Just curious who else is living super frugal

[lazy gardener]

Found a recipe for lemon crinkle cookies. Will have to make those next.

 

[lazy gardener]

Every time we get hair cuts we save about $50.00. I cut hubby's hair. Usually, it comes out better than when he pays to have it cut. Then, I cut my hair, cut everything I can reach/see. Then, hubby finishes up the back. I get compliments on my hair cut often, so... guess I don't do too bad. Not to mention, it saves us a lot of time and gas. Takes an hour for the drive time just to get to town and back, plus the time for the cut, and the wait! Takes less than 20 minutes to do a home cut.

 

[LittleLakePhil]

I got a couple real good deals this week....I was needing a power steering pulley puller set. About $150 new. Found one for $15 at a garage sale...never used...also new snowshoes for $30...never used.

 

[donrae]

Let's see, frugal things today....


had the boys clean the horse stalls and dump the straw/manure in the chicken areas. Free bedding, and exercise/food for the birds.

Found more worms for the indoor worm bin. I think it's doing well. I couldn't find the banana peels I'd put in there when I set it up, so something's going right!

Rendered some more lard from our pigs. This finished the second bag and cleared up more freezer space. Filled that with meatballs. One more bag of lard to go!

Dinner was leftovers, always frugal.

Not sure how frugal it's going to be, but I brought home a dozen Colombian Wyandotte hatching eggs for $5. If I get a decent hatch and raise them to point of lay I can sell them for $20 each. I really need to calculate feed sometime to know how much I'm making on each bird at those prices.

 

[perchie.girl]

Bought a table saw stand and a support roller for long piece a cavnass tool kit and they threw in a hand full of tools... Eight bucks.

Gawd I love garage sales

deb

 

[Sherol]

What a thread.. have spent better part of a month reading just before bed. A lot of good ideas here. I have always had to be frugal.. single mother for a long time. Shopped a lot of used clothing stores. My local Goodwill here is so clean and such a pleasure to shop at I never go into a "real" store. Shirts are $3.99. Purses are also that price. I keep an eye out for things I want in the house. Was looking for lamps at one time and spent many a lunch break hoping to find an interesting one there. I like to keep a list of things I want to do or what I need. I research the retail price and then I know when I am getting a good deal. Right now trying to find a good pasta machine at an insanely low price.. lol.

I spend a lot of time on Craigs list too. Always look at the free stuff every few days. The main thing I am always looking for lumber I can load easily as I always seem to need a board for this or that. My chicken coop is mostly from Craig's list finds. When my son is in town we run the roads with his truck picking up stuff I can't get into the SUV. Because of the issues with Craigs list I call my mother and she gets the address where I am going and we usually chat until I pull up. Then I turn the ringer of my phone up and she calls me back in 20 minutes. If I don't answer she will call law enforcement. We have a code word for trouble as well. Thirty minutes I get another call. I like being cheap.. not thrilled with hurt or dead.

I have had to learn how to use tools and do basic construction. Without the ability to hire and no significant or even insignificant other to help, I have had to think things out and just do it. My chicken coop is not square or a work of art. It is however, functional and I learned a lot doing it. It has given me the confidence to do other things like try and build shelves or an arbor. Every project becomes a learning adventure. If by some freak accident I win a lottery or inherit millions, the first thing I will do is hire someone to do all the little projects I have lining up. I think the one thing I dislike about not having enough and being frugal is not being able to have a master craftsman create what I envision.

I invested in a dehydrator and have been dehydrating food and storing it. I have a concern of power loss and everything in the freezer going bad. I also find it is easier to store dehydrated foods rather than canned.The reason initially for the investment was I can also take my garden produce in season and save it for when it is not. I also buy stuff on sale.. like the strawberries over the summer. Bananas marked down because getting too ripe. Both are dehydrated and ground up in my Magic Bullet and I have great smoothies all year from fresh berries and bananas. I also love making jerky. Love to eat it and it is much cheaper to make your own. I have dehydrated many cans of tomato paste and they now store nicely in a canning jar. As my interest in dehydrating grew and I tried out recipes to use my deyhdrated food in, have found I am eating better. Getting away from processed instant food has made a difference in my health and outlook.

