Frugal First Friday
Jan. 2nd, 2026 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
Welcome to Frugal First Friday! This is a monthly 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 on the first Friday of each month, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course. There has been talk about releasing these posts in print format. In case that turns out to be worth pursuing, please note: if you comment on this or any future Frugal First Friday post, you are giving permission for that comment to be included in print or other editions. This means, for those of you into the legalese, that by posting something in the comment thread you are granting me non-exclusive reprint rights to your comment, and permitting me to transfer those to a publisher or other venue. Your contribution will have your name or internet handle attached, your choice.
I also have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed. One change from the earlier frame is that if you produce goods or services yourself, and would like to let readers know about them, you may post one (1) (yes, just one) comment per month letting people know, with a link to your website or other contact info. The other rules ought to be familiar by now.
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: 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 #3: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.
Rule #4: don't post LLM ("AI") generated content, and don't bring up the subject unless you're running a homemade LLM program on your own homebuilt, steam-powered server farm.
With that said, have at it!
Ham Week Meal Plan
Date: 2026-01-02 06:56 pm (UTC)Every year for Christmas, we have a relative who sends us a ham. It's very nice of them but even if ham was our favorite thing, eating it all in a short amount of time would send our sodium levels sky high. So we've evolved a ham eating plan that puts a lot of it into freezer meal prep to eat the rest of the winter.
Phase 1 - Ham, Egg and Cheese Breakfast Sandwiches. We eat a few of these during Ham Week and fully cook a number more to put in the freezer for fast/to-go breakfasts. This year I put up 24 sandwiches. This used to be a lot harder when I individually fried the eggs but now I bulk bake them on a greased sheet pan. You can either put down individual eggs and pop the yolk or make a scramble and bake it to cut into even segments.
Phase 2 - Cuban Sandwiches. I'll buy and roast a pork loin or crockpot a shoulder depending on what I like at the store that day. Bonus: add adobo and orange juice for flavor or go plain. We happened to be on Phase 2 on New Year's Day this year - good timing! For freezer meals - I'll dice it all and make dinner sized portions to go in freezer containers that are 50% ham and 50% pork. When it's time to eat it, thaw the day before, broil with some cheese and dress with mustard and pickles fresh. The dice makes it a little easier to handle the uneven shapes even if it switches us from a pressed sandwich to a grinder style. I got 10 dinners packets put away so we'll eat it once a week for the near future.
Phase 3 - New Orleans style red beans and rice. I'll save the bone and scraps for this dish. This year I put it away in the freezer and will probably do this around Mardi Gras. We'll eat it as a main dish for a few days and then it will end up as part of a taco or chili mix.
Other things I've done over the years:
-ham and cheese scones (just add a 1/2 cup each in small dice to your favorite scone recipe). Very good but doesn't use up enough ham when you need to use up the ham!
-ham and cheese breakfast enchiladas. Dice ham and cheese and put into tortillas in a baking dish. Instead of enchilada sauce, make scrambled egg base and add in liquid form over all the enchiladas and bake until the eggs are done. This is nice if you've got a crowd for breakfast. Top with green onions.
-Roll up ham and cheese in pizza dough to make a stromboli.
If you've got any ham recipe favorites - let me know. There's a chance our family will send us another ham for Easter!
Re: Ham Week Meal Plan
Date: 2026-01-03 01:27 am (UTC)When you get down to the bone in the middle, it's hard to get all the meat off, so I save that for bean soup: put it in the pressure cooker with *just* enough liquid (water or any broth I have going) for soup-- it's easy to overdo and you don't need to cover the whole bone-- and pressure cook it for 30-35 minutes. Scrape remaining bits off the bone and then bury the bone in the yard (calcium poor soil: the trees like it). Then add whatever chopped veg I have around: onion, peppers, garlic, celery, carrots even a bit of greens (not too much), cook those, then add a squeeze of lime or a spoon of vinegar, cooked beans (I use black, pinto and/or cannelini: most anything will do), some hominy kernels, salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, and cilantro if I've got it. Heat through and it's good to go. I go for a pretty thick soup, YMMV.
