Butter Wrappers for Greasing

This is one of those things I said I'd never do (like wash ziploc bags) but started to recently. But when hubby asked why I had a pile of folded butter wrappers on top of the shortening bucket . . .

I didn't realize someone might not know why a crazy lady was keeping those. The residue of the butter is generally enough to lightly grease your baking pan.

Just rub it on, if not enough, grab another one.

Bottle Top Bag "Clip"

Someone sent this to me through an email forward, so I have no idea who this idea belongs to, but thought I'd put it up here, since I've never seen it before, maybe you haven't either.

Cut up a disposable water bottle and keep the neck and top, as in photo.

Insert the plastic bag through the neck and screw the top to seal.

Reader Suggestion Friday - Uses for Yogurt Containers

Sheri, a mother of eight, was kind enough to share some of her tips for reusing yogurt containers. Hope you get some ideas.

When people come to my house and wonder why we have a tall stack of these 1 quart containers, we show them! We stack them like blocks too! We make walls and castles for Ezra to knock over. (He's our youngest.) All my children have fun making the castles and walls with the cartons.

I also use my yogurt containers for drinks on the go! I mix up my protein drink in the blender and pour it into my 1 quart yogurt container and put the lid on, with a small hole cut in the top for my straw. It's kinda' my signature... I will reuse these containers until they are beyond use. With this recycled container, I don't mind if someone tosses it in the garbage. Which can happen when I am out and about. I have tried other containers, but they were too tall for my straw to reach the bottom and be able to drink out of it.

We have also had loads of fun with the yogurt cup lids! They are safe indoor flying disks! And easy for little children to make fly! I think we had about 20 lids that we were flying at each other one morning. We were laughing so hard, we got our morning exercise!

The smaller 6 oz and 8 oz yogurt cups can be used like those stacking cups and they are are free, once you eat your yogurt! If you want to reuse those smaller yogurt cups, some yogurt companies will send you the reusable plastic lids for free if you ask. Then I put my husband's daily yogurt into one of those cups for his lunch from the larger 1 quart container. I think I need to learn how to make yogurt! When we take yogurt in the car, I put a hole in the top and stick in a straw for less messy eating! It works most of the time. Some of those yogurts with bigger chunks of fruit might get stuck... I can even cut the straws in half for a more convenient size.

Milk Carton Reusable Lunch Box Holders

If you haven't checked out the magazine, FamilyFun, you really should. Seriously, I am not fond of paying for magazines, but I do pay for this one. I got this idea from them. My hubby takes lunch to work, (You didn't think our cheap selves would eat out for lunch now did you?).

So, FamilyFun suggested this instead of lunch baggies, plus it is tons more durable so it will keep your items from getting smashed.

Take a gallon milk jug and mark off three of the sides small like in the picture and one tall side up to the top. (FamilyFun shows a milk jug without the divets, if yours don't have them, even better, you have to fiddle with it if you do.)

Cut it out. If you have divets, cut the interior flaps down until they don't touch it when folded, otherwise it doesn't close securely, lets in too much air although this will never be well sealed. Place a piece of sticky velcro on the top long interior flap and on the corresponding bottom flap.

Place in your bread.

And fold in the flaps and velcro it closed. No more squished sandwiches. Wash with the dishes when yucky.

P.S. My poor hubby's coworkers shake their heads in pity that I send the man to work with lunch containers made from trash, but I promise there is a reason behind my madness! Tupperware would do the same thing, look prettier and clean up easier, but my hubby's lunch pail is too small to accommodate a bulky sandwich container. That's why we use this, it fits.

Homemade Sugar Ant Trap

A neighbor of mine used this with success, and my honey in the pantry is being attacked, so I set out the bait last Friday.

Mix (mix it with something disposable that you will not be eating off later)

1 teaspoon syrup (or honey)
with 2/3 teaspoons borax (put don't use your cooking measurers, just eyeball it. If the ants ignore your bait your tipped them off by putting in too much borax)

Place in a little plastic lid (the lids off things the recycling place won't take anyway), not something you will eat off of later.

