Category Archives: Frugal Living

Shopping Your Pantry {Welcome Home Link Up}

pantry

I was pretty sure we needed groceries.  But, I also knew we needed to save our pennies if we could.  I ran down to Aldi and bought milk for $2.76 a gallon, grabbed a few of their on-sale fruits and headed home thinking surely I could find enough food in our house to last a few more days.

When I had worked through Carrie Isaac’s audio series, Grocery University, the biggest thing I gleaned was the concept of shopping your pantry.  Basically, that means you look to your pantry FIRST before anything else because your real savings can often be found there.

Well, I went to my pantry and realized there was no way I was going to be able to make any sort of meal list from the jumbled mess that had never been organized since our move here, I decided to organize the shelves and ended up with this:

pantry after

Um…I was scared.

I took a few deep breaths and told myself there had to be meals in there.  Here’s what I found…

red potatoes – good side dish, cubed w/ herbs and olive oil and baked at 400 for around 40 minutes.

taco soup ingredients – oh yeah, I had meant to make that a week ago..ooops!

steel cut oats – perfect for birdseed granola!

maple syrup – pancakes anyone? (and since my children watched More Than Making Maple Syrup from Moore Family Films, they absolutely LOVE being able to have maple syrup in the house – and I have a whole new appreciation for the cost of maple syrup!)

ingredients for Unprocessed Oatmeal Cookies – another great use for maple syrup!

32 bean soup – I don’t have a hamhock to throw in there, but I think it will be fine.  Wish I liked beans.  Good thing my family does.

spaghetti – just enough left to feed us a meal for lunch!

ingredients for Spanish Rice – family favorite from my father in law

onion soup – no way it would feed us on it’s own, but I have buffalo roast in the freezer that could be paired with this as either a French Dip Sandwich (I have just a few hamburger buns left) or just poured in the crock pot with the roast as a marinade.

and a contribution from my refrigerator…

fixin’s for lunch loaf – I take my quick pizza dough recipe, roll it out in a rectangle, spread on olive oil and Italian herbs, add deli meat and cheese, roll up like a jelly roll and bake!  We LOVE this!

I’ve also become a huge fan of sliced cheese and Triscuits for lunch.  It is surprisingly filling and my whole clan thinks it’s fun!  I had this on hand too.

So, needless to say, I didn’t HAVE TO go shopping.  As empty as that pantry looks, it still held treasures!

So, shop your pantry first and save!

SPEAKING OF SAVINGS!

Don’t forget all this month as a gift to my lovely readers, DrinkBands can be purchased at 10% off using code:

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DrinkBandsDon’t miss it!
You will love these things!

Now let’s link up!



Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent Gets an Upgrade

My homemade laundry detergent

Two years ago, I posted about making my own laundry detergent.  I mentioned how I had left behind the liquid in favor of the dry.

Fast forward through time and you will find me not using either.  Until recently.

I decided I was going to try again after reading this post from Mooberry Farm.  She had a little different configuration of the same ingredients I was using.  But, the real difference was I no longer had any of our homemade castille soap, so I had to purchase some Fels-Naptha.

For those of you who don’t know what Fels-Naptha is, it is a heavy-duty laundry soap in a bar (often used for stain treatment) that costs about $1.15 per bar.  You can buy it in just about any supermarket in the detergent aisle.

Let me give you the new measurements and directions and then explain a little more (I tweaked the directions a bit from what was on the Mooberry site):

Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent
1/2 bar of Fels-Naptha
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
2 gallons of water, divided

Also need:
a grater
a large saucepan (8 cups or larger)
large bucket or container with lid
liquid storage containers for finished product

1. Grate 1/2 a bar of Fels-Naptha into a saucepan (I still use my Bosch grater).

2. Cover shavings with 4 cups of water and heat on low, stirring often, until soap has melted.

3. Remove from heat.  Add the borax and washing soda and stir in another 4 cups of water.  Mixture will resemble pudding.

4. Pour mixture into a bucket or other container with a lid (I used a cooler–see photo below), add another 24 cups (or 1 gallon + 8 cups) and stir well.  In fact, you may want to use a whisk.

5. Let mixture set overnight.

6. The next day, the congealed soap will have settled to the top.  Stir it back in and pour into storage containers if you’d rather not dip your hand into a bucket every time you do the laundry.  I used old laundry detergent bottles.

Use 1/3 – 1/2 cup of detergent per load of laundry.

And yes, you can use it on your cloth diapers too!

A few notes of interest:

*I didn’t have enough old detergent bottles to pour into, so I keep a very hard to open cooler with the remaining amount in my laundry room.  This has proven to be a very good method.

*I don’t add essential oil.  It would take way too much to make a difference in the smell, so if I ever add any, it will be tea tree oil for it’s anti-bacterial properties.  I’d rather use my yummy-smelling essential oils in other ways.

