Just curious who else is living super frugal

[jbirds2012]

i cook on our wood stove every chance i get. i figure if it was good enough for my grandma then it's good enough for me. plus i like the idea that I'm giving the gas company the silent finger. some day when we get our house together I'm going to get a real wood stove range.

 

[jbirds2012]

Lydia reminded me that we're so poor now that thieves would probably leave us something rather than take anything!

he he, yea, if someone stole our car they would probably bring it back and leave a 20 in the driver seat cause they felt sorry for us.

 

[mickey328]

LOL...I worry more about vandals (aka kids with nothing better to do) than actual thieves. We did have two incidents, nothing major. Once, someone got in the car (we lock 'em now) and went through the glovebox...stole the part pack of cigarettes I had in there. The other was a bit of a shock...we'd brought back a few things from our storage unit and they were in the back of the pick up, which had a cap. We didn't lock the cap, and someone got in there and just busted up the stuff. Nothing stolen...just vandalized. Fortunately we were able to fix everything but still...

LOL, I'd have to learn all over again how to cook if I tried to use a wood stove, jbirds. Not really an option for us though...we can pay the utilities or we can pay for wood...none here to be able to cut ourselves

 

[MoonShadows]

We live out in the sticks and can't even see our neighbors' houses from ours. We thought we were safe here, but a few months after we moved in (18 years ago), someone broke into the hosue while we were at work. They didn't take anything, but it cost us $525 to fix the front door. We got a security company to wire our doors and put motion detectors on the first floor. It costs $588 a year for monitoring, but it is peace of mind. Just the sign at the top of the driveway is enough of a deterrent. I think a would be thief or vandal would see that and move onto the next house. And, Rosie, our 10 year old toy poodle barks at everything!

I laughed when I read about the cars. Thank gawd I was never one of those who had to have the newest car. My car is 13 years old. The back windows have so many wedges in them to keep from falling down, and most of the knobs on the radio, etc are broken so I always have a needle nose plyers on the front seat. I think even if I put a "take me" sign in the windshield no one would want it. But it gets me where I have to go; that's all that matters.

 

[mickey328]

Our van is a 1999, so it's nothing fancy either, LOL. We're WAY more into function than form. But the ones messed with were newer ones...still nothing fancy, and nothing on the vehicles broken...they were unlocked, so it was just a matter of them opening the doors. I had a friend who lived in a dicey part of town and his got broken into so often he finally started leaving it unlocked just so he didn't have to keep replacing his windows! He did invest in a removable radio after the first episode, though and kept nothing in the car for them to steal.

You'd think being that private would help but I think some of the smarter thieves look for places like that...they're more private so less chance of anyone seeing them. Here in town, we're more prone to kids who just want to mess stuff up. I'm not sure what's worse. I had an older friend who wasn't into all the new electronics and when junkies broke into her place they got so irked that there wasn't anything they could take and hock, they went into the basement and found some cans of bright red enamel paint. They poked holes all around them with a screwdriver and just walked through her whole place slinging that paint all over. Poor thing...it was a HUGE job to get everything cleaned and re-painted

 

[galanie]

I've been told many times that my Security sign is what helps more than anything. I don't have anything worth stealing and that is why I purposefully leave the blinds open in the parts of the house I don't use. My truck is 12 years old and unlocked. Someone broke in it when it was new and pulled the window off it track (when I lived somewhere else) so I just started leaving it unlocked. From time to time I see that someone has been in it and made a bit of a mess but they can't take the radio out and nothing in it to steal.

It really helps when you can have a messy, poor appearance like I do. The living room has been for storage for years. Blinds open, come have a look, thieves! Want that old box full of stuff? Help yourself! hahaha

 

[Raiquee]

Glad to see this thread is still going strong!

 

[mickey328]

I'm probably the last to find it but I came across an amazing site today for all things frugal...recipes, crafts, reuse.. It's huge and I've already spent a couple hours looking around and barely scratched the surface. www.budget101.com

 

[ScottnLydia]

As I stated earlier, we just processed 7 sheep. We have just finished the final, and most frugal step in the processing.

Most of the carcass is boned out. We trim the rear spine, hips and ribs of all we can for grind (ground lamb). These remaining bones are then covered in water and simmered to make lamb stock which we use whenever we make stews, cous-cous, or lamb pie (shepherds pie).

Any remaining meat still clinging to the bones is scraped/picked off and ground to be mixed with bread crumbs to make lamb patties. Lovely little things, kind of like gyros if you season it that way. I put the bones out in the chicken yard and let them get whatever they can off of them. It's a hilarious sight, all those bones in there. I'm tempted to put up a sign saying, "DANGER, CHICKENS, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!" with bones all around it.

If I had some way to crush the bones I could feed them to the chickens, too. My dog already gets more than enough.

 

[In His Service]

I know we used to soak the chicken wishbone in vinegar so we could twist and bend it. Wonder if you could do that with your bones, or if that would leach out all the calcium. I know when I simmer my chicken bones long enough, I can grind them in my magic bullet, but that would take forever for the amount of bones you are talking about.