Place it near the parade of ants. The ants will swarm to the easy access food but not notice the borax and they will take the unsuspecting food home, feed it to all and poof! There goes the colony.

This should not be ingested by people or animals you want to keep, keep out of reach of children and pets.

Jeans Tote or Grocery Bag

I cut open the legs from the side to make the seam go down the middle. Now I have two pieces, my back and front. They are a bit flared making the optical illusion in this photo that one is larger than the other along with my angle, but they are the same.

Then using one leg of the jeans, I cut off the leg the same length as the bottom hem of my bag for the bottom piece.

And then with the other pants leg, I cut it the same length as the side of the front/back pieces to make the side gussets.

Then I sewed the bottom piece to the front and back.

Then sewed on side pieces.

Then I cut off the waistband, cut it in half and then cut off two belt loops.

I centered the belt loops in the middle of the bag and then put the belt loops as small little loops on one side for attaching to the bag holders at the store.

And the finished bag looks like this:

Well, not right away, this was after ironing the sides and bottom to fold in. I hate ironing so that totally turned me off to making anymore. Plus, if you do this project, you need your sewing machine to use a jeans needle, but I still broke one when I got too many jeans seams together. Will use it for hauling stuff, but didn't care to make anymore.

Curtain Produce Bag

So, if you want to take along your own reusable grocery sacks to the store (See how I made some from a t-shirt here), what about a reusable produce bag for your romaine lettuce, tomatoes or onions?

I took a sheer curtain that got a few runs in it with the help of a kitten. One side was still ok.

I folded it in half and cut 11"wide rectangles. The length was whatever my curtain length was halved, probably 25". I was able to cut three from the curtain avoiding the tears.

Fold them inside out and sew up both sides and then turn them right side out again. Super simple! Put produce inside and tie a knot to keep it in there. The produce is just visible enough to make out what it is. If there is a number the clerk needs to read, then I would probably not knot it since I am not sure I could make it out with the sheerness of this particular curtain.

Stuff these in your reusable grocery bags to make sure they go with you to the store.

Wowser Wednesday - Plastic Bags turned into . . . a plastic bag!

Want to take all those flimsy plastic grocery bags you have and make a more sturdy plastic bag? Here is a video describing the process. I really love the idea of using a seatbelt from a junkyard for the strap!

T-shirt Grocery Bag

Do you want some easy-to-sew handmade reusable grocery bags you can make with something lying around the house? A t-shirt works great for this project. This is not a new idea, but I do have a twist on it.

First, grab a plastic bag from your store that hasn't been opened yet (makes a nice lazy pattern). Stick this on top of your t-shirt with the neck hole centered in between the bag handles.

Cut around the bag, but do not cut the shoulders area. On the right and left side I left a 3" strip for the "gussets."

Flip the shirt bag inside out. Do not sew where the arm holes would be. So just sew around the bottom of the bag starting from the bottom of the neckline on one side to the other.

Now you flip it inside out and viola! An easy handmade reusable grocery bag, but they are a bit inconvenient for the store clerks if you just hand them to them as a wad, so this is where my twist comes in. Cut off two arm sleeve hems and cut it so it makes a long strip.

Then cut about a one inch hole in the handles of the t-shirt grocery sacks. (The picture shows the holes to the inside since that is where the plastic sack holes were located, but I have decided that straight in the middle would work just as well and be stronger.) Thread the arm sleeve hem strips through the pile of bags through these holes and make a simple tie to keep them all together.

Then when you go to the store, you can take your whole pile of bags and slip the bags onto the store's plastic bag holders with one easy step. Then, untie the arm sleeve strips once they are in place and throw them into the bottom of a bag. Now they are ready to pack and pull off individually.

