But where to get candles at a frugal price?  We buy most of ours from the local thrift shop- I watch for seasonal sales in particular, as I don't much care if I am burning an orange candle in December, or a blue one smelling of the sea shore in January (in fact, I'd love that).  I also buy the little tea lights for fondue pots when they go on sale.

Stock up- CVS and Walgreens will often feature packages of candles as loss leaders- they will have a coupon allowing you to get four or six candles at a drastically reduced price.

Consider buying replacement wicks from the local craft store, so that those marked down, scuffed up and burned out thrift shop candles can be refurbished with a new bit of wicking for a longer life.

Getting the fullest possible use out of your candles:

If the candle holder is black from smoke, you can clean it up very easily by wiping it out with a cloth dipped in rubbing alcohol.

REuse the container for more candles- to empty it out of the leftover bit of wax, put it in the freezer over night.  The candle should pop out easily, with perhaps just a bit of leverage from a butter knife.

Don't throw the wax away- I save old candle ends and the last bits of crayon.

You can use these to rub on the edges and metal parts of a drawer that sticks to make it open and close more smoothly.

You can rub the bottom of a large cardboard box with a bit of candle end and use the box for sliding down a grassy hill.

If the candle is scented, you can melt it down (gently, over low heat) and pour into candy molds, freeze, pop them out, and you have those scented wax pieces for tart burners.

Make fire starters- take an egg carton and put old dryer lint in each compartment.  Pour melted candle wax over the lint. Let cool.  Use these on camping trips and for bonfires outside.  Good stocking stuffers for your outdoorsmen!

You can make another candle with them, or you can make the following Christmas ornament:

Directions here.

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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 a sunny window or outside on your deck or patio.  Water regularly.  Harvest by pulling off outside leaves rather than pulling up the entire plant.

Purslane: it should NOT have a milky sap (milky sap is a different plant).  The leaves are succulent and I think delicious.  Purslane grows just about everywhere and is easy to find- make sure the purslane you picke has not been sprayed for weeds.

Day Lilies: NOT tiger lilies, but day lilies, the plain orange ones. Snip the buds into rounds, tear the petals into ribbons, or have the petals inside your sandwiches instead of lettuce.

Viola or Johnny-Jump-Up petals

Sprouts you've grown yourself (all you need is a jar, water, and a bit of old nylon or cheesecloth, and seeds- lentils, mung, alfalfa)

Lambsquarter leaves (young ones are better)

Toss with lemon juice, vinegar, and herbs, or salad dressing of your own making.

Serve with croutons of your own making (dice leftover bread slices into squares, toss with oil and herbs, toast in the oven)

Add other vegetables as you choose- from the garden, farmer's market, or store.

Choose a book on edible weeds for further explorations in wildcrafting

Do you eat from your flower garden or consider weeding the garden harvesting dinner?  What's your favorite edible weed?

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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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That's because for years our family "vacations" were known by another term- PCS move- that's Permanent Change of Station, or transfer, for you civvies out there. My husband was in the military for 20 years- he was in boot camp on our first anniversary. During his career, we combined our new orders with a road trip and a few visits to sites of historical or personal interest. He saved up his leave for these trips. This is how our family managed to live frugal and still visit places like Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Lliard Hot Springs in Canada, the natural history museum in Regina Canada, campgrounds in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territory of Canada, as well as all along the Al-Can highway, many a natural history museum, Little Big Horn, Chimney Rock, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Dessert, art museums in California, Nebraska, a cowboy museum in Texas, the Olympic Peninsula and so much more. We were moving, and we took a little detour here and a little detour there.

The military pays families who are transferring a per Diem rate for food. That is supposed to be enough to cover eating out a restaurant, but we never found that it was quite enough for our family- our daughters are surprisingly healthy eaters. It was, however, more than enough to cover picnics, and if we did those right we might even have enough left over for part of the museum entrance fee.=)

My husband retired from the Air Force six years ago, and we no longer get a per Diem travel rate, nor do we do as much traveling. (On the plus side, we do make a little more money in the civilian sector, and he doesn't go overseas without us for two months out of every year). Still, what we learned during our military travels still works for us. Here are some of the things we do while traveling with family.

