What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[TooCheep]

Not to beat a dead horse, but if you take advantage of those "free" 5-gallon buckets at the bucket day sales at the tool stores, you don't have to use them for food. I have a number of 5-gallon buckets that I use to tote around tools, use as garbage pails, toss in bits and pieces of a work project, etc... Mostly, those are 5-gallon buckets I have saved from painting or maybe drywall mud. Just wash them out and use them for a tool bucket. If I don't know what the bucket was used for before, then I would not use it to store food, not even dry feed for the chickens. There are countless uses for those 5-gallon buckets.

At any rate, I hope some people will consider taking advantage of those bucket day sales and save themselves $5.00 per bucket. That's a good deal that I suspect lots of people don't know about. Those 5-gallon buckets can be useful for lots of things, and I have found it very handy to have empty buckets and lids around in my garage.

I definitely agree with this last point. In addition to human & chicken feed storage, I use buckets for general storage and making self-watering planters. They fit well inside each other, so it is easy to keep extras in a single stack.

FYI- Some people use the larger kitty-litter buckets in a similar way. I have no knowledge of their food-safety factor, but wouldn't hesitate to clean them out and use them for non-food storage and their squarish shape is actually more space-efficient.

 

[Sally PB]

She told there was one bakery in town that was selling their square frosting buckets, with lids, for $3.00 for the set.

I would love to have the square buckets, versus the round ones. You can fit more of them side-by-side. But I'll take the round ones.

 

[TooCheep]

Just FYI for anyone using the 5-gal buckets-
There is a product called Gamma Seal lids (there are also knock-offs) that are fully resealable. Basic lids are cheaper, but if you use them to protect food for longer-term storage, once you break the seal you can't trust them to fully seal again (kinda like canning lids).

You don't want to use them for all buckets due to the extra expense, but I do use them for my chicken feed buckets as I'll use about 1/3 bucket every time I refill their feeder and want to be able to give the rest a good seal again and when I later refill the bucket, I don't need to purchase another basic lid to get a good seal again.

The base of the lid permanently seals to the bucket and the top screws into place and has a good seal. My local hardware store has them for about $7 which is about the cheapest I've seen.

 

[alwaystj9]

I have used the Gamma seal lids and have some that are about 10 years old and still in use.
I use Smart Seal lid assemblies from True Leaf Market https://www.trueleafmarket.com/

They are not cheap but you can use them on any standard 5 gallon bucket and mine have lasted forever. I am currently using one for grit and one for oyster shell in the barn.

I do want to note, however, that these plastic buckets are NOT rat proof. We have Norway Rats (wharf rats) that can chew through any plastic bucket or barrel as long as they can push their back feet against something. I have had them chew out holes in cheap metal trash cans.

 

[saysfaa]

I really can't tell if we are in disagreement, or not,...

I'm not sure either.

Maybe this will help. Menards carries both food grade and not food grade. This is picture and description of each.

 

[saysfaa]

"...However, it should be noted that while all food-safe containers are made from HDPE, not all HDPE is food-safe...."
From Scranton products website

In the context of this type of plastic. The whole page was about HDPE only. I mean, there are glass food containers, other types of plastic, and so on.

I don't go into Harbor Freight very often. I haven't noticed their buckets.

 

[gtaus]

FYI- Some people use the larger kitty-litter buckets in a similar way. I have no knowledge of their food-safety factor, but wouldn't hesitate to clean them out and use them for non-food storage and their squarish shape is actually more space-efficient.

Frugal Tip: Keep a pail of kitty litter in the garage to use to soak up spilled oil and other fluids that might leak from your car.

Kitty litter used to be less expensive than the bags of oil cleanup absorbent in the stores. I got an almost full bucket of kitty litter, for free, from a relative who no longer had a cat. Since I don't have a cat, I intended to use the kitty litter in the garage for oil and fluid leaks from the cars. I will also sweep up the kitty litter and use it again for the next oil spill in the garage if the litter does not look too bad. If the kitty litter gets too soaked, or too dirty, then I toss it out and just use a fresh scoop the next time.

