What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[Farmgirl301E]

I try to live sustainably and sometimes I do and sometimes I don't! What are some of your tips or things that you can't do?

Example of things I do:
- no purposefully bought single use plastics in the home. This has been made much easier by the new variety of plant-based baggies and saran wraps!
- no spray cleaners, I use bar soap, bar shampoo, and bar conditioner (no bottles as the US doesn't really recycle plastics anymore and the pacific garbage patch is growing)
- Of course using egg cartons from friends and not buying eggs Also trying to grow as much of my own food as possible.

Examples of things I don't do :
- I still have my plastic toothbrush, floss, and toothpaste with fluoride.
- I am terrible about buying things from Amazon that comes with plastic bags.
- Chicken, dog, and rabbit food comes in plastic bags
- I still eat meat (but I grow some myself)
- I buy makeups, clothes, dog toys, and household items that aren't sustainable

What about you?

I also grow vegetables and want to get chickens. I'm in a city, though I'd love the country. I can't move from here.

I make my own toothpaste, deodorants, and when I'm done with my bottle shampoo, I'm making shampoo bars. I make my own soap and lotion bars.

I can my food, and store bought cans get made into art.
Sounds like we're same in thought process

 

[Jenni Hen]

I also grow vegetables and want to get chickens. I'm in a city, though I'd love the country. I can't move from here.

I make my own toothpaste, deodorants, and when I'm done with my bottle shampoo, I'm making shampoo bars. I make my own soap and lotion bars.

I can my food, and store bought cans get made into art.
Sounds like we're same in thought process

Wow that's impressive!

I got as far as thinking about making soap when lockdown started and there was a lot of panic buying, but I worried about the caustic mix.

 

[TropicalBabies]

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.

Restore, goodwill etc. Kind of blame the people for not dropping at one of those places. Glad the landfill guy was flexible and let you take it away
Our landfill is pretty liberal and we have gotten a few wheelbarrels, a dolly and a bike to mention just a few. All still in use.

 

[gtaus]

Glad the landfill guy was flexible and let you take it away

I think he felt better after yelling at me and establishing his authority over the landfill. He's not known for his people skills. I may have been in the wrong, but he could have handled differently. There were no signs posted.

Our landfill is pretty liberal and we have gotten a few wheelbarrels, a dolly and a bike to mention just a few. All still in use.

That's what I mean. Why not let people take what they can use? As a taxpayer, I would rather see community recycling efforts.

BTW, we have a Restore in our town, but they charge more for used items than they cost for new at Menards or Home Depot. I don't understand that. If I shop at a Restore, I would expect to buy a used item for considerably less than the price of a new item at Menards. I stopped going there a few years ago when I saw prices going up on all items. They must have gotten under new management, or something. I think the concept of the Restore is a great idea, but the prices have to be reasonable.

 

[TropicalBabies]

BTW, we have a Restore in our town, but they charge more for used items than they cost for new at Menards or Home Depot. I don't understand that. If I shop at a Restore, I would expect to buy a used item for considerably less than the price of a new item at Menards. I stopped going there a few years ago when I saw prices going up on all items. They must have gotten under new management, or something. I think the concept of the Restore is a great idea, but the prices have to be reasonable.

X2! Same happened here. Paying near new prices for something full of dust in a broken box that you can't test or bring back if it does not work. BS! I won't even donate to them anymore. I will have a good giveaway pile at my next garage sale instead. Maybe we answered the landfill question lol
My dh filled 3 old feed bags of composted horse poop for me this morning and sent me this photo for some reason. Made me think of this thread.

It is our 3 stage pallet compost bins. Plastic that backs it is old fema plastic from 1993 lol. Just sold out 2 finished bins. We have steady customers as we are a much better deal than big box stores. We make 1/2 of our feed costs with composting and selling.

 

[LizzzyJo]

I also grow vegetables and want to get chickens. I'm in a city, though I'd love the country. I can't move from here.

I make my own toothpaste, deodorants, and when I'm done with my bottle shampoo, I'm making shampoo bars. I make my own soap and lotion bars.

I can my food, and store bought cans get made into art.
Sounds like we're same in thought process

How awesome! I make soap too, but haven’t tried lotion bars yet. That sounds really fun.

 

[gtaus]

X2! Same happened here. Paying near new prices for something full of dust in a broken box that you can't test or bring back if it does not work. BS! I won't even donate to them [Restore] anymore.

Unfortunately, I ended up on the same path as you. I used to donate stuff to Restore and buy stuff there for projects I was working on. But somewhere along the line they raised their prices so high that you could literally buy the same items new, cheaper, at Menards. So, I stopped going to our Restore and stopped donating to them.

We still have a very active church Thrift Shop in our town and we can donate lots of stuff to them. They sell their donated items at garage sale prices and lots of people are more than happy to pick up those hidden treasures and save lots of money. Also, their profits go to support our local charities. When my parents passed, we donated lots of their clothes and stuff to the Thrift Shop.

For stuff I cannot donate to the Thrift Shop, I'll just put it out front along the road with a FREE sign and usually it gets picked up by someone. I hope it is useful to someone.

 

[gtaus]

It is our 3 stage pallet compost bins. Plastic that backs it is old fema plastic from 1993 lol. Just sold out 2 finished bins. We have steady customers as we are a much better deal than big box stores.

Love to talk about homemade compost. Really jealous of you guys in the tropics as I imagine you can make finished compost in no time compared to me here in northern Minnesota. Those look like some really big compost bins. Do you turn over the compost from one bin to another bin along the line? I don't think my back could handle that much work with a manual pitchfork. I'd definitely need something mechanical to turn that much compost.

FWIW, I turned my chicken run into a chicken run composting system. My composting chickens are outside (in the non-snow months) scratching and pecking the litter in the chicken run from early morning until they go inside the coop to roost for the night. All that constant turnover means my chicken run compost is finished in about 3 months and ready to be used. I don't sell my compost, but it saves me 100's of dollars every year in not having to buy compost bags from the big box stores. As a bonus, my composting chickens give me eggs. We sell the excess eggs and that pretty much pays for all our feed costs.

I also have 5 pallet compost bins for excess material and/or for stuff that I don't want to toss into the chicken run - like moldy food. I treat those bins as totally hands off. I fill up bin one and then move on to bin two, etc... It takes me about one summer to fill up each compost bin. When I fill up bin five, then I harvest bin one, which usually has had about 4 years of composting in place without turning. Just about everything breaks down to finished compost over 4 years. Not nearly as fast as your compost bins in Hawaii, but I'm not in a hurry for those bins to finish so it's OK with me.

 

[gtaus]

I also grow vegetables and want to get chickens. I'm in a city, though I'd love the country. I can't move from here.

Having a small backyard flock of chickens and gardening just go together so well. The chickens can make great compost for your gardens to grow people food. And you get eggs as a bonus. Lots of cities let people have small flocks of laying hens but restrict roosters because of the noise. I think a small backyard flock would be great for you.

 

[becstalls]

- no spray cleaners, I use bar soap, bar shampoo, and bar conditioner (no bottles as the US doesn't really recycle plastics anymore and the pacific garbage patch is growing)

This is news to me (about the US not recycling plastics anymore). I’d like to learn more. What are we doing instead of recycling the plastics? Sorry if this is old news. I have six kids (youngest 3 are triplets who only just started school this year) so I basically live under a rock.