The kids are also fond of a simple dish where we just cook rice with diced carrots and peas and a generous amount of butter, salt and pepper, and at the end add some diced ham. Handy one-dish thing when we don't feel like using every saucepan in the house :)
Re: Ham Week Meal Plan
Date: 2026-01-03 11:06 pm (UTC)Re: Ham Week Meal Plan
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-04 01:33 am (UTC) - ExpandGarden Hods
Date: 2026-01-02 07:16 pm (UTC)I used old, ripped out pine interior siding, and a few wider boards that used to be book shelves. However, more cash than I would have thought went into 4 different sizes of wood screws and galvanized 1/4 inch hardware cloth. SO, the wood savings was so minimal as a percentage of the rest of expenses, it would have been easier construction with new, knot free pines boards over the almost 50 year old wood I used.
I actually enjoy working with wood, I am not very good or experienced with it, so this is also skill building. I had to clean up and put the old small table saw in the garage to use, I havent used a table saw in decades, so that was the first apprehension to overcome. The plan I used was the Planet Whizbang plans. My first thoughts on it is I would have loved more details on how to implement the design ! The design pages are more about what to buy and what the design is, not how to construct or any tips. There are many Garden Hod designs online, some free ideas too, some simpler or potentially less costly than this one. But, I must say, this one is very sturdy. Much more sturdy than some others. If you own one of those staple nail nail guns, you could make a simpler one much more quickly, and be able to use 1/2 inch hardware cloth.
The one place this design doesnt work as stated is the handle, as his instructions are to have 1 inch doweling with a 1 inch hole, and he says to sand down the doweling on the first inch each side to 7/8" so that swelling will not crack the wood. I did as I was asked and then the doweling of course would slide right out ! And I had pieces for 4 hods all made to spec and it was close to Christmas. I was scared at that point of splitting the wood, a neighbor brainstormed with me and we decided on a predrilled hole with a single panel nail ( ridged to not pull out easily) at the top of each handle end. This seems to work well.
As for hardware cloth, I had envisioned using hardware cloth I had, but mine is 1/2inch, so when I got to that I ended up buying a small roll of 1/4 inch, because of how to fasten, but I must say the stuff had serious quality issues ! The grid was no where near parallel and there were unsightly globs of galvanized coating. I managed to get it onto 3, and the 4th, mine, I am going to figure out how to just use the 1/2 inch, which is much more evenly constructed and is what I have.
I still very much enjoyed the process, just peacefully working with the wood for most of the time, and the outcome, the Garden Hods, look nice and are extremely sturdy. Maybe now that I have used the table saw again, and I had lots of cuts to make to make use of that lap siding ( like cutting off the laps, and cross cutting ) I will be less shy about other things that come up around the house that need rip cuts. ALthough, I still wont do any long rip cuts or try to manipulate large full sized plywood !
Re: Garden Hods
Date: 2026-01-03 12:03 am (UTC)Re: Garden Hods
Date: 2026-01-03 06:41 pm (UTC)Excellent! DIYing useful things out of scrounged wood is a superb skill to be cultivating.
On salvaged/found/previously used wood
A few things to note about using salvaged or found wood:
On Table Saws
Having access to a good table saw is very useful. While I prefer (as I wrote below) hand tools, there's nothing wrong with having a good power tool and knowing how to use it well (and, importantly, when to use it and when not to).
In the interest of furthering both agendas (more utility from your table saw as well as the ability to not need it when it isn't the right tool), here are a few of my thoughts which you or others might find helpful:
Keep your blades sharp. Yes, table saw blades can be sharpened! I wouldn't encourage you to do this by hand, though. It's not too expensive to take them to a local shop that offers this service. Ask around at the independent hardware and lumber yards in your area and you'll pretty quickly get a recommendation on where to take your blades. A good sharpening is less than half the cost of a new blade, and blades can be resharpened several times before the carbide tips have completely worn away. Cuts are cleaner and cooler with a sharp blade, which makes the motor run better and lengthens the service life of the whole saw as well. My favourite circular saw blades are by Freud (the "diablo" series), and they're worth the money you spend on them in my opinion. While I use hand tools nearly exclusively now, I grew up with a variety of table, circular, and radial-arm saws in the workshop, and I've used a wide variety of blades over the years. I kept coming back to these. There may be slightly less expensive blades that are just as good for casual use, but to me the "savings" in cost isn't worth the risk of finding out that "value" blade just isn't up to snuff.
