid buying a pricey speaker. If you need to amplify your phone’s audio, just place it speaker-down in a cup. This will help amplify the noise in a jiffy. It’s not fancy, but it’s perfect for hosting the odd party here and there.

Easy air freshener

Oh no! Your mom just called and she’s on her way for an unexpected visit! Don’t let her get a whiff of last night’s Thai takeout in the trash. You can do a quick ‘n’ easy air freshener that will fill the house in minutes.

Start your oven and keep it at 200 degrees F. Line a small pan with aluminum foil, and fold the foil so its edges are raised like a bowl. Pour vanilla extract into the foil and let it bake for 15 minutes. It will make your house smell like fresh-baked cookies!

Worth a thousand words

Smartphones are amazing. I remember 20 years ago, in a time before iPhones, when you had to write down or memorize important information. Today, we can simply snap a pic and store information with so much ease.

One of my favorite life hacks is to take pics of business cards, recipes, and directions. You can even use tools like Evernote to store and search through saved images.

Perfectly round egg patty

I love cooking breakfast sandwiches in the morning. But I had a problem: my biscuit and sausage patties were perfectly round, but my fried eggs were inevitably weird-shaped. I figured out a quick solution after watching one fateful episode of Top Chef.

They were using ramekins to cook their breakfast eggs in perfect circles. I didn’t have fancy-people ramekins, but I did have a lot of Mason jar lids. And you know what? They work like a charm!

Now I make my eggs inside well-oiled Mason jar lids. First, I spray the lid with Pam or give it a good coating with oil. I crack the egg into the heated ring in a frying pan. I add a little water and put the lid over the pot, steaming the egg over low heat. The result is a perfectly fluffy and round egg for breakfast.

Baking bacon

Speaking of eggs, it would be sacrilege to serve them without some bacon. I grew up cooking bacon in the microwave, which inevitably left it a little gummy and un-crunchy.

It’s a bit more of a production, but Mr. Picky Pincher has cracked the code on cooking perfectly crisp bacon.

He places a large cooling rack over a baking sheet. He lines the cooling rack with the bacon in long strips, topping it with another cooling rack. After baking at 400 for 20 minutes, the bacon emerges perfectly brown and crispy. We wait for it to cool before rolling it in paper towels and freezing it for later.

Repurposed wrapping

This frugal life hack comes from the ‘cheap’ side of my brain. Any time I order items in the mail, I try to save the packing materials. Better yet, some companies include tissue paper, which I gleefully hoard.

The result is a growing collection of wrapping and tissue paper. Folks, have you seen how much this stuff is at the store? For something that we literally tear and throw away, it’s criminal.

I save money by giving a second life to perfectly good packing materials.

Coring cherries

I hate extraneous and single-use kitchen gadgets. If it only serves one purpose, that usually means it’s taking up way too much counter space. That said, sometimes we like to get creative with items already on hand to save money.

For example, a few months ago I made a cherry wine. The downside is that the pits were in the cherries. They sell fancy cherry coring apparatus, but I didn’t want to drop money for such a rare occasion.

Instead, Mr. Picky Pincher showed me how to remove cherry pits with chopsticks. We put the fat part of the chopstick on the base of the cherry and slowly pressed down, removing the core with ease.

No more boil-overs

If you cook at home like me, you know accidents are inevitable. And if you’re super clumsy (like me) accidents aren’t just inevitable, but they’re super common occurrences.

One of my least favorite cooking accidents is boil-overs. You turn your back for 20 seconds and, before you know it, pasta water is boiling over your stove. Ack!

Fortunately, they do make little tchotchkes that will keep your pots from boiling over. Or, if you don’t want to buy one more flippin’ thing, simply place a spatula over the top of your pot. It will prevent it from boiling over and ruining your day.

Ironing in a pinch

This isn’t the best thing in the world, but I’ve done it, it works, and the people need to know about it. One frugal life hack is using a hair straightener instead of a proper iron.

I’ve only done this when I was super desperate, of course. Hair irons get extremely hot, and sometimes have gunk on them from hair products. They can easily ruin your clothes if you don’t watch out!

That said, a hair straightener works in a pinch if you need to remove a hefty wrinkle.

Which cable is which?

I get so confused when digging through our entertainment center. It’s turned into a jungle of unorganized cords, thrown together in a horrible mess. If I need to unplug the TV, it’s a real pain to figure out which cord belongs to the TV.

