TKOG Who spends her days cos-playing Little House on the Prairie

NTKOG: The kind of frugal, level-headed domestic goddess who takes yo’ Depression-era grandma for a run for housekeeping money.

I am: at least a solid half-level above Microwave Gourmet in the kitchen. Isn’t that enough? No? You beasts!

I am not: secure enough with the essentials of domesticity to even begin considering thrift, frugality or any of those other Laura Ingalls Wilder motivational cross-stitch staples.

The Scene: My postage-stamp Brighton apartment, which is just about big enough to hold one — as long as you don’t have big dreams.

Let me level with you a bit, kittens: Ignore the number in the description up there. I haven’t just done 222 or 250 or even 300 of these NTKOGs — I’ve done more than I can easily count. The problem? Not all of them make good stories. In fact, half of the things I do specifically for this blog end up getting scrapped because there just isn’t 500 words of content in ‘em.

I’ve taken to thinking of these failed NTKOGs as didn’t-kill-me’s. ’cause that’s all there really is to say. Wore a too-short skirt work? Didn’t kill me. Told off a homeless dude for sticking his arm in my shirt up to the elbow? Didn’t kill me. Sat up until 3am drinking boxed wine on the curb with a Jordanian immigrant? Well, you get the message.

Unsurprisingly, many of these didn’t-kill-me’s are stories that take place in the privacy of my own apartment, where I try day by day to take on the non-glamorous task of finally becoming an adult. Still, in the spirit of frugality (and saving you having to read a post every single day ’til August 23), let us indulge for a moment in a compost heap of domestic-themed NTKOGs.

NTKOG #224: Washing and re-using various disposable household goods. This one was brought on by my year-long spurning of paper towels. Heck, if I can save a tree or two, how many casualties could I save in the plastic rainforest?

Cue many weeks of rinsing and reusing plastic cutlery at work, using old wine bottles as water carafes (’till they crowded out my fridge, that is — whoops), and painstakingly washing and drying my old Ziploc bags.

The Verdict: Oh man, this made me feel like the special guest star of a Hoarders prequel. With the exception of the wine bottles, which felt a bit roguish and debonair, it’s just — it’s just so much effort to save something that costs mere pennies. Plus, I’m not convinced it’s environmentally useful, what with the massive water consumption it entails. Voting this one a thumbs-down with a double serving of, dude, I am not my grandmother. (Which is probably a good thing, or else my fridge would be too crammed with decades-expired cans of lard to have room for wine in the first place.)

NTKOG #225: Eating expired food. See what I mean about the non-glamorous thing?

Let me be straight with you: I’m such a paranoid culinary princess that I can’t even eat leftovers more than 24 hours later. And the second we approach the expiry month of a food product? See ya.

Nonetheless, conquered my revulsion by working through two half-gallon bottles of month-expired soy milk. Which, unlike moo milk, tasted exactly the same as they did the day I bought them.

Later, growing riskier, I cleaned out my seriously limp crisper drawer into a pot of chili that tasted — what’d'ya know?! — exactly like my usual recipe. But my craving for zombified produce reached its pinnacle when I prepared and ate, of my own free will, banana-nut dinosaur muffins out of these:

I generally have a rule against foods that can be described as "sludgey," but even three weeks old, organic bananas are too $$$ to throw away.

The Verdict: The first didn’t-kill-me I’ve been delighted and surprised to find actually. didn’t. kill me.

NTKOG #226: The kind of gender-neutralized toolbelt-wielding lady who fearlessly handywomans her own environs. By which I mean. I scraped and re-grouted the crusty tiles in my bathroom. For fun.

The Verdict: Okay, this one actually did almost kill me. Because my Roomba was running in the other rooms I, like an idiot, closed myself in the bathroom for three hours with the caulking solution, then hyperventilated and passed out very briefly in the bathtub. Which is a lot funnier in retrospect than it was at the time.

Oh whatever. Like Bob Vila never had a bloopers reel…

Meta-Verdict: One doesn’t like to brag but — this guy? Totally not dead yet. No, no, hold your applause.

Correction: I might have died of cuteness after eating these.

Tagged as: apologize if you read this when the whole site was accidentally bolded. that's what i get for trying to format a post on my Iphone on a bus., birthday hangover? probably!, domestic slavery, don't even front like you're not jealous of my dinosaur muffin pan, hot fresh caulk, if you're like a stalker-big fan you might have noticed my archives were misnomered by two. NOT ANYMORE., indentured servitude, my roomba is trying to kill me, my roomba's only goal is to make sure i end up in a darwin award when he murders me. "local girl found dead in her underwear while picking zits." thanks wallace.