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I know I’ve mentioned them before, but get yourself some wool dryer balls. I have used mine for about three months now, and am still in awe. No static cling, especially with polyester. My towels have never been softer. My sheets are soft and crisp.
And it’s surprisingly easy to remember to store them in the dryer.
Also, as far as cheapass coffee goes, Kroger Private Selection breakfast blend is the best I’ve ever had. I’ve tried almost all of the cheap grocery store brands and they all need a ton of sweetener and sweetened creamer to be palatable, and even then I’d find myself not able to finish the cup. This stuff I can drink with only creamer, and if I do add sweetener I just need a tiny bit. Seriously amazing stuff. No bitterness and no “weird flavor”.
FYI, if you're having problems with cheap as fuck coffee because it's bitter as hell, the solution's not to add a buttwhack of sweeteners, but rather add salt in with the grounds. Just like with grapefruit, salt interacts with your tastebuds and diminishes the sensitivity to sour and bitter flavors.
Source: Coffee onboard aircraft carriers is the most heinous thing on the fucking planet (besides Starbucks without additives), but it's necessary to survival when you're in anything affiliated with engineering or reactor department. Sprinkling salt in that shit goes a long way towards fixing it.
So when you fill your grounds cup for your next pot of coffee, throw in about a teaspoon of salt with the grounds then brew the shit. You might find it tolerable with the absolute minimal amount of additives.
I mean, it makes motherfucking no-name military coffee pleasant. Sara Lee because flavorful and Maxwell House becomes smooth. I recommend giving it a go.
So when you fill your grounds cup for your next pot of coffee, throw in about a teaspoon of salt with the grounds then brew the shit. You might find it tolerable with the absolute minimal amount of additives.
Also, I'll state that with cheap grounds, going marginally lighter on the quantity is better also. I brew cheap dark roast coffee at my house all the time, and we use about 4 lightly heaped scoops (my scoop is a 1 tbsp scoop if I recall correctly) for a 12 cup pot, and toss in about 1/2 tsp of salt directly in with the grounds before running the pot through. If we need more powerful go-go juice, 6 scoops and 1 tsp. It makes a nice, smooth cup of Jo that's no so bitter it's trying to rip your tastebuds off your tongue. I can drink it black with glee, but will sprinkle in one packet of splenda into my 16 oz mug if I'm feeling squirrelly and want sweetness in my life.
So on my last ship, the messies had the weird idea that tar in the pot was what we wanted. Everyone grumbled and groused about the shit coffee on the mess decks.
One day, when I'd had enough (I was among the first of the chiefs there every day because my department had to be early as fuck at all times), I told them to dump the kettle they'd brewed, and start over. I pointed at a wood picture frame we had mounted on the mess's wall and told them that I wanted the coffee in the percolator's tube to match that shade of brown, and that they needed to dust their grounds in salt. They'd been brewing it so the tube was /black/ and using no salt.
They followed the directions, brewed it to a delightful mahogany shade... and we ended up having to share our coffee with the entire damned wardroom when word got out that the chief's mess had fixed the coffee. We couldn't keep them out - we were in a shared mess onboard a shipyard barge because our ship was in dry dock. Blasted officers fucking drained our stores more than once.
This is a 2026 update: It is still financially viable to save up, then but a shit-ton of meat from a local guy.
It's a "big purchase all at once" but the math is still working.
It doesn't have to be a chest freezer. It's more that it's more financially worthwhile (at least in my experience) to save up, go to the "meat guy" and then buy a stack of meat.
Even if it only fills up half my freezer, the cost per pound works out to be less than you get shopping at the store every week.
Sometimes you can get really good deals at the store, but those tend to be limited (e.g. Last time I got a REALLY good deal on chicken, they only had 3lbs available for me to buy).
It doesn't have to be a chest freezer. It's more that it's more financially worthwhile (at least in my experience) to save up, go to the "meat guy" and then buy a stack of meat.
There's also rounding up some other people and buying the meat of an entire cow, or half a cow, or whatever, then splitting it up. The good thing about this is you can specify how you want it cut and then negotiate about who gets what so everyone gets something they prefer.
