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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Perhaps you have found storing wrapping paper for a year awkward or have just a little that you are trying to use up. I've repurposed wrapping numerous ways. Here are a few of my favorite wrapping paper hacks:

1. Tablecloth: Depending upon the design, you've got yourself an easy clean up cover for your dining table.
2. Tablecloth (part 2): Or, turn it around and display the white side. This serves the same purpose as a tablecloth with some added fun. Draw, color, or paint on the white table covering for some family fun.
3. Origami: If you have just a bit of wrapping paper left, cut squares and make some festive paper cranes.
4. A makeshift sword, light saber, or schwartz: As a kid, I preferred the latter, a reference to Space Balls the movie. Children, and kids at heart, can have at least five minutes of fun before destroying the cardboard tube.
5. Wrapping paper: December and January birthdays along with New Year's Eve party hosts have resigned themselves to receiving gifts wrapped with evergreens and snowmen.

What uses have you found for leftover wrapping paper?

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Do your fluorescent bulbs actually last like they claim? Ours haven’t. We’ve used fluorescent bulbs since we’ve been married (6 years in January!) and in two different residences. We started writing the date with a sharpie on each bulb and saving the receipts with packaging. The box claimed they’d last five years I think it was, and it wasn’t even a year. I don’t know if we got ones that were poorly manufactured or what. I’d recommend saving the packaging and receipt even though it’s annoying because I recently shipped some of ours back to the company and they sent me 2 x $20 coupons to replace the bulbs...

Read the rest of Kimberly's post here

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Use magazine or catalog pages (because they are glossy so hold up better) and make a set of paper boats.  Make them really small and give them in an old metal tin formerly used to house mints (altoids, usually). Paint the tin or decoupage it if you like.

Use the old metal tins to hold the beads from several pieces of costume jewelry picked up at a thrift shop or yard sale (or from your old stash)- take apart the costume jewelry and give the beads, findings, and a bit of floss or fishing line to a child interested in making her own necklaces or bracelets.

We have found lots of old classic board games and puzzles at the thrift shop.  Games are easier to check to be sure they have all the pieces, and you can either take a chance with a puzzle or watch for puzzles that haven't been opened.

A small basket of 'go-together' things from the thrift shop and your own head:

• A couple of matchbox cars, a book about cars, a toy stop sign or house, and a plastic or vinyl placemat upon which you have drawn a few roads.
• A toy shark, a book about sharks, and a framed picture of a shark (you frame it from a picture from an old calendar or a book that the thrift shop tossed in with a batch of other books because it was falling apart), or some viewmaster cards about ocean creatures.
• A 'bedtime basket: two or three bedtime story books, a stuffed animal, and a comfy pair of pajamas made from a pair of sweat pants and a co-ordinating t-shirt.
• A jump rope, a set of jacks, and a book of jump rope rhymes (you could put this together yourself from jump rope rhymes you find online.
• Blocks and toy soldiers or toy animals.
• Have you ever noticed how many Christmas ornaments would also make nice items for the dollhouse?  Don't do this if any of your children still mouth their toys, as Christmas ornaments are not tested for child safety issues, such as lead paint and other hazards.  Use common sense.
• A few wood scraps, some old tools (simple things, a small hammer, a screw-driver, a wrench), and some nuts and bolts.
• A home-made batch of play-dough and some cookie cutters and a rolling pin from the thrift shop, along with other odds and ends that would make interesting shapes and patterns in the dough.

For young cooks or older cooks, look for small kitchen gadgets and build a present around that. One year at our house the 'easter basket' for each of our little girls was a stainless steel mixing bowl, a small wooden spoon, a small whisk,  and a small baking tin, and it was a big hit. Other kitchen related presents I thought of while browsing the thrift shop:

A nutmeg grater (I picked one up at the thrift shop for .50), a couple of whole nutmegs (this package could contain as many as a dozen whole nutmegs so you could make several little presents with them), and a batch of a recipe using grated fresh nutmeg along with a copy of the recipe (or forego the batch if you the present won't be opened for a while).  We like nutmeg muffins, immensely.

Cookie cutters, colored sugars (you can make your own by putting sugar and some food coloring in a small jar and shaking very, very well), and a recipe for sugar cookies.  Include a batch of dough if the present is to be opened immediately (this freezer recipe looks good).

A fluted pastry cutter and a recipe for these cookies (instead of cookie cutter shapes, roll out the dough and use the pastry wheel to make squares and diamonds), or for home-made noodles.

A teaball or tea infuser, a teacup and saucer (or a pair) and some looseleaf tea (check your local natural foods store, or consider making your own blend).

An apple corer-slicer and a recipe for an apple dip. If  you find a pretty bowl with a lid this would go nicely with this present , especially if you fill it with a batch of the dip.=)

For somebody with a green thumb:

If your recipient has a sunny window, consider a pretty pot of soil (I saw lots of pretty planters at the thrift shop) and some herb seeds, or buy some mint at the grocery store (produce section) and plant it in a pot.

A book on gardening , some seeds, graph paper, and an out of the ordinary gardening catalog (Johnny's Selected Seed, Seeds of Change, Territorial, Peaceful Valley Seeds, for example)- I saw lots of nice books on gardening at our thrift shop- not all 'how-to' books, but also pretty coffee table books, devotional type books, gardening memoirs both funny and sad.

