What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[TooCheep]

The only real advantage to that Kitchen Compost Bin is that it probably looks a little better than my old ice cream bucket. Any container would work, of course, but I know some people might not want used food containers on their kitchen countertop whereas that Kitchen Compost Bin looks better to them. Maybe that would encourage some people to save those kitchen scraps and leftovers for composting and/or feeding them to the chickens.

The other point, of course, is that those Menards Flash Sale emails sometimes contain products at heavily discounted prices and you can save a lot of money.

Absolutely. It get those same notices. They have some excellent deals there.

You are also correct about the compost bin. Cosmetically better and I just wanted to point out that they were likely going to be gone quickly.

 

[gtaus]

Sigh... Just another 7.7% inflation.

I know the price of food went up and has not come back down. Dear Wife does most of our grocery shopping, so I don't think about that very much.

However, I have noticed that many of the tools and electronics that I buy have significantly gone down in price. I just got a new Samsung Tracfone smart phone with 1 year service, 1,500 mins, 1,500 texts, and 1.5 GB data for $66.00 from QVC. It also came with accessories such as a case, a car charger, a home charger with cable, and a nice stick-on stand/grip. Last year that package deal was about $100.00 without a case or grip.

Here is a current listing on QVC of that phone...

You know, I don't live with a smart phone in my hand all the time. I don't need unlimited talk, text or data. I use maybe only 200 minutes of talk, or less, per year. And, the Tracfone unused stuff gets rolled over into the next year if you buy a new Tracfone. I have over 4,000 minutes of talk, about 4,500 texts, and 4.6 GB of data accumulated with this new purchase. More than I will ever use.


I mainly use my smartphones as mp3 players when I'm out on the riding mowers. I listen to stuff while I work, and if the phone rings, I just press a button on my safety headphones and can talk on the phone. The other use is for taking pictures, many of which I post on the BYC forums. I hardly ever use it as a phone.

The Tracfone costs me less than $6.00 a month. That saves me money over paying $35 a month for a landline phone, which I also did not use very much, and had no other function. It's a good deal for someone like me who is not on the phone very much.

 

[fuzzi]

She said her #6 item would have been vodka. Being alcohol, it would have anti-icky properties. It would also be handy as an item for barter!

And making tinctures.

 

[fuzzi]

This is almost gone. Likely won't be there past today. That said, I use an old coffee canister for the same function. Collect coffee grounds, tea bags and vegetable scraps and throw them out in my compost pile periodically.

I have a couple large mouth plastic containers with screw-on lids that I use to collect coffee grounds and vegetable odds and ends that I don't give to my flock. I think originally they held dog snacks.

 

[igorsMistress]

I've made powdered laundry soap, but it didn't work well in my machine. Not that it didn't clean, the powder didn't travel from the dispenser cup into the drum. Liquid works much better for me. I haven't made liquid detergent. Maybe if I just put the powder in with the clothes...

I remember a blog from 15+ years ago and the woman listed the 5 things she'd stock up on for cleaning in a SHTF crisis scenario. I know baking soda and white (distilled) vinegar were on the list. I can't remember the other three for certain... borax? washing soda? They might have been on the list.

She said her #6 item would have been vodka. Being alcohol, it would have anti-icky properties. It would also be handy as an item for barter!

Many homemade cleaners include washing soda and borax so I bet those were for sure on the list. I would include Dr Bronners, liquid and bars. Super versatile.

 

[igorsMistress]

I've made the liquid laundry soap many times. Sometimes the ingredients can be a challenge to find. The recipe makes a lot, I have a dedicated 3 gallon bucket to mix it and several old laundry soap containers that I store it in. This is the recipe I use.
Liquid Laundry Soap
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
1 cup liquid castile soap unscented or scented
15 cups water divided
Essential oil optional for scent (I do not use essential oil, it will take a good bit for a whole batch)
In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, bring 6 cups of water to a slight boil. Once the water begins to boil, turn off the burner.
Add the Borax and washing soda. Stir to dissolve.
Then add 9 cups of room-temperature water and 1 cup of liquid castile soap. Give the ingredients a stir to combine.
Allow the soap to cool for a few minutes before pouring into one large gallon-size jar or smaller containers, like quart-size jars. Make sure your jar(s) are heat-safe. If not, wait until the soap is cool, then spoon the soap into the jar(s).
If you're reusing an old detergent bottle, make sure the soap is fully cool before adding to a plastic container. Add an essential oil of choice (if using) to the soap (now in the jar) and stir to combine with the detergent.
The essential oil should add a subtle fragrance, but shouldn't be added until the soap cools as heat will cause the essential oil to evaporate.
As the soap sits, the mixture may form into a gel and become chunky. There may also be liquid and gel separation, simply stir or shake. This is normal. I shake mine up each time I use it. I use about 1/2 cup for large top load washer, I think a front load uses much less but I don't know.

