What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[gtaus]

Child labour is wrong of course. And its true they use child labour for all kind of things in certain places in the world. We should not buy these things. But we often dont know what we are buying.

I have no desire to support child labor, either. But I think the problem is with the people who use child labor to profit themselves. It's not necessarily in the product itself.

I have visited many third world countries in my younger days, and child labor is exploited in all areas. There is no doubt in my mind that if we all stopped buying any one specific item, those people exploiting children would just have them doing some other dangerous task to make profits.

Here is the USA, we do have laws attempting to ban products that use child labor.

ref: crsreports.congress.gov, www.hg.org

I'm not continuing this because I don't enjoy debate, and I don't want to clutter up a help thread with back and forth discourse.

Yeah, it seems like some heated conversation on the topic of sustainability. Lots of different opinions on the subject. Don't feel too bad, I have been criticized for posting too much on frugal tips on this thread that I use to save money. Sometimes, it just feels that you can't win. Anyways, I have always enjoyed your input on this and so many other subjects on the BYC forums.

 

[gtaus]

Here are the things I do currently:

Great to hear about things other people do. Just wanted to comment on a few things on your list...

*use plastic bags from grocer to line trash cans

Absolutely. Anything we can do to reduce the number of plastic bags that get directly tossed into the trash is a good thing. Small plastic bags work great for small trash cans, but I always grab the oversized bags when checking out at Menards. I use the large plastic bags for our kitchen trash can. Fits perfectly. I have not purchased any trash bags for a number of years.

compost unused food scraps, chicken coop stuff, etc.

Composting is one of my favorite topics. Before I had chickens, I composted our food scraps and unwanted leftovers. Now that I have chickens, they eat almost all scraps and leftovers turning it into chicken poo and speeding up the composting process.

I converted my entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. It provides me with more compost than I can use. It's a wonderful resource. I tell people that I have composting chickens that also give me eggs as a bonus. We sell excess eggs to friends of the family, but my biggest return on the chicken investment is all the compost I harvest every year from the chicken run. I have saved hundreds, and hundreds, of dollars using my chicken run compost instead of buying bags of compost at the big box stores.

When I put together freezable dishes, I make about 6 of the same recipe at one time, label, and freeze. This saves on fuel, money, time, electricity,

When we were younger, we used to can a lot of food. But Dear Wife reached a time where she determined canning was too much work. So now we just freeze large batches of soups and other dishes.

Although lots of things can be reheated quickly in a microwave oven, when it comes to bread-based items, I use a small toaster oven or our air fryer. No need to heat up the large oven. Saves time and money.

I forgot to list one of my favorites! I break down and reuse every box I can get my hands on to use in our plant and flower beds.

Back in the day, we used to fill up many large trash bags every week with the bulk being paper products. Now I shred almost all our paper products to first use as chicken coop bedding, then tossing the used bedding into the chicken run to compost, then the chicken run compost is used in my raised bed food gardens.

Laying cardboard down flat is a good, compostable, weed barrier. I used to do that and then toss on grass clippings to cover the cardboard. It looked nice and it all broke down into compost to feed the soil.

Now, I shred almost all our paper and cardboard products. Over a number of years, we went from about 3 large trash bags per week for the dump, to 3 bags per month when our town set up some drop off recycling bins. That was a big improvement. But then we got chickens so almost all our food scraps and unwanted leftovers now go to the chickens. We have very little trash these days.

I live in the country, so I am able to burn some of our garbage in my firepit. With recycling everything we can, shredding all that paper for coop bedding, and feeding just about all our food scraps to the chickens, we are down to about one bag of burnable trash per month. Most of that is just wet, soiled, paper from food packaging. It has been almost 2 years since I have had to take any trash to the dump!

Hope to hear more from you in the future.

 

[Daisy June]

Great to hear about things other people do. Just wanted to comment on a few things on your list...



Absolutely. Anything we can do to reduce the number of plastic bags that get directly tossed into the trash is a good thing. Small plastic bags work great for small trash cans, but I always grab the oversized bags when checking out at Menards. I use the large plastic bags for our kitchen trash can. Fits perfectly. I have not purchased any trash bags for a number of years.



Composting is one of my favorite topics. Before I had chickens, I composted our food scraps and unwanted leftovers. Now that I have chickens, they eat almost all scraps and leftovers turning it into chicken poo and speeding up the composting process.

