What If.... Preppers/Savers on the Youtubes Sometimes Lack Creativity and Experience

 OK, rando rant a bit because I'm kind of a dick.

On the youtubes, the thrifty people I follow are doing this "What if" type thing. Fine.  

Things like "What if you only had a half a bag of rice, 3oz lentils, and moldy cheese, and you don't get paid for a week and the money is gone...how would you stretch the food and what would you make?"

Mornings with Granny is best at this because I suspect she's been poor for reals.

I was poor once upon a time and now I'm too lazy/cheap/frugal to run in to town when I am lacking an ingredient.

ANYWAY...recently, the ones I watch are "prepping" or stocking up for power outages.  Turns out rice is a bad idea without power.  Um...like the electric stove or any of the 2 dozen counter top plug in appliances are the only ways to cook???

JEEZ people!  One vlogger was talking, this morning, about a power out where they had no way to heat water or cook food. She has other videos where they grill food outside.  Does the propane tank and/or charcoal not work when the electricity is out???

Also, candles under an upturned can with holes cut in the can-sides makes a tiny stove.   So does a can of crisco with a wick (which can be a bit of dry wood, twisted fabric, wooden skewers, taper candle jammed in a hole, or almost any cooking oil/fat you have around).  PEOPLE!!! Electricity is not the only power.  

What about a solar cooker?  Or the dashboard of your car in mid day?  Heat water with those mid day and then put it in a thermos, or even just wrap up the container of hot water with whatever.  That reflective dealy in the windshield works well.  ALSO coolers keep things warm.  They are don't just keep things cool.   Then you can heat that warmish water for washing or whatever.

Also...rice, pasta, grains can be soaked for a while, brought to the boil, poured into a thermos or the pan wrapped up and they will cook much faster with very little heat, e.g. over a candle or crisco heater.

Grills hold pots as well as naked slabs of meat. You can even bake bread, cake, whatever on there.

ALL YOU NEED TO COOK IS A HEAT SOURCE.  

Other tips for power-outage cookery:

Think about the size and power of your heat source.  Boiling a cup of water over a candle will take a while.   Boiling a cup of water on the grill is wasting heat...boil up the big pan of water (tea kettle, anyone?) and store the excess because maybe it will still be warm later.   Overnight oats/soaked-rice for 4 is too much to bring to a boil over a candle.  Not too much on a grill or in a solar cooker.  

Frying is faster.  Small bits cook faster.  You can fry on a grill.  Put the frying pan (cast iron is the best option) on the grill.  Add fat and whatever.  Cook.  Don't wander off.

Grill outside.  Want to bring some of that heat inside?  Heat up clay plant pots and bring them inside in metal buckets, set them on things that won't burn like bricks or the hearth.  You want get super warm, but you'll be busy and a bit warmer and NOT die of carbon monoxide. 

Butane burners are great, I use them all the time.  But the butane runs out pretty fast if you start with cold water and want to boil it up.  Hence lots of preheating on the woodstove and storing the water hot in thermoses (thermosi?  thermopodi?)...insulated containers!

Things to do now:

Make a "hay box" for your favorite pasta/rice pan.  NOT the insta pot.  Don't be an idiot.  The pan that you can put on the grill, stove, woodstove, etc.  Best if it has small handles but just use what you have.  Find a box, card board, wood, or a metal milk crate, that fits the pan with several inches to spare on all sides.   Line your box with wool blankets or old sweaters if you have it, or hay (hence the name), straw, cardboard, or even metallic bubble wrap. Make sure there is an inch of cardboard or wood or no-flammable at cooking temps fabric between any plasticky crap or fabric and the pan. Make the lining fit tight around the pan.   When the time comes, heat the pan up, like on that grill, and when the food is boiling hard, put the pan in the box (which of course you insulted on the bottom and sides and top) and close it up.  If you can heat up a rock or plant pot ahead of time and put that in the box while you finish boiling up the food, that will preheat the box and make it work better.

Don't have a box?  Make a bean hole in the ground and preheat it like in the olden days.  I will let you google that.

You can boil things mid-day in the solar cooker and transfer to the hay box or bean hole or thermos.

When using a thermos, preheating is best.

These all work like slow cookers.   Pasta will get mushy fast, whole rye berries hold up super well as do wheat berries, oat groats, and barley.   Quinoa is an excellent option as well.

If I am putting meat in, I prefer it to be fully cooked first, either fried up (sliced thin it fries faster/less fuel) or precanned by me or an industrial canning service.

If using a thermos for soup or flavored grains/pasta, you'll want to not use that for coffee or tea water later.  No matter what they say, the flavors linger. I have tested glass, plastic, and stainless steel lined thermoses and all retain that stank.  It's fine in the next cooked item, but not great in my coffee.  

To make the thermos cooking work: invest in a good bottle brush and good funnels.  I use a big canning funnel for the wide mouth thermoses and a skinny funnel for the insulated bottle type thermoses.  

The water you use to preheat a thermos is fine to use in the next batch of soup, to drink, to give to pets who usually enjoy the vague food stank, or to soak tomorrow's grains.  

These practices always save fuel/money/pollution/resources to why not be practicing now??

Rant complete...for now.

Slow Fashion October

 OK, I know if my sister happens on this she will question the term "fashion" in anything I write.  I don't have any fashion sense at all.  Which, for slow fashion October, works perfect in reducing clothing waste.

I watched a youtube...which I do too much of late.  But then I fact checked this one and it was correct.  Dang it!

I had heard the term "fast fashion" but since I have no fashion interest and am of an age where "fast" is moot, I ignored it and filed it under run of the mill consumerist BS that was probably wasteful.

But...I had no idea HOW wasteful.  Wow.

Here's a link to the youtube:  https://youtu.be/F6R_WTDdx7I

And here's a link with some background on slow fashion October:

https://www.interweave.com/article/knitting/slow-fashion-karen-templer/

Interesting stuff.

I no clue how many clothes people in 1st world countries have!  Good lord.  Throwing out over 80lbs per year in the US????   I don't have 80lbs of clothes.  Probably 50 to 60lbs.  About 20lbs of that is boots.  I should count my garments.  It's not a small number.   But clearly I am behind most of the US population.

Anyway, according to various studies you can link through the above links, in the US in 1990 80-90% of the clothes Americans bought were made in America.  After NAFTA (which for the record I thought was BS when it was put in place...different rant) jobs in the textile industry moved to other countries where people are paid less.  Less than a living wage.  And human rights are violated in the sweat shops.  But it's cheap!!  

What percentage is now made in America???  2.5% roughly.  That's a loss.  Big loss. I have trouble finding clothes made in  the USA.  Even my hippie dippie zero drop shoes from a company based in Portland OR...the actual shoes are made in china.  The company claims they couldn't find a manufacturer in the US.  ONE of my pairs of boots IS made entirely in the US.  Actually, the leather may have been tanned overseas.  Apparently that's a thing we do.  Ship hides overseas for tanning and have them shipped back to make stuff out of the hides.  That is BONKERS.  Anyway, I traded a pair of boots with a friend.  The boots I got from him didn't fit me super well but better than the ones I gave him (which passed on to a dude who was fixing his roof and I think that dude is actually wearing them).  I traded that 2nd pair of boots to a neighbor who gave me a pair of used White's Boots!  Hand made in Spokane, WA.  So not only in the US, but in the same region as me.  Nice.  I'm working on learning to wear heavy boots again.  They are awesome.   

The other garment I have that I know was made in the US is a t-shirt I bought this year.  One of the first "new" items, like actually new from a retail store, I've purchased in ages (other than sox, undies and some shoes) at full price.  I paid a higher price because it is made in the USA.  Also, because the design on it is the bomb.

Of my used items, the vast majority are made elsewhere.

Now for another factoid...apparently we wear our clothes a few times and throw them out as "old".  The studies claim people in the 1st world chuck the clothes (or forget them but don't chuck them) after an AVERAGE of 7 WEARINGS!!!  WHAT!!!  I wore the aforementioned t-shirt 3 times the week I got it and 2 times the next week. It's already over 7 wearings.   The sweatshirt I have on was purchased used, then a couple of pieces of a previous sweatshirt (That I wore until it fell off me in shreds) are applique'd on it (thanks Anne!!).  My "good" black t-shirt with long sleeves that I wear under button downs and sweaters was purchased new but at a deep discount (5$) literally years ago.  Like 5 or 6 years ago.  In Portland at Powells Books.  It made its first outing of the season this week and I noticed that the cuffs are so worn they are splitting into two unrelated layers instead of a coherent folded over ribbed edge.  I will keep wearing it until it is in tatters. It won't even be demoted to non-office wear yet.

