What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[gtaus]

I had him to start bringing me the carcasses, heads and all. I pressure cook them until they crumble easily. I use the liquid to cook brown rice, wheat and sometimes scratch. I pack up the fish meal, freeze it and add it in portions to my chickens evening meal.

I was feeding the raw fish remains to my chickens, but they never really ate very much of it. Not a big deal for me because my chicken run is a composting sytem and the uneaten fish remains get buried in the run litter and become worm food, then compost. But it would be better if the chickens ate more of the fish.

Can a person boil the fish remains instead of pressure cooking? I don't have a pressure cooker, but I could boil a big pot of fish guts out on the barbecue grill. I just don't know if the boiling of the fish remains would get to a point where the bones would crumble easily.

I did buy a used food processor for next to nothing from the thrift store. It's just sitting out in the garage. Could I take the boiled fish parts, blend them up and pour the mix over some of their feed? Is that a good idea?

 

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

I was feeding the raw fish remains to my chickens, but they never really ate very much of it. Not a big deal for me because my chicken run is a composting sytem and the uneaten fish remains get buried in the run litter and become worm food, then compost. But it would be better if the chickens ate more of the fish.

Can a person boil the fish remains instead of pressure cooking? I don't have a pressure cooker, but I could boil a big pot of fish guts out on the barbecue grill. I just don't know if the boiling of the fish remains would get to a point where the bones would crumble easily.

I did buy a used food processor for next to nothing from the thrift store. It's just sitting out in the garage. Could I take the boiled fish parts, blend them up and pour the mix over some of their feed? Is that a good idea?

I tried boiling first. It took an entire day for them to get soft enough for me to be comfortable. And it made the entire house smell like fish for days.

 

[gtaus]

I tried boiling first. It took an entire day for them to get soft enough for me to be comfortable. And it made the entire house smell like fish for days.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Probably why they need to be pressure cooked.

 

[Mason Farm and Ranch]

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Probably why they need to be pressure cooked.

Yeah. I turn off the heat and let it cool with the weight on to keep the odor contained.

 

[saysfaa]

I'm quite annoyed at Home Depot over their moving boxes. The main reason I'm willing to buy them instead of keeping the free ones from the grocery store out of the recycle/waste stream(s) is that they are uniform. They are also sturdier but that is secondary; I can find sturdy enough. Less printing and uniform printing are nice but not really important.

Uniformity is important enough that I bought enough to get a good start on replacing the mishmash of brands of boxes that worked just not as well.

And they changed the size. Actually, they changed the dimensions rather than the size. So now they do not stack well. Of course, it is close enough in size and in labeling that I didn't notice there was a change until I had several boxes filled with things that do not switch to other boxes easily.

Having slightly different dimensions could be a benefit - somethings fit one dimension better than the other. But only if I'm aware of it so I don't have half the set of Grandma's china dishes in each kind. Or all the boxes with kids' toys in one kind except one of the boxes of kids' toys.

I will NOT rebuy boxes to replace the older style. Probably, they didn't do it for the purpose of making the older ones not work well. I am still NOT replacing them.

So that was several months ago. This week, I got around to shifting the contents of a lot of boxes and was doing pretty good about letting my annoyance go. I even noted that one kind is labeled "heavy duty small" down the edge and the other kind has "small heavy duty".

The shifting went well.... until, I stumbled across the third size labeled identical to either the first size or the second size.

 

[saysfaa]

It was worth the $2 or less to have uniform boxes with handles that are sturdy enough to move books and other things with similar weight. And sturdy enough to stack four or five high even when they are filled so heavy.

It is actually not hard to mark and cut the handholds. It folds better with a bit of scoring at the bending part.

Our basement is dry (with some help from a dehumidifier in parts of the summer) but after several years, some of the books in the bottom row are beginning to show signs of problems from dampness. I think it is because concrete allows moisture to move through it. I think a slab of insulation under the stack of boxes will solve that. That will cost much less than building or buying shelves of some sort.

Moving them around so different boxes are on the bottom would buy time but I think only so much time before there is a bigger mess (most of the stuff needing to be aired instead of just some of it).

Even with these problems, the cardboard boxes are working better than the metal shelves, better than the metal-framed shelves, and better than the style of all-wood shelves that we had in previous houses each with or without plastic boxes or totes. Even if I wasn't as anti-plastic as I am. Although, the plastic Rubbermade totes worked well for much longer for wood blocks, knex, legos, etc when the kids were playing with them often. Cardboard doesn't like being opened that often.

 

[gtaus]

Advantages to buying quality cookware at a thrift store...

Once a month I attend a Senior's Citizen's Cooking Class. Every month our instructor shows how to make at least 3 dishes. Usually a main dish, a side dish, and a dessert. Some of the recipes call for certain types of cookware for best results. A few months ago, we learned how to make a dessert that should be cooked in a thick walled pie plate - not those thin walled aluminum pans. Size matters in cooking, I guess.

Of course, I did not have the pie plate with thick walls like the Pyrex pie plate the instructor showed us. But I put it on my list of items to look out for at the Thrift Shop. It took a couple of months before I spotted some on the shelf. But this week I snagged two Pyrex pie plates for 50 cents each. That's a great deal considering how much they sell for new at Amazon...

In this case, I was willing to wait for what I wanted and needed. I passed on some other stuff that was close, but not quite right. If you can be patient and wait, sometimes you can get exactly what you want at a Thrift Store and save lots of money.

Now I have to take out that dessert recipe and try to make it for Dear Wife. I need to get my money's worth out of my "new" Pyrex pie plates!

 

[gtaus]

Our basement is dry (with some help from a dehumidifier in parts of the summer) but after several years, some of the books in the bottom row are beginning to show signs of problems from dampness. I think it is because concrete allows moisture to move through it. I think a slab of insulation under the stack of boxes will solve that. That will cost much less than building or buying shelves of some sort.

Even a couple boards on the concrete might be enough to solve your problem. That would keep the boxes off the floor. I'm into pallet projects these days, and certainly a pallet, or a half pallet, would lift the boxes up off the floor and allow air to circulate underneath and keep the boxes dry.

I typically use plastic totes if stored directly on concrete. If I have cardboard boxes, I just throw down some 2X4's first and that keeps the boxes dry. But I could see boxes sitting on concrete might start to get damp over time.

 

[Sally PB]

I think it is because concrete allows moisture to move through it. I think a slab of insulation under the stack of boxes will solve that.

The middle of our concrete basement floor will be damp sometimes. Concrete will wick up water.

I have repurposed styrofoam inserts that come with shipped electronics or fragile items for just this purpose. Yeah, hate the plastic crap, but I didn't buy it for this use, it was a "recycling" of sorts. The owner at work got bottles of wine delivered at work, and the inserts for those live under boxes on my basement floor now.

Another good candidate is the plastic carrier that bottles of pop come in. Believe me, those can support a LOT of weight. They also make great "trays" to dry boots on.

 

[saysfaa]

Dh has little tolerance for pallets and less for deconstructing then. Unfortunately. And I used up most of it before I realized this.

I'm also a little hesitant to use wood for this. I think it would need an air space under it for long term effectiveness. That adds complication and expense since I want the stacks to be stable.

The styrofoam inserts are effective, even that thin?

I might have some left from when I tried to jerry rig a window air conditioner for my mother's house and similar things in her house. It was horrible to work with but this just needs to be a flat layer of the unmoving sandwich.