Five Frugal Things | thanks to my dad’s attic

1. I got a wheelbarrow from my Buy Nothing group

Someone was moving out of town and offered up a rather old wheelbarrow with a flat tire. It was also missing the nuts that hold the wheel assembly on…oddly, someone had just used a bunch of duct tape instead of just getting some new nuts.

Which is weird because it’s not like nuts are hard to find. And they’re not expensive either. I think they spent more in duct tape than they would have on brand-new nuts!

2. My dad fixed up my wheelbarrow

I was really not too sure how to tackle the flat tire, so I brought the wheelbarrow over to my dad, where he inspected it and delivered bad news: the wheel bearings were also shot, so it really needed a whole new wheel assembly.

Also, he noticed that it was missing the wheelbarrow wedges entirely. I had actually never noticed these on wheelbarrows before! They’re shaped like this and they go underneath the tub part of the wheelbarrow.

My dad has an impressive collection of trash-picked and rehabbed wheelbarrows, so this was hardly his first rodeo. And luckily for me, he’d saved some parts from some of the wheelbarrows he’s rehabbed.

He went up into his attic and found a wheel assembly, AND amazingly enough, he had a pair of wheelbarrow wedges. Yay!!

So now my wheelbarrow is nice and functional and I didn’t even have to buy any new parts!

The new-to-me tire is a bit dry-rotted, so I might have to replace that eventually. But that won’t be expensive; it’ll be way less than the price of a new wheelbarrow!

3. I bought a secondhand floor fan for Zoe

The other two fans I bought went into rooms upstairs, but I thought Zoe would appreciate one in her room as well.

So I kept browsing Facebook Marketplace for another one and sure enough, one popped up, marked down from $30 to $20.

I picked it up, and of course, I will be popping by my dad’s garage at some point to blow it out with his air compressor.

Gotta get the other people’s dust out of there in order to make room for our own dust. Heh.

And this time I will record the flight of the dust bunnies. 😉

4. I poured my light pink paint into a glass jar

After I finished painting the Ikea Jules chair, I used the rest of the paint in my paint tray to put a fresh coat on the top of the nightstand in Lisey’s old bedroom.

That’s a nightstand from the abandoned house and man, I don’t think I ever posted about it. Hmm. Gonna have to dig through my old photos and put together some before, during, and after pictures.

By the way, you can see that this paint IS actually pink when you look at the contrast of the white bed.

Anyway! The original paint can was in pretty bad shape by now and it couldn’t maintain an airtight seal. So I poured the last bit of paint into a kombucha jar I’d saved, labeled it with a sharpie, and put it on my paint shelf downstairs.

Speaking of….that shelf is also a free item I rehabbed, but I don’t think I ever showed it to you.

Gonna put that on my to-do list.

Man, my house is chock-full of free things I’ve rehabbed and repurposed!

5. I bought a box of bruised peaches

I know, I know…I’m working through my frozen peach stash!

But frozen peaches are not the same as fresh peaches, and I will be sad if the only peaches I eat this summer are my frozen ones.

 

So, I am eating peaches like mad right now, and I probably will freeze some to replace the frozen ones I’ve been putting in smoothies.

Your turn! What frugal things have you been up to?