Foods that travel well:
dried fruits and vegetables. Some of us love snacking on sun dried tomatoes (look for sales, or learn to dry your own), some munch on raisins, my husband's dried fruit of choice is prunes.
Granola- make your own.
Nuts
boiled eggs if you have a good ice-chest
summer sausage
jerky
oranges- they come in their own wrapping and don't get squished like bananas. On the other hand, they can be messy.
Cabbage- seriously, my husband loves to munch on wedges of raw cabbage.
Pretzels
bread and muffins- especially if you freeze it first, pack in single layers in a tupperware container, and store in the ice-chest. We're going to be trying these 'main dish' muffins later this month- they are really miniature quiches you can hold and eat one-handed. We know they work for short car trips as we've been doing that for a few weeks now.
snack mixes- like chex mix- made from scratch, of course.=)
bagels

Sometimes I like to pack meals that we can easily eat in the car, and then we use the time we would have ordinarily spent eating visiting a park or a museum.

We might bring brown paper lunch bags and fill up the bags with our snack items- things like carrot sticks, fruit, chopped wedges of cabbage, popcorn, celery sticks, crackers, cheese, slices of sausage, nuts, raisins, home-made cookies, dried tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. The Headmaster likes to eat raw green onions. You can usually pick up dried prunes quite inexpensively at the local dollar store or discount grocery.

We like sandwiches in pita or pocket bread best, because the filling isn't so likely to fall out. One of our favorite fillings is this Chinese Pork, either on its own, or mixed with cream cheese. You can make up a batch of this, put it in pocket bread sandwiches and freeze them. Then pack them frozen and eat in a day or two when they defrost.

Sometimes I make sandwiches at home and freeze them in advance. Other times I just pack the fixings. A favorite lunch to have at a picnic table somewhere is miniature shish-ka-bobs. I set out olives, pickles, cherry tomatoes, cubes of cheese or sausage, mushrooms, and canned pineapple chunks (don't forget your can opener!). We supply toothpicks or pretzel sticks and napkins. Each person makes their own miniature shish-ka-bobs on the toothpicks or pretzel sticks (the pretzel sticks tend to break unless you poke holes in the food first).

We find that breakfast is usually the cheapest meal to eat at a restaurant, so if we are going to eat out, that's the time we choose. If we don't want to eat at a restaurant at all, I pack yogurt and homemade granola, and we eat granola and yogurt while driving. Yogurt keeps better than milk while living from an ice-chest.

The harder cheeses keep better than soft ones.

peanut butter, of course, unless you have allergies. Have the peanut butter in sandwiches, in celery, or mixed with powdered milk and a dab of honey for peanut butter 'play dough cookies' (we roll them into balls and eat them)

"Melba" toast- one of our kids favorite snacks when young was home-made whole wheat bread sliced and toasted at a very low heat in the oven for a long enough time that it was dried all the way through. This kept well while traveling (just store it so it can't be crushed to crumbs) and is delicious with a mixture of cream cheese and grated cheese.

For a couple of trips where we weren't sure of hitting a grocery store, I grew sprouts while we traveled. I soaked a jar of sprouts overnight before we left, topping it off with a square cut off from an old nylon stocking and a rubber band. Three times a day when we stopped somewhere I rinsed and drained them. I prefer drinking fountains and pumps at parks to gas station restrooms.;-) That way we had a fresh vegetable just about the time our other fresh produce was running out.

We have also put snacks in ice cube trays. This is fun, but a bit messy at times. I like the tupperware ice-cube trays that have lids. The fun part about this is that small children like having this smorgasbord of snacks to choose from all divided up into little containers, but they are not overwhelmed by the amounts.

We each get a bottle of water that we refill as needed. I like to put a sprig of mint in mine, and I like to wrap other mint springs in a wet paper towel so I can have more when my first sprig is ready to be tossed (or eaten). The FYG has her water rationed because, while we are not unreasonable about bathroom stops, we do think every hour is a bit much.

Where to Stop
Whenever possible I like to take our driving breaks at museums or sites of historical interest, but it's also good to stop at places where the children can run off their pent up energy.

When the children were younger we would stop at rest stops and have foot races, climb trees, ask the children race to the next tree by hopping on one foot, jumping, hopping backward, skipping, and somersaulting- we could ask them to do these things under a watchful eye while we were getting out the picnic stuff. I pack sidewalk chalk and a jump-rope. We can sketch out a hopscotch pattern on the sidewalk in a moment, and the jump-rope can be used in a covered picnic area or in a ground floor hotel room on a rainy day.

