My favorite recent frugal purchase: soup cubes
Excuse me while I evangelize for a minute. I freeze EVERYTHING but I'm always running out of plastic containers, which also don't optimize freezer space well, and I hate washing or throwing away a million ziplock bags. Boom: soup cubes. You can stick meat or beans or soup or fruit or whatever in them and make them into neatly stackable little bricks that you can then store in one giant bag. I found food storage containers that are roughly the same size so for lunch prep I'll stick a cube of soup or beans in the container and let it thaw in the fridge or take it with me to work. My entire freezer is cubes, I've never been happier. Thanks for reading and I hope this changed someone's life today.