Fruits of Frugality Lehman's loves to help folks lead a simpler life. Submit your email address below, and we'll send new recipes, simple living tips, and announcements to you. "Frugality is such an ugly word," reads a change purse being sold in the Brooklyn Museum shop. I couldn’t resist being amused. It’s hip and wry and urban and chic. I had to buy it because it is contrary to my life in the country. The word sent me scurrying to my Chambers Etymological dictionary. The word so associated with avoiding waste and saving has its roots deep in what we find antithetical to its current usage. Tracing it through various Latin cases it ultimately rests in words originally meaning fruit, profit, and value. Now frugal doesn’t seem an ugly word at all! It’s lost some of its repressive Puritanical tarnish. When we’ve polished it off it is deeply rooted in abundance. This makes me smile. For me frugality - in both its saving and abundant forms - is rooted with arboriculture. Trees take a certain amount of nurture and patience but they give back so much. They last long after us. So when I think of frugal acts to incorporate into our lives I like to think - root, trunk, branch. This suggests to me that various items need ‘double up’ or multitask for us so that they have a second life beyond their initial purpose. Consider newspapers. Many people read online but there is still nothing to beat reading the funnies aloud to your kids. People acquire newspapers for many and widely various reasons. They use it to line the cat litter tray or line wastebaskets. But the most frugal use for newspaper to my mind is to use it in the garden. Newspaper can be scrunched up in balls to add to the compost bin in between those wet ‘green’ layers of tea bags, vegetable peelings and coffee grounds. But you can also use it to save weeding labor. Try this on the next gardening day when you mow the lawn. Save the grass cuttings.