Things to pack:
can opener
tablecloth for rest area picnic tables. I also like a quilt to spread out on the ground
paper towels and home-made wipes
water bottles
plates- this is up to you- you can pack one dessert plate for each person, use foods that won't be too messy, and rinse them off after each meal stop, or you can pack paper plates. Or plan foods that don't need plates, and use napkins- cloth can be rinsed, rung out, and set to dry in a sunny window or on top of the ice-chest, or just relax and use the disposable ones. Consider how frugally green you are being by NOT eating at a restaurant=)
ice chest
cheese slicer
vegetable peeler
paring knife and small cutting board (I have one that is only about 18 square inches, it fits nicely inside a ziplock bag with the paring knife and in the side of our ice-chest.
salt and pepper
Ziplock bags or other food storage containers

Other tips:
Plan regular grocery store stops along the way to replenish a few fresh vegetables, fruits, cheeses, and yogurts. I would buy a package of cream cheese and one of grated cheese and mix them in a ziplock bag, kneading until well combined, for a cheese spread for crackers.
Cottage cheese, dill and garlic make a favorite dip for vegetables.
If you long for a hot meal, go through the drive through of a fast food place and order one hot thing from the dollar menu, supplement with your own fruits and vegetables.
Learn to drink water, make sure your kids are fine with water. You will save SO much money this way.

Do some advance planning and prep- cut up turkey ham and freeze it in cubes, bake and freeze muffins and cookies, mix up some snack mix (we like oyster crackers, peanuts, mixed with dill, garlic powder and buttermilk powder and tossed with a bit of oil), make and freeze sandwiches (spreading them with butter will keep them from getting soggy when defrosted), dehydrate some cherry tomatoes or other products, make granola...

What are some of your favorite meals while traveling? How do you save money on food during road trips?

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You don't have to have a big, involved composting system like ours to benefit from compost.  This is ours at the messiest time of year:

My husband is really embarrassed about this picture, btw- it's the worst the compost pile ever looks.   It only stopped snowing a few weeks ago, and we don't really do anything to the compost pile over the winter except add things to it, and on the days that have been dry enough to work outside, we've been busy mowing lawns (ours, my mother's, the grass by the creek bed...), and on days that weren't nice enough, well, the weeds grew anyway.  This compost pile framework is made from pallets and old fence posts, both of which were free to us.  My husband measured the pallets, stuck the fence posts in the ground at the right intervals, and then we just set the pallets over them.

This is the biggest compost pile we have ever had.  In previous locations we had:

A one compartment pile, made  from from four pallets over fence posts, and I would lift up the front pallet and shovel the pile and put the pallet 'gate' back in place.  I was younger then.

A round pile made by first sticking a PVC pipe with holes in it in the ground vertically, then placing four fence posts about two feet out from the center pole and wrapping chicken wire around it all.  We tossed compost in over the chicken wire, stuck a hose down the PVC pipe periodically to water it (and the pipe with holes served to air it out so less turning over was required), and periodically lifted the chicken wire off and turned the thing over.

A trash can with holes drilled in the sides- I'd put the lid on and roll it around the yard periodically- or have a child do that.

This is how we use our current compost pile:

On the far right side is the place for 'fresh' things- we keep an old ice-cream bucket for scraps in the kitchen, and periodically we dump that bucket in the far right side.  Every once in a while we shovel one of the following over the top of that:

Dead leaves

shredded paper

dirt from the woods

old hay or straw from the gardens or the barn

We fill up that far right side until, well, until it's full enough, about 3/4 of the way to the top, and then we (meaning my son) shovel it out of the far right compartment into the middle compartment.  As you can see, once in a while somebody doesn't pay attention and they dump 'new' compost material onto the middle compartment, but they aren't supposed to do that.

Now, in the winter, that's all that happens.  This weekend, the first really solid spring weekend we have, which is when my husband was hoping I would be writing this post and taking a picture of the compost pile, the weeds get pulled out of the way, and the compost pile in the middle gets shoveled up and over to the compartment at the far left.

For the rest of the season, until first snow, every day we add new compost to the narrower section at the far right and just keep adding to that section, and every week we shovel the 'aged' compost from the middle to the section on the left, or back from the section on the left to the section in the middle.  This regular turning over gives us rich, dark compost in just a month or so.

