well I've been reading thru all these wonderful ideas, and I thank all of you who responded on my sock dilemma, yes I've thought of darning them, but DH doesn't like the line against his heel, I never heard of the sock patch, think I will try that.
I had one other frugal thing I do that was not mentioned. At Christmas time in particular I have everyone give me their wrappings from their gifts, I reuse the paper to make origami boxes. In fact I usually only buy wrapping paper to use for origami, and just cut it to size. A whole lot cheaper than real origami paper.