So Happy It's Friday!

It's also a very happy day because when I opened my blog this morning, I had a NINTH follower!! Wow! For me, that's a lot! Nine is my favorite number, not to mention I'm amazed so many people read what I write. I guess the number's higher when you add the people who asked me to subscribe them, but 9 is an exciting milestone for me. It's a perfect little 3x3 square on the side of my blog. I'm a big fan of threes (part of why my favorite number is 3x3 - it's just a perfect number!).
I've been reading this week about the fastest and easiest way to recycle stuff - it doesn't involve sorting, or a recycling bin, or dragging anything to the curb. It's as simple and basic as just reusing whatever it is. I have numerous salsa, tomato sauce, and peanut butter containers washed and stashed with my dwindling supply of plastic containers, to be used for leftovers, chopped ingredients for future meals, small pieces of things, whatever. I've noticed that jar lids come in mainly in two or three standard sizes, which makes mixing and matching easier than you'd think. Husband, long-suffering as he is, has taken his lunch to work in a washed, de-labeled mayo jar on a couple occasions, because that was the container for which I could find a lid. Plastic lids also can be switched around, as small mayo lids and some others seem about the size of peanut butter lids.
It makes sense, when you think of the fact that part of the price you pay for the item goes to the packaging. I always thought of it as paying for the food, and then hey, if you can use the container, free container! But that's backwards. From a business standpoint, you're paying the cost of the food - the shipping - the marketing - bunch of other stuff - AND the packaging. You paid for that jar, as well as what's in it - why get rid of the jar afterwards, and THEN go shopping for food containers? With that in mind, I'm starting to look at the worth of the packaging when I shop, particularly if I'm choosing between items that are otherwise equal - but one's sold in a can (only reusable as a pencil container) and one's sold in a jar (which could then hold the leftovers of the meal).
I'm not cheap. I'm frugal. :)

canning chicken

I'm a little paranoid about the latest additions to my pantry - five pints of cooked, deboned chicken. I've never canned meat before. It's a little unnerving.

I estimate about half a jar to add chicken to a bean soup or vegetable soup or something, and a full jar for chicken soup. I've also got stock in the fridge I'm going to can tomorrow - all the bones, skin and fat from the chicken, plus celery, carrots, onions, and spices (including oregano and basil from my own garden), boiled way down and strained.

We had stocked up on chicken before starting to sign up for Angelfood every month, and now we have more than I can use. Frozen, it will NEVER get used - too much work. But in jars, after one incredibly long day of de-boning, it's as easy as opening a can. We're getting split breasts next month - what do you DO with those, except boil for soup? So I'll be canning a bunch again. This is SO much fun!

When I was little, I thought it'd be fun to be Donna Reed. Okay, not when I was LITTLE, when I was LITTLE we didn't have a television. But you know, junior high or so, I thought that'd be so cool. Have the house always clean, dinner cooked, laundry done... Seriously, I thought she had the easiest (HA HA HA) job ever. Nowadays, I think my housewifely role model is more Caroline Ingalls. (As in Laura Ingalls' mom? Little House on the Prairie - the books, not the tv show?) My house may not be clean, my laundry may not be done, but if we're snowed in tomorrow, we've got food "put by" in the pantry!

And after a day of playing Caroline Ingalls (while my jars were processing, I used more than five gallons of aquarium water to water my plants, gee THAT was fun), I am beat!

Line-drying clothes - in winter!

Did you know that hanging on a clothesline removes that mildewy smell of laundry forgotten in the washer for a day or so? It does!

What just came off the line was my third load of the day. My clothesline was my Mother's Day gift this year. I'd been begging and begging for one, and it made my summer.

I was reading today online that it's not unheard of for neighborhood associations to ban clotheslines. Not restrict them to backyards, just ban them outright. (My uncle in Colorado had to sign a covenant promising to water his yard - Colorado is MOSTLY DESERT. So - yeah. And I'm sure that those running his neighborhood association are newly perplexed, every year, when they encounter mandated water rationing and fireworks on the 4th of July are forbidden. "What? Again this year? Gee, there was enough water for my Bermuda this spring, I can't imagine what's wrong with the water supply NOW...")

Anyhow, a woman commenting on the blog said that when she was growing up, the dryer only ran when it was below freezing. If there was a sun and it was 33 degrees, they hung their laundry. And it kinda makes sense when you consider that dryness in the air is a problem in winter - if the air is dry, the clothes will also dry faster. Just ask anyone who's hung out laundry with 70% humidity - doesn't matter how bright the sun is, drying will take forever. So it stands to reason that although you might only hang a load a day in winter (shorter daylight hours, sunlight less direct), it would still work. I think I'll try it!

Some REAL money-saving tips...

I am a sucker for "how to live cheaper" articles, and Yahoo Finance has many. I've read them all. They don't apply.

We don't have a cable bill to cut. We don't drink Starbucks. We don't go out to movies. We don't eat out but once in a great while. When we want pizza, I get a three-dollar frozen one. So tips such as "A sack lunch at work can save you $35 a week!" ARE USELESS, as are "Brewing your own coffee rather than stopping at Starbucks" and "Renting movies instead of going to the theater".

So here is how WE live cheaper.

Honestly, it starts with Angelfoodministries.com. There's not an application or income level requirement, it's not food stamps (but you can use food stamps to buy it!), it's just very cheap food, great if you don't qualify for food stamps but are tired of beans and pasta. It's almost a month's worth of groceries in one shot. I budget about $50 a month for the regular package and one special, and plan the rest of the month around what's in the freezer and pantry. There's frozen meat, frozen vegetables, some canned stuff, a quart of shelf-stable milk, a dozen eggs, it's a variety of things, all of which keep in the pantry or freezer. The rest of the month, I go to my freezer and pantry first, to see what one or two ingredients I need for a complete dish, and then buy just that.

Shop N Save, or at least the one near us, has a clearance basket up at the front of the store. Whatever is in it that's useful, I buy, whether or NOT I have a use for it right then. Cans with torn labels, boxes that got dented or cut while unloading, bags that sprang a leak. Then later when I'm low on ideas, I have things in the pantry I wouldn't normally buy, but which might prove inspiring.

Getting really, really serious about sales and coupons helps too.

When it comes to cooking, a white sauce made of margarine, flour, and powdered milk stretches a can of cream soup to feed a family (if you have some miscellaneous vegetable or something to add). If you just make a sauce and dump in whatever canned vegetables are in the pantry, presto, dinner's done. It costs pennies, but tastes good, and doesn't FEEL like a cheap meal.

Recycling and composting as much as possible have kept us to one can of trash a week (our hauler charges by the can). This is EVEN WITH a baby still not out of diapers, and we do use disposables (I'm nowhere near organized enough to do cloth just yet).

If you're diligent and have a green thumb, garden - if you start your plants from seeds, your initial investment is almost nil.

Having one car can make schedules inconvenient if the husband needs it for work but I have somewhere I want to go during the day. But, we've found that having a bus pass and walking has cut our gas cost in half. You'd also be surprised how many errands can be put off until the husband's next day off, or at least until he returns from work, when the alternative is an hour round-trip on the bus. And shopping at somewhere like Walmart or the other big stores where things are theoretically cheaper only saves you money if you don't have to drive there. Walking is free!

I'll post more as things come to mind!