The Frugal Introvert’s Guide to the Weekend

Ah. Thursday afternoon. The perfect and natural time to begin contemplating your weekend plans.

We learned from our Myers-Briggs and finance article that we have quite a lot of introverted readers. In particular, we have a veritable army of female INTJs. Y’all are only 0.8% of the population! So since there’s five or six of you, we can assume that literally every female INTJ alive is present and accounted for in the comments section of BGR.

I made this post especially for all of you. I know how much you guys enjoy plans, backup plans, schemes, machinations, and gambits (an INTJ somewhere is rushing to the comments with “DON’T FORGET STRATAGEMS”). I’m also aware that your drug of choice is that sweet, sweet Get Shit Done feeling. Yet you struggle with prioritizing self-care and have difficulty enjoying lazy, unscheduled weekend time. Don’t we all!

That’s why I have developed this Frugal Introvert’s Guide to the Weekend. It’s a bunch of free and low-cost stuff you can do in your home that will make you feel rested, tested, and invested (TM, TM, we’re starting an MLM and that phrase is gonna be part of our cult-like sales culture).

In your bedroom

Jerk off

Let’s start out with a bang ELL OH ELL SO #RISQUE.

Look, I may be a New Englander, but I’m no Puritan. Everyone’s pearl jewelry could stand a little polishing from time to time.

Honestly, is there ANYTHING nicer than having a big breakfast, going back to bed, plugging in your Eroscillator (with Grapes and Cockscomb attachment), and going to town on yourself until you’re ready to take a post-breakfast weekend nap? NO, I SAY! No there is not!

The huge boost of oxytocin your brain releases upon orgasming reduces your overall stress, helps you sleep better, staves off headaches, boosts your immune system, relieves pain, and makes you feel fucking great. It’s self-care! Make time for yourself, goddamnit!

Take a nap

Almost half of all Americans get less sleep than experts say they should. Sleep deprivation causes increased traffic accidents, weight gain, heart problems, and overall poorer judgement. Thus, science tells us that napping is a necessary skill for all aspiring financial gurus.

You know what makes you really sleepy? Researching sleep deprivation. Do you see how I suffer for your benefit? APPRECIATE ME.

Meditate

I don’t get anything out of meditating, personally. But I know lots of people do! Try it out. If it turns into a nap, you’re still living the weekend afternoon dream.

Wash your sheets

Hey! You’ve been meditating, napping, and jerking off on those babies! Get them in a hot cycle already!

I am one of those monsters who never washes their sheets in a preemptive fashion. Don’t let your children grow up to be like me. They will be ridiculed for their dingy sheets and thrown into Parisian carnivals. (That’s why the Phantom was in that sideshow, right? He had real dingy sheets? Yeah, I think I’m remembering that plot point correctly. Because then he had that great swan bed underneath the opera house but Christine was like “ew your sheets tho, I’m gonna settle for this guy who looks like Nancy Drew b/c he has a maid service or whatever and his sheets are crisp af.”)

Take off all your clothes

Take a good, long look in a full-length mirror. Remind yourself that every commercial entity on the planet is deeply invested in making you dissatisfied with yourself. Resist. Take that good long look, then nod your head and say “yup, puh-retty dang good!”

It’s not a trick. You are puh-retty dang good.

More on self-care with the Bitches:

• Why You Should Take a Break: The Importance of Rest and Relaxation
• Ask the Bitches: Ugh, How Do I Build the Habit of Taking Meds?
• Run With Me if You Want to Save: How Exercising Will Save You Money
• Our Master List of 100% Free Mental Health Self-Care Tactics

In your kitchen

Make a really nice meal for yourself

Some people find cooking to be mysterious and stressful, and those are exactly the people who should do this. Knowing how to make your own food is an absolutely essential skill.

If you don’t know how to cook, start learning now. You can make yourself a perfectly scrumptious breakfast with two potatoes, a slice of toast, and an egg. If you do know how to cook, learn what you can make with few ingredients but lots of skill—the same ingredients will basically get you homemade potato gnocchi. Brown some butter, fry up some sage leaves, and treat yo’ self.

