I travel with mayonnaise.

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Recently I flew to Anchorage, Alaska for a 10-week housesitting gig/visit. I generally go with just a carry-on bag, but my new neck-supporting pillow takes up a big chunk of that bag. I couldn’t stuff much Stuff into the small space where the pillow wasn’t.

A real frugalist just hates to pay checked-bag fees. Were this to have been a short trip I’d have simply used a rolled-up towel under my neck. But 10 weeks is a little long to subject my creaky neck to a tube o’terrycloth. Into the bag went the pillow and into another bag went a bunch of my stuff.

Plus some birthday presents, and some mayonnaise.

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Got an honest face? You have a bright future in sneak-thievery.

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Recently I bought my first laptop. However, I could have gotten one or more for free at the University of Washington. During the month before I left for Alaska, I was twice asked by library patrons if I’d watch their stuff while they went to the bathroom.

Of course I said “yes,” because it was a simple favor. But I could also have strolled out of Odegaard Undergraduate Library with a couple of nice computers plus whatever was in their backpacks.

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Frugal materialism.

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One of my earliest articles for MSN Money was called “Living ‘poor’ and loving it.”* In the essay I noted that there’s real joy in knowing that you have everything you need and some of what you want.

But what if your goal is to have more than one of everything you need, and a whole bunch of what you want?

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My first laptop, finally.

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Two years ago I wanted a laptop. I thought my life would easier if I could write during my 50-minute bus rides to the University of Washington.

But then I examined the potential purchase the way I examined all others:

  • Can I really justify the expense vs. the payoff?
  • If I got it, would my life be significantly improved?
  • If I didn’t, would my life by substantially diminished?

No, no and no. Buying the laptop would have meant dipping into my nascent emergency fund. It also would have meant one more thing to carry – and a backpack jammed with textbooks and my daily brown-bag lunch already had me feeling that I was toting my house on my back.

In other words, it would have amounted to a very expensive shoulder ache.

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Jam jars and laminate flooring: Why Freecycle rocks.

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You can get rid of anything on Freecycle, and I can prove it: A woman came to my house the other day to pick up five empty 42-ounce oatmeal boxes.

Bonus: The lady is a Yup’ik Eskimo so while we chatted on the phone I had a chance to use one of the approximately three Yup’ik words I know: “Akleng,” or “I’m sorry,” when her toddler daughter woke up crying from a nap.

I wasn’t sorry to be giving her the boxes, though, because it gave them one more use before they hit the recycle bin.

I also wasn’t sorry about having five empty oatmeal boxes. I kept them because I figured someone would want them. And someone did.

 

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It’s the “Tania necklace” now, baby.

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We have a winner! Two of them, in fact. The “Carrie necklace” goes to Tania, whose name comes in well under the allotted 12 letters. She’ll be the envy of all the other girls (and not a few of the boys) if she wears it to “Sex and the City 2.”

The confectionery consolation prize winner is Catseye. As we all know, confections have a stupendous capacity to console. In this case, that’s a bag of Godiva milk chocolate strawberries and two Godiva bars (milk chocolate with almond, dark chocolate with extra-dark ganache filling).

Congratulations to both, and as for the rest of you: Suck it up. I wasn’t even eligible to win and you don’t hear me whining, do you?

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