The shirt I wore with it, an orange button down REI fishing shirt with vented pits...love the vented pits, I bought at a thrift store a few years ago and wear about once a week 6 months of the year. 

I wear my jeans (which I get in the 100% cotton version because 1) better quality 2) don't stretch out and make it look like I crapped my pants, 3) without the plastic stretch crap in them I can use the scraps of wornout jeans in the garden as weed mat or tomato ties and it will just dissolve into the soil eventually) until they fall off of me in shreds.  Then they are diced up for the rag bag.  Then end up as kindling or in the garden.  I haven't bought jeans new in probably a decade or more.  I've tried to buy all cotton workpants new but I can't find any that fit because only a few brands do all cotton anymore, and then pretty much only in men's sizes and then they don't carry a long inseam with the waist size I need.  So, I comb the thrift stores and try to have 3 jeans and a few workpants in active rotation and a few in backstock for when something falls off me in shreds.

I wear my bras and undies until I can't figure out which hole is for a limb and which is for the torso.  Sox get mended (and are cotton or wool, but sadly rarely 100% cotton or wool because that is almost not a thing anymore...I keep looking) until there is more darn than sock.  Then they go in the rag bag.  Sock tops are great for lots of things and the feet make reasonable cleaning mitts.

More factoids...cost per wear.   With fast fashion, even a dress at 30$ that is worn the average 7 times, that's about $4.28 per wearing.  If you are a chump and buy one that says "dry clean only" (and extra chump points if you take that on faith rather than trying to wash it by hand and block it) then it will be "cheaper" to throw it out rather than clean it and wear it.   If you are me, you didn't pay $4.28 to start with!  I might pay 10$ for jeans if they are all cotton and fit really well and have lots of wear left and the pockets are actually deep enough to put sh*t in.  Then I wear them ...let's see....a pair lasts 1-2 years for me, and I have 3 pairs in rotation at a time.  So...1/3 of a year I'm wearing each pair.   That's 122 wearings (roughly) per year per pair...but I do wear chore pants on the weekend usually so we'll call it 100 wearings per pair per year.  Even if a pair only lasts the one year, that's 4cents a wearing.  Since I usually wear a pair of jeans for a week and then put them in the wash (they go in sooner if they get sweaty or grubby), I spend less on laundry than most.  Less washing makes clothes last longer and puts less microplastic waste in the water ways.

There are more horrifying factoids like how much fast fashion is thrown out before anyone even buys it!  It is produced, shipped, put up on display, and thrown out!  Wasted clothing, resources, effort.  And still the companies selling this crap make money hand over fist.  So how much is thrown out?  60%  MOST of it.  Cripes.  You can read 20 of the more horrifying factoids here:

https://goodonyou.eco/fast-fashion-facts/

How to reduce clothing waste at the consumer end:

-Inventory what you have.   You will be surprised.

-Don't buy crappy clothes.   They don't last.  Buy clothes that last.  You can do this new or used.  

-If possible, buy clothes produced in a first world nation.  

-If you can, buy local.  

-If you can, make your own!  (I can't sew clothes or knit or crochet.  I am hoping to learn to weave.)

-Buy natural fibers (thereby not contributing to microplastic waste AND enhancing recycling/reusing options)

-Wash judiciously.  I have written about doing laundry well, also do it infrequently.  A good airing is the old febreeze (don't use febreeze). 

-Use the dryer sparingly!  Line drying is better or hanging on hangers or a drying rack.  The sun kills germs for free.  Dryers are hard on clothes and all the "lint" is what used to be the fabric in your clothes.

-Wear what you already own.  Go shopping in the dresser, closet, wherever you keep clothes.  Try them all on.  If something feels good, fits right, looks decent and suits the tasks you expect to do in it, keep it.  If not, donate it or do a clothing swap with friends and neighbors.  Everyone brings clothes that are in good shape and fresh washed, but they don't want anymore.  Best to sort them by garment type and/or size.  Put the clothes around a room, then people can pick what they want.  Try it on, take it to a relative/friend it might fit or work for.   After that, check with a shelter or other social service agency to see if they an use any of it.  

-Try new combinations of what you own.   We get in ruts.

-Remember that people are so worried about themselves they really don't give a crap what you are wearing.  In 2014/2015 I blogged about wearing the same 5 sweaters to work everyday for a month.  It turned into a winter's worth of wearing those sweaters because it was comfy, easy, simplified my morning.  I had a few choices, but not dozens.   And, since I wore an undershirt with the sweater, I washed them once at the start of the season and once at the end of the season.  See above "launder judiciously."

-Borrow clothes if you need a specialty item.  Like a party or wedding or something.  See if you can borrow an item. 

-Thrift and redonate for a special occasion item if you can't borrow something or wear something you already own.  I've done this for the odd wedding.  Like one in the summer when it was SUPER hot and all my "formal" clothes (you know, the ones without holes) are for cooler weather.  So I ran to a thrift store and got a doable linen outfit and sandals for about 10$, wore it, washed it, and redonated it.  

-Change your clothes before you do dirty chores.   Change into older stuff that you are wearing out.  

-Learn to mend clothes.  Good brands of shirts with buttons give you a couple of spare buttons.  They are sewn to the inside of one of the side seams or hooked to the tag at the top along the neckline.  Keep those.  Really good quality clothes come with a bit of spare thread too.  Keep that as well.   Designate a box or drawer for mending thing and put the buttons in there.  When one pops off, watch a youtube and learn how to sew it back on.  (Get your sewing kit at thrift and get cotton, linen or silk thread...polyester and nylon thread are crap.)

-Pick styles and colors and things that YOU like, not what is in fashion at the moment.  Like broom skirts in shades of mustard and puce?  Knock yourself out.  No one really cares.  

-When shopping new or used, check the seams, washing instructions (only chumps buy "dry clean only"), and fabric content.  Pull on the fabric a bit and see if it is sturdy.   Anything weak, frayed or hard to wash isn't worth it. 

-Be willing to reformat a garment to get more wear.  I mentioned my tendency to wear through the cuffs on t-shirts above.  I also wearout the cuffs on sweatshirts.  By the time the cuffs are work to tatters, the shirt is generally too raggedy to wear to work anyway and is a chore shirt or pajamas.  So, cut the cuffs off.  You still have over 90% of the shirt and it is still wearable.  You can cut the sleeves off a hooded sweatshirt when they get too worn and frayed and wear it as a work smock (with cozy hood) for dirty chores like butchering.

There's more but this is a good spot to stop.  

Some of My New/Recycled Thrifty Ninja Moves

 I've blogged about my uber thrifty...like to the point they may be pointless...habits in the past.  Things like giving up shampoo.   Which of course worked out well and IS worth it to me.  Make your own choices.

Watching some thrifty/frugal food youtubers and other cheapskate vloggers, I can see how far I've come/gone.

E.g.  Watching grocery hauls where people buy selzer water.   First I think "wow, that's a ton of plastic...more plastic than food" that they come home with, in their reusable bag!

Even the 2nd harvest I'm getting has less plastic packaging.   Clearly I do not shop like a normal human.

Anyway, here are some ninja moves I've developed thrifty-wise:

1) Groceries

Grocery list is in general terms, rarely specifics.

I write "grain" meaning any type of grain, flour or starch. I can work with rice, flour, corn flower, wheat berries, etc.  Whatever is on sale.  It's a starchy for a meal that is shelf stable and dry.

I also put "veg X2" for 2 types of veggies.  Whatever is cheap.  Varies by season and you never know what's in the discount veggie bin.

Same with fruit.  I put about how much or if I would like multiple types.  I can generally get discounted bananas at 25cents a pound at a local store.  They are not bagged, just starting to show spots which is fine  Freeze some and use some right away for banana eggs.

I haven't bought meat in a store in recent memory so that's not on the list anymore.  It could pop up again in the future in which case it will be whatever is cheap.  I eat plenty of meat.  I get it in other ways.

For spices/herbs I may be specific and always buy in bulk or from the deeply discounted rack or large bags from an international food store.  Working on remembering to harvest more of my own.  Right now I could use a poultry mix or some sage.   But, no hurry.

I do like canned tomato products but right now am out and am getting used to not having them.  When I do put them on the list it says "tinned tomato".  Paste, diced, whole, sauce.   As long as it is low sodium (health issue), and just tomatoes not sugar and tomatoes or overly seasoned in a strange way, I will get it.  I can usually get things for 39cents or less for a 14.5oz can.  I'm all for dried tomatoes and will can my own when I have a kitchen again.  

I use the occasional bouillon cube, though there is only one brand I have found locally that is low sodium AND tastes decent.  I only buy it when I find it on supersale or for a buck or less on the discount rack.  8 cubes of 2 servings each per box.  I used my last one recently, last cube, and so if I see it when I'm back in a store, I might get it.

