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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In no particular order, here's a romp through some joyful, and very frugal, memories:

.

Have a race.  Jump rope.  Play hop scotch.  Find a hill and slide down it on cardboard boxes (wax them by rubbing with the side of a candle for even more speed).  Skip.  Play Mother May I, Red Light, Green Light, or ring around the rosy.  Find a swing set and swing.  Even if you are thirty.  Especially if you are forty.

Go to the beach, a lake, a river, a stream, a creek, a brook or any body of water- hang out. Toss rocks in the water. Wade. Sit on a blanket or lawn chair and just talk to one another, enjoying one another's company

Have a picnic. We've had picnics at parks, at the beach, by the river, on the verge of a parking lot outside a museum, out of the back of the van, and on blankets on my living room floor. A couple times I even set out plastic ants.  Invite friends.   Bring cards, a ball, a book or all three.

You can have a picnic in the rain. This is from somebody's 18th birthday party, and she says it's the best party she had, ever, and all the friends who came agreed.

Go for a walk, even if it's muddy outside.  Drive somewhere new, park the car and get out and take a walk.  Go as a family or go with your spouse (above is our youngest child, our third youngest child, and their brother-in-law, only this was taken about three years before we knew that's who he was going to be).

Dress up and be silly and extravagant and more than a little ridiculous.  Speak in period or in costume.  Take pictures.  Dress up like this and go out for coffee and a piece of pie.  Split the pie.  Put on a play.  Let your kids put on a play for you.  Go to the thrift shop or a yard sale together and look for the most outlandish piece of clothing you can find for a dollar or less.

Yes, my family is macabre.  Go to the cemetary and find the oldest headstone, or the most interesting.  Take a picnic (yes, we do this).  Take a book.   Take paper and crayons and start a collection of tomb rubbings.

Find a bridge and play Pooh-sticks.  Walk slowly across it, hand in hand.  Skip across it.  Stop in the middle and sing a song to hear how your voice carries over water.  Sing Bridge Over Troubled Water, very badly.  Drop rocks in the water.  Look for turtles.  Slap mosquitoes and compare bite marks.  Scratch each other's backs.

Bake up a storm, take cookies to a neighbor or a new mom from church.  Have friends over for pie and coffee. Eat up your treats while watching a movie together.  Play a board game or a game of cards.  Play Charades.

Sing.  Karaoke.  Bring up midi files or youtube videos of songs and sing along with them. Make a family CD- everybody pitches in a dollar to pay to download a favorite song at Amazon and put them all on a single CD reflecting your family's unique tastes and vision.

Or you and your spouse put together your own special CD of romantic music and have a candlight ice-cream sundae in your room with the door locked.  REad the Song of Solomon together.

Sit under a tall tree in the fall and read aloud from Janice May Udrey's very charming picture book.

Pick a book to read aloud to each other, or as a family. Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog...) is pretty funny.

Look for free events in your town- concerts, lectures, museums, free days at the zoo or aquarium.  Does your little town have a local historical society?  A book club?

Volunteer somewhere together.

Weed the garden together.

Do the dishes together- you'll be surprised how much meaningful conversation can come from doing some mundane task together.

Take a free class together- card making night at the library, or a sign language class at church, or get certified by the Red Cross together.

The first couple of years my husband and I were married, we had to do our laundry at a laundromat. We would take along backgammon or mastermind and play one of those two games together while doing our laundry. Bring along a thermos of iced coffee or lemon-ade as well.

Visit a nursing home together.

Write down a list of people you know, put their names in a jar, take turns drawing names out of the jar and saying something nice about them- then write a note of appreciation to some of the people on your list.

These are just a few ideas. There are dozens of ways to have fun, meaningful, bonding, delicious, wonderful, joyful times together that do not need to cost much, or even anything. There are deliciously wonderful things which you can do to serve others, to grow together, to increase your level of enjoyment and understanding of one another- things that will bring wonderful memories and sweet fellowship without the bitter aftertaste of adding to your credit card, or finding that you really could use the money you spent on pizza for a pair of shoes or a visit to the doctor.

There is no lack of joy in frugal living. There is an abundance of all the things that matter most.

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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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Dealing with these issues takes more than one strategy for those of us without large discretionary spending abilities. First of all, you try to budget for those emergencies as much as a possible, setting aside a designated amount of money every payday for just such contingencies. I know it's hard, and for some of us in some circumstances, there just genuinely isn't any money to spare anywhere, all expenses have long since been pared to the bone, and you can't really budget what you do not have.

But to be honest, for many of us? If we came naturally by that sort of self-discipline many of us wouldn't be in debt in the first place. At some point in our lives we have to be grown ups and stop saying, "I'm just not like that." We have to be like that. Might as well start now. One very good place to start is so-called 'free money,' that is money you weren't expecting, either through a present, or selling something for more than you expected, or finding a bill is lower than expected- however you get it, hen you come across 'free money,' such as a few dollars sent by a friend or relative, an unexpected refund, a present- don't consider that mad-money that you can spend on anything. Apply it either to your debt or to your emergency fund.