I use that compost for seedlings, to put in five gallon buckets where I grow tomatoes and peppers (we have a lot of yard, but it's mostly sandy and shady), and for improving the soil where I can grow things.

You can compost in a bucket, an ice chest, or a 2 litre soda bottle.  Why would you want to?

Reduces trash

Recycles waste

Turns trash into something marvelously complex, interesting, and life-giving

Because then you can plant a couple window sill pots of lettuce or herbs in your home-grown compost- you don't need to buy potting soil or fertilizer- or even pots!

The two buckets hold lettuce seedlings, which we will eat by just pulling off the outside leaves (and thinning out a big).  I have a couple other buckets with lettuce growing on other windowsills.  The buckets were free, the soil the is my free compost, and the aloe vera you see is another useful kitchen plant, as we break off a bit and rub it on whenever we burn ourselves cooking.

I recently found out something interesting about compost which I did not know.

The Boy was building a small worm bed and the directions called for peat moss, which we did not have.  Aside from the frugalities of running to the store, we live ten miles from town and drive a 12 passenger van, and I do not make spur of the moment runs into town.  We go into town on a scheduled basis, and usually only when that trip coincides with other scheduled trips- music lessons, library volunteering, work, and so forth.  So I let my fingers do the walking, quite literally, and googled it.  I found that compost is not only a good substitute for peat moss, it's preferred for several reasons, one important reason being that peat moss is apparently not a renewable resource!  I had no idea.

You can make also make quick compost by mixing shredded paper and coffee grounds.

What should you put in your compost bucket?

Here's how we keep ours- we save all kitchen waste except meat and dairy scraps- I keep a plastic bucket with a lid on the kitchen counter (other places I have put it under the sink. Into it, I toss coffee grounds, cold coffee, tea bags, egg shells, vegetable peelings, moldy bread, slimy lettuce leaves, leftover bits of salad too far gone to use, the remains of dead flowers, apple cores, onion skins, sometimes hair from our hair brushes, all kinds of odds and ends, mostly from the kitchen.

I do NOT put the lid all the way on it- what makes a compost pile or the bucket collecting the compost fixings stink is a lack of air- the more airtight your system, the nastier it will smell.   I just leave the lid loosely over the top, or sometimes put a cloth over the top to keep bugs out, but allow it enough air not to reek. Every day or two that bucket gets emptied into the space  at the end of my compost pile.  If you don't have a big outside compost pile, you could use:

a trash can with holes drilled in it

An old ice chest with holes drilled in it (for drainage)- this kind works best for a worm bed, which will really give you good turnover for composting, or some other smaller container.

The Key Ingredients for Success:

Constant turn over- for us, that's because we have three bins- one for constantly adding new materials to, one is always empty, and one has the 'old' compost which is now in the final stages of breaking down. Having an empty bin makes turning over the compost much easier.  But you could do the same thing with a smaller container that you can just flip over or roll- the trash can, the two litre soda bottle with a flap cut out of the side for adding content, and holes for drainage (you can keep this in a shallow pan to catch drainage.  Use the drainage to fertilize plants.)

Airflow- you don't want an air tight system.  The smelliest bacteria thrive in anaerobic conditions.

You could also use your home-grown compost to grow seedlings to sell at your local farmer's market, or perhaps there is a market for it among some of your friends.  Maybe somebody who does have plenty of sunny windows would be willing to barter your compost for some home-grown lettuce leaves?

Even if you don't have a sunny window and you don't want to grow your own houseplants (although studies show they are good for the environment, filtering out toxins from the air), you can still make compost- after all, if you have kids, it's fun to show them how things break down and turn back into dirt!  You could share your compost with somebody who does garden, or simply take your bucket of new dirt out to the park and dump it out there instead of into the garbage.  After all, isn't it just amazing that the sort of garbage you see here:

Can into turn dirt capable of growing and nourishing something like this:

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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 them at a good price.

Thanks Mama is giving away 3 Kissaluv cloth diapering items on their blog!  There are 10 ways to enter so do as many as possible to really increase your odds of winning.

They're also having a great sale on Thirsties, and shipping is always free on orders over $60.

I couldn't help but notice that they also carry my favorite-ever baby carrier, the Ergo, at a competitive price. It's not cheap, but so worth it! I love mine, and it's so ergonomically well-designed that my skinny 8yo can adjust it to fit herself in seconds, and can carry the 35 lb. boy in it with ease. It's truly amazing!