For non-food things, I'm doing better at shopping in my own storage.  I recently brought the shirts from the back of the hanging storage to the front.  It looks like I have 5 new shirts.  All are of course from thrift and I have had them for ages, I just haven't worn them for months.  I think I have 10 button down long sleeve shirts and 1 thick sweater in the shed right now and I wasn't even wearing most of the shirts.  I wear a t-shirt or shell under the button downs and a longsleeve t under the sweater.  I also have 3 sweatshirts, 2 are fine for work if we're doing fieldwork that day.   Those are in heavy rotation.  I keep 3 button downs at the office for meetings (even zoom meetings) that come up on fieldwork days, or after a tragic coffee spill.  Wear one for an hour and hang it back up.  They get washed about 2x per season.

2) Laundry:  I bought more undies at the start of 'rona in case I needed to quarantine.  I had enough to go a week or 10 days between laundry trips.  Now I have enough to go 2 weeks.  Since laundry is the main reason for going to town on the weekend, having more undies, hence fewer laundry trips, saved in multiple ways.   1) 5$ gas every other week at current rates.  2) if I'm not going in town, I don't run other errands and don't hit thrift stores where something on the list might be available.  Things fall off the list if you wait long enough.  Either I find something else that works, or figure out I don't really need the item.  3) I do 3 loads of laundry every 2 weeks instead of 2 loads every week.  I use the bigger machines, and find by delaying a week, I only add one more load.   I go ahead and wear my weekend work pants (Carhartts from thrift usually) for an extra weekend so no extras there.  1 or 2 more pairs of work jeans in the winter, possibly more in the summer when I'm sweaty, and some long johns, undies, sox, kitchen towels and gym towels, some t-shirts and long sleeve shirts only adds one load.  Interesting.  Might keep up with the 2 week laundry system after 'rona.

Not going to town for laundry weekly, and people being idiots, made me stretch my grocery trips out to every 2weeks after the farmers market closed for the season.  Pantry/no-spend grocery challenges have stretched that out even more.  As I type this it has been 42 days since I've set foot in a grocery store or paid for food in anyway. I've GOTTEN food....eggs from the chickens, 2nd harvest left overs, bread with a gift card, gifts, and shared it out, but haven't gone to a store or otherwise paid out of pocket for any.  Not even a restaurant.

The 2 weeks between laundry/town trips was also a good time to wean myself off of fancy coffee.  I would buy one per week for about 2 - 4$.  Not much by many people's standards, but a unnecessary cost to me.  I get good beans to grind from the discount grocery store, and use the old ones at work, and drink up the tea I have rather than have 3 or 4 cups of coffee.   I have a hand grinder so I also have to preplan my coffee.   This saves the drive through cost AND the idling the car costs while sitting in the drive through. 

3) Woodstove cookery.  It's not a "cookstove" but you know...cooking is just food + heat.  So it works.  I have taken to roasting things inside the fire box.  Not while it's BLAZING and over heating, when it's all died down a bit and is coals.  Push the coals to the back.   Set a whole pumpkin or squash or onion toward the front, by the door.   Close the door.  Wait.  Every now and then, open the door and spin the squash/pumpkin/onion around a bit.  Cook all sides.   You don't have to get the seeds out of the squash/pumpkin before cooking.  I do poke a hole or two so it won't blow up in there.  Once it feels pretty soft and before it's totally charred, take it out in a pan.  Peel the skin off, cut off the top.  Scoop out seeds and guts.  I put the seeds in a bowl of water to clean up and save some to plant and roast the rest on top of the stove.   The first time I did an onion, I wrapped it in foil.  This seemed messy and the outside of the onion was still charred.  Now, I just don't peel them at all.  Set an onion in the firebox.  Spin it around now and then to get a new side toward the coals.   Remove when it feels soft.  It's a bit sticky.  I peel off the charred bits, mostly it's the papery skin that chars.  I wasn't eating that anyway. That takes the ashes with it.   Then, I stab it with a fork (because it's hot) and dice it up a bit.  Throw it in soup, on rice, or with pasta.  EXCELLENT caramelized (if you burn it a bit, call it caramelized) or sweated onion.   Great soup without frying an onion in a small space.  I assume I could do garlic in there as well but I've been boiling that in the soups. That's been working well.

On top of the stove I can bake...usually burning the bottom because it's hard to control.  Put a small pan of muffins or cake or biscuits on a trivet (I use a real trivet or a few jar rings that are beyond using on canning jars any more)  Put a BIG roaster upside down over the whole thing.  Or...a small soup pan fits over my little cake pan which makes a nice chocolate wacky cake (the one with no eggs).

4) Soaking pasta is my new thing.   If you soak it, even cheap spaghetti, for a couple of hours before throwing it in hot soup (using it for noodle soup this week) or bring the soak pan up to a boil, it's done fast.   When the wood stove is going I don't have to worry about saving fuel so much, but there isn't a ton of room on top of the stove.  If I'm making a sauce or soup, that's pretty much all the space.  MIGHT get the little cake pan on there for a side of biscuit type bread or bannock or cake.  If I want pasta, much easier to presoak it off the heat, then throw it in the hot soup.  Ready in about 2-3 min.  Taste for done-itude.

5) Back to thermos cooking.  I've done it in the past but with being home a lot since March 2020, I'm doing it more.

Thermos pasta.  Fill thermos with boiling water.  Put the top on.  Let it sit about 5 min.  Measure pasta that will take up about half the interior space of the thermos.   Boil more water.  Pour out the first boiling thermos water (I use it for doing dishes or something) which was to pre-heat the thermos.  Put in the pasta.  Fill up to the bottom of the cap with water.   Close TIGHTLY.   Rotate it around a bit to help separate the noodles.  Do that now and then for the next 10-15 min.  It's not very picky about timing.  I use a thermos with a pour top so I open that a bit and pour out the water (good for soup or rehydrating dried veggies for a side dish or soup).   Put the pasta on a plate.  Eat.

Thermos rice and thermos rice with lentils have also worked well.  Use LESS rice than half the interior size of the thermos.  Takes a bit of trial and error.  Set the thermos on its side and rotate it now and then.  This takes a couple of hours usually.   Sometimes you might want to reheat it to eat, or reheat and put back in if it's not done.   White rice cooks faster but also goes to mush easily.

Presoaked wheatberries cooked up in a thermos very nicely.  I preheated the thermos as above.   Boiled the berries in water in the appropriate proportions for about 5 min, then put in the thermos and rolled it around now and then for a couple of hours.  Great texture.  I ate half with dinner with some oil and spices and saved the rest as breakfast with some jam stirred in like it was oatmeal.   It is almost impossible to overcook whole grain berries.   

6) Shop in the storage.

Before I go to the store, I often (not always, I'm not a monster) check the current stock.  Since March 2020 it's been safer to be in the storage unit than the store so doing more of it.    For groceries, check the pantry/stored food stock BEFORE making a list.  Figure out what can be made with what's on hand.  I often take out what would be good to eat up first and put that on the visible shelf at home or the office.   E.g. If I get too much fruit, focus on eating that.   Often, turns out I don't need anything and can skip a store trip.

For other stores (hardware, thrift, clothes) checked stored stuff.  I have a back stock of sox an pants bought at thrift in 2019.   It was a good year for wool sox and cotton-no-stretch jeans.   Rather than getting something new, wear those.  No one gives a crap what I wear.  Sometimes I find hardware bits and bobs in the tool storage so don't have to buy then.   If there is something I do need, I hit thrift first if it looks safe to go in the store.   Some things I can't get at thrift. like butane for the tiny non-woodstove.   I've started ordering that in bulk rather than getting cans a few at a time.  It costs more upfront but hasn't seemed to increase overall consumption.  We'll see in spring when I don't have the woodstove going.  With being home so much, I may be using it up faster.

7) Use up what others are throwing out or I have in stock but don't super like.   

There is AWFUL coffee at work.  In a nice can. Or rather there was.  I drank it up.   It is B.A.D.  And it is G.O.N.E.   Now I have a nice 3lb coffee can to turn into a chicken feeder by filling it with chicken food.  Or to use as whatever.  And, it's gone.   Stretched my decent coffee supply about 3 weeks by drinking it up and now the decent coffee tastes really good.

I found some instant espresso powder in the back of my home pantry shelf (2 or 3 shelves in a book case by the "kitchen" which is a table).  It's not horrible.  Especially if you put a bit of baking cocoa with it.  Then it's actually decent.  I have another serving or two.  It wasn't getting fresher.  Might was well drink it up.