After a series of financial crises, our emergency fund has long been depleted and we have more debt than we'd like. That discourages me, but I have to remind myself that if we hadn't had the emergency fund in the first place, we'd be even further in the hole than we are now. We are digging our way slowly and painstakingly out as we rebuild that emergency fund and pay down debt. One rung on the ladder out came recently when I found a great deal on some food items one month, so we had extra money leftover in the grocery budget. We could have used it to buy a couple of steaks, but instead, at the end of the month we rolled it over to pay down a debt. In another case, we had set aside 20.00 to buy shoes for the youngest two children, who are still growing and they each needed shoes for the wedding last month. Then we found them new shoes, amazingly, for a combined total of five dollars each (thrift shop, half price). That extra savings wasn't 'free money' to blow on something 'fun.' It was money to return to the emergency fund or to apply toward a debt. Once those things are where they should be once more, we would just add it back to our clothing fund the next month.

Meanwhile, we learn and relearn to sacrifice in other ways. There's no reason in the world to feel entitled to the things we feel entitled to- coke and/or gum at the check-out, a movie out, running through the drive-through.

When the microwave broke we did without it until Granny Tea told us of a used one for 30.00. Lots of people do not have microwaves (some think they are unhealthy and wouldn't have them at any cost), and of course, for centuries everybody did without. I am old enough that I remember the family standing around the microwave to watch butter melt and marshmallows expand. It's a want, not a need. If the DVD player breaks, play board games, read books, and take walks for your entertainment, or listen to tapes or the radio. Play solitaire. Write letters. Put up a birdfeeder outside your window and watch the birds for a while, until you can afford to get a replacement. Maybe by the time you can afford a replacement you won't even want one anymore. I was also fortunate enough to live in a household with no television until I was six, when my mother says somebody who felt sorry for us gave us a black and white set. "We" didn't get a color television until after I left for college in 1980, and I was not deprived.

Once you've saved up enough money to pay cash for repairs or replacements, see what you can find used. Join a Freecycle list, put the word out with your friends about what you're looking for, and visit thrift shops and consignment stores.

Keep your eye open for your local (and not so local, we've driven up to an hour away for a good one) library book sales. Libraries aren't just getting rid of books, sometimes they are selling old computers, printers, movies, tapes, and even on rare occasions, bookcases. We've even purchased large art prints at a library sale.

Aunt Sophronia offers her young friends these rules for improving their economic circumstances in the 1870s.

"...I will give you the rules, which are few and simple, and easily performed by self-sacrifice. Work hard; see and improve all small opportunities; keep out of debt and carefully economize. That is the best that all the wisdom of the world has been able to digest and formulate as rules for getting rich. The matter is simple and lies in a nutshell: have the end definitely before you; do your own work toward it and do it honestly, and don't give up until you have reached your goal; the same plain, straight, unadorned and yet passable road is open to all."

These rules still apply today. There are exceptions, yes, disasters, crises, things outside our control that can happen to anybody. But even then, those who developed the trait of self-discipline will do better than those who have not.

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Learn Who- who in your area has goods and services for the best prices, has goods or skills you can learn from or barter with, who online offers great frugal tips, who of your friends supports your frugal efforts, and who encourages you to be a spendthrift, who is having a great sale this week?.

Learn What: what is a good base price (Traditional Medicinals or Good Earth Teas for around 2.00 a box?), what's on sale, what has a good resale value (we look for these things at thrift shops and yard sales and other used sources, and resell some items at a consignment store, and some online), what to substitute when you're out of one ingredient.

When: Learn when things are in season, when they typically go on sale, when the cost of an item has nothing to do with its value, when to cut your losses, and when it pays to spend a little more up front and when it doesn't.

Why: why a temporary convenience can cost more than we realize, why it's important not to make frugality a misery (and how you can make it a joy), why you cannot buy the better you.

And remember that:
Before you can properly consider and apply what you have in your hand, you just may need to examine what you have in your heart. Without a spirit of contentment, we can never truly achieve a gracious and cheerful frugality. Without that pleasure in economy as a fine art, we cannot expect to be able to see all the possibilities in those things we do have in our hands.
And without that strength of character that makes possible cheerful self-denial, all our attempts at frugality are merely ash and dust in the eye.

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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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*Make muffins completely from scratch, rather than using the Raisin Bran cereal recipe (this is another one that really surprises me. Muffins are not difficult and they are quite inexpensive. Raisin Bran even on sale, is not 'from scratch.' )

This is true, except for when it isn't.=) Recently a grocery store in my town had Raisin Bran cereal on sale for .99 a box, and they had coupons in the store for 1.00 off on two boxes of Kellog's cereal, making the Raisin Bran .50 a box. There was a limit on two boxes per customer, so naturally, I had several children go in to buy a couple of boxes.

