1. This advice given to us at the beginning of our marriage.  We did know this one from the beginning, but we also strayed from this one too many times.  Still, having been told early on, we did do much better than might have otherwise. We'd have done better still to never use a credit card at all, or at least to never, not even once, use it without paying off the balance at the end of the month.

2. Laundry soap, home-made (Also check out my Q and A posts on the laundry soap here. also here, and for more information on suds try here.) This would have saved us a bundle if we'd done it from the beginning or our 1982 marriage instead of only the last five years.

3. After far too many years of ordering pizza delivered on pay-day, we finally realized that if there is any regular indulgence in your life that you can only afford on payday, you really cannot afford it at all and need to get your spending  under control.  We needed to get our self-control under control!

4. Home-made diaper wipes and travel wipes.  We did this pretty well for the last three children. Even though the 'baby' is now nearly 12 years old, I still make these from time to time for traveling.  So refreshing!  And so nice for sensitive skin.  Also, I asked my grandson's mama to tell me off the top of her head her favorite frugal tip she'd learned from me, and this is what she thought of.  My grandson's mama is my second daughter, and while I do love being the grandmama, I can't really say it's more fun than being the Mama.  It's loads of fun, but not more fun- just different.

5. This home-made stain remover, which works even on thrift shop baby clothes with yellowed stains of undetermined origin.  In fact, sometimes I can buy used baby clothes that are drastically marked down because of those yellow stains, and then I soak them, launder them, and sell them at a yard sale or consignment store for more than I paid.

6. Washing my hair with baking soda I do have incredibly soft water. When we went on vacation we stayed in places where the water was incredibly hard, and my hair just felt stiff and icky, so while we were gone I switched back to shampoo- only Head and Shoulders because my hair felt so gross (Pipsqueak, who has thin, silky, very blonde hair, does not use baking soda, and she, too, complained of her hair feeling 'gunky' from the hard water). I noticed that I had to shampoo my hair daily or it was greasy and clumpy, whereas, at home with baking soda, I can go three days between washings, and my hair still isn't as disgusting as it was in 24 hours with hard water and shampoo.

7. Washing my face with cod liver oil The first week I did this every night.  Now I only use the oil a couple times a month, and mostly just splash my face with warm water and baking soda the rest of the time (the baking soda when I am washing my hair), and maybe take clean, wet washcloth to it.  I don't wear make-up, so this regimen works well for me. If you wear make-up, the cod-liver oil is a great remover.

8. This recipe for cookies- no wheat, no corn, no eggs, no sugar, no dairy, but the Cherub still loves them!

9. Reading the Tightwad Gazette Books To be fair to myself, I could not have read these from the beginning because they were not published yet. I do have all my Progeny read them for part of their Home Economics class in our homeschool. If anybody tells you these are 'extreme' ask them how much they are saving each month and what their debt level is, and then ponder whether or not that's the sort of standard you share or desire.

10. Revising my way of thinking from 'what do I feel like having' to the What's In My Hand principle (see also here) , because the biggest aid in frugality is attitude. I know you've heard me say that before, but I don't think we can hear it enough. Y'all are probably much nicer than me, but there are always new areas I am discovering where I am a bit of a spoiled brat. I am 48 years old and I think I was a late bloomer at this growing up stuff.

So... what do you wish you'd known way back when and put into practice from the start?

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Green cleaning ideas- these are the things we use to clean at our house- and by green, I also mean the green that's in your wallet.  One tip I don't think is on there- to clean sinks I use a bit of baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.  The cinnamon is mainly there because it smells so great.  It smells even better if I save orange peels, dry them, grind them in the food processor, and add them to the sink cleaner.  It's more fun to clean with stuff that smells nice.

