Frugal First Friday

[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!   

Comments

Ham Week Meal Plan

[prayergardens]

Well - this fits in nicely with our host's New Year's Day Lucky eating plan.

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!

Garden Hods

[atmosphericriver]

Well, I did make some garden Hods out of scrap wood, 3 of which went out as Christmas presents, filled with some home canned items ( apple pie slices, apple juice, apple butter, some jam).Overallit turned out well, and I am glad to have spent time with this skill building activity. My offspring appreciated them also. This is frugal due to cost savings over buying them new, and also in terms of skill building.

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 !

Use your calendar to schedule all those routine jobs

[teresa_from_hershey]

I use a Year-At-A-Glance calendar to track everything my family does for a year. It hangs in the dining room. Most useful! Get the biggest one that will fit on your wall.

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?