For that it's nice to have a chest freezer. The price will seem like a lot but it's ultimately way cheaper.
So if you're "poor" but can swing a big one-time purchase you can have meat that ultimately costs less than half what it would have otherwise.
Also, I'll state that with cheap grounds, going marginally lighter on the quantity is better also. I brew cheap dark roast coffee at my house all the time, and we use about 4 lightly heaped scoops (my scoop is a 1 tbsp scoop if I recall correctly) for a 12 cup pot, and toss in about 1/2 tsp of salt directly in with the grounds before running the pot through.
I have, apparently, been making coffee ALL WRONG for a decade now. I have a small brewer that makes a max of five cups, I usually make about two/two and a half. I’ve been using a 2 tablespoon scoop for those two cups, because I think that’s what the package said. Maybe that’s really why I’ve had such a hard time with my coffee. Thanks!
I’ve been looking on Facebook Marketplace for various things for a while. Found an older (2011) model Brother computerized sewing machine for $20. It was missing a foot pedal and a needle plate cover, but runs fine. Needless to say, I bought it and the missing parts for about $50 total. A brand new equivalent model is between $150-200. Definitely worth the hour and a half drive to pick it up. If it breaks down before too long? Oh well. But it’ll be great for improving my skills until I can afford something better.
Anyway, where I was going with this is I’m seeing a shitload of older solid wood furniture for free, or less than $75. As the silent gen and boomers die off, the children just want someone to take this stuff off their hands. You can probably also pick up some really fine china and silver silverware for pennies too. If you’re broke, but can still eat off fancy dishes every day, why shouldn’t you?
And wood has the benefit of being able to be refinished, so you don’t have to stick with the 1980s orangish wood look. Apparently some people make a business out of refinishing furniture for resale. I gotta admit it’s tempting at those prices.
Using up the last of a bottle of Product, lotion or shampoo or whatever, is a hassle. Step 1 is storing it upside-down, where it falls over all the time; Step 2 is spatula nonsense or Alexander-the-Greating it with a knife. You can buy specialty funnels/ass2ass connectors for shampoo, but seriously. There HAS to be a BETTER way!
Pick up a chunky glass votive candle holder from the thrift store or a yard sale, or somewhere else in your house. Make sure the candle hole isn't ridged and doesn't have anywhere you can't fit a finger, and get the heaviest one you can find. (It doesn't have to be animal-shaped.)
As you can probably guess, next time a Product bottle is nearing empty, take the lid off and put the bottle upside-down in the chunky-ass candle holder. Not only will Product go toward the top of the bottle, but it'll likely come out into the candle well, where you can scoop it with a finger. (The shoulders of the bottle will help keep evaporation down during this short period of use, but you can also keep the lid on.)
When it's all over, put the candle holder on the side of the bathtub to remind yourself to rinse it out, next shower.
The nice thing is that just having a candle holder in the bathroom is unremarkable and doesn't "read" the same as having a special Product spatula or As Seen On TV plastic funnel. And you could burn candles in it if you wanted to.
On a basic level, salt is salt. Yes, different varieties have different effects, but purpose of salt for you is to make your food palatably salty, and for that, use iodized table salt. Get the big store brand container, it won't expire, and no, I don't care if the fancy sea salt is on sale and you can get it for a bit cheaper. The iodine added to that basic table salt will help prevent you from developing an iodine deficiency, which can cause significant health problems that you can't afford to treat. This is all the more important because you're cooking everything at home to save money instead of eating precooked/processed foods that use iodized salt
You don't want this and can develop it surprisingly quickly if you get any bright ideas like just eating ramen for a month straight (real life example). You need to make sure that you're getting an adequate amount of vitamin C in your rotation of poorfag foods so your connective tissues don't start turning to jelly. Citrus is ideal for this, your big bag o' frozen peas will help with this, but also stock up on some cans of tomato paste. It's very cheap and you can routinely scoop a bit into your beans and rice, pasta, etc to bolster both flavor and nutritional value.