A pretty shallow bowl, some flat glass beads, and a bulb for forcing.

For a young couple:

A basket of Christmas decorations

A pair of matching mugs or bowls and home-made hot cocoa mix, spiced tea, or ice-cream topping; add a deck of cards or some other game.

For a man:

Find a nice  'manly' tin, and wrap up a batch of cookies or home-made bread.  Include a home-made certificate entitling the recipient to one refill (or one refill a month, or membership in a 'cookie of the month' club).

Pick up a good thermos, if you can find one (I've seen a Stanley thermos at our thrift shop a couple of times), or a couple of sealable lunch containers.  Promise to keep them filled.=)

Put together a shaving kit- I found a boar hair bristle brush one year (admittedly, this will not be a common find, but you never know, and the point of this post is to prime your pump, not give you a dot to dot list), and included the brush, a bar of goat's milk soap, and mug to put it all in.   You can add a good razor and some aftershave.

A tie and a tie-pin- and if you cannot find a tie-pin you think he'll like, put together one of your own by finding a plainish, flat tie tack and using something like a dab of Gorilla Glue to attach a better front- look through thrift shop jewelry, craft supplies, and even on the fastentings of clothes to find something you think he'll like.

If your guy travels, you can put together a traveling kit for him- look for a nice small and manly bag at the thrift shop and add things like:

• small bottle of shampoo
• nail clippers
• pain-killer
• chapstick
• unscented lotion
• mouthwash
• toothpaste
• toothbrush
• floss
• laminated photo of you and the kids

While the items on this list are not exactly frugal, this is a really good source for ideas on all things manly.

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Those are a few of the ideas I had while browsing the thrift shop.  What are some of your more creative ideas for frugal gift giving?

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• Andrea shares the strangest little hack she ever came up:  So, it was 95 degrees this week and the sun was beating down on my skylight (I know, I should have done something before this). Desperate times being what they are, I grabbed an accordion style baby gate, figured out the right size to safely secure it in the skylight, draped a folded sheet over it and locked it in place in my skylight. Instant sunblock for a free short term solution to a short term problem! Kids can not get to it and it is not moving anywhere until this heat passes.
• Briana provides instructions for frugal wasp/hornet traps.
• Linda tells how to make a doll blanket that is easy and quick to complete.  She adds, "You can also use the squares to make pillows, tote bags, place mats all kinds of fun things!"
• Linda also posted instructions to make quick and easy barstool covers.
• There's a giveaway ending soon on my family blog, Life in a Shoe.  Enter up to 4 times to win a free Thirsties Diaper Cover and their Fab Fitted Diaper in your choice of colors!

How did you save money this week?

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At any rate, here's a sampling from the inbox:

1. Noah said, Mortgages are probably one of the most overlooked areas to save. I know this because, for better or worse, I worked as a mortgage banker for years.   I find that if you keep the reality of mortgage costs in your mind, you are much more motivated to pay the debt down sooner. Most people spend more on mortgages than anything else in life. What an opportunity to save!  Read his article on how to save money on your mortgage.
2. More from Noah: Squirrels use a technique called "scatter hoarding" to store their food. Should another animal steal their food from one cache, they have more than enough elsewhere. Maybe that's why they call it "squirreling money away".  I've been using a finance management system similar to this for years, and it's centered around three accounts: an expense, a personal, and an emergency account.
3. Now that everyone's too strapped to use credit cards for their original purpose,  the authors of The Scavengers' Manifesto have created a photo essay detailing ten better uses for them.
4. The Snackhound says: I see boxes of etched and cloudy glasses at yard sales and in the trash. Most people don't know that those glasses are "sick" and there is a cure. There is a simple way to bring your glasses and your yard sale finds out from the back of the cabinet. Of course, I am as silly as usual.
5. Also from The Snackhound: Two decadent brownie mixes, a container of whipping cream = you can make that gourmet cake you ate downtown for $7.00 a slice, for less than $1.50 per slice!  Get the recipe here.
6. Free conference calls: FreeConferenceCall.com allows users to conduct a teleconference with up to 96 users for 6 hours—at no cost. Free conferencing is not just for office use; it can be used for organizing sports teams meetings, family reunions, speaking with students in college, motivational seminars, religious study groups and even crisis response meetings.
7. Angela has Free lunchbox ideas for back-to-school from Ziploc & Taste of Home (plus a $1.50 coupon on two Ziploc products)
8. Carol has some great tips on Where to Find Cheap College Textbooks.
9. Check out our fun and frugal birthday gift for an 8yo who loves to cook.  Several of my girls have these recipe binders now and they all treasure them!
10. and Maggie Evans shared this great tip on the new Facebook page for Frugal Hacks: I keep a bowl of no-knead yeast dough in the fridge at all times. 6 cups water, 3 tsp yeast, 3 tsp kosher salt, and 13 cups flour. It keeps up to 2 weeks. Good for bread, pizza crust, bread sticks, cinanmon rolls. With grated mozzeralla in the freezer I can always whip up a pizza if there's nothing else to eat, instead of going out.

Just a quick reminder: if you'd like to submit a hack, please be sure to keep it very brief or provide a link to a specific post on your site.  Feel free to plug your best and favorite post, but make sure it's useful and interesting!

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