I make this but use a scented liquid soap, usually tea tree, and add it when the water is room temp. Fragrance is very mild at that point, but I don’t like my clothes to smell anyway.

White vinegar is what I use as a softener.

 

[gtaus]

Composting is the Heart of Sustainability

Well, that is what I heard last night while watching some YouTube videos. They stated that making your own compost on your homestead is the heart of sustainability and the first and foremost aspect of permaculture.

It's kind of like a beautiful circle of regeneration. You feed the soil with compost, the soil feeds the plants, the plants feed your family, and you make more compost to feed the soil to start the cycle all over again.

This time of year, I am using the riding lawn mower to vacuum up leaves on the lawn along with some cutting the grass at the same time. It makes a wonderful blend of compostable litter for my chicken run. Here are a few pictures of what 7 full bins of grass clippings and leaves looks like...

A large portion of those piles will be converted to chicken run black gold compost by next spring. I will haul out wagons full of compost, sift it in my cement mixer compost sifter, and then mix that compost with a high-quality topsoil 1:1. I then fill new raised beds or top off my old, raised beds.

Many years ago, when I was growing up, we used to bag up all those grass clippings and leaves and haul them down to the city dump. That's what everybody did. But now, in my older age, I can tell you that almost nothing organic leaves my property. Most of it gets tossed into the chicken run for processing. I have a few compost bins for organics that I don't want the chickens to eat, like maybe some really moldy food or forgotten leftovers. That does not happen very often, but I keep my compost bins for stuff that has really gone bad.

I still get excited every time I harvest some of my chicken run compost. It's just so much better than the bagged compost I used to buy at the big box stores - with bits and pieces of metal, plastic, and glass in the compost as an unwanted bonus. I know 100% that my chicken run compost is all natural, healthy organics from my own property.

I harvest hundreds of dollars' worth of chicken run compost every year for my gardens. If you have a backyard flock, consider making your own compost and move you and your family a little further down the line to sustainability.

 

[Stravager]

I've made powdered laundry soap, but it didn't work well in my machine. Not that it didn't clean, the powder didn't travel from the dispenser cup into the drum. Liquid works much better for me. I haven't made liquid detergent. Maybe if I just put the powder in with the clothes...

I always toss the powdered laundry soap in straight with the clothes in the drum. Works pretty well so far.

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

Anybody looking for some late season pots make sure to check your local craft store. I just got a bunch of 8” pots from Michael’s for less than half of what Home Depot is selling the same size for. (Admittedly some of that is Labor Day savings…but only some.)

 

[gtaus]

A few days ago, I posted a couple of pictures of me dumping in bins full of grass clippings and leaves into the chicken run. The chickens will scratch and peck that litter over and over again until it breaks down into compost.

I mentioned that I save a lot of money by making my own compost instead of buying bags at our big box stores. Yesterday, I harvested about 14 cubic feet of finished compost in less than 30 minutes of work using my cement mixer compost sifter. I wondered what the current cost of compost was at Menards, for example, if I had bought it there. This is what I found online...

I checked the math on that and found that if I would have bought 14 cubic feet of that compost at Menards, it would have cost me over $79.00 with the price after rebate!

I only sifted out 2 wagons full of finished compost yesterday to top off a number of Dear Wife's planters and one of my raised food beds that I pulled the tomato plants.

Here is a picture of the newest planter I made out of pallet wood for Dear Wife's "wild" flower garden. She had a couple of plants that were being stunted by some other plants that overgrew an area and she want them moved before they died...

I call my homemade chicken run compost "black gold compost" because it is so rich and black, and it saves me so much money by making it at home.

For many years, I used a simple 2X4 frame with hardware cloth tacked on to the bottom of it to sift my compost into a wheelbarrow. That worked great, except that it was a labor intense operation that took me a long time. But I would spend hours sifting compost from my compost bins at that time and end up with half a wagon of finished compost. As I got older, I wanted a better option that was labor saving.

I invested in making a cement mixer composter sifter shortly after deciding to convert my entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. At that time, it cost me about $240 for everything, but that was because I had to pay for a new cement mixer which was on sale for about $200.00. I could not find any used cement mixers for sale in my area. That would have saved me a lot of money and worked just as well.

In any case, given the price of bagged compost at that time, I calculated that my investment had a break-even point of 4 hours of run time because I was able to process $60.00 worth of sifted compost every hour. With today's compost prices, I calculate that I am making finished compost around $150.00 per hour!

Here is a picture of my current setup with the cement mixer compost sifter...

It's one of the few investments that I have made that has paid for itself so fast. The best thing, for me, was that it saves me so much labor and wear and tear on my old body. I don't know how to calculate that benefit, but not having a sore back at the end of the day is pretty valuable to me.