I famously don't care for peaches.  Mushy.   Canned peaches from 2nd Harvest are less awful because they are underripe and have some texture other than mush.  They come packed in pear juice, unsweetened.  Nothing wrong with them.  I drink the juice and eat the peaches with breakfast at work.  I'm generating a lot of empty cans which I hope to turn into a solar collector like this:

I could heat a solar dehydrator or the chicken coop or a tiny greenhouse   We'll see.  For now I get to spend my time cutting the bottoms out of cans.

8) Candle nubbin candles.

I like candles.  They fix the light from too many LEDs (the head lamp or flashlight or solar light I use for general and task lighting).    I also use a little candle heater.

Cans that have an integral bottom, not a welded or crimped on bottom, think salmon cans, make good containers for candle nubbin candles.  So does the "CAN-dle" that I got at thrift a few years ago.  It's a low flattish can that had a 3 wick candle in it for emergency heat and it fits in my candle heater (which does not heat the whole wee shed no matter what idiot youtubers say.  It's more candle than heater).  When I get candles, thrift or gift almost never new, burn them.  There is usually some candle nubbin left that didn't burn.  I store that in a tin or bag.   When the CAN-dle is used up, or mostly, or I have a good appropriate can, I put a bunch of nubbins in it, melt it on the woodstove...carefully.  Not when it is SUPER HOT more when it's died way way down.  Take it off...carefully.  Let it cool.  Right before it is totally set, I jam in a few dollar store birthday candles (40 for 1$) or smallish candles from thrift or gifts.  I found wicks at thrift once and found that letting the candle nubbin candle totally cool, then drilling a hole about wick size worked really well.   These don't burn perfectly, are usually a hideous color but they give light and I don't have to throw out the nubbins.

For those thinking of gifting me...think unscented!  They don't attract bugs AND they mix better in the nubbins.  Adding vanilla to bayberry to "wet forest" does not make for a nice smelling candle.  More like someone over ate cookies and pooped under a tree.

101 Money Saving Ideas: Numbers 42-59

To review:  Totally bogarting this series idea from Centsible Living with Money Mom on the youtubes.  She's awesome!  Watch her.

42 A dollar a pound, all year round.  This was part of hint #32 and I want to expand on it again because it really works. It's a food purchasing GOAL but not a hard line. So, what can you get this week at the local grocery stores for 1$/lb or less?  USUALLY potatoes, onions and bananas are available year round so those can be staples. All are flexible.  E.g. my favorite soup is potatoes and an onion.  About 4 medium to large potatoes and 1 medium to large onion.  Dice them up, add 4-5 cups of water.  Boil until tender. Eat.  It's super good when sick or tired or sick and tired (so basically every day for me since I find my fellow humans exhausting).  Change it up with spices, a diced boiled egg, drop a raw beaten egg in there and bring to the boil while stirring to make potato egg drop soup.  A bit of lemon juice, lime juice or vinegar in your bowl just before you eat it will make this incredibly delicious.  Mexican spices, Italian, whatever you have, poultry seasoning you can never seem to use up, a knob of ginger diced up ...ANYTHING is good in here.  Maybe not sugar but who knows.
The left overs turn into mashed potatoes eventually.

What else is 1$/lb or less this week?
24oz loaf of bread for 99cents...that's under 1$/lb
Pasta is right at 1$/lb and as a dried product, cooked up it is even a better savings.
Remember that principle with dried beans too if you have a way to cook them!  1lb of dry beans will make 2-4 lbs of cooked.  Canned beans are often 1$/lb but not nearly as good a deal as the dried.  If you don't have good cooking facilities, canned are the better deal.
Frozen veggies, 99cents/lb
2 jumbo cantaloupes for 5$...WEIGH them.  You're bound to find a couple that are 2.5lbs or more making them 1$/lb or less.  I'm almost ready to start carrying a little hanging scale and old onion bag so I can weigh at the Grocery Outlet and etc where fruit and veg is all by the piece or bag.
You may notice I left out all sugary drinks.  Those are never a deal even at under 1$/lb because they are not nutritious.  But if you must drink them (and sometimes I must), then pay less.
You probably won't find coffee and spices this low so techniques on those later in the list (probably)

43  No Plastic Days.  Just TRY to spend money without acquiring plastic!  You may not spend at all or you may spend less.  Be mindful of packaging and of the plastic coated receipt paper!   Once in a while I shop online but that is just acquiring the plastic later.  Also, usually can't check mail on a "no plastic day" because of those damn little windows in the envelopes.  Those CAN just be open without plastic like they used to be or your address could be on the envelope...like the old days.  If only.  I spend time when watching a movie or youtubes tearing those damn things out so I can burn or recycle the envelope  Aggravating.

44  Write a letter.  Sure, the stamp costs you something, but it takes up time you might be spending or online shopping, and you get ZERO targeted ads based on handwritten letters.  Your emails, facebooks, texts and cell phone calls are scanned and you get targeted ads.  If you manage to turn off the snooping on your own email/phone, etc, likely the person on the receiving end did not.  And you get targeted ads.  Try even talking by someone's smart phone. I like to say things like "Nutterbutter ice cream sandwich" or "artisan" and watch the ads roll in next time I'm on the internet.  Creepy man.  Targeted ads are more effective, that's why they do them.  So get targeted for things you don't use, at least. And at best, avoid being targeted.   People also love getting letters. 

45  Review your insurance(s).  I try to do this once a year or so and see if there are savings, if a rate deal has been dropped (e.g. I need to take another cheap defensive driving course in order to get money off my car insurance).  Call the insurance agency, not just email and online.  Get someone on the phone.  It shocks them.  They might drop it a few dollars.  Maybe get some easy online quotes and see if you can get something cheaper.

46  Can you consolidate some of your items/tasks/bills and save $$?  You never know.  A few years back I reorganized, culled and consolidated 2 storage units into 1 slightly larger than the previous "big" unit (heh heh) which save 50$/month.  I'm going to try another cull to see if I can minimize it again and maybe get down a size again...though I like the location.  But you say...why have a storage unit?  Get rid of that sh*t! Well, yes, ideally (see #47) I would do that.  But alas, living in 135sq feet and wanting my furniture for the house being built as we type, I have it in storage.  I am a genetic hoarder so have to downsize in phases.  That's what works for me,

47  Get rid of crap in storage units.  This saves you the storage costs.  If you are lucky, you can sell some of your crap and/or share it out to people who will appreciate and use it.  In #46 I get defensive about why I am keeping my crap in storage.  And another thing...about a 5'x5' portion, 11' tall, of the storage is "live" storage where I keep things like off season clothes, extra food storage containers, a gift bin so I can buy gifts when they are on sale.  The stuff outside that goes through periodic culls.  I'm working on it.  #genetichoarder!

48  Drink Tap Water.  Guess what is in those bottles and gallons of water you buy...TAP WATER.  Maybe it's spring water and maybe it comes from somewhere with "springs" in the name.  Much of the time it's tap water.  It's EXPENSIVE.  Drink tap water.  I bring tap water from work to my house because I haven't bothered to get the well tested (house! HA!  I flatter the shed sometimes).  It's not hard.  You fill about 1 gallon a day and bring it home for drinking and cooking.  Live on the streets?  Well, then you have bigger issues.  Chlorine in your water?  Air it out a bit or get a filter pitcher AT A THRIFT STORE.  I also generally found the filters, still packaged, at thrift stores.  Also, lots of people drink chlorine water.  Maybe work with your town if you don't want it in there.
So, how much is it to drink bottled water which is total BS on so many levels....at least refill the goddamn bottle.
1 qt of bottled water is about $1.50, maybe a buck.  I get a gallon of distilled (for the solar batteries) for a dollar or so.  We'll be nice and say 1$/day for buying bottled water.   Cost of municipal tap water per gallon?  $0.002  on average.  That's 2 onehundredths of a cent per gallon for well water?  I spent 19,000 or so on the well and solar to run it (but the solar does more).  I use about 500gallons a week in the summer when watering the garden.  Less in the winter or rainy season.  So, let's call it 250gallons a week...250/7 = 35/day.   I've used the well for 5 years and 6 months or so... 19000/5.5years = $3555 per year/365 9.45/day cost for 35 gallons.  9.45/35 =   $0.27per gallon!!! Already cheaper than buying water!! Woot woot!   It gets cheaper every time I use it.  I don't waste it to drive down the cost. I 'm very frugal with my water usage.  Aquafers are precious resources and one does not save money by wasting water.

49  Change clothes when you get home.  I hate doing this but I try.  Right now it's so HOT that I change into thin pants and tissue thin shirts before working around the property after work. Easier to wash those.  I keep "work pants" hanging on a hook all year round.  Those get washed less and are sacrificial pants.  They are meant to be worn out and stained and grubbed up.  Changing out of "office worthy" pants and shirts saves those.  It means I've been wearing the same jeans to work for years and my office shirts last for years too.  Boring, but cheap! 

