I use cotton dish cloths, and a brush

Peppermint tea. If you have a garden you can grow it yourself. But you have to keep it from spreading everywhere.

Our first colour tv cost about 3 months of my dad’s salary in the early 1970s. And the Siemens mainframe computer in the company he worked for was tens of thousands (which was more than a year’s worth of the average salary). Rent. Every month. It had less computing power than my smartphone.

A brand new coffee grinder (hand crank) for free, and 15 silk neckties for €1 each.

Can you install something like this: https://youtu.be/M8P4v6JeNDw?feature=shared ?

Would planting a hedge or shrubs on your side be an option? Much nicer than a fence, provides a biotope for birds, insects and other animals, can bear fruit (yummy berries!)

Growing to a hight of 3 ft (~90 cm) should be a matter of 2 or 3 years, depending on the plants.

What a beauty! 👌

The clothes industry comes to mind. A new “collection” every two weeks, and the “totally out of fashion” stuff from last week gets shredded before it even leaves the Asian slave labour camps. Well done, Primark, Shein & Co.!

I’m a guy and do a simple taper fade from 1" on top to 1/4" on bottom

Same here, but a bit shorter than in the picture. I haven’t been to a hairdresser for at least 35 years.

Soaking and cooking too many beans? That’s just like opening a big can of beans when a small one would suffice.

Talking about clothes…

I like to dress up a bit. More formal than others. So the opposite of fabric softener (I use 25% acidity white vinegar for that): potato starch for crisp shirts.

If you are courageous enough: yes, you can wash suit jackets. Cold, very little detergent, wool cycle, slow spinning. But jackets hardly need that anyway. A good brush gets you a long way. And a spray bottle of Vodka, to freshen up the lining every once in a while (no, you won’t smell like a drunkard).

And of course: second hand clothes. Especially the more formal stuff because (way too) few people walk around in suit and tie and only buy them to wear once for some formal occasion and resell them afterwards for ridiculously cheap.

Sounds strange, but: don’t go shopping with an empty stomach. That easily leads to impulse purchases.

Make a shopping list, and stick to it. But be flexible: If you planned a cucumber salad and find tomatos are on sale, change your menu: tomato salad it will be. Leave the cucumbers in the shop.

Many herbs can be grown on your balcony or even your windowsill.

Try bone glue: https://www.fine-tools.com/G10008.html

My dad always had a tin can of glue simmering in a pot of hot water, in his workshop, “back in the days”, 1960s.

Happened to a lot of our appliances when we lived in an area with extremely soft water, which can be very corrosive. Some plastics seem to be more durable than others.

Use the same place where the old flight of stairs used to be: the house’s structure and floor statics were calculated to have stairs there. You don’t want to mess with a house’s structure without the help of a statics engineer!

A little bit of “Stair maths” to start. Sorry for metric units, you might have to convert them if you’re in the US.

The ideal stair has an angle of 30°, a rise of 17 centimetres up, from step to step, with steps 29 cm deep, from front to back. Two rises plus one depth should be as close as possible to 63 cm because of the length of a human’s step.

You won’t get this ideal in most cases, because the distance between the upper and lower floor will rarely be an exact mulitiple of 17 cm.

1: measure this distance, finished upper floor to finished lower floor. Divide by 17 cm. Round up or down to get the number of steps you need.

2: Divide the distance between the floors by the number of steps from above

3: Use the “2 rises plus 1 depth = 63 cm” to determine the ideal depth. Stay as close to that as possible to make the stairs easy, safe and comfortable to walk on. It’s a good idea to make a drawing to scale at this point, to see how the stairs fit in the floorplan.

4: Now you can calculate the length of the stairs using good old Pythagoras (a^2 + b^2 = c^2, “a” being the distance between the floors, “b” is the depth of one step multiplied by the number - from above, “c” is the length of the stair - and the boards (“stringers”) on either side as well as the handrails).

Now you can calculate the material you need. Two stringer boards, the required number of steps of the correct length, plus brackets and screws on either side of each, plus one or two handrails plus balusters.

My basics:

• second hand almost everything
• some stuff from my balcony (chives, chard, strawberries, rosemary)
• sewing machine to alter and mend my (second hand) clothes or linens, and to make stuff from scraps (like pillowcases, handkerchiefs or potholders)
• “ugly” vegetables (not pretty enough for supermarket shelves)
• cloth napkins, rugs and handkerchiefs
• almost no meat
• only tap water to drink (well, ok, coffee in the morning and herbal tea in the evening)
• no car, but a public transport pass and two bicycles

Jarring: Not much of a learning curve, and you hardly need any equipment. I do have jars anyway for shopping at the zero waste shop, and you can simply use your oven. But still I hardly ever do it.

I rent, so could only install a small solar system on my balcony. Not high on my priority list - but I have some shares in local solar and windpower co-ops. Electricity is expensive (Germany), but is covered that way

Minimalism: I prefer a minimalistic look, but I think if you save money, you are a minimalist even if it doesn’t show.

I do have a bread maker and wouldn’t want to miss it.

I only wear natural fibres, so of course cotton (or wool!) socks and underwear. But those are the only clothes I buy new so I can easily afford the best quality there. I darn my socks, by the way.

Drugs: I don’t drink any alcohol but I vape, and treat myself to a good Cuban cigar every once in a while.

You can often find second hand machines in excellent condition (sold by people who think they are too large after they bought them?). Mine was about €20.

I use bread mixtures from the supermarket which cost about €1.50 per kg and are good for two small loafs.

Use a parquet stripper.

My golden rule: If I can’t pay cash, I can’t afford it. Easy.

Detained for not using a flight you bought and paid for? Can someone please ban those airlines and grant this poor boy a compensation of 1.5 million per minute of detention?

That’s absolutely unacceptable.