Prepare something to eat during the week

Look, dessert in our household is… not optional. My partner and I love each other significantly less than we love cookies. Often on the weekend one of us will make something sweet to last us for the rest of the week. You’ll know you’ve baked enough cookies when your house smells like a five-alarm fire at a Yankee Candle Factory.

Tons of frugal bloggers swear by batch-cooking. Apart from dessert, I don’t really do this, for the simple reason that I like to cook and look forward to doing so! But if you often run out of time or steam for cooking during the week, try doing it over the weekend.

Practice making something you suck at

I’m an appalling baker (too little patience, too much improvising) but I still bake a loaf of bread most weekends. The process of kneading is hella relaxing, and baked goods are the most universally-accepted currency for petty bribery.

Make something for someone else

If you have a friend who’s studying for grad school, or working three jobs, or just had a shitty breakup, take two hours to make them something nice. You will feel so good. They will feel so good. Philanthropy is an illusion, all charitable acts are inherently selfish, etc. etc. etc.

Bake treats for your pet

There are exactly three steps to making your own dog treats: put shit dogs like to eat in a bowl, mix it until it’s a dough-like consistency, bake it until it’s hard enough to crack dentures. For some ideas, check the Doggy Dessert Chef, WHOM I LOVE.

This is a great way to get rid of random cans of pumpkin puree and pineapples and coconut milk and whatever else is hiding back there. And it’s a super nice thing to do for your pooch. Hard baked treats help them clean their teeth! And whatever random crap you put in it will surely be better for them than the random crap pet food manufacturers put in store-bought treats.

In your bathroom

Take a bath

I’m surprised how many adults don’t take baths! Showers are cool and everything, but they’re awfully… efficient.

Baths feel great and make you smell good. They’re proven to help you relax, de-stress, and sleep better. And they’re truly awesome when combined with wine and Netflix playing on a laptop propped up on your toilet.

Give yourself a manicure or pedicure

I don’t have nice nails. At all. I work with lots of paint, chemicals, power tools, and animals. The square footage underneath my nails is irrevocably, permanently gunky. My nails split on the reg. It sucks. (Don’t skip to the comments to tell me about Biotin. Biotin is lies.)

When’s the last time you really gave your nails a once-over? Because you don’t want to become like me. This is another Parisian-mob-just-waiting-to-nonconsensually-throw-you-into-a-carnival situation.

Make a face scrub

Son, let me tell you a secret. Take your regular old cleanser, mix it with a few spoonfuls of regular old sugar, and rub it gently all over your face. Your skin will feel soft as a fucking dewdrop resting upon the crest of a baby bird’s downy wing.

You have to be really careful with scrubs because some of them are too rough, and will tear your shit up. Sugar’s molecules are the perfect size and softness to slough off dead skin without abrading the new stuff underneath. Plus it’s cheap af.

Do a mask

Bruh. BRUH. You wanna feel like a goddamn king? Mix some apple cider vinegar with some Aztec Secret. You can get it on Amazon for $10, and a tub lasts approximately four hundred years. Smear it on and let it suck out all of your oily face nonsense.

Also, if you are a non-female creature reading these tips and think they don’t apply to you, FALSE! I cry, FALSE! A clean, cared-for body is not the sole domain of women. Some beauty regimes are mild to medium torture, but these procedures are maximally relaxing.

Take a super leisurely poo

Don’t look at me like that.

You knew where this was heading.

And you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Relish your cup of coffee or morning run. Grab some literature. Lock the door. Get fucking ~ * c o m f o r t a b l e * ~ .

The Bitches are not interested in your protests. We are not here for your wrinkled nose. The Bitches embrace the human experience in all its messiness, its torn edges. We are all one crack in a frozen pond away from eternal nothingness. So enjoy your poops, for fuck’s sake.

Incidentally, I work in an office with very un-private, airport-style bathrooms. Pooping cannot be a joyful, relaxing experience with the sound of your VP scuffling around in the stall next to you. My deepest and most sincere condolences go out to my sisters and brothers with gastrointestinal issues. This must be twenty-seven times worse for you.

In front of a screen

Watch a movie

I have a very long Netflix cue of movies I haven’t yet seen, and I know you do too.