*Speaking of smells, Fels-Naptha does have a distinct, yet not unpleasant, odor.  However, that smell does not transfer to your clothing.

*The reason I think this is doing so much better than my homemade castille soap did, is because Fels-Naptha is intended for laundry.  Additionally, upping the amount of borax and washing soda helped the consistency greatly.

*This does not suds.  It’s ok.

*The mixture ends up looking a bit curdled.  It’s ok.

Now, for the question that will determine if I continue to make my own laundry detergent…

Is it cost effective enough to be worth my time?

First off, the time required to make this is nominal.  It’s easy, folks!

Secondly, I am going to use very general numbers since prices vary regionally.  If you want it exact, use your own region’s prices.

Cost Breakdown:
Fels-Naptha – 1/2 bar = 58¢
Borax – 1 cup =  53¢
Washing Soda – 1 cup = 44¢
Water – 2 gallons from tap = 20¢
Total per batch = $1.75
Total per load = 3¢

For me, each batch fills around 3 of the containers I had on hand.  We only use one kind of detergent and for that size it costs around $3.00 a bottle when on sale (and it goes on sale often).  I do have to use a bit more of the homemade detergent than the store detergent, but not much.  So without factoring that in…

Cost difference = $7.25 in favor of the homemade detergent

And since we taken it this far, let’s figure my savings for a year if I only used homemade detergent…

Let’s say it takes me 2 weeks to go through each 50 fl oz bottle of detergent.  That means every 6 weeks, I am making more at $1.75 or buying more at $9 for 3 bottles.  That’s $15.17 a year for the homemade and $78 a year for the store bought, which equals…

Yearly savings = $62.83

Is the trouble it takes to make my own laundry detergent (again, nominal) worth $62.83?  In some seasons, I’d have to say no, but right now this feels like a significant savings for very little work.

What do you think?

The Compost Pile {Welcome Home Link Up}

compost pileLast Monday, the young man who stays with us a couple of days a week, asked me if there was anything he could do to help around the house.  I’m not sure he bargained for what I handed him…

The Compost Pile

I had been watching Homestead Blessings – The Art of Gardening and they made it look so easy, I actually felt like I could tackle this project (I seriously detest when instructions are so hard to understand you want to give up long before you even start!).

So, our friend got his work clothes on while I scouted around the property for something suitable to enclose my compost pile.  I had my sights set on wooden pallettes or wire, but as I rounded the corner of the shed, there they were…cinder blocks!  TONS (and I mean TONS) of cinder blocks!

We hefted those things from behind the shed to the garden (and I paid the price for all that manual labor later that night!).  Boy, was I glad our friend was there!  I would never have managed without him!

compost pileI decided to set it up at the north edge of the garden where the fence for the grapes ends.  We built it with 3 sides and then started layering.

reeds and dirt

In the same place where we found the cinder blocks there was a large stash of reeds from the ornamental grasses around the yard.  We broke those up and put them on the bottom to aerate the soil. (Homestead Blessings suggests sticks)

On top of the reeds, we shoveled in some dirt from the edge of the garden.  I don’t know why it was there, but it was a lovely black color.  In fact, all the soil around here looks wonderful!

our indoor composting bucket

We’ve been saving scraps indoors in this old trash can we keep under the sink.  You can use any organic uncooked material except for meat.  In fact, when a friend cut my hair this past week, into the compost bucket it went!  The hair also deters animals from poking around in my compost pile!

the scraps on the pile

Isn’t that lovely???

Now, if I had had it, we would have put manure somewhere in there, but we didn’t have any, so…

we added the final layer…

top layerThis layer would have been straw, but we didn’t have any, so we used what we cleaned out of the asparagus patch.

Homestead Blessings suggests keeping it wet, but they said turning it was not required.  I had a landlord once who had a huge mound of compost and he planted his potatoes in it!  I won’t be doing that, but it is fun to think one day this might all break down and have worms in it!

Now, it’s time to link up!  Do you have a post that would be encouraging to the homemaker?  Add it below!

And don’t miss Tonya from My Homey Haven’s book study of The Hidden Art of Homemaking! Check it out here:
Hidden Art of Homemaking button



Finding the Country Girl in Me

sandhill plumsI grew up in a small town, the daughter of a farmer. I picked sandhill plums in the summer and split wood in the winter. I drove a combine during wheat harvest and broke ice for the cattle during blustery snowstorms. I knew where you could find free persimmons and I even knew what to do with them once I had them. At one point in time I lived on a ranch in the middle of a mile section with nary a neighbor in sight. And life was simple.

Then we moved to the city.

And despite the fact that I thought I would never forget and never fit in, before long that country girl got lost in the concrete and life felt a lot like rush hour traffic.  I didn’t seem to have time anymore.

Now I know the city didn’t time warp me.  There were other factors too, but already only a few days into our life back in the country I can feel time slowing.

