What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[fuzzi]

For those looking for ways to preserve food, one thing you may not have tried but likely have handy is eggs. I always save some eggs in the spring for use over the winter when the girls mostly or fully stop laying.

There are a number of ways to preserve eggs, but the three I think are best are freeze drying (very good but requires expensive equipment), freezing (works but uses valuable freezer space) or water-glassing (cheap, requires no power, but has ~10% failure rate). I've been doing water-glassing for a number of years now.

Here is the master thread on water-glassing:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/water-glassing-egg-preservation-experiment.1428588/

I make refrigerator pickled eggs. They only last about 6 months, but are an easy way to have eggs to eat when the hens decide to molt!

 

[fuzzi]

While hubby was visiting his dad in Charlotte, NC, their water heater died. It was a smaller unit, in a closet on the second floor. (That seems like a really dumb idea to me. I've not been impressed several aspects of the build on this house.)

The cost was $3000 for the replacement.

Charlotte is not a cheap place to live.

We rented a duplex apartment for about a year. It was fairly new, and the water heater was in the attic! That's an expensive accident waiting to happen.

I had to replace my 18 year old water heater last year. I was horrified at the prices, but my plumber (yeah, Tim!) gave me a cash price of $800 including installation.

Oh, and it's in the outside closet, which is part of but lower than the living areas of the house.

 

[gtaus]

My late MIL swore up and down she couldn't stand the taste of softened water either. ... I guess you can get used to anything.

Well, I imagine so. Still, there are many things I don't care to change at this stage of my life. I'm comfortable with having hard water at our house.

FYI, I was in the military and moved around to a number of countries and cities. We had soft water in most of those places. I liked returning to my home with hard well water. But I grew up in a small rural town and spent most of my summers pumping water by hand at my grandparent's lake cabin. I think the taste of hard well water is just ingrained in my DNA.

 

[gtaus]

...I don't know if something would have failed in that time, but I will say that our clothes are cleaner, the washer is cleaner, the dish washer is cleaner, and no orange bowl in the toilet.

One of our "expenses" is our quality of life. It's one of the things we worked and saved for.

Some things are worth paying for if it really makes a difference to you. We buy lots of house brand food at the supermarkets to save money, but there are certain items that I will still buy the name brand. It's no use to save a little money on something if you make yourself miserable in the process.

Being frugal is not only about saving money. It's also about deciding where and how to best spend your money.

 

[gtaus]

I used to have a "water boss " water softener, From Menards.
At the highest setting, it still wasn't enough. It lasted about 10 years and I replaced with the same that lasted about 10 years. I lost interest in soft water.

I had to get some plumbing work done last year. I had a leaky value and my pressure tank needed to be replaced. It was the cost of labor charged by the plumber that drove up the cost of the project. I don't mind paying someone by the hour for their service at the house, but I swear they started the time clock 2 days earlier when I first scheduled a service call! The labor cost was almost 3X the cost of materials.

 

[gtaus]

I had to replace my 18 year old water heater last year. I was horrified at the prices, but my plumber (yeah, Tim!) gave me a cash price of $800 including installation.

I was charged $800 for the labor alone on my water heater installation. Sounds like you got a really good deal from your plumber. Good for you.

My post on the cost of a new water installation was just to give some people an idea that there may be other options to plumbing services than a local contractor. Home Depot ended up saving me $400-$500 from the local quotes I got. If you have a good plumber that works for you, there is value in that. I was just looking at total contract price and Home Depot came in lower than my local options.

Well, I also have a commercial account at Home Depot and get a 10% military discount on the materials, but not on the labor. I saved another $70 on the water heater with my military discount, which was nice.