I made a test run of these to see how it would work. I ended up having to show the elderly lady what I meant by placing them on the hooks and taking off the strips. I told her to load them up heavy to test them out, and she put two really huge bags of frozen veggies in one and protested the whole time that it would get them wet, I had to assure her that I could easily dry them. Then she put produce in the other; that didn't really test its mettle, but the frozen veggies did, and the bag worked just fine. It did get a bit damp on the ride home, so I just let it hang from the kitchen drawer pull until it dried. I now feel good enough to make many more in order to have two bunches to give the clerk two bags to work at packing appropriately at the same time.

Reader Suggestion Friday - Fixing Leaks

Do you have something that should hold water but doesn't? Before throwing it away check out Betsy Bargain's tip:

"My watering can was starting to leak, and I thought I would have to get a new one. My sister suggested I use silicone tub and tile caulking around the spout where it was leaking. It worked great! It no longer leaks, and I won't have to buy a new watering can just yet!"

I am betting tub caulk can fix other leaky things as well.

Check out Betsy Bargain's Talk Thrifty to Me blog.

Cloth Tissues and Napkins

My hubby has gone through an entire two boxes of kleenex with his cold this week, and I couldn't stand to go buy any more boxes. So, I grabbed some of my aunt's old handkerchiefs that I had sitting in a drawer to make a pattern off of and decided to grab one of my cloth napkins as well.

A cloth handkerchief is about 12"x12" and a cloth napkin is 16"x16." On the tissues, I am just using any worn flannel, but on the napkins where I want both sides to look the same, I will only use a plain colored fabric.

I made a square pattern from some green paper that was left at my new house when I bought it. Any paper would do, to make it square, fold it into a triangle. (It just happened to be 12"!)

Pin on the paper pattern to your fabric and cut out. I am using worn flannel since that is about the texture and thinness of the old hankies I inherited.

I then surged around the edge. You could zigzag around or hem it on a regular machine.

And that's all there is to it! I took an old pajama pant leg and a worn flannel shirt. I got 3 tissues from the pant leg and 5 tissues from the shirt. Find a nice tin box or some other container and fill it with reusable hankies.

The same pattern will be used when I get around to making my cloth napkins.

Vacuum Seal with a Straw

I have yet to find the cost of a food vacuum sealer palatable, so I use a straw to try to avoid freezer burn and spoilage. I put the left over food I want to put in the freezer in a ziploc bag, insert my straw, snap the ziploc up to the straw and suck air out. As I get to the end, I suck, pull out the straw and as quick as possible seal the rest of the way all at the same time. May not be as good as a vacuum sealer, but would bet it's 80% as good, and virtually costless. I do save the straw unless I stick it in something nasty accidentally.

Junk Mail Envelope Shopping List System

Save the return envelopes in junk mail.

Write your list for the grocery store on the back. (I have a permanent pantry list written in the order of the aisles of the store I most often frequent that I use as a guide, so that I write them down in about the order I need to get them to help me get out of there as quickly as possible without numerous trips back and forth and forgotten items.)

Star the items you have coupons for or for price matching to remind you at the checkout line that you need to give these special attention. If price matching, next to the shopping list item, I write the abbreviated store flyer name, page number and advertised price. When looking at the shelf price, I can easily see if it is worth doing price match just from my list and the store name and page number helps me find it quickly at the checkout. I always circle the item in the flyer with a Sharpie so I can see it really quickly. I always put these items in one section of the cart and unload them first and get it over with.

Store the coupons you plan to use in envelope.

Dump Your Own Trash

Last month, my garbage bill got hiked again! $91.60/3 months from $73.80. This is the third straight bill where it went up in cost. So I canceled my service; I will take it myself. You do need a truck a van with removable seats or access to one to make this worthwhile.

One, I will save money, and two, it will force me to recycle which I have been too lazy to do when it was easier just to toss it.

Find your local dump if you have one. Mine's actually two towns over (You can call your county enviromental department if you don't know where yours is), find their hours and their minimum charge. My mother takes her trash in every 3-4 months to a transfer station and pays, oh, $10. My landfill's minimum charge is $50.33! I am unlikely to bring more than a ton of trash, so the minimum charge is likely what I will pay each time I go there. See how many miles it will take to get there and take into account the fuel efficiency of the vehicle you will be using. Gas will cost me about $4 to go there at the current price of gas anyway. So grand total of $54.33. I have to wait at least 8 weeks to break even and waiting longer to save more money. Plus, I don't know about you, but I often forgot to take trash out on the right day on time and then I just wasted about $8 of payment for the service.

