Several years ago I wrote a series of post on how to live without a bunch of crap clogging up your life and how it can save you a lot of money. I had no idea how much traffic those posts would get day after day, year after year, but these are some of my most read posts. They are not well written nor do they contain any kind of brilliance. They are just posts that state some basic strategies for living with less.
Since I’ve been working this year a lot of my previous time spent in the kitchen has been sacrificed and I find myself purchasing more and more convenience food items for my kids to pack in their lunch boxes. But one thing that has not changed is my ability to skip the mixes. We don’t use mixes. I say we, because by some miracle my children have been able to learn a thing or two about baking and they are not afraid to open a cookbook and follow instructions for pancakes, waffles, cookies, biscuits, cakes etc. Really, it’s just so basic.
I know my boys are not going to call home and ask me how to make biscuits or pancakes or cookies or any other kind of baked good. I also know my youngest will probably be 6’7″ tall and still want to sit on the counter to help and that’s okay because he’s my little tiny biscuit eater forever and ever and ever no matter how gigantic he gets.
So, they know how to cut butter into flour, but they do NOT know how to clean the friggin’ kitchen. I’m just sayin’, they find baking easy.
Now share with me a simple money saving tip that you have used over the years that most folks don’t consider easy or convenient.
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I love this of the boys making biscuits. Such precious pictures. You do not even know what a good parent you are. I love reading your blog. I have to pay attention to myself and not burst out laughing here in the Library while I am reading. Go Girl!!!!
Okay… I must admit I’m skeptical of the mixes thing when it comes to cakes and brownies. If I buy a mix for $.50 at the scratch and dent store (or get it on sale for $.99 at the grocery store) how is that any more expensive than making it from scratch. I’ve never actually done the math, but I’d hazard a guess to say it’s either cheaper or similarly priced. Then, when you factor in time savings (time is money too!) I figure it’s a better deal.
We cloth diaper-check it out-its so easy now with velcro and snaps! I make quite a bit (though not everything) from scratch, including BBQ sauce and yogurt. Something I haven’t seen mentioned is making your own dishwasher soap. 1 part borax, 1 part baking soda. I find I get a film unless I also include a container of something called “Lemishine” for every 4 cups of soap (which is still much less expensive than the green detergent I was buying to avoid the bleaches used by mainstream brands.)
I use about 1/4th the reccomended amount of laundry soap. The manufacturer’s reccomendations are a great big lie designed to get you to buy as much as possible. There’s so much soap build up in regular clothes you could practically wash them without any soap and still have all kinds of suds in there. And yes. My clothes are still perfectly clean. 8o)
Geez, I feel pretty inadequate after reading everyone else’s comments. I used to make yogurt and sometimes made my own baby food. I have found an excellent recipe for a pancake mix on the King Arthur Flour website http://www.kingarthurflour.com) The “Light ‘n’ Tender Wheat-Oat Pancake Mix” makes the best pancakes and very healthy. I think “once-month-cooking” is a great concept, I just could not devote a whole weekend to shopping, chopping and prepping a months worth of meals. So, I found a book that is a little more do-able for me. It is “Don’t Panic-Dinner’s in the Freezer” by Susie Martinez, Vanda Howell and Bonnie Garcia. Recipes that have instructions for doubling, tripling, etc. Eat one meal that day and the others are put away in the freezer for next week or whenever.
I make my own laundry detergent and some cleaning products. I also iron. So many women don’t do this any more, but my husband HAS to look professional, and we would spend a fortune sending all of his dress clothes to the dry cleaners.
I iron too, AND my son is learning to iron his own dress shirts! Dry cleaning is not convenient for me, and I just would not be able to afford it!
Cleaning with homemade vinegar or bleach solutions. No mixes. Stocking up on sales. Yes, food storage does save money. No, it does not make me a hoarder. Yes, I am prepared when I can’t get to the store.
That’s so cute!
I make many things from scratch (no mix), you can’t top a home made biscuit or pancake. But when mixes are on sale for less than $1, it pays to keep a few on hand for cupcake emergencies. Like when you’ve spent the food budget for the month and your 10yo says “mom, do you think its a good idea to take cupcakes to school on my birthday tomorrow?”
Thank God I am not the only parent who lets their kid on the counter!
We just recently gave up paper towels and kleenex. I cut up and stiched around an old tablecloth to make extra kitchen towels, and I have a “rag bag” for disposable mess clean up, like cat poo. However, the first cat poo incident happened on my hubby’s watch. Guess what he cleaned it up with? A brand new dishcloth I had knitted! Grrrr. Anyway, toilet paper works just fine in place of kleenex. So far, so good!
We bought a chest freezer on sale when the oldest was small to store pumped breast milk…it held almost 13 gallons in those little bags, but that’s a story for another day…anyway, after we didn’t need it for milk anymore, we now buy the huge flour and rice bags from Costco and store them in there, along with some other staples. You can buy 25 pounds of flour for less than two 5# at the grocery store and the quality is restaurant quality…same for the rice.
1. We only use cloth napkins. But that’s just what was normal in both of our households growing up, so it wasn’t like we decided, “Hey, let’s be green and thrifty with our napkins.”
2. The library. Love it. I can walk out with an armload of books, and if I only read 2/3 of them, who cares? If I get all into learning about something, from architecture to sock knitting to frogs, I can get multples volumes of information about it instead of choosing just one in a store. We’ve never rented movies or used Netflix, because the library has anything you want if you plan ahead and reserve it, and if you don’t–then you take whatever looks good and sometimes discover a gem.
