What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[TropicalBabies]

One of my favorite subjects! Bravo OP!

I try my best not to bring extra into my house. We built our "tiny house" 540sq with the planet in mind. I buy my clothes used sometimes but barely buy any anymore. No makeup for most all my life. No real hair products... Soaps are barred or eco friendly and refilled and/or bought in bulk. We shred our paper and I use in nest boxes along with the tall grass I cut and dry. All waste goes into one of our composting systems along with our green/house/yard. I have not bought a zip lock bag in 15 years @ least and purchased very few b4. We don't drink soda, grow our own fruits, dry all clothes on a line. Use a ton of mulch for water retention and organic mater back into our soil. Also have well water on solar for our yard.
My new feed bag project- I'm collecting feed bags and sewing shopping/feed bags and selling them for 100% nonprofit. I have kept about 200 bags out of the landfill so far with another 400 waiting to be sewn and adding a small cash flow to 2 of my favorite nonprofits.
We have solar and PV. I only drive with purpose and multi task and recently bought a motorcycle for my main transpo. So my gas consumption is awesome-ly very minimal. Am working on making a basket for my motorcycle out of used irrigation drip line so I can deliver my eggs and people won't have to come and get etc though must confess most my customers are very local by plan.

Horse feed sourced locally and we also graze a lot. Have a 150 eco boost. Everyday I hope and try to do better and am really glad to hear of a few of my fellow humans doing the same ✌

Real minuses. Cat food.

 

[gtaus]

Goodwill type stores vary a lot in how worthwhile they are.

I started shopping our local thrift store a few years ago. It is run by a church group and their profits go to help charities in our local area. Good for me when I can find something I want or need and knowing that my money is going to help others in need in my community. Sometimes I buy an item that may or may not work out for me. If it's a complete failure for my use, at least I consider my money went to charity. Sometimes I just donate an item back to the thrift store, but if broken or doesn't work I trash it myself.

Not all of it is the garbage we are currently generating; some of is decluttering.

I usually box up items in the house that we no longer want and drop it off at the church thrift shop. They can decide if they want to sell the items, put them outside in their "free" bins, or dump the items in their big trash bins. One person's trash might be another person's treasure.

 

[LizzzyJo]

I grew up in a rural small town. We had about 40 family farms in our area when I was going to school in the 1970's. When I graduated from university in the early 1980's, there were only 2 family farms left in that same area back home. Everything changed.

I’m the opposite of this. I grew up in an urban area in a big city. Totally oblivious and reliant on corporations. Husband is from the country. We moved out to the country on land in 2017 to begin hobby farming (with a pipe dream of homesteading). We both have good non farm jobs.

I’ve had to learn EVERYTHING from scratch and am still dumb. Haha. When we moved out here I’d never seen a tractor up close. Didn’t know what propane tanks were for, thought well water was contaminated, was scared of the idea that my neighbors were armed, thought white haired devil children may live in the corn fields… the list goes on!

All I knew was animals from having them and working with them for my job from time to time.

I am learning one day at a time!

 

[LizzzyJo]

No more spending money on decorative gourds! I smashed our purchased ones in the compost pile last year and continued to put my rabbitry waste there and…well… this is about 75% of them.

 

[gtaus]

I am pretty self sufficient, and I measure that by how many trips I have to make to town. I also keep cutting back on the amount of garbage I am producing and am down to one roadside bin or less each week.

Sounds like a success.

I am also trying to quit buying crap -- and I am decluttering what I do have.

I am pretty good at not buying crap.

I'm not so good at decluttering what I do have. I always tell myself I should save that item and reuse it at once or twice more before it gets thrown out. I save too much stuff, according to Dear Wife, but eventually I find a second life for many things. Threads like this help with fresh ideas on second uses for things like that.

 

[gtaus]

Anyone else have these crazy dystopian fantasy moments?

I'm not into prepping, per se, but I have encouraged Dear Wife to stock up on supplies when things go on sale. I believe in a well stock pantry. She is more of a minimalist.

When COVID-19 hit the supply chain, Dear Wife got into a panic and created a supply closet full of toilet paper, paper towels, and other products that she cannot live without. Of course, at that time, TP and paper towels were about 3X the cost of pre-COVID prices. Now that stores are more of less restocked with products, we still have a nice supply of products in her panic closet and now buy items on sale prices to keep it restocked.

Speaking of supply chain problems, even our local WalMart is now frequently out of stock on many items that we never used to bother to store at home. Changing with the times, we have increased the size of our pantry and have had to change what we eat or use depending on the availability of the items in the store. It's a different world now. A nice home pantry helps smooth out those temporary shortages in the store. Flexibility in what you eat or use is also key to success.