If you want to do more things with your table saw, such as safe and precise crosscutting or miters of various kinds, you might consider making one of Fred Bingham's "sliding auxiliary table" jigs (he details this in his book "Boat Joinery and Cabinetmaking Simplified", and scatters very interesting hints about how to use it throughout the text, but I cannot find any information about it online through a quick search). It makes using a table saw safer and more precise for those who don't have high end fences and fancy guides. In short, it's a sliding fence that keys into the miter gauge grooves on a table saw, remaining square to the blade, and permitting you to affix the work to it through a variety of other jigs and fences you can make yourself to suit your needs. Since the whole fence slides with the work, the work can be tightly affixed to it (even clamped) so your hands remain far away from the blade and the cut is more controlled. There's also far less chance of the work tilting or slipping as you proceed through the cut, which could cause the saw to bind or leave you with an edge that isn't straight.
Table saws take up a lot of room, though. If you're not ripping long stuff or sheet goods (plywood, etc) and especially if you're not doing it very often, you might consider trading / selling it and getting a bandsaw instead. Bandsaws are safer, quieter (in general), and take up a lot less floor space. A bandsaw with a tilting table that has a groove for a sliding "miter gauge" is exceptionally useful for making small stuff that feature angles (you can use this nifty tool on a table saw too, but I would prefer the SLAT that I mention above as it does more tricks and is safer on that tool, but on a bandsaw it's the bee's knees).
And I would encourage you to consider learning how to use a handsaw (note the h :) for crosscuts and short rips, too. Grabbing one and just doing the job is often faster than setting up the table saw. And they take less room and make safer dust. Knowing how and when to use all these types of saws will let you know whether or not that table saw is worth the space it's taking up!
-- V.O.G
Sadly obligatory: Power tools are very dangerous and need to be used with full understanding of the risks and with full safety protection equipment, including dust collection. (Power tool dust is very fine and is a known carcinogen.) You, the reader, alone are responsible for the safe operation of your power or hand tools. I disclaim any and all liability resulting from this or any other post of mine regarding woodworking.
Re: Garden Hods
From:wood dust control
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-06 01:20 am (UTC) - ExpandUse your calendar to schedule all those routine jobs
Date: 2026-01-02 08:30 pm (UTC)Using the Year-At-A-Glance calendar led directly to this month's frugal tip.
Use your calendar or logbook or journal or mega-to-do list on the fridge and schedule all those things that need to be done weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. This way, you don't forget.
Thus, monthly, we change the furnace filter, dust the ceiling fans, dump and refill the Mosquito Bucket of Doom (not in the dead of winter), hang out charcoal deodorizers and bathtub scrubbies for a thorough airing, clip cat claws, and so forth.
Quarterly, I rotate the mattress and wash the mattress pad, scrub the bathroom thoroughly, shake out the unfinished basement rugs, and sweep the unfinished basement.
Annually, we clean out the dryer vents. If we used the dryer all the time, we'd do this semi-annually.
You get the idea.
You're scheduling those things that should be done -- whatever they are -- so you don't forget them.
That is to say, if you dust your mirrors once a quarter, they'll never need dusting.
Routine maintenance according to a schedule keeps things working much longer and how thrifty is that?
Use what you have...food version
Date: 2026-01-02 10:46 pm (UTC)Re: Use what you have...food version
Date: 2026-01-02 11:32 pm (UTC)But, I am organized, which is why I figured out I had more stored than needed. Going thru each area annualy at a minimum is a good idea, put it on Theresa
s calendar idea. Any back up area you cant realy see, make a list of what is there. Rotate, pull older items forward.
I dont keep 5 types of rice, I might be more basic of the staple foods, but I can have random items that are smaller.
Maybe one pantry area is your one you are actively pulling from, so when you start to run low on items there, you consult your master list, on the clipboard in that area, and go to area B to fill up the basmati rice jar, for example. Once you move the last pounds of basmati rice to the current use pantry jar, you immediately put basmati rice on your list to go buy a new 25 pound bag. That would be my recommendation. Same for brown rice and sushi rice etc...
I keep having a nagging feeling that my home canned jars and shelves in my active pantry area are too vulnerable ( earthquake). Don't worry, that doesnt mean imminent risk, but it keeps pulling at me that I need to address it sooner rather than later. So, soon, I will actually be boxing up onto the floor items that are now very beautifully displayed and easy to see. I will label boxes and make a master list until such time that earhtquake prep can ever be implemented in the pantry. which will mean glass jarred foods always in a cardboard box, the shelves adjusted to that height for have them in boxes, the shelves connected to the wall or ceiling and some kind of bulk bungy cord macreme to keep the boxes from easily sliding off.
