Frugal Friday

[ecosophia]

Welcome back to Frugal Friday! In honor, so to speak, of the wildly inflated price of eggs, this month will be Egg Meme Month on Frugal Friday. Yes, you may consider this encouragement to get your own henhouse up and running!

Aside from that, this is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc.  I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

With that said, have at it!

Comments

Re: Our four cats don't see the vet

[teresa_from_hershey]

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%%%% The Mosquito Bucket of Doom %%%%
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or, how to minimize mosquito reproduction in your yard!

At heart, the mosquito bucket of doom is a big bucket (Orange Home Depot buckets are excellent as supposedly, mosquitoes are attracted to the color) containing water, dead weeds, and >>>> this is CRITICAL >>>> a mosquito pond dunk which keeps the mosquito eggs from hatching. Dump the water and weeds and mosquito dunk every month without fail. Replace with fresh water, a new handful of weeds, and a fresh mosquito dunk.

Mosquitoes lay their eggs in this inviting, fetid pond and they never hatch.

Mosquito dunks are sold in garden centers for people with ornamental ponds to keep the skeeters down. You need a half dunk for a bucket so a package of six will give you 12 months of coverage. They're safe for expensive koi.

Jo Brichetto devised this method.
Here's the link to her website where she goes into detail:

https://sidewalknature.com/2022/05/08/mosquito-bucket-of-doom/

She's on Instagram and Facebook as well as posting regular updates about sidewalks, your neighborhood, and nature.

This will be our second full year with the bucket of doom. Has it helped? Yes, I'd say my skeeter count is lower, although it helped considerably more when the next door neighbor removed the decaying shower stall from behind his garage that was a mosquito plantation.

Like everything else, doom buckets take time to show their effects and you STILL must remove every other source of standing water that you can find. Mosquitoes can breed in a teacup of standing water.

Re: Our four cats don't see the vet

[(Anonymous)]

Teresa from Hershey— Thank you so much for this!
Nom du jour: Beatrix Potter Fan Clun Prez

dump and dunk

[kallianeira]

Well well, so many things you Transatlantics can get that we just don't merit here in the Antipodes!

Bacillus thuringiensis is only available in complicated fruit fly traps as far as I can tell and yet that mozzie dunk solution sounds to be totally miraculous for control of mosquitoes, with which practically every area is plagued. Of course there are toxic chemical larvicides on the market. Wouldn't it be frugal to culture your own bacteria for the pond? (hint) We can't even buy native fish to eat the larvae; virtually all the species in the pet market are imported. Woe betide the owner whose minnows escape into the nearby national park...

And linen - if it's not a luxury dress, shirt or see-through thin pair of pants then forget it. Practical garments? Excuse me while I stifle a macabre chcukle. The hours I have spent searching online for ordinary linen clothes and underwear would have been sufficient for me to learn to sew them myself... but to source the fabric, again forget it. $35+ per metre plus postage.

Mary, please don't mention socks without polyester: you'll make me cry. All right, I exaggerate - here they come with nylon, or polyester, or perhaps both.

iridescent scintillating elver