Or of course, if you can get someone nearby of like-minded nature to join in with you who will produce as little trash in the same manner, you can cut that cost in half! I think a regular truckbed could handle 8 trash cans. Or find a friend who is keeping their trash service and ask if you can add to their pile and pay them a bit a month for the help they are giving you.

So, to make it 2 months +, I used the money that I had saved up for that hiked bill, to buy a few more garbage cans with nice locking lids. I now have 6; 4 tall ones for trash and 2 large long ones for sorting recycling. I only want to put in real stuff for the landfill, not the stuff I can get rid of or that will stink it up.

So, I found out what the recycling place will take and now keep out of the trash all of those items and sort them in bags and then place them into their own garbage can for taking to the recycling center. Wash/rinse and let dry food plastics and cans to keep them from smelling as they accumulate. I took my first set this time just to see how the recycling went, but I really didn't have enough to merit going once a month, so I will wait to take these for at least 2 months from now on.

I found where the household hazardous waste department was by calling my county Environmental Office and got the hours I can take my dead batteries, CFL lightbulbs, paint, etc. and they are accumulating in a box in the utility room.

I have a burn box for the paper products that recycling won't take -- here they won't take my food/cereal boxes. So when that gets full, I will burn it, of course, you can only do this if you have a decent sized yard and no rules against burning in your area. Otherwise you would have to throw it.

I have two compost ice cream buckets. One for the garden compost: veggies, coffee grounds, grains, fruits etc. that will be ok for gardening. The second for "bad" compost: dairy, meat, bones, grease. The garden compost is above ground to compost and turn, the bad compost has three options, when my hubby gets around to installing the garbage disposal everything but the bones will go there. But for now, they are thrown on the ground separately from my compost or if you are worried about it being messed with you can dig a small hole in the ground which you can periodically bury -- I have very little of this kind of trash. The "bad compost" will degrade, it just isn't good for the garden unless you are diligent at watching the temperature and turning it so that you are assured it composts, I'm too lazy, so I don't want to mix it to be on the safe side. If you don't have a garden, you could compost it all together if you just wanted to throw out the food. I don't want to put the bad compost material in my garbage cans because they have to be there at least 8 weeks and I don't want it to stink!

In the other rooms of the house that collect trash, I do now have two little wastebaskets, one for actual trash and the other for recycleable/burnables to sort out later when full to the appropriate places.

I cloth diaper so all that stinkiness is gone to the septic. So all that really goes in the trash now is unrecycleable plastics and metal things unworthy of going to the scrap metal place and other such things. Where I was filling a kitchen wastebasket worth of stuff about 2-3 times a week, I am now only taking actual trash out less than once a week to their new home in the garbage cans and I am sure I have room for improvement. I am on week 7 and have almost filled 2 large trash cans - I will go when I fill all four, but I am already only one week away to being cheaper than the garbage service. Going at this rate I will have to take trash in at probably 15 weeks. That's a savings of $3.43/week or 15 week savings of $51.45 and less clogging of the landfills by yours truly.

UPDATE: A friend of mine lets me bring my few bags of trash with me when I visit her, she isn't interested in giving up trash service and just enjoys my visits as "payment." SCORE! No paying for trash anymore!

Figuring a Recipe's Cost and Nutrition

Are granola bars cheaper and healthier, I'm asked.

I have found two online sites and I have made a spreadsheet that can help you with figuring that out if you care when cooking your recipes. You can see if you truly are saving money or making things more nutritious if that is your main goal for cooking that recipe.