When things got tight one of the first things to go was meat in my budget. Now I have started to get meats on sale and will spend an afternoon making up meals I can take to lunch at work. I get chicken leg quarters here on sale for $2.20 for 10 pounds. I used to fry them.. now I bake them without skins and get 9 lunches out of them. Even if I add a bag of chips I am eating for less than fifty cents a day. I have started to make refried beans because the beans are something I can grow and are healthier than chips. Found a great recipe for omelett muffins. Spent last weekend making a dozen of those and now have a delicious and quick breakfast I warm up in 30 seconds. I have no issue with eating the same meal for breakfast or lunch for an entire week. Who needs variety when I can eat that cheap.

I am a soap maker. Have been for over ten years now. It is a luxury I do not deny myself.. lol. I will cut something else before I will cut my oils and butters in soap. But I also now make my own laundry soap. Love the feel of my clothes using my hand made laundry soap. I add vinegar to the softener container and everything comes out soft and smelling nice. No over powering fragrance.. just nice. And towels are soft and absorbent.. something I lost using Downey or any other fabric softener. Those products just gummy up everything they come in contact with. Next year I hope to put in a clothes line to reduce my electric bill and enjoy line dried linens. I tried DIY dish washing soap and did not like it at all. Spots and film on everything. I did not want to risk etching my glasses to find a decent recipe for my water. And.. after much research it seem the DIY dish washing recipes all fall short of what a commercial brand does. Not worth me being that cheap and ruining my dishes and glassware. Trade-off is I spend $12 for a large container of dish washing tabs and with 80 loads I get about a years use from that purchase. It is just me so that will last me a long time .. and I do add splash of vinegar to the wash and dishes come out looking brand new every time.

Speaking of vinegar.. love that stuff. I scour my sinks with baking soda and then spritz with vinegar. I scrub again as it is foaming and then rinse. Been telling my mother about that for a while and she just tried it and could not believe how clean the sink was. With our hard water here it is sprayed on the shower walls and squeegeed off after. Spray the shower head and never have build up issues. In addition to a small spray bottle of vinegar I also keep peroxide and 90% alcohol in small spray bottles near the sink. I have a mesh drain that gets funk in the mesh. I spray with the peroxide and the funk disappears. Peroxide is good for any film, like milk on glasses or a tea stain. It oxidizes it right off. Can add it to your laundry to brighten whites. The alcohol is for sterilizing. Cutting boards and counters get sprayed then rinsed or wiped off. Good cheap stuff that does a multitude of things around the house.

For entertainment I have Netflix. Been so long since I have watched TV I have no idea what people are talking about when they discuss shows or commercials. When I do get exposed to a commercial it actually feels weird.. and I have come to the conclusion it is because I an not really a consumer. That subtle sales hook has nothing to grab here. I also purchase $5 movies form Walmart on the odd times I am in the store. The Goodwill has pre-owned movies for $1.99 and another local grocery sells pre-owned for $4. I have heard some libraries allow you to check movies out like a book.. so that would make them free. At this point in life, a good movie or time reading a book is all I need for fun.

I moved an hour out of the city where I work to have a place for chickens and a garden. Because I had to have a minimum order I have 17 birds for just me. I ordered 15.. 14 girls and one roo. But they sent 17. Come to find out of the 4 easter eggers I ordered for the colored eggs.. they sent me 3 roos and only 1 pullet. So they threw in 2 other pullets. Going to have to deal with those boys probably in the spring as had only planned on having the one I ordered and the supposed free exotic one. Knowing I will have more eggs than I will need I have lined up people at work to purchase some, and I hope in time the chickens can pay for themselves a bit and I will be eating there for free.. lol.. I am also trying every interesting egg recipe I see as a way to use what I produce and not have to purchase something else to eat.