Because your point is correct, putting it aside is not enough, we need to use it and have it not go bad ( or break) before we can use it.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-01-03 12:52 am (UTC)I keep a deep pantry in the basement and label 5 gallons buckets by numbers with tape and keep a spiral notebook nearby with what's in the bucket and when it was purchased. I don't do a perfect FIFO, sometimes something goes bad but it's minimal.
I did used to keep food in those 20 gallon rubbermaid totes but mice got into those (without the snap lid, ugh lesson learned), so everything that isn't in a can goes in a gamma lid sealed bucket even if it's not the most efficient spacewise. I keep home canned goods in the basement too and try to move things left to right by age on the shelf and then pull from the right side.
I am also guilty of the impulse sale purchase ("Apricot jam with no sugar for $0.75 a jar, I'll definitely use that!") so sometimes I put one - just ONE - challenge ingredient of something I wonder why I bought next to the stove and it stays there until I use it in some creative way. The usual answer is if it's savory it ends up chili and if it's sweet it ends up in a pot of oatmeal.
Pantry organization
Date: 2026-01-06 01:31 am (UTC)Dry beans, peas, rice, etc. go into plastic jars (which originally held peanut butter). If they fall, they probably won't even spill, much less shatter into dangerous shards.
Where I have deep shelves, I pack six pint jars to a wooden orange crate, and swap the crates as empty jars replace the full ones.
Lathechuck
Woodworking
Date: 2026-01-03 01:35 am (UTC)Woodworking is a wonderful way to learn some very practical skills and save (potentially quite a lot) of money. On the topic of frugality it ought to score fairly highly: it's good exercise[^1]; it's productive labour; it's quite satisfying mentally and physically; it enables the use and re-use of renewable resources and discarded furniture; it can be powered exclusively by hand at a rate of production that is practical and practicable by the average person to suit the average household even when done as a "free-time" task; and the tools and workspace to get meaningfully started can be, with care, themselves frugally obtained.
However, if you're comparing a quality handmade piece of solid-wood furniture with any mass-produced piece of shale from a four-lettered blue-and-yellow store, you'll have to do a little careful thinking when you realize that just the raw materials cost for your little project might exceed the finished cost of the four-letter-store's product by a factor of two or more. This is because of a false equivalence: furniture that will last is a better use of time, effort, and resources than furniture that was produced using toxic chemicals[^2] and will most likely become landfill material in a few years of ordinary household use. While it may cost you more in the short term, you'll reconsider whether it was really necessary and, if the answer is yes, you'll have saved yourself the need to ever buy it again. Plus, you'll have the satisfaction of doing it yourself and knowing you could do it again.
With that in mind here are some ways I've learned to make it work, frugally, while being personally rewarding and satisfying.
(TL;DR A basic set of quality, well chosen, used hand tools that you have taught yourself how to care for can permit you to build a very large array of necessary and useful furniture to as high as level of quality as your skill and available time permits. And acquiring the skills is very easy these days, since in addition to excellent resources the material and process teaches you as you make things.)
Note: The most important thing is to actually start doing it. Start making small items of furniture, start modifying furniture or your home yourself, start actually making pretty much anything and it gets easier to make more complex or challenging projects.
1. Work in whatever space you have available to you.
One thing I've recently figured out is that you don't need a shop or very expensive tools to start doing work that would be perfectly suitable to use for a lifetime and durable enough to pass down to your children and grandchildren too. In fact, you can make a wide range of useful, practical, and necessary items of basic furniture, from chests to chairs, stools to shelving, in virtually any common space in your home you're willing to permit to be temporarily transformed into a "shop". Yes, even if you're worried about sawdust and all that (more on this below).
Even if you live in a tiny apartment in the middle of a major city you can obtain decent quality wood and build very nice things if you're thoughtful about how you set up a workspace. Temporary (set up after dinner, tear down before bedtime) workspaces can be used to advantage in this situation - I built a classic English toolchest in exactly such a setup, using a 3-foot section of kitchen counter and a few 5-gallon buckets on the floor as a temporary workshop and doing one step at a time in my spare time, evenings and weekends, clearing it all away as needed for meal prep. Sure it's slower, but it's entirely doable!
