Archive for crunchy stuff
Maintenance is Frugal
Dishwasher not running well anymore? Clean the seals well and run a rinse cycle with a cup of vinegar. Then follow these steps. And consider this home-made dishwasher soap which really works.
Countertop Compost
Keep a container of the following sorts of kitchen scraps: egg shells (break them up really well), coffee grounds, teabags, bits and pieces of peelings from vegetables and fruits. Sprinkle a bit of dirt over each layer. Once it’s full, then it’s time to turn it or shake it every day or two. In a [...]
Grow Your Own Wheat Grass
What you need: potting soil or compost A container (it doesn’t have to be deep. Cake pans work) wheatberries (try your natural foods store) water sunshine Fill the container with soil. Sprinkle wheatberries evenly over the surface. Sprinkle a little more dirt over the top. Spray gently with water. Keep the soil moist but [...]
Candles
Burning candles is something that makes the cooler, darker days seem brighter and warmer- but they don’t just ‘seem’ that way- they do make things warmer. One candle in the room adds the equivalent of one person’s body heat to the room. But where to get candles at a frugal price? We buy most of [...]
Summer Salad
Here’s a salad you can make without going shopping for the ingredients- although you might need to take a walk. As always, be careful and be sure of your plant identification: Lettuce- grow this in an ice-cream bucket of compost or potting soil. Sprinkle with lettuce seeds, sprinkle with dirt, keep damp and set in [...]
Ten Frugal Practices I Wish We’d Done from the Beginning
This list is off the top of my head. If you ask me again tomorrow, it will probably look slightly different, and the week after that I might remember something else I think is even more important. There is probably something more important that we do that I learned at my mother’s knee so I [...]
Frugal Eats On Road Trips
I tried to count the number of road trips our family has taken, but I really just can’t. I have no idea. And when I talk about road trips, I am talking about trips we have taken of several days duration, sometimes weeks, and, a couple of times, road trips that lasted over a month. [...]
Composting
Alright, you city folk, apartment dwellers, thinking that this whole composting thing doesn’t apply to you because you live in a small place and don’t garden… I think there could still be something for you in this post. You don’t have to have a big, involved composting system like ours to benefit from compost. This [...]
Cloth diaper giveaway and promo code
I’ve posted about my favorite diapers – they’re super cheap all-in-one pocket dipes from China. They do the job adequately and the price can’t be beat. All in all, they’re the best fit for our budget and situation, but I won’t hesitate to admit that I love the more expensive diapers when I can get [...]
10 Changes we’ve made this year
Our family has made quite a few changes this year toward simplifying our lives and our budget. Some required extra work to adjust; others were painless. Some save a significant amount of money, while others were done for different reasons – but resulted in savings as a secondary effect. We switched to cloth diapers. This [...]
Frugal Ice-Packs and Learning to Plan Ahead
I assume we all know the emergency tip about using a frozen bag of peas or corn on a nasty bruise. But what about when it’s not exactly an emergency? This past week our daughter Pip had her wisdom teeth out- three cut out and one extraction, and she needed to apply ice packs every [...]
AirTap: have you heard of it?
I heard about the AirTap Heat Pump Water Heater just last week on the radio, and already I want one. It’s not cheap, but it is cheaper than the much-vaunted tankless water heater, and it seems to be easier to install and far more efficient. Imagine a water heater that heats its water–not by gas, [...]
Various and Sundry
Wonderfully frugal way to get clean, soft, lovely skin- I LOVE this method. 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 [...]
Cloth diapers: why I shunned them for 15 years. Why we switched.
I have 9 children now, and I used disposable diapers with the first 8. My reasoning was: I did NOT want to swish dirty diapers in the toilet. I didn’t want the risk associated with diaper pins. My baby sister once spent hours with a pin through her skin thanks to an inexperienced babysitter. Disposables [...]