I would want to say right off the bat my granola bars are healthier just by the fact it is made from scratch and without the preservatives which is more of the reason I want to avoid prepackaged food. (I'm really not into the counting calories)

But to find out if it's healthier, I found this site - FitDay. You do have to sign up for a free online account to use it. Once you have, you get to fill in what you ate all day and it will give you the total calories you consumed with other information. But, for our purposes, just plug in the recipe ingredients on a blank day, and that is the recipe's health info. Divide nutritional information by how many servings your recipe makes.

http://www.fitday.com/

Now, to find out the cost of your recipe, I made a simple spreadsheet calculator. In a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc, make your default calculator that you will leave to copy and paste for all the ingredients you want to figure out.

So in the example here, the top boxed set with the titles is my calculator that I will leave for copy and pasting. I wrote in the A cells what I need to remember for plugging in. The B cells is for my own desire to remember how many ounces are in the package, how many measurements are in the package and how many I use in the recipe. This is optional. C cells only have the formula in C4. What you write in cell C4 is formula

=a4/a3*a2

It has an error message in the default calculator because it can't do the math with words, when you replace the words with numbers, you get the answer of how much you spent for the amount of that item in your recipe. So, I highlighted and copied all the cells of my default calculator and pasted it further down on my spreadsheet. The spreadsheet will automatically change your C4 cell formula to pick the new cells for calculating wherever you paste your calculator so you don't have to come up with any new formulas.

So I plugged in the amount of Vanilla I used in my Granola Cereal Recipe. I had a 2 oz. bottle that I bought for $3.86. There is a total of 4T in a bottle and I used 1 T in the recipe. Once I plugged in the numbers, I got the answer that I used $.97 worth of vanilla in my recipe.

You can easily do this in your own spreadsheet and copy that example calculator infinitely until you get the amount of items in your recipe. I am sure you can make a formula to add all the C4 formulas, but I am not that good at spreadsheets, so I just add up all the answers by calculator. For the next recipe that uses vanilla, I can just simply change the servings used to get my new total.

If you are just way too freaked out to use a spreadsheet, there is one online cost calculator that I found like this, but you can only do 7 ingredients at a time and they are not savable, but you can find it here:

http://sensetosave.com/frugal-tools/recipecostcalc/

Cereal Liner Dehydrator Sheets

My dehydrator came with one plastic sheet to make fruit roll-ups etc. But I wanted to make my own cereal, and I ran across the information that you can make your own granola cereal in the dehydrator, but you need plastic sheets and one would not be enough! So, I didn't want to spend money to special order more, so I had to find something to make do with.

Cereal Bag Liners! Take a cereal bag liner and rip open the seams and get your dehydrator rack or the plastic liner that came with it for a pattern.

Then take a marker like a sharpie and trace the pattern onto the liner. Cut it out; make sure you cut off the ink of the marker.

Then lay the liner on your dehydrator rack and fill with food. I have used this twice for making very yummy granola cereal (tomorrow's post is the recipe; don't fret!) and they have worked well. They are obviously flimsier than the other and will curl up, so you just have to uncurl the curls to put the cereal on the top. I have yet to make fruit roll ups, so I am unsure if they would work for that, but they work for this and you just wipe them clean in the dish water and hang them over other dishes to dry and reuse.

Pantry Money Safe

Leave out enough change and cash in a piggy bank or jewelry box, or any other normal hiding spot to make a would be burglar believe he's found your stash.

Then take a tin can of something normally found in your pantry in multiples and use one of those can openers that open the lid from the side of the can.

Wash it out, stuff in the big money and put the lid back on.

Put back up in the pantry. Hopefully, no one is going to go looking in your pantry for money, especially if he/she has found your "stash" already.

Wash Ziploc Bags

My mother-in-law washes ziploc bags, and I have to admit I thought that was crazy. I decided years ago that I was never going to "stoop" to being that frugally silly.

But, then I picked up an old copy of the "Tightwad Gazette" a few months ago at a used library book sale. I was reading the article on washing baggies half-heartedly, but it ended with these paragraphs:

"I can wash out a plastic Baggie used to store broccoli in the freezer in 11 seconds, saving $.05 per bag ... or I can throw the bag away and reach under the counter to get a new Baggie in 5 seconds.



