What is the weirdest habit you have adopted to save money? For me, it's the reuse of the shampoo and conditioner out of hair dye kits. Whatever I have left over goes into a bin and I pull from this the next time(s) I wash/condition my hair.
Whenever I'm in a fast food place, I take the unused napkins that people leave lying on their table when they leave. Otherwise the girl who cleans the lobby throws them away ,even though they were never used. Other customers also abandon sugar packets and sauces that they didn't use and I pick those up from the table too. I don't consider it taking from the restaurant ,since they're items discarded by other customers.
I don't know if you can call it weird, but because there's only the two of us, I've taken to buying mainly smaller versions if it works out cheaper. It doesn't always work out that way, but I now have my calculator out and double check. I've been doing this ever since money became a little tight, and sometimes I'm able to save money.
I don't consider it that weird but I'm sure it can seem that way to some people, but I almost always try and take home extra ketchup packets and eating utensils like plastic spoon and forks or chopsticks from restaurants. This way I'll always have a stock of emergency utensils at home for when I need to bring some for traveling or for when I'm just feeling too lazy to clean. I also like taking and saving up on ketchup packets because sometimes I run out of actual ketchup in bottles and packets can help fill in the gap before I go to the grocery to buy new bottles again.
When I was in high school, I used to starve myself so that I come home with my allowance intact, and I get to save that money to buy the stuff that I want, like a Game Boy Color portable console. Nowadays, I just place water in shampoo containers when they are already dwindling so that they get diluted and I get to squeeze out more washes off of it.
I save hair dyes and use half of it at a time. YOu can not keep the bottles too long if they have been opened however, as they will not work after a time. The active ingredients are dead. One recent habit though is experimenting with making my own popcorn as it is healthier and cheaper than those microwave popcorn bags.
I will often grab extra straws for use at home when at a fast food restaurant. I'll also shove garbage down in the garbage bag on garbage day so that I don't have to use a new bag. My husband thinks it's cheap but I'll use the large bags you get you get at Toys R Us in our kitchen garbage can rather than throwing them out. I'll also use them when I donate clothes so I don't have to use a green garbage bag. My mom grew up in the depression and will save milk bags and use them as freezer bags.
My son works at an automotive parts distributor and brings me these large plastic bags that the parts are delivered in and I use them as trash bags, for donations, and storage for out of season decorations, fans and our window air conditioners to keep the dust out. I save the AA batteries from remote controls to use in battery run clocks around the house there is usually a good amount of juice left to keep the the clocks going for a few months. I don't just throw away my liquid dish or laundry detergent containers. I fill them with water, shake and use it before opening another container.
I guess it would be bringing water from work. Drinking water is not that cheap, and it is free for all at work. So I used to bring bottles from home occasionally and fill them up with water at work. It is a little bit weird for me because Water is expensive but not extremely expensive to justify getting it from work. But I never felt like I was doing any harm, since at work they filter the water and don't do any sort of control.
I don't know if you'd call this saving money or not. To me it's saving and getting rid of clutter at the same time. I tend to use the cheapest products first if I have multiple products from a category. I've been doing that a lot lately with my perfume. Right now I'm on my last bottle from that Walmart pack I got years ago. My mom does lots of stuff though. She brings napkins and sauce or jam packets from restaurants. I think she overdoes it because she ends up not using those packets and I question how old they are but I know with the napkins it saves her buying them.
One of the things that I do to save money is just not take the money out of my bank account. I hate to lend people money off of my bank account, because when they return it to me, it does not go back on my bank account, and it gets spent on silly wasteful things. Whereas, if the money is on my bank account, I can't really spend it on things that I have not put a lot of thought into purchasing.
Well, I guess not eating to save money is the weirdest for me. I mean, it's really weird since the main reason you're trying to earn money is for you to have the means to buy food and not go hungry and yet here I am, going all 'hunger games' just to save $20.