The most interesting thing about being frugal is the realization that most cultural and design decisions were made with that mindset as the central conceit. Spending money you don’t have to’s a fool’s errand, don’t do it. 

When I was building my wood shed I did it with little knowledge of how things out to be built. It’s essentially a gigantic piece of furniture because that’s the vocabulary and sort of structure I understand. I made loads of mistakes, obviously, it being my first thing taller than a chair. Oddly the mistakes I made were not so much structural, as economical. While it might not be the strongest thing in the world, and part of the floor did fall out, but just for a second, it’s a bit overbuilt in my opinion. 

The knowledge of builders is the secret of how to make a thing as strong as possible, for as cheap as possible, as quickly as possible. The beauty is found in doing that well, and eeking out aesthetic given the demands of budget. Different projects hit the venn diagram with different emphasis, but frugality’s always part of it, and more than you might think. 

I was designing the cabinets for my office and it occured to me that I was looking down the barrel of almost $650 in plywood. Which is absurd. I had overbuilt the carcass considerably. Because I’m nervous about the approaching birth I got lost in my head for most of the day thinking about these cabinets, and the main thing I harped on was how to cut that plywood cost. 

I know I had made a cabinet carcass in school so I attempted to recall that distant memory for tips. I didn’t look on the internet, I just remembered, and in the end I’ve got the price down to about $120 in plywood. That’s a bit of an illusion because a big part of my solution is using cherry for the drawer sides and parts of the carcass I don’t know the name for.

Maybe that’s cheating, but loads of cherry’s what I’ve got, money for fresh plywood ain’t.