2. Use hand tools, not power tools.
If you have power tools and know how to use them or are interested in learning, there's nothing wrong with that at all. However, even in that case using hand tools may surprise you with their versatility, flexibility, and general, well, hand-y-ness. They also leave an unmistakeably pleasant texture to the wood that machines just don't.
Hand tools have many advantages over power tools:
3. Go antique or used when you can
and
4. Maintain your tools yourself.
These two are pretty self-explanatory and interestingly, somewhat related.
Learning enough about tools to care well for them helps you be able to identify quality used tools wherever possible, and to bring them into working order without a great deal of hardship.
Sharpening tends to be the part that puts a lot of people off. I went from knowing almost nothing about most hand tools to sharpening all my plane blades and chisels solely from reading books and blogs posts and then simply trying. The best advice I got on the subject was simple: almost all of the major methods for getting tools sharp work well. Pick one and stick with it until you're really good at it before you consider another. (I chose Japanese waterstones and a honing guide, and the combo works very well for me.)
5. Reduce the cost of raw materials
While wood might not be very cheap on the market (though, arguably in relationship to its relative value and increasing scarcity for many species, it could be considered underpriced), there are a variety of ways to obtain useful raw materials at much reduced prices:
Finally, let's break down two common misconceptions:
You don't need a parent who was a master craftsman, a college degree, or even basic advanced education to do a quite nice job - be willing to teach yourself and learn how to do useful work at whatever standard you can work to now, while using that work to improve your skills and thus expand what you can do next. Youths aged 12-16 used to turn out perfectly good furniture as part of various wood shop programs throughout modern history, a great many of them using only manual hand tools to do so (after the rough planks had been cut from the tree, of course).
You don't need to make "high-end" stuff, either (unless you want to!). Realize that there is a huge (but often overlooked or forgotten) historical record to draw on of simple, rustic, but very beautiful and functional furniture that was made by hand for centuries, and thus you don't need to be aiming for "fine" furniture to get something really lovely, handmade, practical, and long-lasting. There's a wide middle ground between "ghastly and probably unsafe" and "rococo".
This history of delightful but un-fancy furniture is often simply called "vernacular furniture" or "furniture of necessity" which through the centuries produced the majority of the stools, chairs, settles, tables, chests, aumbries, bedframes, armoires, and other necessary items of household organization and utility in the era before industrialization. Many of them were made with very few tools indeed - often an axe and froe as the core of the kit (along with, variously, bowsaws, a drawknife, one or two chisels, an awl or gimlet, and perhaps a plane or two). The wood was often rived green and assembled in ways that permitted it to dry in place. Spindles were often shaved or turned on a "pole lathe" which was a simple affair that required no fancy parts. All tools were made by hand by blacksmiths at those times, as were nails (which made them astonishingly expensive by modern standards, and thus avoided whenever possible through the use of clever joinery until cut nail manufacturing brought the prices down significantly).
There are plenty of books you can find that teach how to get started with these techniques. The older ones are usually better - since the '80's or so there has been a glut of fairly "bleh" books of all varieties on woodworking and it can be easy to get lost in the offerings, each of them revised, updated, or outright replaced every year or two. A few independent publishers have reprinted historical books and translations of historical books on the subject which are very useful for one wishing to learn, and there are some quality instructional courses taught by video if that's your thing. Beware of the books put out by the bigger woodworking magazines and associated publishers, though - that's usually mediocre at best (in my opinion) and over-reliant on power tools. And even moreso beware of the vast amount of both awful and often unsafe or inefficient "advice" and "how-tos" on YouTube about woodworking. It can be very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff online. Your local library may or may not be a great help here, too, but it never hurts to check.
-- V.O.G
Footnotes:
[^1]: but not, please note, requisite to have a strong or athletic physique, or even much of a physique at all - scrawny middle-schoolers have learned how to turn out decent work.
[^2]: The particleboard making the bulk of "wood" products, and the foil lamination (the fake-wood or solid-coloured appearance) on the surface are commonly made or attached with glues that are basically plastics, some of which off-gas formaldehyde vapours and other harmful chemicals. All of it breaks down in daily use much faster than solid wood does, and - unlike solid wood - cannot be meaningfully repaired.
