Archive for DIY (Do It Yourself)
Frugal Links and Reads
Thrifty Tuesday: Selling online with thriftshop finds. Market value and how to go about setting prices that are fair to yourself. Two quick and frugal recipes- Pakistani kima (or hamburger curry), and a very quick chow mein recipe. I love this home-made bathroom cleaner solution. A week’s worth of very frugal meals (at the time [...]
Frugal Miscellany and Free Gardening Books
How to use nail polish remover to remove the print from plastic containers- this is useful for using those containers for gift giving and special storage. Really neat idea! Get your kids on board and teach them about frugal living, too. Make your life and theirs easier when you share the joy! Here are 37 [...]
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.
Frugal Disaster Prep
September is National Preparedness Month in the USA, and Fema has some things for you to do to be prepared. In fact, they recommend that every household have a disaster kit on hand. Here are a couple of frugal ways to start that disaster kit. How I dehydrated my own beans. Food supplies you don’t [...]
Make a Shadow Box
I wanted a shadow box, a small shelf to put several little treasures. What I had on hand, or in my hands, was a wooden gift box that had originally come filled with tea as a gift. Tiny balls of clay help hold each of the items on their shelf. I have seen a similar [...]
Warding off the Heat
Sunny windows are wonderful in the winter when they let in light and change it into warmth. In the summer, they can raise the temperature in a room considerably, making you swelter. If you run the air conditioner, a window with enough direct sunlight can make that air conditioner have to work harder, costing you [...]
Frugal Camping
My family’s first real camping trip we dove right into the deep end. We had three children, ages 11 months, and 7 and 8 years old. We were military, and we had orders to Alaska. We were visiting my grandparents in one of the Great Lakes states. A number of my relatives had come to [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Punch and Cake Reception For About $100
Here in the South, receptions and showers often feature a simple menu of punch and cake. While this may not be socially acceptable in some parts of the country, count yourself lucky if it is! I helped a friend host such a reception for 100+ people. Here’s how the budget worked out, in real numbers: 3 Costco sheet cakes for $51, with 48 [...]
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 [...]