 

[gtaus]

Here's another frugal and sustainable tip I just remembered. Do you keep those warranties on products you buy? Well, I do. Last year I had a shovel I bought from Menards that had a 15 year warranty. I saved the warrenty sticker along with the original receipt in a folder labeled "Warranties." Anyway, the shovel broke, I took it back to Menards with my receipt and warranty card, and they exchanged it with a brand new shovel. That's being frugal.

Of course, if they don't still sell that same shovel, you might have to settle for a refund or, God forbid, deal directly with the company that made the item.

I had a hand pruner with a lifetime warranty that broke last summer. It was no longer sold in the store. Because I had my original receipt with the warranty card, I was offered a refund, but I chose first to contact the company to see if they could send me a replacement. After all, a new pruner was about double the cost now compared to what I paid for it years ago. Happy ending, the company sent me out a brand new pruner to replace the broken one.

Sometimes it is more frugal spend more money to buy a high-quality item that will last for years and years as opposed to saving money today on an inferior product that you might have to replace many times over. If I know I need a tool that I will be using everyday and I want to last a long time, I pay extra for high quality and those lifetime warranties. It has saved me money over the long run and cost me much less than having to replace inferior tools every few years.

So, do I settle for a less quality tool sometimes? Absolutely. I only buy Ryobi cordless tools for my DIY'er projects around the house. The same tool by a professional contractor brand might cost 2X-3X times more without providing me, for my use, much more of a benefit. But since I don't use those tools everyday, maybe only a few times a month, some tools maybe only once or twice a year for a speciality tool, I chose to not buy the higher grade, higher cost, contractor priced tools.

FWIW, the Ryobi products come with either a 3-year warranty for the brushed tools and a 5-year warranty for their brushless tools. In the ~18 years I have been buying Ryobi tools, I have had only one tool fail within the warranty period and they fixed it for free. Not a bad track record.

I guess being frugal means that you learn when to spend extra money on higher quality products and when you can get by just fine with a less expensive option. But always save those original receipts and warranty cards.

 

[TropicalBabies]

We also sell our composted horse poop in used feed bags. Almost all customers save their bags and we cycle them that way.
My egg cartons are saved from friends and neighbor and recycled.
We just keep pecking away... would like to use more grey water ♡

@gtaus Mmy auntie was the same about her plastic bottles. We bought her a ceramic water dispenser and refil it with reverse osmosis @our local store. Also got her a nice travel canteen and so far... she has lessened her use quite a bit. We also got her recycling much more major victory lol with baby steps.

 

[YolkFolksHome]

Yes. I don’t consider myself a prepper, I consider myself prudent. We have extra food for humans and animals, 2 months worth on hand at all times. We also have emergency food buckets and alternative options for cooking other than electricity. I have a bunch of water storage as well, but haven’t filled them yet as I haven’t figured out where I’m going to store it all. It’s not just for those dystopian fantasy moments. It’s for any event that puts us in a bind. We are saving for a generator, I’ve heard about rolling blackouts too many times in other areas recently and people are moving here to the desert in droves. That’s adding stress to both our electricity and water resources and I think that is what frightens me the most. I’m looking into hydroponic gardening as it uses less water than a traditional one. Space is my biggest issue there as well.

Pardon my ignorance but, why are people moving to the desert? I'd think that'd be the last place for human settlement. I wanna know what I'm missing in life. My neighbor talks about going to see his friend in Arizona once a year and how a lot of people are living an Rv/nomad lifestyle and I can't understand why.

 

[gtaus]

Speaking of dryers, our old dryer started squeaking something terrible a few months ago. I mean, it was really loud. Dear Wife was all over me to get a new dryer. However, I found some YouTube videos on the possible problem and discovered the bearing on the dryer had dried out and just needed to be replaced. Of course, no parts available locally for the old dryer, but Amazon had the Drum Bearing Kit I needed for my brand dryer for less than $18.00.

It took me just over to an hour to fix the old dryer, and much of that time was spent vacuuming the housing out and cleaning up the lint and dust from 15+ years of use. But the dryer no longer squeaks, and better yet, Dear Wife is silent.

When you know what the problem is, it's amazing how an $18.00 kit and one hour of your time can save you the expense of buying a new dryer for $500.00!

YouTube should be on everyone's frugal life list. I have saved so much money by making simple repairs myself with the help of YouTube videos that years ago I would have never thought of repairing myself.