50  The clothes/fabric use chain.  When clothes DO wear out and are not shareable, tradeable, donateable, then what?  For me, they get torn into rags.  Seams on jeans and the waste band are usually strong even after the fabric rots.  I use them to tie up stuff in the garden.  Since I wear 100% cotton most of the time, or 100% wool/linen/natural if at all possible, these things decompose into the soil eventually rather than being there as plastic bits forever (functionally forever...who knows when that sh*t goes away?).   The main body of the clothes get used as wash clothes or reusable rags until they are so bad they become a 1 use rag to be trashed.  These are good for engine oil checking.  Or for wiping up greasy spills and then being used to start fires (in the woodstove...not just random locations).  Elastic off bras and undies has various uses as well...tie up tomatoes etc.  But, has to be gathered up as it won't decompose in a reasonable amount of time.  I keep a bag on a shelf near the other cleaning products for clothes that need to be rags now.  I fish in there for what I need when I run out of wash clothes, or am crafting, or need to start a fire and paper isn't cutting it to get the kindling going.

51  Do something while you stare at the TV/Computer/Whatever.  Watching a movie or show or random youtubes?  Do something.  Lately I've been folding boxes for mustard samples. You probably don't need to do that, but maybe you have mending or you like to knit.  I like to darn socks while I watch a movie or listen to a book.  Don't have any that need darning right now but I do need mustard sample boxes.  In fact, I'm blogging this during a work webinar.  Maybe I shouldn't but the webinar has repetitive bits so when something is being repeated, I type.  Then tune back in when it's new info.

52  Sell something you like to make/do.  This is new to me, but I'm testing it out.  I like to make mustard so I started selling it.  I'm tracking the money to see if the cost/benefit works out in my favor. It takes time and space, 2 things I don't have lots of to spare.  But, I like doing it.  And so far the mustard is selling at a local farmers market.  I'm just above break-even right now and had to do a price adjustment so we'll see.  Some people cook meals for those without time or space, others do sewing alterations, manual labor, or whatever.  It doesn't hurt and might be worth a try.

53  Keep Long Term Goals In Mind.  These would be financial related mostly.  Like I want to retire some day.  Every day I spend half what I earn, I earn a day of NOT WORKING because I have that amount of money saved (hopefully with interest) to pay for that day of retirement.  This is above and beyond my retirement fund and Social Security.  Another goal is having a house, garden and land the way I want.  I hasn't been super cheap getting toward that and compromises have and continue to be made, but if I keep going the way I'm going, I will get there debt free.  When I was trying to buy land I had a cost per square foot so before I spent $$ on something, I figured out how many square feet of land I could buy instead.  It wasn't totally accurate but it helped keep the spending down.

54  Gratitude moments.  I take a moment now and then when I get discouraged with the thrift and just want a giant expensive meal out or a 7$ iced coffee on a no spend day.  I use that moment to think through things in my personal life that I am grateful for.  Many of them end up having to do with being debt free and having my spending mostly under control.  Like I'm always grateful for being debt free.  A bad day at work is less bad when you know you COULD stomp out in a huff and not come back and still not lose your home.  So far that has meant I did not have to stomp out because I had a better perspective on things.  It keeps me on track.

55  Everything is a choice.  You are not a victim of your debt, your costs, your job, people/charities begging you for money, any loans you've given.  Everything you've done, including inhaling, was a choice.  So, move on.  Make a new choice.  Choose to pay the debt off.  Choose to forgive the loans you handed out unwisely or to openly ask for the money back or to sue the bastards.  Do it.  Choose to learn boundaries and enforce them with money.

56  Free Fruit!  Nice segue.  Or not.  Fruit is getting ripe right now.  Time to put the apple picker in the car and the eyes peeled for random fruit trees along the road, in people's yards, in parks.  Always ask if the tree looks like someone owns it or in a town park.  And be mindful of pesticide and herbicides that might be on them.  People spit pits out windows for generations so lots of apples and pears along highways, old RR beds, trails.  Many are delicious.  Some are crap.  Taste them if you feel comfortable.  If it looks like the area has been sprayed (lots of dead veg and/or few bugs) then I pass it up.  But often I pick them.  You get pesticides on grocery fruit too.  Wash it.  Make your own choices (see #55).  A friend has a cherry tree and calls people to pick each year.  I go and I share out the fruit and eat some.  Spent yesterday evening picking serviceberries (which are late this year) and eating them.  Some went into vinegar which will preserve them and flavor the vinegar.  I'll get more for several evenings in a row here.  Other berries are getting ripe.  Pick them.  When someone offers you their home grown fruit say yes, and thank you and enjoy and share something back sometime.

57  Free meat!  I help a friend butcher chickens and ducks and will help her butcher whatever comes up next.  I learn something and always get a bit of free meat with the new skills.  Sometimes I invest in meat with her, like when she bought ducks so grow and butcher.  I paid in for some of the ducks and helped with the meat production.  That wasn't free, but was cheap.  Some people grab roadkill. I haven't yet, but I'm all for it and someday hope to run across a fresh kill when I have my knife and something to put it in.

58  Free veg!  It's zucchini time here.  When someone asks if I want some, I say yes and take it.  Fry it, eat it raw, dry it, bake it, put it in soup.  It's good food.  Eat it.  If you have a freezer, shred it and freeze it.  Drying is my favorite because it becomes differently delicious in soups later.  Also just eating it as dried chips is good.  Don't forget mushrooms and other wild food you can gather beyond the berries noted above.  I know mushrooms aren't really veg but I didn't want to do another entry on this.  Enough already.

59  Grow some flavor.  A pot of herbs or an herb garden, some onions, garlic, peppers, or other flavory things in the garden or a pot will help with all that free zucchini.  And with flavoring that potato soup or other cheap food soups.  Herbs and spices are expensive, buy some seeds or learn to start them from cutting.  I hear you can root bits of basil from plant cuttings.  Maybe.  I have thyme, chives, tarragon, oregano, fennel, horseradish, radishes, 2 types of sage...no 3 types of sage, garlic, walking onions, sorrel (wild and garden), and probably more that I'm not thinking of.   Those all really help when I am grabbing a handful of greens to fry up or make salad.  Grab the herbs or garlic tops or an onion leaf (are the green things on onions leaves?  Blades?)  Anyway, it's cheap and healthy.  I have so much thyme I can dry it for the winter and have tasty soup all year. 

Mid and Longer Term Things to Do: This Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

So, work is shutting down but I'm the office point person.  I volunteered.  It makes sense.  With schools and daycares closed, those who were not as careful with the birth control have childcare and often elder care issues.  I solved that second bit with what is known as the "geographic fix" in the anonymous type organizations.  I moved. (Sorry Sher!)  (Sorrier Pam!)

Anyway, rather than beating people up for the last sheet of toilet paper, perhaps we could do things that might really work.  Remember: you can wipe your butt with anything, just don't flush it.
With a humanure bucket toilet (which might be a good idea to start...and which I thought I had blogged but can't find a post so maybe a blog on that) I don't have to worry about clogs so as long as I'm not using plastic bags to do the job, my wiper can go in the system.
If you're rich, get a composting toilet and paper that decomposes easily should work.

I ran into this video on one of my favorite YouTube channels.  The lady has passed away and her advice is still good.  With so many people off work without benefits and the congress busy gutting the benefits bill, frugality NOW will help you both be and feel more in control of your finances from here on out.  (I hear that that "feeling" bit is important to some people.  Not my bag but whatever.  I'd rather be in control than feel in control.)

https://youtu.be/fgq5lqd4cxc

Her basic tips:
Family
Have a garden
Use and re-use
Make your own meals
Eat healthy

I figure "friends" count as family too as does the neighborhood.   So I emailed my phone number to my across the road neighbor (she was easy to find as she is a college professor).  We don't really chat because neither of us is like that.  But when I was waiting on a tow truck, she hollered over asking if I needed a ride.  When I go to the community band concerts where she plays the kettle drums, I say hi and chat about nothing for a minute.  We're both cranky so I assume we're both effective people.
She's older than I am and may end up not allowed out.  I can drop some groceries to her if need be.  Or meds.

As for the garden...check.  Do plant one.  Lots of libraries now have "seed libraries" and may be able to get some to you even if they are closed.  Stores are open and seeds are cheap.  You don't need the best and brightest to get started.  Cheap radishes are good.  They grow fast and are tasty and pretty.  Kids and old people love them.  You can dice up the greens and put them in fried eggs or use them in salads.  Let a few good looking early ones go to seed.  Replant every week.
In my raised bed, I had lettuce coming on and a volunteer kale (not because I meant to keep seed...because I was lazy).  We had a cold snap that might have killed them but it was nice to see something get started.
Lettuce is fast too.  Carrots are pretty easy to get going and you can use the tops like parsely.

