What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[saysfaa]

Thanks everyone.

We kept her in the garage until the last few years but she is what we took when the weather was bad. We've moved but always north enough that salted roads are part of lufe.

We started asking at the first bubbles in the paint. The paint guys said they wouldn't touch it because she was rusting from inside the panels.

About the time the first paint flaked off, I started asking about replacing panels. At the time, I didn't care if it cost more than she was worth to anyone else. But they already would not do it. They said bondo or spray foam would make her rust out even faster.

It is now nearly ten years later. She doesn't have water inside the carpeted areas yet but I'm afraid it is getting close to that.

I don't care what she looks like but I think I'm going to have to try to seal the water out some how.

I'm afraid there won't be enough steel to use bondo. I'm thinking get her as clean as possible, wait for a stretch of good, hot, and hopefully dry weather (maybe when I visit my kids who live in a hotter, drier climate) and crawl under her with a wire brush and can of expanding foam.

Then try to put a barrier around as much of the relevant area as I can. Let that cure. Then spray paint that with whatever coating is the most salt resistant.

But I don't know if it has a chance to work. I'm really bad at finding how-to videos on line. I kknda think she is past what most people try to fix, anyway.

She actually doesn't look too bad but I know it is almost paint holding the rust together for all parts beliw the top of the wheel wells. And some higher parts.

 

[Red Horse]

I bake from my home kitchen for a farmers market 10 min from me and I have got to the point where all I need from the grocery store are things like condiments that I don't want to make from scratch and the few chemicals I use to clean. Almost everything else, I trade for at the farmers market and my eggs come from my girls here at home. There are people in my community who grow huge selections of produce during the winter in their greenhouses, beekeepers, farmers who sell chicken, pork, beef, lamb, sausages, etc and dairy co-ops that sell a variety of animal milks and cheeses. I do my week's shopping there and I trade baked goods for all of those things and I make extra so that I can be sure to have what those people will like. Its such a good feeling to look around there and every vendor is enjoying a huge gooey brownie and I know I don't have to go buy a box of questionable salad from the store later and that my mushrooms are actually fresh.

 

[Sally PB]

Almost everything else, I trade for at the farmers market

I love barter! Everyone wins.

 

[Liz Birdlover]

Feed bags...we use them a lot, many ideas
Trash
Recycling
Re-bag composted rich soil for neighbors' gardens
Use to clean up on job sites, they're stronger than contractor bags, especially picking up nails & wood fragments
Use to save wood scraps for the firepit summer evenings
Use to take wood scraps to friends for their firepits
Bag up molted feathers
Make them into handy reusable & strong tote bags for numerous things...
book bag,
shopping bag,
magazine & knitting bag,
snack in vehicle bag,
keep smaller tools & blades in one place in truck bag,
trash bag for in the truck cab,
miscellaneous towel, sunscreen & whatever bag for the boat, beach or fishing pier,
transporting basically anything you don't want rolling around all over the vehicle,
filling with donations to drop off as often paper bags will rip,
Cut them open and use as a drop cloth when painting or doing tile work,
the uses are only limited to your imagination.
No plastic bags here, but if any show up, they are taken to the recycle bag box at the grocery store.

5 gallon buckets leftover from paint at work are another favorite...use them daily.
Scooping poop boards under chicken perches,
dumping compost,
cleaning firepit ash,
weeding,
planting starting trees or other plants and veggies,
mixing stuff up whether mortar, grout, paint, miracle grow, etc.
Using as tool boxes, especially for particular jobs,
I have a paint job bucket & a tile job bucket.
Keep heavier tools without their own cases together, easy to pick up & move & not have them all over the truck.
Whatever I need to move, that's too heavy for a feed bag.
I've even rescued a few turtles off of roadways using 5 gallon buckets!

We have awesome well water, that is pretty much all we drink, make our own iced tea or lemonade. No plastic bottles at all here.

Leftover veggie water is frozen & saved for making soup Sundays

We do other "love the earth" conscientious things, too, like trying to route our stops efficiently so we aren't making numerous trips, providing friendly habitat space & planting wildflowers for wildlife, butterflies, bees, bats, birds, reptiles, etc.

Seems like lots of folks here are doing what they can & It all adds up!

Example of a Feed bag made useful

 

[AOrchard]

I like to drive around local suburbs on large item trash pickup day! It's mine blowing what good stuff people will set out for the landfill. I've gotten rolls of fencing, chicken tractors, rabbit cages, dog kennels, screen doors, 4x4x8s, wood flooring, and more this way, most of which were in good to great condition.

 

[gtaus]

But I don't know if it has a chance to work. I'm really bad at finding how-to videos on line. I kknda think she is past what most people try to fix, anyway.

I think someone may have already mentioned this, but some people would just get a piece of tin flashing, rivet it over the damaged area, bondo, sand, paint. Not a method for a true body shop, but maybe good enough DIY job to keep out the water and give the car a cosmetic facelift.

