Tag: frugality

January 20, 2026 – There Outta Be a Better Way

January 20, 2026 /

I admit it, I am frugal. That is one way of saying that I really despise waste. A standard construction tube of caulking often contains way more material then a typical home owner project will use at one time. So the remainder of the tube becomes waste if it sits around too long.

I have tried every trick in the book to preserve the life of caulk tube remnants. I have put electrical tape over the nozzle. I have tried to embed nails and screws so that there is a channel when I come back to it. I have cut the nozzle shorter to pull the plug of dried caulk out. I have used large, screw on electrical connectors to act as a cap. They all suck.

Caulking is a love hate relationship. You want to believe that it is an ideal solution to a less than ideal situation. That being said, I find about a five year or less life with it in an outdoor application. My personal preference is to use as little as possible because if you are at the point where your hopes are on caulk, you are waiting to fail.

Certain projects typically can use quite a bit of caulk. I am thinking back to siding replacement I did a couple of years ago. In those cases, it seemed like I was going through it as fast as I could blink. But, because I despise waste, I want to make sure that I am purchasing the exact amount I need. Caulk will even dry up in an unopened tube and when you only use a squirt at a time, it doesn’t pay to keep it around.

Recently, I was doing a quick cleaning to get ready for a house showing. I hadn’t really spent any time in the apartment since the tenant moved out. It looked like it was in the need of TLC and when I looked at the vanity, I could see a gap between the top and the tile backsplash. I can’t remember if I ever mentioned this but we had to replace the entire floor a couple of years ago. The shower had leaked and it had rotted the structure. So, the vanity had to be removed and I suspect it shrank.

I thought that I would just quickly put a bead down. The more I can spruce up, the better the chances the buyer will be wowed, or at least not turned off. I had an open tube of kitchen/bath caulk. The best application for this is 100% silicone, that is not wholly important other than to say it is not water based. It requires mineral spirits to clean up.

In fact, I had two tubes. One was clear and the other is white, see picture above. The clear one had clearly given up the ghost. I determine that by forcing a nail into the small opening at the nozzle. If and when I pull the nail out and I get some still wet material, then I consider the tube viable. I would then set about trying to get at the good material.

The clear was clearly dried out, but the white was not. So, I set about poking and squeezing until it was flowing. If I can get away with it, I will cut half the nozzle off but that amount of opening causes a very wide bead. That tactic is not really suitable for a for a bath job unless you are OK with it all over the place. I was not.

Twenty minutes of poking and cleaning my hands and tools off with mineral spirits, I finally got it to flow at an adequate rate. Believe me, more than once I had this thought that I am spending way more money in time than just going to purchase a replacement tube. The nagging problem in my head is that this perpetuates the cycle all over again. I had to get it done quickly because I had 30 minutes before the showing so I persisted. Fortunately, I felt like the smell of bleach that I poured around the shower to try and subdue the mildew significantly overwhelmed the pungent, vinegary smell of silicone caulk or the petroleum smell of ‘Odorless’ Mineral Spirits.

The job got done and I screwed the electrical wire nut back on the nozzle. I know full well that the next time I want to do something like this again that this tube is likely shot at 3/4 full. I was lucky to get a second project out of this one as it is.

End Your Programming Routine: I used to keep a small tube of hand squeezable caulk. However, it also dried up. Just like we are buying half gallons of milk now, these things can almost cost as much as a standard tube. But, at least there is not so much waste. Now that we are moving to a newer house, I am expecting less home improvement projects. Maybe it is time to go back to the smaller tube?

June 22, 2021 – Slum Lord Tactics, Custom Paint Colors

June 22, 2021 /

This post may not be super revolutionary but it can get you out of a jamb or at least save some money. For me, I am typically paying $60-$100 a gallon. To top it off, getting rid of leftover paint is also a pain. In my state, every container is charged a recycling fee. That is supposed to cover the cost of returning leftover paint for recycling.

A quick word about recycling. There is a company in the state that picks up all of the paint that is returned. Everything is sorted, for instance exterior and interior and by color. Then like colors are grouped together and mixed and finally standardized into a basic color palette to be sold at a value price.

I have personally never used the paint, so I cannot really comment on the performance or quality. I would consider it for applications that do not have high performance applications like interior paint or outbuildings that you just want to get something on. There is a lot of science involved in paint and just combining different manufacturers could effect the integrity of the paint.

Back when I was a youth and working with my grandfather, we would occasionally gather all of the leftover paint and mix it together. Often times, it would come out as a brown or olive color (as exterior). Interior whites were a no brainer, you ended up with some shade of white that was unique but just fine.

When you have multiple buildings to maintain, a smarter tactic is to standardize on one color. Many times we did use the same color, but there were times when it was inconvenient to drive across town to buy paint or a tenant had a special request or we were given paint and other such random events. Consequently, we always had a mishmash of paint.

I talked about this subject last year on July 1, 2020 when I referenced the color ‘Pandemic Pink’. That was a mixture of a lot of my random exterior colors that came out pink. Today I am going to mix leftover interior paint for my sheetrock priming. My plan is to mix about 1/2 a quart of yellowish/orangish with about 1/2 a gallon of purplish gray with one gallon of PVA drywall sealer. I expect it will come out as a light brown.

Ultimately, I am going to paint over it with something whitish because I want as much light as possible in the room. I just haven’t totally decided yet because I want to minimize the inventory of leftover paint. I also want to minimize cost so I am weighing total cost versus future utility.

Additionally, I wont go as far as saying paint has a shelf life but in practical terms nothing lasts forever. What I have found is that the container fails before the the paint actually goes bad. The ammonia used to buffer the paint (water-based) rusts steel and causes pinholes to let air in and dry out the paint. My point is that if you are saving partials for eventual touch-up you may find that your partial is no longer paint some day when you open the container.

End Your Programming Routine: As I mentioned above, there is a lot of science to paint. I am going to end it here today and save getting more detailed into the qualities of paint later. If you have a bunch of paint that you no longer need or want and a project that needs some painting, consider recycling it yourself.