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Syncletica
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 8:58pm | IP Logged
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Molly - Can you explain Freecycle and how you did the gift swap thing? Those sound so interesting! I wish I could barter, I unfortunately don't have anything I can barter with, except maybe homemade chocolates and chocolate bouquets, which would get tiresome to the receiver, no doubt.
ps - can you give me your recipe for homemade soap, too?  I hope it's not too much to ask.
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melanie
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Oh, and I would also love to know how to make homemade laundry soap! I was just thinking about this the other day, actually.
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Melanie
homeschooling Maria (13yo), Kain (10yo), Jack (5yo), Tess (2yo), and our newest blessing, Henry Robert, born 4/23!
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Syncletica
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I'd like that, too. I've tried a homemade recipe for laundry detergent, but was not satisfied with the results. The clothes did not smell clean. Is there a recipe for a really nice liquid one?
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molly
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 9:26pm | IP Logged
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First Melanie, feed your man meat  We eat meat, but it is cheap because we "grow" our own. We go to livestock auctions, pick up Jersey bulls at 20.00 a head, feed tehm our own milk, (from our milk cow) grass them, hay them one season and at the end of the next summer, to the freezer they go! All told approx. 18 months. Same with chicks and other beasts 
Next Freecycle, just google it, and look for one near your cities. If one is not listed they will direct you how to begin one.
The swap....loads of fun! Pick a venue, I used a church basement, get your local Starbucks to donate coffee, advertise on your local HS list, set the time, put out the goods, at teh appointed hour, let the ladies "shop". Everyone here was so gracious and kind, we just walked around the tables picking up what we would liek, as if we were at a yard sale. Everyone found stuff they could use or want. Then we donated everything left to a local thrift store, very simple!
Now for the soap!
1 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax
1 bar Fels naptha soap grated
4 cups of water
melt grated soap in water, fill 5 gl bucket half full of hot tap water, add melted soap and powders to bucket of hot water. Stir until dissolved. Cover and let sit over night. When cool you can add essential oil if you choose. I add Tea tree oil as I use this for my cloth napppies. Well not my nappies, but my baby's
pour into clean used laundry soap jug, Add half soap and add more water. Shake before use, it gels up quickly.
you can wash 640 loads in a front loader w/ this recipe using a 1/4 cup per load! Cost about 2.00 to make!
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molly
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 9:27pm | IP Logged
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Oh, as for bartering, we can all type, clean, babysit, sew, knit, read, mow a lawn, paint a room, something! Think outside the box!
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molly
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 9:33pm | IP Logged
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One more thing Dr Raymond Moore has a great book; Minding your own Business, it is about teaching children the importance of running their own business' and family based business'. Quite a good read, in our dark economical times!
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guitarnan
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 9:35pm | IP Logged
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Learning to fix things yourself (with books from the library) can save you huge $$$. Yes, it takes time. My husband fixes our cars and I figure he saves us $1K per year in labor costs and parts markups by doing this. He can fix washers and dryers thanks to the library books we've borrowed. My dad taught him to fix our dishwasher.
I try very, very hard to avoid pre-made foods (even snacks). Frozen burritos used to be popular here (they are very inexpensive) but my kids no longer like them, so the only pre-made foods we buy are ramen noodles, on-sale mac and cheese (although they are learning to like homemade better!) and cake mixes. (This is me being lazy...I seldom bake desserts anyway...)
I use only cream of chicken canned soup or bouillon cubes (Knorr's); otherwise we make our own stock. I buy generic cream of chicken and no one has ever complained.
Pretzels are inexpensive bagged snacks - they're really good dipped in herbed cream cheese but cream cheese is not a frugal snack, LOL!
The book Miserly Moms has a great recipe for homemade granola...I love it but it disappears in a day. If you leave out the raisins it is very frugal, though, and easy to make.
One great way to save on fresh fruits and veggies is to go totally seasonal. If it's not in season locally, it's probably too expensive.
If you want to arrange a gift swap, the Elfster site is a great resource. My writing colleagues organized a white elephant Christmas gift exchange that worked wonderfully.