My bucket of kitty litter has lasted more than 5 years, but, if I ever run down to empty, I'll still have a nice bucket for (non-food) use in the garage. And, yes, square buckets can make better use of space than round buckets.

I did a quick search on the price of kitty litter versus oil spill absorbent. A 25# bag of oil spill absorbent now costs a little less than a bucket of brand-name kitty litter. Maybe a generic kitty litter would be less expensive? I guess if I ever run out of my bucket of kitty litter, I'll just buy a bag of oil absorbent if it's a lot cheaper and refill the kitty litter bucket. One should factor in the value of the good, solid, square bucket that the kitty litter comes in. There is value in that bucket as compared to an empty bag of the oil absorbent material.

I have some neighbors that have cats. Every once in a while, they put their empty kitty litter pails and other plastic containers out on the street by their mailbox. Free for anyone who wants to use them. I picked up a kitty litter bucket from them and use it to hold rusty old nails and bolts. I also picked up some kind of cat food container that was a big jug of sorts, with a big mouth screwtop. I think I used that for old oil from changing out the oil on my lawnmowers. Our WalMart had an oil recycle drop off where you could just bring the oil in a jug and leave it there. IIRC, that's what I did with that cat food jug and my old oil. At least it was used for something in a second life before it was recycled.

 

[gtaus]

I would love to have the square buckets, versus the round ones. You can fit more of them side-by-side. But I'll take the round ones.

No doubt those used, square, frosting buckets are food safe. Considering a brand new 5-gallon bucket lid alone costs about $2.50, that's a nice price at $3.00 for the set of used frosting bucket and lid. That's what my cooking instructor uses. She just goes to the bakery and pays $3.00 for the set for her food storage. She really likes the fact that the square buckets don't waste any space on her pantry shelves.

 

[gtaus]

I have used the Gamma seal lids and have some that are about 10 years old and still in use.

Those Gamma seal lids are nice for some storage. I put one on my 5-gallon PVC chicken feeder because it is easy to unscrew and dump in fresh feed. However, latter I discovered that a person can also buy cheap, easy-off lids, for the 5-gallon buckets. Four years ago, I was only familiar with the hammer and crowbar tops that were watertight.

The Gamma seal lid I bought was about $7.00 at Menards. I recently found the easy-off lids at WalMart for about $2.00. For my 5-gallon PVC chicken feeder, I would have been fine with the easy-off lid and could have saved a few bucks. But I did not know about them at the time.

I do want to note, however, that these plastic buckets are NOT rat proof. We have Norway Rats (wharf rats) that can chew through any plastic bucket or barrel as long as they can push their back feet against something. I have had them chew out holes in cheap metal trash cans.

I don't have Norway rats to contend with where I live!

But we do have squirrels. I had a 5-gallon bucket full of bird seed stored outside on our deck, and a squirrel was gnawing on the lids. Never actually made a big enough hole to get to the seed, but I had to replace the lids because they were no longer waterproof. I told Dear Wife that we would have to get a small metal trash can with metal lid if we want to store her bird seed outside on the deck this coming summer.

For now, I had to move the buckets with chewed up lids into the garage. The squirrels stay out of the garage. Too much activity in there for them to be caught inside the garage.

We have fat squirrels eating from our bird feeders and underfed birds that try to visit when the squirrels are elsewhere! Stupid squirrels.

 

[gtaus]

I'm not sure either.

Maybe this will help. Menards carries both food grade and not food grade. This is picture and description of each.

I had one green Menards bucket out in the garage, and it is marked as #2 HDPE. I don't have the white bucket, but I see that is also HDPE. Are they the same? I don't know. The green one with #2 code indicates food-grade, but the other white one advertises food-safe but costs more. Maybe the FDA food-safe certification is a higher standard? I don't know.

Reminds me that all squares are rectangles, but rectangles are never squares. Maybe all #2 buckets are food-grade, but not all #2 buckets are food-safe? For dry food, like chicken feed and dry grains, I don't think it would make any difference between food-grade and food-safe. There might be a difference if used for liquids or if heated. But I'm only guessing at this point.