Figuring that she spends 6 seconds to save $.05, she calculated the savings rate of washing Baggies is $30 per hour."

Ok, how can I possibly continue to refuse to save $30/hr???

So, I attempted it. But I had a greasy water problem which kept those bags nasty. So I had to quit until I figured out how to get my bags clean. A little sprinkle of washing soda in the water was the winning ingredient to getting my dishes oil free.

So, now, I am able to save $30/hr. Turn them inside out to wash. Put one hand in there spread out and use the other hand and dishcloth to wipe. Dry inside out in a dishrack on top of a chopstick wedged in between dishes.

So, if you don't have chopsticks from China in your utensil stash, every time you go to a Chinese Restaurant (or friends who go have them collect for you) take a set of chopsticks home, wash them and use them for baggie drying. I keep these chopsticks in an old peanut butter jar behind the sink ready for this purpose.

FYI - don't use baggies that had meat in them. Throw those away, but all the rest can be washed to save money.

Then, I cut out the back side of a cereal box and patched back up with tape. Once the bags are dry, I turn them right side out and wipe off any leftover wetness and place them in the cereal box container to pull out of when needed.

UPDATE - Be ready to get those used chopsticks off the restaurant table before the bus boy comes around! In-laws took up to dinner and I chose Chinese for the dirty chopsticks. (Funny reason to choose a dinner out, I think!) and so we were talking after we had completed eating and bus boy tries to take the chopsticks. Hubby grabs them back and says we will keep these. Banter between him and bus boy of, "I will take them, they are dirty, yes?" and "No really, we want to keep these, thanks." Finally after several takes the bus boy, insistent on the need to throw the chopsticks away, offers new chopsticks. Hubby smiles and thanks him for the generous offer of more new chopsticks, but still refuses to relinquish the old dirty ones. Bus boy gives up on his apparently extremely necessary job of keeping customers from taking out the trash for him and doesn't give us new ones. :)

Washing Soda for Greasy Dishes

Well, I have finally figured out how to get the oils off my greasy dishes finally. I have never had such a hard time doing this anywhere else I have lived; I think there is something strange with this rural water. I have tried all kinds of things: changed dishwashing soap, added boiling water, added bleach (this works semi-decently, but kills my hands), washed with fireplace ashes (aka lye), and on and on. But my dishwater still looked like this. And no plastic thing came out of there non-slippery. It has really truly annoyed me.

So I was reading an excerpt out of an old 1900s book titled something like "Teaching the Bachelor how to care for the home." Fun stuff - stay-at-home Mrs. Cleaver type lady explaining to bachelors how to care for the house - something that would teach me a great many things I am sure. It said something like, "If you have really greasy dishes add some washing soda to the wash, just make sure you rinse well use gloves or wash your hands afterward to keep your hands from drying out."

I just bought washing soda for the homemade laundry detergent I made. So off I went to try this out. And it works! I put in a very small shake of washing soda and a small squirt of dawn and my plastic feels like plain old plastic again. I am so happy! I have used it for three weeks now and I believe I have finally beat the grease monster. I don't use gloves since I hate washing with them. I have forgotten to wash my hands afterward and they do get a little dry, so it dries out your hands if you let it sit on there.

I keep an old Parmesan shaker full of washing soda next to my dishwashing liquid to help me shake just a little into the sink.

Making Produce Last Longer - Crisper Humidity Controls

I have a two door crisper in my refrigerator that has knobs to control humidity.

So, I set out to find what should go where so my produce will last longer.

High Humidity:
beans
leafy veggies
asparagus
celery
cucumber
broccoli
green onions
berries
pears
mushrooms (should be stored in a brown paper sack)

Low Humidity:
melons
tomatoes
citrus
garlic
onions
gourds

Then to remind me, I wrote them on sticky labels and attached them to the drawers, so I and the rest of the household will put the stuff in the appropriate drawers.