Re: Woodworking
Date: 2026-01-03 04:39 am (UTC)Also, by and large older hand tools are much better quality than recently manufactured ones. Many of ours came down to me or to my wife from our parents and grandparents, a very few even from our great-grandparents. Both of our fathers knew their way around wood-working, and had home workshops, and taught us a lot. Her father's father had even been a house carpenter in his younger years.
All the boys had to take elementary shop courses in my Junior High School (7th-9th grades) in Berkeley way back then: wood shop, metal shop, print shop (setting moveable type and working a hand-powered printing press), and mechanical drawing. It's really a shame that such courses seem to have gone by the wayside now.
So when we bought our own house back in 1974, I was able to do a lot of the woodworking myself to put built-in shelves where we needed them, make free-standing wooden bookcases, and mend our hand-me-down furniture when it broke or wore out.
A lot of excellent older books on wood-working, long out of copyright, can be found and downloaded from www.survivorlibrary.com/
Re: Woodworking
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-13 04:42 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: Woodworking
Date: 2026-01-03 07:46 pm (UTC)WHile some things are fine with hand tools. I made stall doors for my barn rebuild, I could not have done that with hand tools, maybe someone could, but there is no way I could cut a straight line on a sheet of plywood with a hand saw, I am not that strong. I could theoretically do a stall door with hand tools if I buy dimensional lumber, so with tongue and grove or lap siding boards from the lumber yard, then I could theoretically, just make cross cuts on those 6 inch boards in a jig, which I do have. That would have been much more expensive, especially since I was using leftover plywood offcuts from the barn walls.
But, the main problem is that my personal physical limitations would make it impossible. Not everyone at every age and gender can do this all by hand. Sure, I can make cross cuts by hand, not alot a day. The reality in true a world made by hand scenario is that someone else would need to do that work while I could by hand sew or cook or garden, read aloud to the assembled group, etc... -- not build larger projects. There is no way I can use an axe or a froe, I have seen it done by a neighbor, I cant do that physically. When I was younger, maybe.
Even the small projects I just did, the garden hods, there was alot of ripping of small pieces off of those wider boards, so there are 8 inch wide boards, and I need to first rip off the thin edge as it was lap siding, and then make it into 1.5 and 2 inch wide pieces. It is possible for someone to do this by hand, with the right clamps and the strength to keep a steady hand down the length of the board, but I cant do that. Now, I can just buy dimensional lumber that is 2 inches wide and make cross cuts by hand, and for a small project like a garden hod that is doable. I often have the lumber yard take care of this for me when I buy wood, they will rip a long board down from 5.5 inches wide to 4 inches wide ( this has come up as my house is old and sometimes I need to match and have a "true" 4 inch wide piece of lumber), or I sometimes have them cut the large plywood sheet to a smaller size, I pay for this of course. And, I do recommend this if needed, then you can use hand tools and build. Just bring home that lumber in the correct thickness and width so you just have to make cross cuts or drill holes with a brace for inserting connecting dowels or put in nails or screws by hand.
You can also build by hand using branches from your yard, There are books on this, twig and branch building of furniture, and you can even make a garden hod this way. Most current people doing this are connecting them with a powered screw gun, but you absolutely can do this by hand.
When my youngest was in 3rd grade, I had her and another child help me build a 3 bin compost bin using hand tools. We bought the redwood as dimensional lumber and only had to make cross cuts, I was younger and there were 3 of us. I think what we did is they helped me build the main actual frame all by hand, as that was not that many cross cuts or bolts to use the brace for. They loved doing this, then hammered on the hardware cloth. We did a cob pizza oven at her place on a tire foundation, and learned square feet concepts by measuring her hallway that needed to be painted, and my roof.
Re: Woodworking
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-03 08:51 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Woodworking
From:Downsizing
Date: 2026-01-03 02:12 pm (UTC)MWT
Re: Downsizing
Date: 2026-01-06 12:21 am (UTC)I found the hotels particularly interesting because volume, weight, and pack times became priorities. Nothing compares to living out of a suitcase to shift your mindset from what can I part with? to what do I actually need? The former mindset focuses on space as the limiting factor, while the latter focuses on meeting daily needs with the least amount of hassle.
