Cheapskate stories

[BabyMama]

My FIL is a pretty good cook, and often makes sausage gravy for breakfast. One day, he bought a food service size 5# can of sausage gravy. It is just he and MIL who eat breakfast at their house. The can is still in the pantry, and I am leery of being invited over for breakfast. 

Wha...?

Pantry is not a word I usually interchange with refrigerator. Is it open?

It is a very large can, still sealed, but I can't imagine the expiration date hasn't passed. He has had it for at least 3 years.

He should have some meals with my FIL. He likes to buy things in huge cans too, and like your in-laws, their house is just FIL and MIL. He really likes to buy huge cans of nacho cheese sauce. When he does this, any meal at their house has every item topped with this nasty cheese that deity knows how long it's been in their fridge (I find the cheese sauce gross in itself.) They could have a canned sausage gravy and nacho cheese party. It's great for his onset diabetes I'm sure... 

[ladyknight1]

FIL has high blood pressure and high cholesterol, so the sausage gravy is not an ideal food for him.

Homemade sausage gravy, delicious.

Prefabricated, gelatinous, shelf-stable goo with meat in it? Disgusting.

[BabyMama]

Yeah, I'm not real big on the whole canned meat thing in general. My friend is becoming a crazy home canner, which is awesome because that means I have homemade pie filling and veggies on my shelf, but she's started getting into canning meat now and I just cannot get behind it.

[ladyknight1]

I don't eat preserved meat other than dried.

[bloo]

FIL has high blood pressure and high cholesterol, so the sausage gravy is not an ideal food for him.

Homemade sausage gravy, delicious.

Prefabricated, gelatinous, shelf-stable goo with meat in it? Disgusting.

Agreed. I feel something akin to nausea just looking at that stuff at Sam's Club. It just doesn't strike me as 'real food'.

Yeah, I'm not real big on the whole canned meat thing in general. My friend is becoming a crazy home canner, which is awesome because that means I have homemade pie filling and veggies on my shelf, but she's started getting into canning meat now and I just cannot get behind it.

I can understand that. I learned to can meat and honestly, the English cut roasts look like dog food when you're done with it. It's really only good for BBQ sandwiches or beef-n-noodles.

However, my DH goes to NY to catch large salmon and we smoke half of it and can the other half and it makes delicious salmon patties or salmon balls as the bones dissolve in the canning process!

[Piratelvr1121]

I use canned corned beef* for my beloved dill corned beef dip.  And I like corned beef hash too in a can, but otherwise I don't do canned beef.  Canned chicken and tuna, however, I'm okay with.

*(16oz mayo, 16oz sour cream, 1 can corned beef, dill, parsley, seasoned salt to taste.)

[mumma to KMC]

snip

Love my family, and they are awesome in other ways, but will probably always battle with them over the issues of "stuff" and "waste".

A few years ago, before the show Hoarders, there was a show called Clean House starring Niecy Nash. One episode involved a young married couple and their house, overrun with "treasures" her family kept dumping on them. It sounded as though the family were all hoarders and now that there was new "free" space, they were going to fill it up. As an example, I remember someone had been driving along the highway and had seen a golf bag and stopped, picked it up and brought it to their house. The clubs were all bent and totally unusable. They felt like they couldn't get rid of it because it would be "mean" or "rude". Niecy pointed out that her family was being incredibly rude and presumptuous to foist junk, BROKEN junk, on them and take over their home as a dumping ground. And honestly, the house and yard looked like a dump, a real dump.  Niecy basically told them to grow spines and refuse to allow this behavior to continue.

[/quote]

I needed to read this. When my inlaws were here earlier this month, I was "given" six jars of homecanned food. I have no problem with homecanned foods at all, my pantry is full of things I've canned. However, the newest of these jars is from 2011, the oldest, 2005, and that is orange cucumber relish, not something we'd eat at all. The rest of the canned goods are strange food combos or food that I question the quality of before it was canned. We will not eat them at all, I know to be polite (even though they are gone) I will stick them in my pantry and then curse them whenever I can't put something else away, so in the garbage they will go.

So it may not have been garbage they were leaving in my yard, it is garbage they are giving us none the less.

[rose red]

The sausage gravy story and the coupon story remind me of my friend's husband.  Due to his upbringing, he's afraid of running out of food and can't pass up a deal.  Years ago, he brought a huge amount of canned good (lets say franks and beans).  It was a really good deal, like a few cents per can.  The problem is he hates franks and beans.  Nobody in their lives are too thrilled with franks and beans so it wasn't served often.  I told them to donate them, but they never got around to it (anyway, I suspect he may be too cheap to donate).  Now it's been over ten years and they still have the cans, but he won't get rid of them because that would be such a "waste."