Here's the recipe my daughter used to bake a batch of raisin bran muffins:

Raisin Bran Muffins

1 box (15 ounces) Raisin Bran

5 cups flour

Sugar (I have a recipe that calls for 3 cups, and one that calls for 1 1/2 cups, how much you use would depend on how sweet you like your muffins and how much sugar you have on hand)

5 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons salt

4 eggs

1 cup cooking oil, melted margarine, butter, or shortening

1 quart buttermilk

Stir the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Beat together the eggs, cooking oil and buttermilk; mix with the dry ingredients. Fill greased muffin pans 3/4 full. Bake at 400 degrees for around 15 minutes.

You can store this batter in the fridge for up to four weeks, and make a fresh, hot batch of muffins in the morning within 20 minutes- get up, turn the oven on, spoon the batter in the pans while the oven is heating, pop them in and bake.

Here's another muffin recipe we often use when being flexible:

Graham Gems
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 stick margarine
1 egg
1 cup sour milk
1 small teaspoon baking soda
2 cups stone ground whole wheat (graham) flour)

Blend sugar and margarine, stir in egg. Add other ingredients. Fill muffin cups 2/3 cup full. Bake at 375-400 degrees for 15 minutes. Makes 12.

You can add 1 cup of dried fruit to the batter, or make them plain and eat with butter and grated cheddar cheese. I prefer them with butter and cheese.

Pip made a triple batch recently and discovered after she already started that she had neither enough brown sugar or the right amount of eggs. She added a bit of white sugar to the brown sugar to eke out the sweetener (she could have added a bit of molasses, too- I have substituted molasses and white sugar for recipes calling for brown sugar only before), and she just made do with two eggs instead of the three called for by tripling the recipe. I believe she also had only 2 teaspoons of baking soda rather than three. The resulting muffins were denser than usual, but I liked them- they had a pleasing bit of extra texture and crunch to the outside- hearty, hippie muffins, I called them.

Amy Dacyczyn in The Complete Tightwad Gazette offers this other flexible maindish recipe:

1 cup main ingredient
1 cup second ingredient
1-2 cups starchy ingredient
1 1/2 cups binder
1/4 cup “goodie”
seasoning
topping

Main ingredient: tuna, cubed chicken, turkey, ham, seafood, etc.
Second ingredient: thinly sliced celery, mushrooms, peas, chopped hard-boiled eggs, etc.
Starchy ingredient: thinly sliced potatoes, cooked noodles, cooked rice, etc.
Binder: cream sauce, sour cream, can of soup, etc.
“Goodie”: pimiento, olives, almonds, water chestnuts, etc.
Topping: cheese, bread crumbs, etc.

Basically combine ingredients, except topping, and then bake (or have on stovetop) until it's hot.

Just as muffins are better with butter, flexibility is better with the attributes of contentment and gratitude. , and perhaps a small sense of adventure- rather than feeling deprived when you start to make a recipe and discover that you are missing an ingredient, look at it as interesting challenge to see what you can do instead, and be appreciative of the things you do have rather than resentful of the things you do not.

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"Nothing earthshattering or really amazing," she said, "I just have to pay attention and use what I have."

I asked what she meant.

Mostly, she said, it's the groceries- she needs to be aware of what's in her refrigerator and remember what she buys, what leftovers she puts away so the food doesn't go to waste.  And while shopping, don't buy something that's an amazing deal if you aren't going to have time to cook it or you already have too much other stuff in the fridge.

I thought guiltily of the luxury food I recently bought myself- artichokes- which I had forgotten about.  Oops.

Paying attention is an important frugality tool in other ways, too- pay attention and turn out the unused lights.

Pay attention and fix things when they are small issues.  Don't wait for a small problem to grow larger and more expensive.

Pay attention and notice time passing by, getting closer and closer to a birthday, a holiday, a new season- and lay up something towards that day before you have to run to the store and buy something right now because suddenly Christmas is in December and here it is December 23rd already or because for the first time ever the weather will change with the seasons and the kids have outgrown last year's clothes (who knew kids grew???).

Pay attention and return your library books and/or renew them to avoid fines (I am really bad at this)

Pay attention and don't miss the reduced speed limit sign (oops).

Pay attention and get the oil changed on your car in a timely fashion.  It's penny wise and pound foolish to put this off so long the engine fries.

Pay attention to the small print.

What are some areas where you have found it pays off to pay attention?

Here's another one- pay attention to this post, read all the way to the end, and you could win a copy of

Here's how-

1. Share here some way you found paying attention saved you money.

OR

2. write a post linking back to my regular blog (email me or leave a comment to let me know) OR

3..leave a comment over at our other blog and we'll enter your name in a drawing for The Frugal Gazette II!

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