Too many temptations?  Use the code below to save 5% on your order and remember that orders over $60 get free shipping.  Be sure to tell them KimC sent you.

5% off promo code: mama

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1. We switched to cloth diapers. This has saved us at least $30/month in disposables diapers, but it also has other benefits I didn't expected.  There are no more unplanned trips to the store because we forgot to buy diapers.  This saves us $12 in gas every time we don't have to run to town.  Even better, there are no more nasty disposable diapers in the trash, tempting scavenging animals to dump our trash and spread it around the yard.  The savings will double during the inevitable overlap between new baby and previous toddler.  I've never had one baby trained before the next arrives.
2. We switched to cloth baby wipes. This was a no-brainer after we switched to cloth diapers.  No extra trouble, no extra costs.  We do still keep disposable wipes in the diaper bag, since we're not always near a water source to dampen a cloth wipe.
3. We canceled weekly trash service. This saves us the $30/month service, and it saves us the cost of the large trash bags that were required.  It also saves us the extra fees, stench, and headaches when we missed trash pickup one week and had to pay extra the next week when we put out twice as much.  All told, I estimate our savings is closer to $40/month.  We began burning our burnables, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how little of our trash is not burnable.  The more we cook from scratch, the less packaging we generate.  Now that we're cloth-diapering there are no disposables to dispose of.  When you don't bring as much into the house, you don't have to dispose of much either.
4. We got rid of the electric clothes dryer. It was broken, and we decided not to replace it right away.  That was over a year ago.  We've kept up through rain and shine, hot weather and cold.  This works for us, and probably saves our large family $30-50/month, not to mention the initial investment and space required by an electric dryer.  I've also heard that line drying is much gentler on fabric, so our clothes may be lasting longer.
5. We skipped the a/c last summer. It was a scorcher, but we acclimated, learned some new tricks for keeping cool, and we made it.  This probably saved us $700-800 over the course of the summer.
6. We switched to more natural alternatives for deodorant and shampoo/conditioner. Yes, after some initial skepticism, I jumped on the bandwagon.  I'm now using and loving my homemade deodorant (the first that has ever really worked for me!) and baking soda/vinegar instead of shampoo/conditioner (my dandruff is finally gone!).  It sounds weird, but I'm won over and so are most of the children who are old enough to have opinions.
7. We built a chicken coop and bought chickens. In spite of the fact that we had access to many free materials, our "chicken palace" as my dad dubbed it cost us far more than we initially expected.  Nevertheless, we think it will be worth it in the long run.  We purposely chose breeds that have some setting instinct left in their bird brains - not the absolute best layers, but capable of hatching out replacement populations in the coming years.  We're currently getting about a dozen eggs/day out of our flock of 17, at a cost of $10 every 2-3 weeks in feed plus all the scraps our family generates.  We think it's a good deal and one less reason to rush to the grocery store.  Eggs in the store are $1/dozen, so we're $3/week ahead, but there are other advantages: our eggs are fresh and homegrown, I don't have to find room in my fridge to store 6-8 dozen on shopping day, and chickens are very entertaining to watch.
8. I started cooking beans from scratch. After years of believing that our water was simply too hard to soften beans, I finally learned that I was using old beans.  Fresh beans cook up nicely in the crockpot and make a hearty, frugal addition to our diet.  Beans also helped immensely with my morning sickness.  And now that we're not opening cans of beans constantly, our burnable trash declined even more.
9. I started making all of our bread, from fresh-ground whole wheat flour. This might not be as much of a savings once we use up all the wheat we received free from some dear friends, but in the meantime it's not only a great improvement in our diet, but is also cheaper than the [far less wholesome] whole wheat bread at the store, and one less reason to rush to town.  Incidentally, cinnamon rolls can be made from whole wheat bread dough.  I mix up enough dough for 3 loaves, but often shape the 3rd into cinnamon rolls instead.  Fast & easy when the dough is already made!
10. I started buying more staples in bulk. This may seem like a no-brainer, but I finally bought some gamma lids and started storing 25 lb. bags of flour, white sugar, and brown sugar in easy-open 5 gallon buckets.  It's cheaper to buy them this way.  Not by a lot, but enough to make it worth my while.  It's also far more convenient to pick up one big bag of flour or sugar once in a while than to remember to get one or two every time I go to the grocery store.  We use these goods in large enough quantities to make the big bags a worthwhile convenience even if the savings were minimal.