I highly recommend stocking something of a pantry with shelf-stable foods. If your home has a built-in pantry, great, extra cabinet space you can use, great, if not, get some bins you can seal to keep vermin out and use that. You don't need to stock it all at once, but add some extra boxes of pasta, dried beans, rice, cans of tuna and vegetables, etc. here and there over time, particularly as things go on sale. Do keep an eye on expiration dates, use old and swap in fresh, but don't get obsessive about it. Why bother when you can just save the money and buy it when you need it? Because while you're carefully budgeting (right?) and in an ideal world you'd be on top of everything, in real life unanticipated expenses can pop up, and having to cover an unexpected amount that would be a minor inconvenience for most people (say a couple hundred dollars) can be a huge pitfall and set you way back if you can't cover it in time. Fines, late fees, compounding interest. Having a decently stocked pantry on hand is having some peace of mind. It means you have wiggle room in your budget after all, can stop buying groceries for a week or a month (or two) to cover that parking ticket, that car repair, that higher than usual electric bill without the panicky feeling of wondering how you're going to afford to eat. Yes ideally you're also putting money into savings and that serves the same purpose on some level if you've got the willpower to keep it there instead of spending it on shit you don't need, but there's a certain kind of security in knowing there's an expense you can cut for a while if you need to.
A ton of kitchen tools and gadgets aren't great value for the cost and space they take up, but a functional slow cooker is worthwhile. You can often get perfectly good used ones quite cheaply in thrift stores and estate auctions. Multi-purpose ones like an Instapot, sure, if you come across a great deal, but just a dedicated crockpot is enough. Why? For one thing, they're amazing for turning the cheapest cuts of meat into an enjoyable fall-off-the-bone, fork-tender meal while they often have unappetizing textures when cooked in an oven or stovetop (for example). For another, they're generally a very hands-off, low/no supervision-required way of cooking that free up time you can use more productively. Maybe the biggest reason to get one, though, is it allows you to do all of your cooking at the beginning of your long bullshit day instead of at the end of it when you're in no mood and the temptation to go spend too much money on takeout/delivery/etc would overpower what willpower you have left if you didn't already have a hot, cooked meal ready and waiting for you at home. Going to be working a Black Friday shift at your shitty retail job? Plan to get a slow cooker meal going on low before you leave (and add a little more liquid if you're going to be gone extra long)
If you're just learning how to cook, be aware that there are multiple kinds of cooking: hobbyist (which makes up the bulk of the advice you'll read online), the kind of cooking that hobby cooks like to derisively call 'mom slop,' and professional (which covers a wide range from prestigious/pretentious artform to linecook in your local greasy spoon...and which IMO actually often leans closer to mom slop than hobbyist cooking in practice). Aim for mom slop. I don't mean to discourage you from learning to cook well, particularly if cooking is something you enjoy, but mom slop is utilitarian and adequate. Mom slop is about plopping down something affordable, edible, quick, easy, that your whole picky family will agree to eat (if you have a family to feed) and that has some nutritional value three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year until the picky little shits turn 18 and move out. Mom slop is not about making every single thing artisanally by hand from scratch, buying unusual expensive ingredients so you can use a pinch in a single recipe and never touch the jar again, or spending an entire weekend farting around with an $80+ piece of meat trying to make it 'perfect,' managing to leave every last cooking implement in the kitchen dirty in the process, and sulking when you don't receive as much praise as you fished for over your masterpiece. It's necessary chore cooking, not art, not career, not hobby. Let hobbyists sneer at your use of frozen or canned pre-diced vegetables, seasoning mixes, jars of sauce, boxed pasta, dump and go recipes; they aren't invited to dinner and so their opinions on your food are completely meaningless. Mom slop cuts corners to save time, and as long as you still get a cheap, adequate meal on the other end of the cooking process, that time saved can be spent elsewhere more productively. Don't spend the extra 15 minutes fucking around online. Pick a corner of your hovel to clean. Polish your resume and apply for a better job. Budget/meal plan for the next week. Do a shitty survey online for a little extra money. Do some cardio. Plan a heist. Finish a language lesson. Attend to some hygiene. Mend something. Every day adds up, don't waste it.
And a final trick of mom slop is finding a solid roster of meals and cycling through them. Bonus points for each one that finishes off spare ingredients or uses up leftovers from a proceeding one. Which leads to...