We throw do-it-yourself birthday parties. We call the guests to invite them, decorate brown paper gift bags, make our food and cake instead of ordering pizza and bakery cake, etc. You can do "no gift" and "no goodie bag" parties for older children with no problems. A trip to a local park is just as much fun as an expensive party. (Summer party idea: squirt guns!) The cake decorating tradition is now time-honored here and dd is now making cakes for her friends' parties. (I need to find cake decorating lessons for her...love the suggestion above!)
If you like to write, please PM me for ideas on where to find freelance writing jobs...some don't pay very well but do pay, so you may be able to pick up a little cash here and there...
For some frugal recipes, I can suggest my friend Toni's blog: The Happy Housewife. Look under her "recipes" category for some great (kid friendly) meat-stretching meal ideas. She bakes all her own bread and bagels, too...and her Barbie princess birthday cake was amazingly cool.
If your husband doesn't like homemade bread, try making biscuits or something else from scratch that he does like...you will stretch your food budget either way. Making bread at home is definitely cheaper, but the taste is completely different. You can also make pizza crust dough, soft pretzels, etc. at home...your library should have bread-baking books with good recipes.
I am sure this is all quite overwhelming...sometimes it helps to figure out what you can buy with your savings. Couponing, for ex., is easily tracked. You can see week by week what you didn't spend. It is hard at first, but if you give frugality a try, you eventually begin to feel very happy and confident about saving money, particularly when you apply your weekly savings to paying down a particular bill or toward saving up for a specific item. Sooner than you think, you will find yourself thinking more in terms of "needs" and it will feel good. You will be more in control of your finances - what a nice thing!
For me, my number-one attitude adjustment was deciding to get all books and magazines from my library. I love books and am an avid reader, and have a weakness for magazines. I stopped subscriptions (this is a great gift idea to suggest to others, BTW) and learned all about inter-library loan. The only books I buy now are work-related (I write wine columns) and even then I try for used books whenever possible. It's unbelievable, almost, but I've lost my bookstore cravings...I can go into B&N and look at things, yet leave without buying anything at all. I borrow books from the library instead. (See above...Washer Repair for Under $50 is an excellent library book!)
Don't despair...write down all these fantastic ideas and choose the easiest to implement first. Once you know your monthly savings, go to your husband and tell him you've saved $100 this month, could we try (insert idea) to save $25 more next month?
Some things, you'll find, just don't work for you. We can live without Doritos but not without cheese. I shop for the best deal (pre-grated or grate-it-yourself) but, hey, my dad worked in a cheese factory. It's genetic. Put everything on the table (a little at a time, if necessary) and consider whether it's a need or a want. For the must-have items, find the best way to save as much as you can and go from there.
I want to thank you for starting this thread, as it's inspired me to look again at some things around my own home. There's nothing like sharing ideas!
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Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.
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Willa
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One thing to remember about coupons according to my husband (he's a grocery shopping engineer  ) is that not all of them save money. .... they're not all created equal. Many times the coupon is for a brand name or a convenience food and just buying the generic equivalent or the whole-foods ingredients is much less expensive. And not infrequently, the coupon is for something you wouldn't have gotten in the first place. They do try hard to create demand .
One inexpensive snack that my children like is popcorn -- popped from the kernel, not in those microwave packages.
I think many DH's really need their meat, at least psychologically, at dinner. My grandma's way of balancing that need with frugality was to specially prepare a portion of meat for her husband alone, and then serve something else for herself and the kids, with less meat or meatless. Kids seem often to prefer carbs and dairy products anyway.
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Willa
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MicheleQ
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 10:16pm | IP Logged
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molly wrote:
Now for the soap!
1 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax
1 bar Fels naptha soap grated
4 cups of water
melt grated soap in water, fill 5 gl bucket half full of hot tap water, add melted soap and powders to bucket of hot water. Stir until dissolved. Cover and let sit over night. When cool you can add essential oil if you choose. I add Tea tree oil as I use this for my cloth napppies. Well not my nappies, but my baby's
pour into clean used laundry soap jug, Add half soap and add more water. Shake before use, it gels up quickly.
you can wash 640 loads in a front loader w/ this recipe using a 1/4 cup per load! Cost about 2.00 to make! |
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I use the same thing except I don't make it a liquid --I just use it dry. Works great, smells good and the price is fabulous. My dh was skeptical at first but is really happy I started making this.