[gramma dishes]

...    I will stick them in my pantry and then curse them whenever I can't put something else away, so in the garbage they will
go.   ...

I'd dump the contents and save the jars!   

[anniehawks]

My late grandmother used to can meat.  It was delicious.  I don't really know how she did it.  She died more than 25 years ago.  When she was alive, I had no interest in learning.

[siamesecat2965]

   The sad part is that hoarding, from what I've read, is one of the most difficult compulsions to treat because it is almost impossible to convince the hoarder that what they're doing is not normal.

 

Yup. I was watching over the weekend, and told a friend there is no way I could ever help someone who hoards clean out their home. I am ruthless, and am of the mind, if its not needed, don't have space for it, its trash, or you have more than you could ever possibly use" it goes. I simply don't have the patience since as you said, they don't know that their behavior isn't normal.

[Lynn2000]

   The sad part is that hoarding, from what I've read, is one of the most difficult compulsions to treat because it is almost impossible to convince the hoarder that what they're doing is not normal.

 

Yup. I was watching over the weekend, and told a friend there is no way I could ever help someone who hoards clean out their home. I am ruthless, and am of the mind, if its not needed, don't have space for it, its trash, or you have more than you could ever possibly use" it goes. I simply don't have the patience since as you said, they don't know that their behavior isn't normal.

Yeah, my dad comes from a family of hoarders. He and his brothers all married women who are either anti-hoarders or good at organizing, which is probably the only thing that saved them. Sometimes the symptoms of being a hoarder and being a cheapskate are the same--collecting plasticware, napkins, and condiment packages from restaurants, for example. In my mind, the hoarder never ends up using all the napkins they've collected, while the cheapskate uses them them for everything, even stuff that's kind of dicey, like baby diapers and toilet paper and gift wrap. I think the cheapskate actually has to save money, on the surface anyway, from not buying diapers and toilet paper and gift wrap in order to feel good; while the hoarder feels good because they've got this huge pile of napkins, which probably gets dirty and unusable before they can ever be used. That's my take on it, anyway.

[mumma to KMC]

...    I will stick them in my pantry and then curse them whenever I can't put something else away, so in the garbage they will
go.   ...

I'd dump the contents and save the jars!   

Some of the jars are reused commercial jars, like salsa jars. I don't think those can be/should be reused.

[Coralreef]

My late MIL was the cheapest person I've ever met. Mean cheap. Everything revolved around her cheapness. My dh is in no way that cheap, but occasionally the apron strings will tighten invisibly from the great beyond and he'll try something. (Try, because I don't let that ghost of my MIL win.) For example, he's a great fan of coupons. He got to the point where he would only go to restaurants for which we had coupons. He'd actually eat food he didn't like at restaurants he didn't like just to use a coupon! Or we'd spend more money in total than if we went to another, cheaper restaurant without a coupon. Made no sense except that the value lay not in the food consumed, but in the  money saved.  He couldn't get that it's not really a savings if you don't want what you're eating! He couldn't get it because that's how he was raised -- the enjoyment or value of something lay not in the experience, but in the (often false) savings you got from using coupons (or in my MIL's case, outright stealing, such as taking all of the donuts and teabags from a motel's breakfast tray.)

Snipping a bit.  Bolding mine. 

Mother would eat/ wear / use things that she would not like or find attractive if it was on sale / free / with a coupon.  Anything that was "expensive" was not to be enjoyed.  This included clothes that were in style and fit, food at a sit-down restaurant or even perfume that cost more than 50 cents a gallon.  My ex was also a "deal" buyer.  Need three nails?  Buy half a kilo of those.  Yes, each nail was cheaper, but you're stuck with the 500 others that will never ever be used and take up space.  You did not save money.

[Ginger G]

Amasi, your post reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine years ago.  Her husband's parents were genuine hoarders.  She told me that they lived in a mobile home on a good bit of property out in the country about 2 hours away from our city.  They had filled up one mobile home with so much junk that they had to buy and move into another mobile home on their property.  That one then got so filled up that all they had was a few paths to get from the sofa to the bed to the kitchen, etc.  They were unable to bathe because their shower/tub was filled with so much junk.

To give a specific example - my friend and her husband had an ancient artificial Christmas tree that the in-laws had bequeathed them.  It was so shoddy looking it made the Charlie Brown Christmas tree look full and luxurious.  After using it a few years, my friend put her foot down and insisted on a live tree so they put the old one to the curb.  The husband happened to mention to the father that they had thrown out the old tree, so the parents immediately jumped in their car and drove 2 hours to get it before the trash collectors got there.  Apparently they were extremely upset with my friend and her husband for throwing it out and did not hesitate to tell them so.