As for Use and Re-Use...maybe don't reuse the TP unless you've gone with butt-cloths and you wash them between uses.
As for food...buy the whole version of veggies.  Carrots with tops.  Celery as whole bunches.  Skip the sliced and the diced and the trimmed.  Cut off the carrot about an inch down from the top.  Cut off the green bits (the tops) and use as parsley.  THEN, put the carrot nubbin, top side up, in a shallow container of water and watch the top regrow.  You can usually do this once.  Sometimes twice.  With celery, cut the stalks (not "stocks" as I keep seeing in stores...cripes) off about 1 inch up from the bottom.  Set the bottom in a bit of water.  Little celery stalks will grow up.  Remember to dry the celery leaves by laying them on a bit of paper (not that precious TP).  Use as a soup seasoning or in salad dressing when you don't have actual celery.  There's more.  Google it or tell those kids to figure it out with all their out-of-school free time.

As for the Make Your Own Meals...yes please!  I just gave a co-worker a recipe for homemade egg noodles because she couldn't find macaroni and wanted some.  She isn't much of a cook but has a pack of kids at home so it might be something to try with them.  One of them must have a knack for cooking.  Here's the video I sent her...with a note to skip the food coloring:

https://youtu.be/W2JzYzut_FE

Making your own meals is healthier and cheaper and will keep the kids busy.  Kids need to do real things that really help when a family or whomever they live with is/are going through a rough time.  Telling them to stare at a screen or play in the corner tells them they are ineffective and that carries through to adulthood.  Helping cook, garden, regrow a carrot top, find out how to do something, help with laundry, etc...let them help; it's all good for their stress level in the moment because they are making life better for their family/group and in the long run because each kid knows that he/she CAN make things better for themselves and those around them by DOING stuff.  There's research on this.  Look it up.

As for Eat Healthy, well, obviously.  Bingeing on sugary crap to make yourself feel better won't work.  A sugary diet makes one more susceptible to infections of all kinds.  Never mind the sugar-crash that can fuel bad "feelings" that so many of you find so important.  I do not understand why "eating healthy" is left off of the lists of things to do during this pandemic.  Worrying about not getting fastfood if you have a kitchen or even a hotpot or a wood stove and a pan (this does not apply to the homeless, destitute and others with so few resources...you get to eat whatever you can get your hands on safely), but for the majority of us, it is important.  Making your own meals makes it easier to eat healthy than to eat crap.


Thanks to Clara in the first video for her tips and for her family for putting the little video out yesterday from what they'd already filmed.
Her cooking and recipe videos are excellent and fun to watch.  Easy to cook along with.

DAMN YOU PLASTIC!!!

2019 for me is all about reducing plastic coming into my home/life/whatever.  It's a bit rough.

Each evening, when I remember which is about 75% of the time, I write down my plastic use/acquisition whatever.  I don't count plastic I salvage specifically to pass on to another person.  That sounds odd, but so am I.  Yesterday I picked up a plastic pallet for a friend who is coming to till up my garden.  She uses them as the base for her duck house.  easier to scrap the poo off and easier on the duck feet than a wooden pallet or wire base.  I get these used sitting in alleys or where ever.  I figure at least they are getting used longer before they end up in that plastic island in the Pacific ocean.  They are also out of the sunlight which should mean they degrade more slowly.  She is tracking the effect on the ducks.

ANYWAY...since China decided they don't want our dirty plastic buggering up their country, we've been able to "recycle" fewer types at my local recycling place.  I realized before that some of what we were putting there wasn't really recycled but instead just put in landfills later or polluting somewhere else.  When it quit being accepted, that point got driven home, as discussed in a previous post.
This article at CNN reminded me to redouble my reduction efforts:

CHINA'S RECYCLING BAN HAS SENT AMERICA'S PLASTIC TO MALAYSIA.  NOW THEY DON'T WANT IT - SO WHAT NEXT


I'm not linking that because the link will die in days anyway.


So, 2019 is as good a time as any to cut back on plastic.  The first step in figuring out how to get to a new place, on the planet or in life, is to know where you area when you start.  I did this with money budgeting and dieting.  If you don't face facts about the current situation, you don't understand why things aren't working.  This is why I started paying attention to my current plastic usage in January 2019.  It was higher than I thought...same with money and food intake when I started cutting those back.  Better to be honest with oneself than to keep pretending you didn't eat an entire box of nutty buddies (damn you Little Debbie!) or buy an old hotel safe for a silverware drawer (damn you Craigslist!).

About a week in to tracking plastic use, I started where I seemed to have the most coming in...groceries.  Damn you convenience!   I now do better at remembering to bring my own bag or ask for paper or just carry arm loads of crap to the car.  I took empty jars and coffee cans with reasonably tight lids to the food co-op and wrote the tare weights on them empty.  Same with the produce bags I've been given over the years.

For solstice a favorite aunt sent me a new beeswax food wrap!  Thanks Marcie!  (other aunts are favorites too). Getting one of these per year would be ideal.  They last a long time but eventually get mungy and the wax flakes and things. She also wisely chose the one made on organic cotton and packaged in paper.  Some are hemp fabric and I am allergic so that I would have passed on to another person.  I looked up how to make my own wax wraps online and may try it.  We'll see.  I am nothing if not lazy.   So, using that for left overs or apples or whatever instead of cling wrap is another good way to cut back on the plastic, especially the thin plastic.

Cutting back on using plastic bags for my bulk foods purchases wasn't too hard, though when I forget a container or end up at a store where they don't let me use my own container or won't deduct the tare weight from the total weight...I have to start debating.  I have found that some places will let me re-use a paper bag for bulk foods (like nuts 'n such) but not a jar...I don't get it but I did start saving the paper bags that are in good shape and found some lunch sacks (in plastic dammit!) at a thrift store for super cheap and try to remember to throw a couple of those in the grocery basket Sherry (Hi Sherry!) got me years ago for Xmas and it's still good and I still use it almost every day.  It's made of plastic but more on durable plastic vs single use below.

Packaging on foods is a tough one.  I end up buying more bulk, more fresh fruit and veg, and precious little meat.  Sardines in tins and tuna in tins has less plastic than wrapped meats.  Getting my own meat, e.g. fishing or going to a friend's house when she butchers (Hi Cindy!) ducks and chickens works pretty well.  Cindy pressure cans the meat usually so only the lid liner on the re-used jars is new plastic. I think meat independence and canning, drying, and pickling meat will help me with this.  Also...beans.  But I'm taking yoga and lifting weights so I don't want to eat TOOO many beans and then be that lady in yoga who farts through the whole class.  When I lift at the gym, I'm usually alone, then I sneak out a toot and instantly someone else shows up and I don't even have a dog to blame it on.  So, easing beans into the diet.

The bit that should not have surprised me is how much healthier it is to eat when one avoids plastic.  I end up buying "super foods"  (formerly known as "food") like steel cut oats, apples, potatoes, carrots, lentils, rice, flour to make my own breads, and etc.  I'll do a "super foods" rant in a different blog.

When I'm traveling, and I end up REALLY wanting a coffee, having forgotten my plastic-free (or low plastic ) system of my travel french press (yay Planetary Design from a thrift store!) and an insulated stainless steel bottle of super hot water (yay thrift stores!), then I do a drive through.  I try to get the least plastic but alas and alack, those damn coffee lids.  I do get a lid when I forget my own mug because showing up to whatever meeting with a giant brown coffee stain from chin to knees is not super professional. Showing up without the proper level of caffeine in my blood stream results in other non-professional behavior.  I'm keeping an eye out for more of those french presses at thrift so I can keep one and a jar of coffee in the car. Hot water can be had at most gas stations and grocery stores.  I HAD 2 extras but passed them on to friends who were looking for ways to avoid the constant plastic waste from the keurig type coffee makers most offices at work went to.  (I did break down and use the keurig twice last week...to avoid flaming out at a colleague who was getting on my last nerve).

I have also found that some restaurants with drive-thrus use less plastic than others and have targeted those. The one where they hand-patty their burgers and sell them in paper bags with paper wrappers closed...due to employee cash theft or something.  (Damn you underpaid fast food workers!)  A local cafe started a drive up window if you call ahead and I have used it a few times because they cook from scratch and do their best to use up food which will result in less food and plastic waste.  BUT they now put the meal in a styrofoam clamshell, in a thin plastic grocery bag.  If their BLTs weren't so damn good (at the lunch shift..the youngsters working in the evening use cold half cooked bacon fat blobs and yet somehow get the sandwich to sweat in clamshell...and once I had to tell them what the B, the L and the T stood for...and I ended up with a cold sweaty cheese burger in a plastic box.  That pretty well cured me of ordering there in the evening. (Thanks slightly dim cafe worker kid!) I could order an extra lunch and bring that sandwich wrap thing if I planned ahead and walked into the restaurant). 