Does buying large bags of party mix and chips and pretzels, and individually packing them in baggies for lunches count as thrifty? I used to buy the snack packs of chips, but at .25 cents each, I can do better with the large bag. Shopping at ALDI is my favorite way to save! I forgo so many extras that way.
All the make-from-scratch stuff everyone else has mentioned – but I think the biggest thing for me if I’m concerned about *money* as opposed to being healthy or “green” is not to assume that homemade is always cheaper. Even when it’s not on sale, the store-brand powder dishwasher detergent has a lower unit price than the homemade, and when laundry detergent is on sale for .99, that can also be cheaper than homemade. I try to periodically figure the unit price of anything I make from scratch (including cleaners), so I can see if it truly is less expensive, especially when something is on sale.
What does your house need in the winter? Heat and moisture! what is your dryer blowing outside every time you run a load? Heat and moisture! One of our hardware stores here sells a screen attachment for the end of your dryer vent hose. You just put that screen over the end of the hose to keep lint out of your house and vent your dryer to the inside during the winter. I just detached it from the wall, plugged up the hole in the wall and ran the vent hose up to counter-top height so that I could clean the screen after every use.
I buy my cheese in blocks and then use the food processor to shred up what I need. If you coat your cheese grater with a little shortening, it won’t be so hard to clean it off!
Stopping by from Ree’s blog.
I used cloth diapers on my children. The youngest never had a diaper rash because I used the Las Vegas sun to dry the laundry (not the newspaper, the one in the sky). I have made wheat bread for the last 4-5 years. We had quite a bit of food stored for a family of 6. Now the kids are gone, I buy whole milk and cut it with the nonfat powdered milk (reconstituted) that has been in storage. I can, I have gardened. My darling husband has gotten on board and helps me when I buy large quantities of fruit/veggies on sale and need to put it up. I use a chest freezer. I belong to a produce coop. We compost. I can never do as much as I would like to since I work full-time across the valley of the sun from where I live. Like another post, I love opening my cupboard or going to my storeroom (formerly my daughter’s bedroom) and seeing the pints set aside.
Lets see…My husband, two children and I all brown bag lunches…I use coupons in conjunction with store sales…I buy out of season clothes on sale – tee shirts and shorts during the fall/winter, jeans, sweaters and jackets in late spring/summer, nothing trendy, just plain color basics…swap babysitting with friends…and I shop around for insurance, banking, etc.
We’re a family of four and live in the country, so we produce a lot of dirty clothing. I hang all of our laundry outside to dry from March – November (we live in SE Michigan) and once the days go below freezing, we hang it near the woodstove in the house where it dries AND humidifies the house at the same time. We got rid of our clothes dryer two years ago and our electricity bill dropped by 40% immediately. We’ll never go back. (Lehman’s sells a great folding dryer rack that fits on the wall. They hold about one load).
I really like reading all this advice! I’ve really been working on driving less (kind of like Poppy’s advice above). Driving less affects not only the gas consumption–but also all the other money I spend when out running around. I’m fortunate to have a few shops in my neighborhood that I can walk to. Also, although I really don’t like it, I’m still driving my ugly 1995 caravan. My kids (teenagers) are embarrassed to be seen in it–it’s on it’s last legs with over 120,000 miles on it. Any repair I’ve had to make on it the last few years is much less than one car payment. These measures have prompted me to rethink why I would want a new car (do I really need it?) and to think about why I’m going out to a store at all (is it really necessary at this moment?).
We don’t buy or make cakes, cupcakes, brownies, etc very often. They are not good for you and do not contribute to your diet in any good way so are a complete waste of money. Pies and cookies are done for holidays, birthdays or the occasional pick-me-up. I make a coffee cake for Sunday breakfast which satifies our sweet tooth and popcorn for a snack (cooked in bacon grease, or with garlic and pepper.)
I shop at Salvation Army for most of our clothing. We try to stay away from stores unless we know we need something, then only go in with a list and get only what is on the list. I can’t say we are always faithful to this, but when we are we save money.
Netflix has saved us a bundle on movies, as we are really bad at returning things. You can watch unlimited instant netflix, and there is no charge for late movies. At under $10 a month it is a deal.
Grocery shop on Mondays or Tuesdays. Lots of BOGOs, 5/$5.00, etc. If I were more organized I would also use coupons and really save.
Never grocery shop hungry. It is cheaper to stop at the front of the store and get a slice of pizza than try to shop for an hour when you are hungry. Make a week’s menu for three meals a day and snacks, make a list of what you need, take the list and only get what is on the list. Again, I don’t aways have this resolve, but it will save you money.
Start a grocery journal, listing what is on sale and the dates. Typically the stores will have cycles every 2-3 months of things that go on sale. When soup is $5/5.00 every three months, you can buy enough to last to the next sale cycle.
While homemade soup is great, you have to also consider the energy use of cooking dry beans from scratch. You may want to plan several meals for a week with the same beans or freeze them, and cook several packages of beans at once. If you only want 2 cups of beans and have no plans for any more, it may be cheaper to buy a can vs boiling water for 3 hours.
Amazing, I found your site on google looking around for something completely unrelated and I really enjoyed your site. I will stop by again to read some more posts. Thanks!
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