... recipes. They're nice guidelines and can help you learn the frameworks of how things come together, but don't treat them like they're written in stone (unless you're baking. Don't fuck around with baking recipes unless you REALLY know what you're doing unless you want to waste a lot of money and ingredients). But one of the most useful cooking skills you can learn is how to wing certain dishes using whatever you have on hand and get something edible and reasonably tasty on the other end. Stir fries, soups/stews/chilis, omelets/fritatas, hashes, casseroles, all particularly handy frameworks for this and worth getting a handle on. Learn to poach an egg properly while you're at it; plopping one of those on top of a pile of other things can really tie the meal together.
For more specific cheap easy recipes, I'll again point to Julia Pacheco (as linked under the slow cooker section). She has a ton of simple recipes, many of which you can throw together in a few minutes one-handed while holding a baby who refuses to be put down in the other. Maybe you're too poor to have a baby. Maybe you sold an arm to pay rent, I don't know your situation. Point being, she can help train you in the way of preparing serviceable mom slop, all of which can be tweaked to fit your personal preferences. Learning better cooking technique can elevate mom slop into something more restaurant-worthy (which also cut corners strategically for the same reasons, because getting the food on the table matters more than that everything was made from scratch), but you're under no obligation to give a fuck. Do make a point to learn basic food handling safety, though. Never cut those corners. Don't be Jack Scalfani.
There's also rounding up some other people and buying the meat of an entire cow, or half a cow, or whatever, then splitting it up. The good thing about this is you can specify how you want it cut and then negotiate about who gets what so everyone gets something they prefer.
For that it's nice to have a chest freezer. The price will seem like a lot but it's ultimately way cheaper.
So if you're "poor" but can swing a big one-time purchase you can have meat that ultimately costs less than half what it would have otherwise.
Sometimes supermarkets will give great discounts on meat which is on or nearly on it's "sell by" date. If you buy it and throw it in the freezer (or divy it up it up with a food saver (remember to write the dates)) and then freeze it. It's safe for as long as it's frozen. Big the to point out. If you want to use it. DEFROST IT IN THE FRIDGE and you only have 1-5 days to use it. I did this in university and by the end I really only had to buy fruits and veggies often.
But yeah the freezer is your friend. I would invest in a vacuum food sealer, and knock off souper cubes and THEN A chest freezer.
It's massive on your counter. It makes a horribile, horrible noise. You have to freeze the ice cream recipe base at LEAST the night before. You have to use weird shit to make it the right texture, like xanthan PLUS gaur gum. Did I mention how fucking LOUD it is? You have to respin your ice cream every time you take it out to eat some more. If you want to put like add-ins and stuff, they get shredded to dust by that re-spinning. The thing they tell you about just freezing a can of fruit in the special container and making sorbet isn't really as good as you have heard, it's pretty insipid. I sold mine on FB marketplace for $60.
You can just use a couple spoons of instant pudding mix instead of buying the gums. Fairlife milk plus pudding mix plus protein powder is way better than I thought it would be. You can make actual real life ice cream too, not just diet stuff, but you CAN make the lower cal/high protein ice cream and it's way better than the commercial ones. It's even more delish if you add heavy cream or half and half (splash to maybe 1/4 of the container) and then you can try to fool yourself that it's keto.
It's massive on your counter. It makes a horribile, horrible noise. You have to freeze the ice cream recipe base at LEAST the night before. You have to use weird shit to make it the right texture, like xanthan PLUS gaur gum. Did I mention how fucking LOUD it is? You have to respin your ice cream every time you take it out to eat some more. If you want to put like add-ins and stuff, they get shredded to dust by that re-spinning. The thing they tell you about just freezing a can of fruit in the special container and making sorbet isn't really as good as you have heard, it's pretty insipid. I sold mine on FB marketplace for $60.
You can just use a couple spoons of instant pudding mix instead of buying the gums. Fairlife milk plus pudding mix plus protein powder is way better than I thought it would be. You can make actual real life ice cream too, not just diet stuff, but you CAN make the lower cal/high protein ice cream and it's way better than the commercial ones. It's even more delish if you add heavy cream or half and half (splash to maybe 1/4 of the container) and then you can try to fool yourself that it's keto.