The quest for the plastic free restaurant and to-go meal resulted in me using that as an excuse to eat at too many drive thrus and restaurants with resulted in 5lbs gained and quite a chunk of change lost.  I warned my new co-worker that May was all about NOT having delicious restaurant lunches when we are out of town.  I'm trying to keep and apple and container of nuts (bulk purchased) in my bag or car at all times to avoid this.  So far, remembering it about 50% of the time.

For non-food type plastic avoidance, things get more complicated still.  I have stopped buying anything but wood or metal stakes for my plants and tree starts.  More expensive than fiberglass and plastics, but also more re-usable.

Sometimes I cop to a durable plastic item that I will use and re-use.  And if I can get it used, all the better.  I still grab 5-gallon plastic buckets at the recycling center free bucket bin.  These are the corner stone of my composting toilet system.  They seem to last years.  A bucket starts as a storage unit for bee equipment or food, or seeds or whatever.  Or as a toilet buck (old crusty weak buckets that have been in the sun and the plastic is brittle are not a good option for toilets ...I don't want to risk a break down mid---well, you know).  Once a toilet bucket, it stays a toilet bucket until it might get weak and then it is an outside garbage bucket for when I have to pick up trucker bombs by the highway (with gloves) and haul those to a dumpster.  I'm afraid I'm not willing yet to pour out the trucker pee from the old plastic they peed in and threw on my property.  It goes in a well used bucket, into the back of the truck, and to the dumpster.  I'm not unwilling to have pee on my land, but god knows what the high levels of no-doze or painkillers would do to my flora and fauna.
Storage buckets move next to water hauling buckets, then to tool and trash hauling buckets before retirement to the recycling center or dumpster depending on the type of plastic and whether I can recycle it right now.

When I buy buckets to use on the property, I go for metal which is about double the cost of a plastic bucket and lasts, apparently, forever.  These don't have air-tight lids so aren't great for some storage needs.

Buying clothes...I buy mostly at thrift but undies need to be new.  I found some (at a 2nd run retail where old retail goes to die) new and on a plastic hangar rather than in a plastic bag.  I don't know which is better or worse. I looked in to buying online, but the packaging for shipping is usually a few layers of plastic bags, and the undies cost more. So...dear readers who know me....cotton undies size 6 hipster style would be excellent Xmas and Bday presents.

I try to avoid nylon, polyester...actually this will be shorter: I try to buy cotton and wool and leather/suede clothes rather than synthetics.   And almost all from thrift.  Sox and undies and some shoes/boots I buy new.  I look for durable and the highest natural fiber content I can get, then look at style and color.  I do have several fishing shirts with pit-zipper vents that are mostly synthetic.  I have yet to wear one of these out.  One was a gift and is at least 10 years old.  These qualify as a "durable" plastic to me.  I find that less offensive than one-off things like store bags.  I go for high quality so I can stitch up rips and tears an patch them and get maximum life out of them.  The synthetics still give off micro-trash in the washer and dryer that ends up in the streams and in the wind and harms the environment so I'm still trying to limit the number of these I own, minimize the washing/drying especially at the laundromat where the wear and tear sends more of the fabric downstream/wind.  Hand washing and hang drying tears them up less and they last longer.  People must be sick of seeing me in the same 10 shirts, but do I care?  I do not.

Buying thrift store stuff...Goodwill locally now bags things like candles, matches, office supplies and other smaller goods in PLASTIC!  Dammit! I use lots of candles as light spectrum correctives at my place because I use rechargable LED lights which are a bit blue and annoying.  Also, a candle is a nice minimal light and makes one feel warm.  But I don't want a big plastic bag on my cheap candles.  I'm re-melting candle nubbins and trying to make more candles with candle wicks I find at thrift.  The wicks have less plastic on them than the bagged candles.  So far, not a crashing success and I'm hoping to be able to make my own wicks some day.  I have bees so perhaps I will also have beeswax, but not enough for the next few years at least.

I may have to revert to new paper goods over thrift store office supplies or find alternative, grungier, thrift stores for paper because the plastic bags really annoy me.

When I do get plastic bags, I re-use them.  I have a high quality smallish plastic store bag that I call "the bag of bags" and rinse, dried plastic bags, and other bags, get stuffed in there.  Then when I'm casting about the wee shed for a bag to put something in (perhaps an apple and some nuts) I know where to find a reasonable clean one.  If I'm giving food away I find people like to see it in a zip-type bag.  I get those when people give me stuff, wash them out, and re-use. I tried giving stuff in an obviously re-used paper sack and some folks got grossed out.  I have many tin, steel and glass containers but stopped handing food out in those because only a small subset came back to me and it was pissing me off.

I have also been tracking plastic-coated paper.  Partly because I can't compost this or make it into paper fire bricks.  Coffee hut coffee cups ...usually plasticized.  Receipts from stores (which I take to track my budget) ...usually plasticized.  Junk mail, catalogs, etc etc etc...often plasticized.
I'm also finding plasticized stickers on my local organic apples!  GEEZ!!! Really food co-op?   If I can get a couple of root cellars going I hope to buy and grow basic vegetables and fruit to avoid more of those stupid stickers.


Then there is the plastic people give you.  I'm trying to do a number of plastic-free days per month, just like the "no spend" days that help my budget.  I will be going along well, not buying anything, not using the keurig coffee at work, drinking tap water rather than bottled, etc.  THEN someone will give me a gift or office supplies arrive at work.  In plastic or made of plastic. Dammit!  It is everywhere.   I'm lucky to get 5 or 6 days a month without plastic coming into my possession.  If I stay home, see no one, buy nothing, I can do it.  That is my preferred mode of living, but with a job and volunteering and people knowing where I live, it doesn't happen often.

Specific to me things...I went "foundationless" on my bees, though I'm using bits of plastic foundation I already had as comb guides in the hives. That wasn't "new" to me plastic and if it works, it will cut back on the apiary plastic consumption.  I got 2 packages of bees (more in another post) and those came not in the old wood and screen type packages but in STUPID plastic packages!  DAMMIT!!!  I don't know if they will take these at recycling and I'm looking for ways to re-use them.  Perhaps mouse traps?  Queen excluders?  Entrance reducers? Hive ventilation?

Any and all ideas on how to avoid, limit, reuse, recycle and otherwise reduce plastic in my life are welcome.

What Do "Regular" People Spend on Groceries and Food????? ???

So, I was listening to the radio last night.  The little solar powered (also a dynamo crank if there isn't sun) that my sister bought me years ago.  Still works although the handle broke off the crank and the broken end digs into my hand.   ANYWAY, listening to the radio.  The John Tesh show.  I can only get about 3 stations and it was that, music I loathed, or christian radio.  I can tolerate the 1980s power ballad line up on that show if not the "info for your life" bits he does.

An advertisement comes on with little Johnny Tesh's voice.  Marketing some pre-packaged-DIY meal/food delivery thing.  The selling points were "only 10$ a plate" and "faster than waiting for expensive delivery food."

I would not put "only" in front of "10$ a plate."  That would mean spending 30$ a day per person on meals.  Coffee trips, snacks, and meal time/other beverages not included.  900$/month for just your meals.   If it's only supper, still 300$ a month and you've got a lot of eating left to do.

My monthly grocery budget for high end organic food is under 200$. I spend about 50$ a month dining out for work lunches or treats and 20$ a month is currently in the "coffee out" budget so I can have a coffee with a friend about twice a month or do a drive through espresso if I'm on the way to an especially crap meeting.

270$ a month.  That's all meals, beverages and treats.  OK, in fairness, the 1$ popcorn at the local independent 2nd run theater goes in the "entertainment" budget line.  I see an average of 6 movies there a year so $270.50 a month if we're being totally honest.

What do "normal" non-thrifty people spend on groceries and food????

Do the people subscribing to these services sending them prepackaged meal kits think they are saving $$? 
Are they saving $$?

How much can they spend on food?

And what of the waste (much of it while the meal kit is being prepared and put together in the factory)?
What of the packaging?  How much food-packaging trash do these people haul out of the house (or pile on the floor if they are hoarders...no judgment)?

I've been being "lazy" by buying bag-o-salad which I find wasteful and feel guilty about.

I've checked some online resources for "average food budget" and I come in low for my income-level, and will be cutting back to afford some other things this year. 

Most sites note that people eat many meals at restaurants, as take-out, or delivery.  That wouldn't seem to be true in rural areas but maybe it is.  If so, the 10$ a plate wouldn't seem AS bad to those who buy restaurant and delivery frequently.  And the level of food and packaging waste would not be as dramatic as it would for me.

