Kevin and I get great joy and satisfaction out of reusing, salvaging, and being generally thrifty.

Most of the time this works in our favor and saves us money.

Other times our frugality fails us.

This last weekend was a mix of both.

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We had planned to buy our kids bunk beds since they share a room. After further discussion we decided to just get our daughter a bed frame since our son’s bed frame worked just fine.

They still had plenty of floor space and we would save approximately $75. Frugality success!!

We spent the afternoon at IKEA getting the bed and delicious meatballs.

As we were driving away from IKEA, the bed frame box was stretching from our trunk to the front dashboard of our Nissan Versa.

I felt so resourceful and proud we had saved that money.

But halfway home I remembered we did not buy the bed slats that are required with most IKEA beds. I checked my phone quick and realized we did in fact need them, and they were $30.

We both scoffed at this price since the bed frame was only $40.

Our frugal brains kicked into overdrive and we decided we could use half of the slats from our son’s bed for our daughter’s bed. Problem solved!

Nope.

Turns out 8 disconnected slats instead of 16 connected ones makes a big difference. I sat on my daughter’s bed to read her a story last night and sank to the floor through the bed frame.

So today I am planning to get my hot glue gun out to secure them to the bed permanently.

This could turn out to be another frugality fail, but at least no one will be falling through their bed tonight.

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The lesson I learned is that the frugality of choosing the single bed over the bunk beds was wise. The frugality of cutting up bed slats to save $30 was foolish.

You live, you learn.

-Brittany