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Michele Quigley
wife to my prince charming and mom of 10 in Lancaster County, PA USA
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guitarnan
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 10:18pm | IP Logged
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Willa is right...don't fall into the trap. Only buy with coupons what you'd buy anyway (or equivalent, as in Skippy vs. Jif peanut butter).
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Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.
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MicheleQ
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 10:21pm | IP Logged
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Willa wrote:
| I think many DH's really need their meat, at least psychologically, at dinner. Kids seem often to prefer carbs and dairy products anyway. |
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Dh and I are both meat eaters and with two diabetic children we really do have to watch the carbs. We shop the sales. There are several grocery stores within just a few miles of one another here so it really is worth it to go to different stores for the best price.
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mrsgranola
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Michele, can you elaborate on how you use that laundry soap dry? I'd love to get the exact proportions for the dry version. We didn't have very good luck with the gel version and we ended up wasting alot of it.
I've really enjoyed this thread. We had gotten sloppy on our budget for a while and we need to buckle it down again. Right now I'm trying to use up stuff in the deep freezer before we get a quarter of a cow at the beginning of May (and the strawberries will be getting ready around here soon, too, so we need the freezer room). Shopping in the freezer, the kids say.
We haven't been making bread much lately but I need to get back to that, as well. My problem with making so much from scratch is that all I end up doing is cooking or cleaning up the kitchen all day. I don't get much else accomplished. So I try to make double or triple of recipes and put the extra (if there is any!) in the freezer to have at another time. That greatly reduces my anxiety level!
ALso, check out Angel Food Ministries for grocery deals.
I missed the deadline for this month but we ordered last month and were very pleased with the food items.
HTH!
JoAnna
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MicheleQ
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 10:28pm | IP Logged
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molly wrote:
| All of our bread comes from a religious order down the road, who gets so many donations they don't know what to do with it. Ask around, you may have an Order in your area, that is happy to share their abundance. |
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Or a local bakery that has extra. A woman who went through our RCIA a few years ago owns an organic bakery and every few days she drops off a load at my house. She is happy to see it not go to waste and my family is happy to have it. My 4 yr. old especially loves the heavy dark stuff (which totally floored my mom when she was here and he wanted a sandwich with it! ).
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molly
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 10:30pm | IP Logged
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Joanna, what was the problem with the gel? Do you and Michele have front loaders or top? I ahve found this to work great in my front loader, it is the same reipe the Duggars use
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PDyer
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| Posted: April 17 2009 at 10:34pm | IP Logged
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the dry laundry soap recipe I've been using:
1 bar grated Fels Naptha
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
1/4 cup oxyclean power
I grate the soap in a food processor, then change to the regular chopping blade and powderize the soap with the borax, washing soda and Oxyclean in a couple of batches. I store it in a Glad container. Love it.
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MicheleQ
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mrsgranola wrote:
| Michele, can you elaborate on how you use that laundry soap dry? I'd love to get the exact proportions for the dry version. We didn't have very good luck with the gel version and we ended up wasting alot of it. |
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My recipe is only slightly different from Molly's. I don't gel it because I found it worked just as well for me dry and so it's less work.
1 bar Fels Naptha or Ivory soap, grated. I do it by hand but if you have a food processor you can cut the soap into chucks and put it in there --just cover the food processor with a damp dish towel to keep the dust down.
1 cup 20 Mule Team Borax
1 cup A &H Washing Soda
Mix it all together (I just use my hands and break up any lumps).
I use a 1/4 cup per load (I am back to a top loading machine but I used it in my front loader when I had one) but depending on your water you may have to experiment with the amount.