Next?

• We're hoping to install a woodburning stove, though it probably won't happen this year.
• We'd like to get a milk goat - or maybe even a Jersey to share with the local extended family if I can talk everyone into it.
• We're looking at reducing our cost for hot water - maybe like this, or this, or simply by installing a timer and using it mercilessly.

What changes have you made this year?  What changes do you hope to try next year?  Will any show up on your list of New Year's Resolutions?

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There are a number of ice-packs you can put together from what you have in your hand. I especially like this idea- first make a wrapper from a sock that has lost its mate or its usefulness- leave one end open.

Fill a ziplock bag about half full of water, fold it in half (so it will fit in the sock wrapper) and freeze it on a flat surface. Keep several ziplock bags filled this way and frozen so you can cycle them out for sustained ice packs.

Sometimes a ziplock bag will leak, and another way you can keep an ice pack going without the risk of leakage is to get a wash cloth wet, wring it out just so that it's not sopping and dripping everywhere, and then fold it neatly, slip it into a ziplock bag and freeze it (lay it flat on a cookie sheet for a nice, flat pack, these are more comfortable, more flexible, and also take up less room in the freezer).

For a larger pack, fill a gallon sized bag (or rinse and freeze two washclothes together) with just enough water to be about half an inch thick when laid flat, then wrap or pin a dish towel or a pillow case around it when frozen.

Keep two or three of these in the freezer all the time and you will always have one when needed.

Another tip I assume you already know is to keep at least a couple of bottles of water in the freezer- use old two liter bottles from soda or several old water bottles or a milk carton. We use these in the ice chest when we are going on a longish shopping day.

When I was a child my mother bought milk in waxed cartons (such as half gallons of milks come in). When we finished the cartons, she rinsed them thoroughly, filled them with water, and froze them, stapling the top shut. When we needed crushed ice for iced tea or making ice cream, we would take one of those ice cartons out to the patio and fling it on the concrete a few times, wack it with a hammer a few more times, and then dump out the refreshing crushed ice into a bowl or pitcher.

One prinicple that all these tips illustrate, regardless of whether or not you have a need for home-made crushed ice or ice-packs, is that one of the most important keys to frugality is planning ahead, which makes frugality much harder for me than it should be. I suspect that's true of a lot of us, and many of us dismiss certain frugal ideas as being too hard or burdensome or just 'not us.'

But planning ahead is an important skill to have- and rather than viewing it as a burden and an excuse to avoid certain frugal skills, we might learn to embrace the discipline as beneficent, something to help us learn new and better habits.

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Imagine a water heater that heats its water–not by gas, nor by electricity–but simply by the air surrounding it. Your power or gas bills would be significantly lower, and you would be doing the environment a service by conserving a considerable amount of energy.

The AirTap™ does just this. Once connected to your existing water heater, the AirTap™ unit acts as a conventional heat pump, using a compressor (powered by a low-wattage electric current) to extract heat from the surrounding air, and then sending this heat through long copper tubes into an adaptor where it is dispersed in your water tank. This, in turn, heats the water to the same degree as would a gas burner or electric heating component, distributing the hot water throughout your home safely and efficiently.

I searched the web for reviews and found very little, though their own website does link to several news articles.  This seems to be a little-known product, but what I did find was consistently positive.   Here are 2 reviews on Amazon.com.  Their record with the BBB is clean, i.e. non-existent.

According to their calculator, a family of 4 will save ~$400/year, depending upon where they live.  I estimated that our very conservative household of 11 used roughly as much water as a household of 7 might be expected to use, and found that the AirTap could easily pay for itself in the first year.  Since we don't have a freezer or dryer, all of our bulbs are fluorescent, and we haven't used a/c this year, our water heater probably makes up a very respectable portion of our electric bill.

Oh, and did I mention that it produces cold, dehumidified air as a byproduct?  Free air conditioning. Based on the figures at the bottom of this article it produces about the same amount of cold air as a 5,000BTU air conditioner.  It may not be enough to cool our whole house, but I'm not going to complain.

What do you think?

Have you ever heard of the AirTap?

Do you know somebody who has one?

Would you consider trying it?

Should I get one and tell you all about it? 

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© KimC for Frugal Hacks, 2009. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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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