Stay away from places where you spend money.  We often have several hours to kill on Sunday afternoons.  We find the best places for us to go are either to the park or to the library, where we hang out, read, play a game of checkers or cards, and don't spend money.
The post here is on optimizing your cell phone plan, which will seem less than helpful to those who don't have one, or to those, like us, who actually go in on the family plan with my mother who lives next door, so we're splitting a single plan between two families.  Actually, we split it up even further, as the two girls who have cell phone with us on this plan have to pay for their part of the cell phone.  Even if you don't have a cell phone, the best part of the post is the bit on negotiation:

Notice that you didn’t say, “Can you give me a cheaper plan?” because yes/no questions always get a “no” answer when speaking to wireless customer-service reps. Ask leading questions.

A leading question is any question that implies the answer is the one you want, and that doesn't really lend itself to an easy 'no.'  Salesmen use leading questions to get your money from you, it's fair to use them to keep your money.

Sell something: Sell it on Ebay, Craig's List, or list some books at Amazon.

And just a reminder- make it do, wear it out.  Use it up, or do without.  In the use it up department, we have this post about using leftover cookie crumbs.=)

What have you done this week to save or make money?

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For those of you who like a bidet or diaper sprayer for use with your cloth diapers, a commenter to a cloth diaper discussion on my regular blog shared a link for this excellent DIY tutorial for putting together your own for about half the cost.  Honestly, it looks so simple I think even I could do it, and I don't even flip my own circuits.

Cookery- here's a good recipe for feeding a crowd (or not, you can reduce it) frugally and easily- a delicious chicken and potato crockpot recipe, if I do say so myself.  It's one of our fallback favorites- at the end of the day if you have extra guests, just fry up or microwave extra potatoes and cut the chicken smaller.

Speaking of Frugal cookery, TVP is a meat substitute that we use sometimes- it doesn't require refrigeration until after you cook it, you can cook it alone or combine with meat to 'stretch' the meat.  It costs less than ground beef (but more than beans), it's lightweight, so makes a nice addition to backpacking or camping.  We add it to hot breakfast cereal for a proteinboost that keeps us from getting hungry sooner, and it's particularly tasty in burritoes- I fry the tvp in bacon grease or other meat fat to boost the flavor, then cook as directed, combine with refried beans, chiles, tomato sauce, and red onion and herbs and spices to taste, then wrap in tortillas with cheese.  Also makes good sloppy joes.

When the children were small and I had to clean up messes like bedwetting or accidents on the carpet, I liked a mixture of ammonia and baking soda (I sprayed the spot with ammonia, sprinkled with baking soda, rubbed that in lightly, and set a towel over it with something heavy on top of that to 'wick' the dampness out, then vacuumed it up later.  So it makes sense that a mixture of ammonia, baking soda, and dishsoap could be used to replace 'Shout' or other fabric stain removers.

Times are tough for some people, and they are getting tougher for more.  Food storage might be something you want to think about- stock up now, little by little buying extras of whatever is on sale as you can squeeze it in the budget.  Here are some posts to help you think through the process.

Lots of great information here from a guest poster who has been living on her storage for a couple of years of rough times.  Many of the same ideas for disaster preparation can be used for basic economic preparation as well.  See here, here, and here.

Just for fun... yet another frugal idea I've always done and never thought to share- a frugal way to laminate smaller items.

More fun- the simplest toys are often disproportionately delightful - an old spatula, wooden spoon, paint stick, or a stick from the yard, some tape and some ribbons, crepe paper, cut up plastic bags- and hours of joy for a happy little girl.

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What is your favorite homemade cleaner?  Is it cheaper, safer, or more effective?  All of the above?

DISHES: I'd like to find a less expensive replacement for dishsoap - the kind for hand-washing dishes.  Do you have a tried-and-true recipe?  And has anyone tried combining equal amounts of borax and baking soda in the dishwasher?  It sounds too easy to be true, but we don't have a dishwasher to try it out.

What cleaner would like to find a homemade substitute for?

Don't forget to enter the drawing for the new Frugal Forum: be among the first 50 members to post 25 times or more, and you'll be entered in a drawing for $100 cash!  Post about the drawing on your blog to be entered in a separate drawing for $25 cash.  Details are here.

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