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Michele Quigley
wife to my prince charming and mom of 10 in Lancaster County, PA USA
http://michelequigley.com
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stellamaris
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More ideas for stretching the food budget. I try to buy what's on sale that week (I know this sounds super-obvious, but I used to pick menus and then shop! Now I read the sales flyers and then pick menus!) I use The Grocery Game because even though it costs money (about $6 dollars per week for the Sunday paper plus the listings for two stores) it saves me about 30% on my grocery bill and alerts me to all the "freebies" at the drug store, too. Before using this site, I never was able to really benefit from coupons because I don't have enough time to sit down and correlate the weekly sales with the coupons, but they do this for you. I haven't actually paid for toothpaste for about a year. I belong to the store discount/rebate clubs. When you mentioned your husband likes meat, does he like chicken, too, or just beef? I buy whole chickens on sale, roast for dinner, and then make "free soup" for myself and the kids for lunches. Put the leftover bones in a pot with 1/4c. vinegar and all the vegetables trimmings you have (I save onion skins, celery tops, carrot peels, etc. in a bag in the freezer, just don't use cauliflower, broccoli, or brussel sprouts). Cover with water over the top of the ingredients about 2" deep. Let sit about 30 minutes, add some salt, bring to boil, lower heat to simmer, and skim. Simmer on low for about 12-24 hrs. Freeze in (reusable!) wide-mouth jars (be sure to leave a full 1 1/2" at the top, or even 2" to prevent breakage). This is great for soup (add leftover rice, noodles, vegies) and also for gravies, sauces,etc., and it is basically free! You can do the same thing with beef bones, but you need to cook it about 24-36 hours and also add a little more seasoning to the stock when you make soup from it. I also found a great recipe for Cooked Oatmeal Scones. Use the Internet to try to find recipes that use leftover items; I read last week that Americans on the average throw into the trash 25% of their food budget! You could save any leftover meat, chopped up, in the freezer and use in soups or casseroles. Be sure to use your freezer to save any extra items that might be spoiling. You can chop and freeze green peppers, onions, carrots, celery, parsley, cilantro, lemon juice, lime juice, ginger root, squash, and lots more. Don't let it go to waste!
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Caroline
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Bethany
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I use The Grocery Game also and only buy those convenience items at rock bottom or free. I don't buy items with coupons unless free, very cheap, or something we buy regularly. I regularly get free frozen vegetables, and have also gotten free mustard, toothpaste, shampoo, yogurt, rice cakes, cake mixes, etc.
And like others have said, sometimes I make money buying certain items.
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seven2hold
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This is a great thread. Frugality has changed my life. I usually just bought what we needed and assumed that this is just what a budget for a family our size looks like. I remember when I tried to avoid buying new toothbrushes. I tried make my kids wait for a new one from the dentist every six months!  Gross. I wish that I knew then that CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid regularly offer toothbrushes and toothpaste for "free." I also remember when I didn't think "free" meant "free." Now I know that "free" means you pay $ for it, but they return the $ back to you to use in their store. Now I just spend the store $ on other items they offer for "free."
I've been successfully couponing for 1 1/2 years. It takes time and there is much to learn, but I have definitely found it to be extremely helpful in slashing our grocery and health & beauty budget. Before I only bought store brand products, now I use manufacturer coupons and pharmacy promotions and store coupons or credit slips to buy name brand items for less than the store brand price or sometimes free. I sure wish someone had taught me how to use coupons effectively years ago. I remeber clipping a few coupons going to the store and using them (not in conjuction with any sale) and then seeing that I saved so little on my receipt. It just didn't seem worth it.
I know better now. I've begun to read my sales flyers, buy newspapers in bulk and follow coupon forums and blogs to see how the pros are doing it! My sister & I have saved so much money by sharing information on deals, mailing/sharing coupons and rebates back and forth. We hoped to share what we'd learned with friends so we created a blog where we share sale information from our local grocery stores, the highlights of our shopping trips, tips for organizing coupons, creating a meal plan, etc. I just posted how I bought 20 bags of Nestle Toll House Morsels for $2.73. I've never gotten a deal like that by buying in bulk! http://www.livelargespendless.blogspot.com/2009/04/chocolate -chips-twenty-bags-for-273.html
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Mother to DD(91), DD(93), DD(95), DS(98), DD(00), DS(01), DS(03), DD(05), and DS(07)
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MNMommy
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A couple thoughts....I bought a breadmaker from a thrift store and we love it. I can "make" bread from scratch with almost no effort. I borrowed a bread maker before committing to the $12 thrift store version.
You can hang up laundry lines almost anywhere. I've had them in my garage, laundry room, basement, etc.
Do some internet searches to answer your dishwashing questions. Whenever I look up data, it has always told me that using a dishwasher is more economical. I don't have a dishwasher right now, and I can tell you that it's been very difficult to cook from scratch knowing that I'll have yet another huge load of dishes to wash. If you are trying a lot of thrifty changes at one time, washing dishes by hand may not be the emotional boost you need to be all around successful. I find washing dishes by hand for my family of 6 to be tiresome. 
Great thread!
Jennifer
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: frugal living ideas?