Instead of guessing, I’ve started labeling my electronics cords with Post-Its or color-coded bread ties. It’s not perfect or fancy, but it fixes the problem in a few seconds. No extra stuff needed!

Microwave potatoes

I’ve had a lot of people ask about this one! Yes, you can microwave potatoes! In fact, I grew up microwaving potatoes and didn’t realize you could cook them in the oven until I was an adult. #NoShame

To microwave your taters, put up to four of them in a microwave-safe dish. Fill the dish halfway with water. Microwave in five-minute increments until the potatoes are tender with a fork, about 20 minutes total.

Sure, it still takes 20 minutes, but you don’t have to fire up the oven to cook potatoes.

P.S. If you’re making mashed potatoes like these, stir in a hefty amount of butter and heavy cream. You’ll get delightfully fluffy mashed potatoes!

All hail the trash bag

I’ve written before about the hack-worthy wonder of plastic trash bags.

Another great trash bag hack is transporting your clothes in a trash bag. They keep your clothes tied together and protect them from the elements. Simply put your clothes on hangers and put them into the trash bag. Tie the strings around the hangers and bam! Easy clothing transportation.

Freeze flat

One of the best frugal life hacks is learning how to freeze foods in a way that’s fast and efficient. Heck, freezer storage is one of the main ways we save money on our food bill!

To make the most of your freezer, try to store frozen foods in a long, flat way. For example, instead of storing ground meat in one pound circular hunks, press it flat and store it in a square.

The flat shape will expose the food to more warm air once it’s time to defrost. That could be the difference between defrosting chicken in time for dinner and picking up Taco Bell.

Mason jar hack

I’m not talking about a hack for the humble Mason jar’s 1,253,834 uses. I’m talking about a hack to open Mason jars. I have weak little spaghetti arms. It’s tough for me to open sealed Mason jars. Mr. Picky Pincher showed me the below hack and I haven’t had a problem opening a jar since!

Cat toys

Cats are like children. No matter how much money you spend on a toy, they’ll always go for stuff like your spatulas and car keys. Don’t spend money on cat toys, like we did. Just use common household junk to keep kitty entertained.

Zap particularly loves toilet paper rolls, as well as cardboard boxes. Cats don’t need $25 tunnels–just give ‘em a box and they’re happy!

DIY biscuit cutter

Again, I hate having single-use items in my kitchen. Instead of buying a biscuit-cutter, I just use a dinner glass to stamp out biscuits. They come out the right size and shape, and no one’s the wiser.

The phone list

I hate leaving for a trip and feeling like I’ve forgotten to pack something. Sick of forgetting my toothbrush one time too many, I took Mr. Picky Pincher’s advice and set up a list on my phone. Whenever I’m packing for a trip, I tick items off my list as I go. That way, I know I haven’t forgotten to pack anything, and can focus on more important things.

Scrapbook paper

Once I threw myself into the working world, I didn’t have a lot of cash to prettify my apartment. I did what any Millennial would do: I turned to Pinterest. And oh, scrapbook paper. You make so much of my crap look fancier.

I realized I could use my collection of scrapbook paper to prettify and decorate mundane items in my apartment. For example, I turned an old Folgers coffee can (taken for free from work) into a utensil holder. All it took was a sheet of scrapbook paper and some Modge Podge.

If you can’t afford to decorate, see if there’s a way to hack the image you’re looking for.

P.S. We still use this utensil holder and nobody’s realized it’s an old coffee tin.

Stink-free shoes

There’s nothing worse than a horrible case of stinky shoes. Heck, I’ve straight-up thrown away shoes before because they were so smelly. But you know what? There’s no frugal reason to throw away good, usable shoes.

Instead, I started cleaning shoes to keep them nicer for much longer. 

DIY gel air freshener

If you want a more permanent air freshener than the vanilla extract hack, this one’s for you. I stumbled upon this great recipe for a DIY gel air freshener from One Good Thing.

I stopped buying Renuzit air fresheners and just make these now. All it takes is unflavored gelatin, essential oils, salt, and water. It’s much cheaper to DIY it, and I can choose any scent that I please.

The bottom line

Whew! There you have it, folks, just a sampling of my favorite frugal life hacks. There are so many little things we can do in our lives to save just a little bit more money. Try a few of these hacks over time; they add up!

We want to know: What are you favorite frugal life hacks?

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