Gardening.. I came across rain gutter gardening on the internet. Need to Google it. Also join their FB page. Great group, lot of great ideas as well as experience. Basically the gutter has end pieces on it and you fill with water. Ideally you have a float valve and a water source to keep constant water in the gutter. Then plants are grown in buckets/containers that sit on top the gutter and have a hole in the bottom a hydroponic net cup is placed in. When all is filled with soil the net cups with soil wicks water up into the bucket so the plants have a constant source of water. The soil is a mixture of peat, compost and soil. Plants go crazy in the system and there is no weeding, no tilling and I put mine up on cinder blocks to keep away from rabbits and found it was a great height for no bending gardening. Highly recommend this type of garden. Photo is one I found on the internet when I was learning about it.



Below my Thai Basil. Pen is 6' so that is topping out at 5' so you can get an idea of its size. It was in a grey bucket like the others but out grew it in a few months. Repotted in this cat litter pail and it has gotten even bigger. Have Stevia next to it.. this is my herb section. have a gutter on each side of the door on the run.


Parsley and oregano.. the oregano is insane growing in this type of garden. I have cut and dehydrated leaves almost every weekend for months off this plant. I have several Basils also doing well. Have onions and garlic that will over winter and a late radish and lettuce crop in as well. I will be adding more gutters and plants in the spring. Each gutter and cinder block set costs me about $25.. so I try to add one every few weeks to build up to my goal. I will produce a lot of food.. and it will be dehydrated for the most part for storage.




I don't waste much. Everything paper goes into the compost pile. Things like paper towels get put down in a hole and covered. I tend to use hand towels so we don't have a lot of paper towels used. Other paper is shredded in my micro shredder and added to the pile. Only thing thrown away is plastic so I have a trash pick up about once a month. Veggie scraps go to the chickens unless not good for them, in that case they spin in the blender with water to make small particles that don't draw critters and break down faster. When I bake my chicken quarters I pull off the skin. It goes in the crock pot with some of my dehydrated garlic, celery, onions and herbs. I get a nice chicken stock from that. All the skins and veggies are removed and given to the feral cats living around here. I love to recycle and re-purpose. Poking around estate sales or flea markets for some unique item I can use in my home for decor is my idea of a great day. Did stop by a Starbucks near work to use up a gift card I was given and ask about their grounds. I got about half a large trash bag full of them for the compost and was told to come by anytime for them. They will offset all the paper that goes into the pile. I have pdz in the coop under the roost. That is cleaned every week and the chickie poo goes in the compost pile as well. On the look out for bagged leaves and anything else I might be able to add. Compost grows slow with just one person adding scraps so we have to be creative and look for things to feed it.

I think many years ago I did feel a bit "deprived" on my frugal lifestyle. Others had new clothes, latest gadgets and fancy new cars. Part of me felt like a real failure because I could not buy new clothes or toys for my son and couldn't even afford a hair cut for myself. But when the crashes came and everyone had to adjust and lost "stuff" I did not really feel or lose anything. Things are still tough but manageable. I now work for a great company and have a new position so don't have to work two jobs to make ends meet. I am getting some things paid off and will only have the house left. Goal is to have that paid off before I retire. The extra I get now goes into investing in surviving the next crash.. and being able to eat if things go wonky. I still don't get hair cuts.. mom keeps it trimmed and it lives in a pony tail around the house. But at this point I no longer feel deprived. I have found that the more I can get for my dollar the better I feel. And these days I am feeling pretty great.. lol

 

[LittleLakePhil]

Wow...that took a lot of typing....interesting though.

 

[lazy gardener]

Sherol, great job. Imagine what this country would be like if we all lived like that. Our economy would go into such a tail spin!

 

[Skylercarr]

This does not really involve my every day life but this idea is about chickens. So my hens were not laying so well since the days are getting shorter and I did not want to put a lamp in the coop because that costs money. I thought about my dilemma for some time and finally came up with a cheap idea. At Home Depot near the garden section they had these little solar lights that you put in your gardenand at night they will turn on. So I put one in my chicken coop the next day I got 2 eggs and I have been getting more eggs ever since. But during the day you have to take it out and put it in the sun.

 

[lazy gardener]

Could you put it in the window of your coop?