The experience changed my purchase habits and helped clarify priorities.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-01-06 06:34 pm (UTC)Summer cooling
Date: 2026-01-07 08:03 pm (UTC)Keeping your house warmer and cooler
From:(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-09 02:07 am (UTC) - Expandnot exactly
From:HVAC alternatives
From:using what you have
Date: 2026-01-06 11:51 pm (UTC)As to what I'll still be buying, I'll probably buy some ultramarine watercolor paint in the next few weeks, for example. Since I am very low on it and it's getting difficult to use the tiny bit on the sides of the pan and this makes painting watercolors more awkward. And I am much better at spinning cool weft yarns than I am strong warp yarns, so at some point I may need to buy more strong yarn if I am to weave everything I want to. For now though, I am making some pretty good dents in stashes, and am up a dishcloth, a hat, and am partway through two handbags.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-01-09 01:07 am (UTC)wringer washer
Date: 2026-01-09 11:55 pm (UTC)lehmans
From:Re: lehmans
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-10 10:34 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: lehmans
From:Re: wringer washer
From:Re: wringer washer
From:Re: wringer washer
From:wringers
From:recipe needed
Date: 2026-01-10 12:14 am (UTC)So - from the FFF Commentariat - Please! Any from-scratch tuna casserole recipe suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Re: recipe needed
Date: 2026-01-10 03:57 pm (UTC)I'm sure someone who makes casseroles more frequently than I do could turn that idea into one - maybe chop bread into 1" squares, toast them, and stir that into tuna salad, put the mess into a pan, top with cheese, and bake?
-- V.O.G
Re: recipe needed
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-10 10:40 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
From:recipe
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-10 10:38 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: recipe needed
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-15 10:51 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: recipe needed
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-26 05:27 pm (UTC) - ExpandRefrigerator Pickles from Extra Cucumber
Date: 2026-01-10 12:46 am (UTC)After eating as much fresh cucumber as I want, I slice the rest up, put it in a canning jar, cover with vinegar and some dill, and voila! Refrigerator pickles!
They taste great, and keep for a longer time in the fridge than the cucumber would have.
Even easier (after the second "D-Oh!"), pour the leftover pickle juice from that jar of pickles you just finished, OVER the cucumber slices. That pickling brine still has some mileage left on it.
Forehead hurts a bit now, but the extremely fresh pickles are worth it!
35% reduction in electricity bill
Date: 2026-01-12 12:23 am (UTC)We were a bit surprised when we got our last electricity bill. The bill noted that we used 35% less electricity than in the same period last year.
We were not trying to reduce our electricity consumption but I had started doing two new things. The first is that my washing machine only has settings for a large or small load. I started washing medium loads on the small setting. I turn the machine off after it starts agitating enough to mix the clothes, borax and a bit of detergent. I soak the clothes for at least two hours and then turn the machine back on. The extra long soak gets the clothes very clean without a lot of water being used.
The second thing I did was to put a large soup pot on top of my wood stove and filled it with water. I need to check it every few hours so that it does not run dry. I use the boiling water to wash dishes. I pour the boiling water into the sink and add cold water until it is comfortable to work in and then rinse the dishes in a pan of cold water.
Those two things seem to have been enough to reduce our electricity expense by 35%.
Maxine
Re: 35% reduction in electricity bill
Date: 2026-01-13 05:35 pm (UTC)Re: 35% reduction in electricity bill
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2026-01-14 06:49 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: 35% reduction in electricity bill
From:Flying Tips
Date: 2026-01-16 09:12 pm (UTC)(2) I also carry a few energy gels through security. The 3-1-1 rule applies. There are several commercial gel options. The basic idea is to eat one gel for every 30 to 45 min of active exercise, but flying is sedentary, so the effect of eating them lasts longer. Gels are easier to carry than regular food, and I find it takes the edge of feeling hungry if you want to avoid purchasing the pricey airport food.
(3) I also carry some caffeinated foods like caffeinated chocolate pieces or caffeinated energy gels through security. Caffeinated drinks in the terminal are expensive. Coffee on the aircraft is free, and the crew usually provides as many refills as you want.
Re: Flying Tips
Date: 2026-01-23 04:51 pm (UTC)My go to choice for flying is electrolyte drink powders (single use packets or TSA will do swab testing), chocolate covered coffee beans, and a big bag of beef jerky.
Credit Card Alternatives
Date: 2026-01-16 09:26 pm (UTC)Contact Lens Care
Date: 2026-01-16 09:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-01-31 09:57 pm (UTC)