I had a large void in an older car panel that I did not know how to fix. I ended up cutting the plastic from an ice cream pail lid and used screws to attach it to the panel. Then I filled the area with bondo using the plastic lid as the backstop. After sanding it down and repainting the car, you could not see any blemish. I had that car for another year before I gave it away, so I don't know how long that plastic lid fix held. But it held for the year I still had the car.

That car had no resale value, but it still ran good. I had nothing to lose with a cheap DIY makeover. So, the plastic lid fix was a success for me, but I would never suggest it was the correct way to fix the problem.

 

[gtaus]

Leftover veggie water is frozen & saved for making soup Sundays

Loved all your suggestions. Wanted to say that I have started to keep the juice from vegetable cans in the freezer for soups. Dear Wife was upset at first, but she made a beef vegetable soup this past weekend and used one of my frozen bricks of saved canned vegetable juice. The soup was awesome!

As our cooking instructor for the Senior's Cooking Class states, you paid for that juice in the can, don't dump it down the drain and then pay for vegetable stock to make your soups.

I gave up drinking soda pop about a year ago. Now I drink those powered mixed drinks like this....

I save those plastic containers. One suggestion for the use of these containers was to save your juice and soup stock in them. Since they are not round, they maximize the space in your freezer. Also, since they are not really big, you can stash them into smaller nooks and crannies or other voids in your freezer.

 

[Jenni Hen]

I started going to a Senior Citizen's cooking class. Our instructor suggested that we save all the juice from canned vegetables, put it in a container in the freezer, and then use all that vegetable juice for homemade soups. Like she says, you paid for all that juice, you might as well use it in something good to eat. Anyways, I have made one homemade vegetable soup using the saved juices from canned vegetables and it was fantastic. No more straining out the juice down the kitchen drain.

I like to save the veg water and reuse it next day, so it makes a stronger stock. (It's kept in the fridge then boiled up so any bugs get well zapped. )This winter I've discovered dumplings with vegetarian suet. Cook the dumplings in the stock and you get a winter-warmer, hearty soup
To make the dumplings, it's a big heaped tablespoonful of suet mixed with two ditto of self-raising flour. Add enough water to form lumps about an inch across and drop them into the stock. Simmer for about 20 minutes.

 

[gtaus]

I like to drive around local suburbs on large item trash pickup day! It's mine blowing what good stuff people will set out for the landfill. I've gotten rolls of fencing, chicken tractors, rabbit cages, dog kennels, screen doors, 4x4x8s, wood flooring, and more this way, most of which were in good to great condition.

I wish more people would be able to do that. I like to think that lots of stuff that we throw away because it has no value to us might have some value to someone else. I would rather see that stuff have a second life for somebody rather than filling up our landfills.

Back in the 1980's, when I was in the Navy, I had the opportunity to visit China. One of the things that impressed me was that there was no garbage to be found. Any piece of wood, scrap of metal, or plastic was picked up and reused by the people. I'm sure they have garbage somewhere, but you did not see any out in the streets or in public places like you so often see here in the USA.

Unfortunately, here in the US, you often cannot pick useable items out of the trash/recycle pile. I was at our local county landfill a few years ago, and I noticed that some contractor had dumped a perfectly good scaffolding set because they no longer needed it. So, I picked it up out of the metal pile and put it into my trailer. Before I knew it, one of the old timers working out there at the landfill was yelling at me that I could not take anything out of the pile. They landfill only gets pennies for that metal, so I offered to pay for the scaffolding at 2X or 3X their value for the county treasury. Well, he would have nothing to do with that idea. But he felt better about yelling at me and told me just to take it and leave, but don't do it again.

So, I got yelled at for giving a second life to that scaffolding, but it was worth about $250.00 new. I guess it was worth getting yelled at. I set the scaffolding up in my garage and used it as an extra workbench for a few years and now I use it as a heavy duty shelf.

You know, it's a county landfill and they charge people to toss out their unwanted metal. They only make pennies on the pound for scrap metal when they sell it. It's too bad that they cannot just offer to sell it anyone who wants to use some of that stuff and bring even more money for the county treasury.

 

[gtaus]

Most dumps don't let people scavenge because of liabiity issues. Blame it on our litigious society.

I can understand that safety concern, but I'm suggesting that many things, like that used scaffolding, could be put out a line of goods to be sold instead of being dumped into a pile or bin. That way, a person would not have to "scavenge" around in a dump pile looking for treasure. If it does not sell within a determined period of time, then dump it into the scrap metal bins at that point.

I suspect that the county landfill does not want to get into the business of reselling anything. Too much work for their employees. Not that the employees are lazy, but rather that they are paid to do other duties that take up all their time. It's just too bad that lots of good stuff is never reused.

Maybe there are not many people who would really care to use things like that which are tossed into the scrap metal. But when I saw that metal scaffolding, I knew it was still in good working condition and had value, to me, at least. And, I just happened to be there at the right time when that scaffolding was on the top of that pile, so I did not have to "scavenge" through anything to pick it out.