Play a video game

Bitches. Love. Video. Games. Seriously, I love every angle of them, but the best has to be the financial. Games can go for as much as $60, but I will eagerly squeeze 80-200 hours of fun out of a great video game. Plus, there are benefits for you. Gamers have better response times, hand-eye coordination, fine motor control, and focus than non-gamers.

Binge an entire TV show season

If one more friend treats me like a philistine because I still haven’t made time to watch Better Call Saul, I will remove it from my Netflix queue out of sheer spite.

Yes, I believe you that it’s great, but we’re living in a golden age of television! I had to watch Stranger Things and The Crown and American Crime Story and Black Mirror and Lady Dynamite and RuPaul’s Drag Race and Attack on Titan and House of Cards and Master of None and Game of Thrones and The Jinx and Orange is the New Black and Westworld and Transparent and Jessica Jones and American Crime and Harlots and Big Little Lies and Feud and The Handmaid’s Tale and—

(I continue my list from the basement of a Paris opera house.)

Get lost on Wikipedia

Allow me to get you started with the Dyatlov Pass Incident, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and Homosexual Behavior in Animals. THERE. You’re set until Monday morning! You’re welcome.

If you’ve already charted a course through history’s greatest assembly of knowledge curated by misogynists, set your sights upon the terrifying highs and lows of Internet exploration. Read Creepypasta and Cracked and TV Tropes. See if you can read all of Hark! A Vagrant in one weekend. The internet loves you, sometimes—love it back, sometimes!

Call someone you miss

Hey when’s the last time you FaceTimed your Mee-Maw? Or your roommate from college? (Well, for me that was yesterday because it’s Piggy.)

Take an hour to call someone you haven’t seen in a long time. For Introvert Extra Credit, make it an email.

Clean Everything

Deep clean your home

Truly, one of my all-time favorite feelings is working hard to clean my home, then flopping down exhausted with a beer and enjoying the shimmering majesty of my surroundings.

Some especially satisfying tasks? Clean your windows. Dust your baseboards. Scrub your cabinetry and doors around their knobs and handles to remove six months of finger-smudges that you barely noticed accumulating. Ooooh. It looks so fucking good when you’re done.

Declutter

I grew up with a hoarding parent. My developing mind saw where that road ended (picture fifteen years worth of catalogues blocking your bathroom door from closing). I do not want that for myself, and you probably shouldn’t either. So take an afternoon and Marie Kondo your way around your space. Donate useable items to a charity of your choice, and trash/recycle/curb alert the rest. Try to avoid the need to repeat the process by getting less crap you don’t need.

Do a home improvement project

When’s the last time you actually made something you pinned?

Whether you own a home, rent an apartment, sleep in you parent’s basement, or haunt the attic of the Moore family in Villisca, Iowa, there’s always work to be done. Is there something broken you’ve been meaning to fix? Does your home have squeaky doors? Burnt out lightbulbs? Walls with an especially atrocious color of paint?

I spend a substantial amount of my downtime putting effort into my living space. It makes me really happy, and it’s not a bad investment either. Even when I was renting, I used my laissez faire landlords to practice projects and hone my skills for eventual homeownership.

Move your furniture around

My grandparents have lived in the same home for my entire life. Furniture has been cleaned, replaced, and reupholstered—but never moved. It makes me feel psychologically stale to sit in the same chair, in the same spot, in the same room, in the same house for thirty years.

To me, there’s something really magical about rearranging furniture. It makes you think about your needs and habits. When I do it, the room can suddenly look completely different. Plus it’s a chance to clear some respectably large tumbleweeds out from under the couch.

Clean your car

I’m pretty good about not leaving stuff in my car. (Multiple break-ins will do that to you. #GoodbyeCityLife.) But that doesn’t mean my car is clean. The windows are so covered in my dogs’ wet nose smears that it’s actually come back around and created a nice frosted-glass effect.

Into a Parisian sideshow I go. Please, fashion for me of sackcloth a monkey playing the cymbals. As Marie Kondo instructs, I shall keep it only because it sparks joy, as I need no other reason.

I hope you have enjoyed these twenty-five tips for a frugal, introverted weekend experience.

We’ll bring you more in the future, and possibly expand into (gasp!) the territory of extroverts. Because having fun with a group of friends while not spending money is varsity-level frugality.