I converted my entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. It provides me with more compost than I can use. It's a wonderful resource. I tell people that I have composting chickens that also give me eggs as a bonus. We sell excess eggs to friends of the family, but my biggest return on the chicken investment is all the compost I harvest every year from the chicken run. I have saved hundreds, and hundreds, of dollars using my chicken run compost instead of buying bags of compost at the big box stores.



When we were younger, we used to can a lot of food. But Dear Wife reached a time where she determined canning was too much work. So now we just freeze large batches of soups and other dishes.

Although lots of things can be reheated quickly in a microwave oven, when it comes to bread-based items, I use a small toaster oven or our air fryer. No need to heat up the large oven. Saves time and money.



Back in the day, we used to fill up many large trash bags every week with the bulk being paper products. Now I shred almost all our paper products to first use as chicken coop bedding, then tossing the used bedding into the chicken run to compost, then the chicken run compost is used in my raised bed food gardens.

Laying cardboard down flat is a good, compostable, weed barrier. I used to do that and then toss on grass clippings to cover the cardboard. It looked nice and it all broke down into compost to feed the soil.

Now, I shred almost all our paper and cardboard products. Over a number of years, we went from about 3 large trash bags per week for the dump, to 3 bags per month when our town set up some drop off recycling bins. That was a big improvement. But then we got chickens so almost all our food scraps and unwanted leftovers now go to the chickens. We have very little trash these days.

I live in the country, so I am able to burn some of our garbage in my firepit. With recycling everything we can, shredding all that paper for coop bedding, and feeding just about all our food scraps to the chickens, we are down to about one bag of burnable trash per month. Most of that is just wet, soiled, paper from food packaging. It has been almost 2 years since I have had to take any trash to the dump!

Hope to hear more from you in the future.

As an old English teacher, I believe you have earned an A for your response.

 

[MotherofOrpies]

Child labor has 2 sides, my daughter grew up westernized, her intended grew up in India, they did a tour of India, among others the famed Taj Mahal…there, the stonemason apprentice 7 year old children, which finish their education when they are 21, my daughter almost had a heart attack attack when she found out about the child labor, reply of her then boyfriend, no, the children have food to eat, learn a job, support their family, are trained experts when they are finished and the artwork ( which needs constant repairing) is kept up and alive….

 

[gtaus]

Child labor has 2 sides...

Well, I grew up in a small farming community. Every farm kid I know worked the farm with the parents. It might have been called daily chores, but it was work that expected of them to keep the farm going. Some of them grew up and inherited the family farm, knowing everything there was to the business. I suppose that was a good thing for them. We never considered it child labor like in a factory, or mining, where conditions might be less safe and all people are treated poorly.

So, I had to look up the definition of child labor because I'm not all that smart...

I don't think any of the farm kids I went to school with would fall into that definition, even though some of them worked hard on the family farm and they were children.

What's more concerning to me is that almost all the small farms the I grew up with were going out of business, being bought up by large agri-business. The small farmers used to do lots of conservation type farming with multiple crops and animals. Now, all you see is field after field of only one crop, sugar beets, which is the cash crop for the large agri-business owners. Single crop, no animals, apparently no concern for the future when more profits can be made today. Wind block row trees are routinely cut down to make more tillable land, and the topsoil gets blown off into the air. That's not sustainable. It's just sad.

 

[Sally PB]

apparently no concern for the future when more profits can be made today.

That has been the mantra for decades. The problems are now coming come to roost. My generation might have turned it around... but there was too much money to be made for a few people. So the next generation, and the ones after will be forced to deal with it.

It's just sad.

Because it was avoidable.

 

[BDutch]

but there was too much money to be made for a few people.

Still going on in the meat business and supply chains. We have the same problem in IT , shopping, trading, social media, banking ….

The very rich get richer and even ….. (have to stop here before its gets political).

 

[gtaus]

End of Year Clearance Sales?

Normally, this is the time of year I find lots of good end of year clearance sales on tools and tool kits from last year that need to be cleared out for new stuff. I got some really good deals last year at this time. I am just not seeing any good clearance sales this year. What's up with that?

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

I figured out how to make larger ‘pots’ out of toilet paper rolls by cutting them open and putting a notch in one side so they link together. I had been worried the default size roll pot size wouldn’t be big enough for squash or cucumbers, now I don’t have to buy cardboard pots for them.

 

[Sally PB]

I figured out how to make larger ‘pots’ out of toilet paper rolls by cutting them open and putting a notch in one side so they link together. I had been worried the default size roll pot size wouldn’t be big enough for squash or cucumbers, now I don’t have to buy cardboard pots for them.

Very clever!