The other day we worked in the asparagus patch – getting it ready for the new growth (I am so excited about having fresh asparagus!).  I’ve been researching what I need to do to take care of the fruit trees on the property.  I’ve started my compost bucket underneath the kitchen sink and I’m hoping to get a hold of some shipping palettes to make my compost bin outside (mine isn’t going to look as nice as the one in the link!).  Due to my poor health right now, I’ve been determined to return to eating whole foods and more raw foods – something I had no trouble doing when we lived in rural areas.  We’ve been taking in the local wildlife, looking forward to spring, and exploring the property in our spare time!

And I finally feel like I have time again.

It seems like a strange phenomena to me.  How did the city ever manage to suck this life out of me?  Surely I cannot blame the city for all of this.  However, I think the city can cause a person to lose their resourcefulness.  Most of my life I lived in places that required me to drive long distances for resources, so much of my life was spent finding ways to make do with what I had.  Making do creates a person who is resourceful and typically more content.  I have struggled with contentment for years (which is why I write about it so often here…I NEED to hear it too!)

Obviously, not everyone can run out and get a house in the country.  And obviously living in the country will not automatically create contentment and add hours to your day.  I sincerely believe you can bloom and thrive in the city, learn to be resourceful in the city, and even find more time in the city! 

So,this is my challenge to you – if you live in the country, GREAT – I would love to hear how you spend your time and how you are resourceful; and if you live in the city, GREAT – I would love to hear how you are being purposeful about your time and how you are living a life of contentment there!

And I really hope you don’t mind me rattling on about living in the country and all the things I’m relearning – this has truly been one of life’s “Aha” moments for me and I can’t help but share it with all of you!

 

Spending Quality Time with Your Kids {guest post}

When eight people live together in a house, it often gets messy very quickly!  Our home is especially susceptible to this on the weekends.  It could be because we are busier and out of our routine or it could be because we don’t want to take the time to pick up after ourselves.  Regardless of why, we sometimes need to have a “Reclaim the House” session, where we all work together as quickly as possible to get the house back under control.

Tonight, while we were “reclaiming”, I was hand washing all of the dishes that wouldn’t fit into the dishwasher, while my 6 year old daughter helped to dry them.  She is normally my slow worker, the one who HATES anything that even resembles a chore.  She usually finds a reason to delay working by saying she’s hungry right as soon as I announce that we need to get busy.  This time was different though.  This time, she was excited, because she was encouraged to work right alongside of mommy.   I was excited because I had the privilege of encouraging her to be a harder worker by complementing her work.  She totally ate it up!  It was a way that I could fill her love tank and help her to enjoy being a hard worker all while bringing us closer.

That had me thinking about a recent quote that I read.  I wish I could find it now, but it went something like this:  ”The more quality time you spend with your children while they’re young, the more they’ll want to be around you when they grow up”.  It’s all about spending quality time.

Do you spend quality time with your children?  I know I’m guilty of spending too much time in front of the computer while they’re off doing something else.  I’m also guilty of sending them away to do a chore, while I’m off doing another chore.  How much more valuable that time would be if we spent it working together.  We could talk about anything important to them, laugh and make it into a fun game.  They will remember their mother as someone who they like to be around.  You will be someone who makes them feel special.  They will grow up wanting to be around you!  I understand that it’s not always possible to be right next to your children when you have them assigned to a job, but I do think that we can make a more conscious effort to do so.

In addition to cleaning together, here are some ideas of how we can spend more time with our children:

  • Play a game .
  • Read a book
  • Do a puzzle
  • Take them out for a meal one on one
  • Go out for dessert
  • Set aside so much time per day to talk (especially important with older children)
  • Do a craft
  • Cook dinner (rotate in a child to help you each day)
  • Volunteer together outside of your home
  • Let one child at a time go to the store with you
Regardless of how you spend your time with your children, make sure that they know what they are saying is important.  Take the time to really listen to them and you will have a relationship that is strong, even as they grow into adults!
What are some ideas you have used to spend quality time with your children?

Large Family Napkins

napkins

We’ve used cloth napkins for years, but they were always kept away in a drawer in the kitchen and had to be gotten out at each meal.  It just wasn’t convenient.

While visiting another large family, I found a solution that has solved even more meal time problems than I knew I had!

Our friends kept brown washcloths in two decorative planters at either end of their long farmhouse table.  I adapted this by putting extra rust and tan washcloths my mom had given us and we hardly ever used in 2 decorative containers I had been using for pencils. Because my containers were much smaller than their planters, I rolled each washcloth.

The problems this solved:

1.  Something quick to grab for spills.

2.  Washable and reusable napkins.

3.  Napkins that my child with sensory issues will use (she hates paper napkins).

4.  Napkins are always on the table.

5.  They even look pretty!

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