So don't buy it unless you can get American instant pudding mixes (we don't really have those in my country) or xanthan/guar gum. Maybe I should just save up for an actual ice cream machine and treat myself to good ice cream once a blue moon instead.
So don't buy it unless you can get American instant pudding mixes (we don't really have those in my country) or xanthan/guar gum. Maybe I should just save up for an actual ice cream machine and treat myself to good ice cream once a blue moon instead.
See, I'm an ubercheapfag. If I want ice cream, I channel my love of bananas. Freeze bananas that've gone black (I don't bother peeling them - when I want to use them, I take one of my sharpest knives and swiftly cut the peel off. Most people will peel them and cut them into chunks before tossing them into the freezer, though). When you're hankering for 'ice cream', cut the peel off your solidly frozen banana (so it should've been in the freezer for 8 hours or more) and plunk it into a food processor or blender. Pulse that shit until smooth. Boom, instant 'ice cream.'
Sometimes we sprinkle in mini chocolate chips for fun.
This is fantastic during those times when my local grocery store gathers all of the stray bananas that've come off the bunches or have been in the store long enough to start to get overly ripe and therefore unsellable. They'll bag them all together and sell literal pounds of bananas for $1. Last time, I got 6 lbs of bananas for $1. I had banana bread pouring outta my ass and still have frozen bananas for ice cream.
On a basic level, salt is salt. Yes, different varieties have different effects, but purpose of salt for you is to make your food palatably salty, and for that, use iodized table salt. Get the big store brand container, it won't expire, and no, I don't care if the fancy sea salt is on sale and you can get it for a bit cheaper. The iodine added to that basic table salt will help prevent you from developing an iodine deficiency, which can cause significant health problems that you can't afford to treat. This is all the more important because you're cooking everything at home to save money instead of eating precooked/processed foods that use iodized salt
Going to be working a Black Friday shift at your shitty retail job? Plan to get a slow cooker meal going on low before you leave (and add a little more liquid if you're going to be gone extra long)
Not specifically criticizing your ice cream dreams, but this discussion makes me think there has to be some kind of "should I buy this unitasker" formula.
Usually people buy (or have given to them) an electric quesadilla maker, make quesadillas for most of a week, then store it until they move or clean out the cupboards. But out there, there have to be a few Quesadillas Georgs for whom a countertop quesadilla maker completes their lifestyle and gets used every day for their autistic routine quesadilla consumption. Or Cake Pops Georg, or Hot Dogs Georg with his hot dog toaster (the most likely tbh).
For instance, I've heard people say waffle makers never get used and take up space, but I grew up in a household that had waffles every weekend so that would have been an incorrect assessment of our usage at the time.
I currently do not have a waffle maker, because I wouldn't use it that much.
Waffle makers aren't a big cost outlay, but for everything else, like an ice cream machine, it's going to be a mix of
cost to buy
function/cleaning (is it designed well)
would it make more sense to buy the ice cream attachment for a mixer
space used vs. space you have available
savings per serving vs. store bought
enhanced taste vs. store-bought
how often you actually use it
So maybe the thing to do would be to keep a log for a month of how many times you feel like you would have used the ice cream maker, if you had one? The amount of times you think you'd have the time to make ice cream, and you'd actually eat it. (And put a box in the freezer to take up space, if it's the kind where you have to pre-freeze the bowl for 24 hours.)
After all that sperging, if money isn't an object and you have plenty of unused space in the kitchen, there's something to be said for not overthinking it; at worst you'll be donating an ice cream maker to the thrift store in five years.
I definitely agree with you. I hate kitchen gadgets that take up space and only perform one job. I have a relatively small apartment with a small kitchen, so any addition to my gadgets has to be able to fulfil more than one job or see enough use to warrant it taking up space.
I wouldn't get a huge coffee maker because I don't drink coffee more frequently than during the summer - a french press suits me fine because it takes up just enough space to not be wasted. If I were a coffee nerd, maybe.
It's more of a pipe dream because I always wanted to be able to make my own icecream. Sure, I could just make it the old fashioned way and I probably would if I was any more serious than I am.
