How Cheap Are You Part II

13.  Baking soda makes a nifty facial scrub.  Actually, you can do anything with baking soda practically:  wash kitchen counters, use as a shampoo, use as a toothpaste, deodorize your garbage disposal/sink/fridge/shoes, add to your laundry, and of course, cook with it.  And it costs like, under a buck.

14.  Olive oil mixed with a little Castor oil makes an excellent face wash. It takes off make-up like magic - yes, even contraband Mary Kay lipstick!  Get a little empty bottle, fill with about 3/4 olive oil, and top with Castor oil (look for it in the laxatives aisle).  With the remaining Castor oil, if you happen to be ten months pregnant, drink with orange juice.  This will cause you to be violently ill and give you P.T.S.D. whenever you see orange juice for the rest of your life, but if you're lucky, your little baby squatter will evacuate the premises.  Not mine, but I tend to have disobedient babes, even in the womb.  Anywho.  Back to the face wash:  put a dollop in your palm, massage into skin, and use a very hot washcloth to wipe off.  If you have super oily skin, my friend Aerie says to up the Castor oil content and add some tea tree oil.  Castor oil is surprisingly drying, so don't be scared that you will have pizza face.

15.  If you still need moisturizer after that (I do, because evidently I am a crone), I recommend what Genesis and I recently found at a fancy pants beauty store: Epinsencial protective face balm for babies.  It's awesome and only $6 if you can find it.  It has the cute lil Eric Carle caterpillar on the front and is free of parabens and petroleum and full of organic aloe, licorice and zinc.  Yes, I did just take balm from babies.

16.  If you have a fine at the local library there are several ways to avoid it:  write a scathing letter to the librarian because it was not REALLY your fault that you returned a book to the wrong library, make sure every member of your family has their own card so you can rotate them when a fine gets high (works especially well if you have a family of ten like I do), or bring in canned goods to work off your debt (I guess if they don't have that particular program then they will just look at you like you have grass growing out of your ears, but it's worth a shot).

17.  Use vinegar to mop your floor.  Make sure you have pickles on hand for when people tromp through and muse, 'Man, I could really go for a pickle right now for some reason...'

18.  Vinegar is also good for hair.  Also makes you want pickles.

19.  When your fruit juice bottle gets down about a 1/3 of the way, fill with water. Repeat until the juice is so watery no one wants juice anymore, thus freeing up space in the grocery budget for Cheezits.

20.  Hide Cheezits in your closet so they last longer.

21.  Reuse gift bags.  It's especially fun to bring a gift to a house warming party in a Victoria's Secret bag, or a wrap a teen boy's present in a It's A Boy! bag.

22.  I used to carefully peel off the stamps that hadn't been postmarked over to reuse.  But I hardly get anything with actual stamps on them these days.

23.  Find friendly homeschool teens who will give your kid lessons for something - anything - for a fraction of the price that you would pay from anyone else.  I like to pretend this is helping them as well, but it's really for selfish reasons that I want my kids to ride horses and play piano.

24.  Buy the absolute cheapest curtain rods, used cameras, window blinds, and picture frames you can find, just to name a few.  These will fall apart, break, hang crooked, be the wrong size, and never work, causing you to work on your patience and inner peace.  You can't put a price on that.  You can add to the fury control by driving twice as far to get these gems as you would to buy the ones that actually fit and work properly.  Don't forget to buy the curtains down a size from what you really need in order to save $3 so you can work on your not-cussing skills, and if the camera you buy is the fourth piece of junk you've bought your daughter leaving her to look at you with large, sad brown eyes and say with a tremor in her squeaky little voice, 'It's OK, Mommy...thanks for trying...I'll just draw the picture from memory...' then that'll really keep you from being prideful and uppity.

25.  Garlic is cheap and good for just about anything.  Sore throats, bad stomachs, coughs, vampires, and unwanted drop-in visitors.  My husband is Italian and therefore finds it better than my old perfume, BCBG.  Who incidentally, decided to let me be vile and stinky by discontinuing the only perfume in history that I love.  If I smell like garlic from now until eternity, take it up with Max Azzria.