To each her own I suppose.

I like to cook and I don't mind butchering chickens, gardening, canning, and doing dishes.  Those meal delivery kits are not for me.

If You Love Something...Set It Free

So, I was with some young people this weekend who were graduating from college and moving out of their college apartment.  Said apartment was partly furnished with things I used to own.  I fobbed the things off on them (couch, dining table and chairs, dishes, appliances, etc) when I moved out of the Plummer single-wide.  The couch I had bought (through the mail, cheap), the rest were gifts either new or pawned off on me when I set up housekeeping decades ago.

Let's trace the life of the table and chairs. 
When I was 8, my family bought a house and contents from a distant relative who'd either died or gone to the home to wait to die. 
Among the contents was a table with 4 chairs.  It was covered in ugly paint but super sturdy.  Eventually I moved out to go to college.  At some point during my thorough college career, this table and chairs came to live with me, paint stripped off.  I think it was when I was in grad school so about 1989.  I've had it until then and used it a TON.  Eventually put varnish on it (sorry Mom!  I used it without varnish for a while).  Moved it hither and yon, back and forth across the country multiple times.  All the while acquiring more dining sets.  Now that I'm smallify-ing my life, it was time for the table to find a new home.  When a young friend was getting his apartment with a girlfriend I thought "BINGO!" and helped him move, bringing along the couch and table/chairs, various plates, dishes, appliances, and etc that I no longer needed.  Don't worry...I still have several tables so if anyone else is starting up, I can donate more.

They've used it for a few years.  It's showing its age.  A leg is cracked, the chairs need to be reglued.  BUT, still a good solid oak set.  They could not move it or the couch with them. The couch was pretty well shot (cheap, mail-order, flat-pack so lasting 12 years was really good anyway).  The couch cushions were all that was left.  These went in the dumpster...next day they were no longer in the dumpster and we saw one a few blocks from the apartment. It had gone rogue. Perhaps trying to find the couch cushion mating area or the  burial grounds.  We don't know.

Anyway, on Sunday morning, it was the final push in the move so we set the table out by the dumpsters.  Within an hour it and the chairs were gone.  They'd found a new home and I'm sure whomever found them will enjoy them and pass on whatever portions are left when he/she is done with them or moves on.

This to me is one of the joys of a college town/neighborhood.  Things don't often go to waste.  They move on.   As we were hauling the mattress out one of the young people suggested we put it near the median where they got it.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repeat.

They did move some of the art, the good blankets, and the favorite bugs bunny waffle iron.  I was honored that some of my cast offs and gifts were among the things worthy of being kept and differently honored that some of the things were passed on.

O-Pads! A Great Idea

Of course I have not vetted this as to actual delivery rates etc, but it seems like a SUPER idea.

For a 20$ donation you can provide a young woman with a supply of re-usable menstrual pads.

http://www.opads.info/

What a great idea!   The struggle of girls in Uganda, where they are made, and in many places (say...Iowa were I grew up) with embarrassment over menstruation stains and spills and what not is grim.  Not to mention the ruined clothes. Then add to that the monthly expense in places where there is just not the money for it.  Women and girls can end up hiding out for the week.  That affects schooling, income, and freedom.  Makes me appreciate the GIANT Stayfree pads of my youth.  Sure, it looked like had a hoagie bun stuffed in the crotch of my skin tight Zena jeans, but at least I could go to school.  Of course, I shortly switched to tampons.  More "discrete" but still spendy.  I just dropped 20$ for decent tampons.  Someday I should calculate what I've spent.  But not today.

So, this woman developed the charity o-pads to get reliable menstrual pads to women.
Wilbur Sargunaraj (one of my favorite you-tubers) made this video with her:




First class! (as Wilbur would say).  More environmentally friendly than disposables and they are made from fabric scraps by women the founder knows so providing jobs as well.  They believe the 7 pad pack will last a woman 1 year.  I bet careful washing will make them last longer.  Very frugal.

(Also...Wilbur sells those pants and I seriously want some.)

Extremely Useful Things for the Makeshift Water System

So I've been thinking a bit about water.  OK.  I've been thinking a great deal about water.  Like I need a well and it's expensive and you don't know the price until it's done and in.

I'm still hauling water a gallon at a time from work and from friend's houses and from wherever I find myself.  I keep the empty gallon jugs in the car and fill up as I go.  A friend just asked if she could have a couple of gallon jugs for a raft trip and I blanched...uh...they are all in a constant rotation and in use.

There you have the first useful thing: Gallon jugs.  Bigger containers are fine too, but not as useful.  One can discretely fill a gallon.  Filling a 5 gallon is less discrete and requires a spigot and/or a hose or filling a gallon which you then dump into the bigger jug.  FYI: garden hoses are chock full of toxins that they leach into the water.  I don't want to use them for drinking water.

Here's my current system for the gallons:  Fill 2 or 3 per day during the work week.  2-3 at a time are in the freezer part of the work fridge.  These are swapped out every 2 days and taken in a transport cooler to my homestead where transfer them into the 2-3 coolers I have with chill foods in them.  The thawing gallons from the chill food coolers go into the empty transport cooler.  One often just becomes the current drinking supply.   The chilly thawing ice water is used for the final hair rinse or refreshing drink.  I also use that transport cooler and the thawing gallons to chill left overs or new foods headed to the chill coolers.  That saves my frozen gallons in the chill cooler for an extra several hours. I can usually make it 2 days, unless it's in the 90s, on one ice transport. The weekends are a challenge when it's hot.  Sometimes I will run errands in the town where I work, which is not the preferred errand town, so that I can pick up fresh frozen gallons.  Not ideal, but cheaper than a well and an electrical system.

That system brings up another extremely useful thing for this makeshift water system: a good cooler.  Right now I have 5. Only one was bought new and that was about 2 decades ago.  One is a vintage metal cooler.  It's rugged but doesn't hold cold very well so it is a transport cooler and has another task that will appear later or in another blog.  One was a cast off from a friend that I meant to use just for one trip, but it fit so well on the floor of the car and is a great size in general...a frozen gallon fits well and leaves room for a dozen eggs right on top of the gallon (this is the non-handle tall square gallon water style, not the milk jug style).  The other two are recent thrift buys because the system is better with a spare or two.

At the end of a day, if there is a partial gallon and I'm not short on drinking water, I empty the partial into a sun tea style glass jar with a spigot at the bottom.  I have a one gallon one inside the camper at the sink for hand washing and whatever.  A 2 gallon model is on the old library desk that serves as an outdoor kitchen area.  It is over a 5 gallon bucket so the drain water can be reused.

Which leads to the 5 gallon buckets...so many uses.  In the water system they are my drains and my irrigators.  Often one serving both purposes.  If there is nothing greasy or soapy in the drain bucket water (and I try to keep both out of there), it can go on the garden or compost pile.  If it's greasy or soapy it goes either down a gopher hole as gopher harassment, or into the bucket-trap for mice.

I also use buckets, these a bit smaller than 5 gallon, to haul water from the creek to the holding tank buy the garden bed.  We'll get to the tank in a moment.  The haul buckets are smaller because 1) I had them on hand and 2) easier to carry 3 gallons on each hand than 5 gallons on each hand.  They are 3 gallon buckets from the recycling center's free-bucket bin.  If people have used buckets or rubber tubs or whatever, they put them in the bin and anyone can take them and use them.  I have another bucket at the creek. I walk down to the creek, not far, yards rather than miles, use the creek bucket to fill the haul buckets.  Then up the bank and pour into the holding tank.

So...the holding tank.  This is a LARGE plastic tub I got at....the recycling center free bucket bin.  Lots of things go in there.  It holds about 10 haul buckets worth of water. It would technically hold more but the wall strength isn't there.  It's starting to break so I keep the level down.  I do haul two final buckets from the creek and just leave the water in the buckets.  For a hot week, I haul twice a week or so.  On a not-hot week, once a week will be enough for the raised bed and all the containers to stay watered.  The holding tank isn't totally necessary, but really helpful.  For one, it allows the sediment to settle out.  For another, the water warms through the day and I tend to water in the evening when the shade hits the garden.  This way the water soaks in and the plants have time to take it in before it evaporates in the morning.  The warmer water won't shock the roots.

There is another portion of the water system...warm water.  A few elements contribute to this.

Solar shower.  I have one.  It's 2 years old and I left it lying outside all winter.  Still good.  15$.  Worth it.  It says it will hold 5 gallons but then I'd have to lift 5 gallons over my head and tie it up.  That's a great deal of weight and water.  I usually have 1-2 gallons in it.  On a sunny day it heats up nicely.  On a not so sunny day I can add a tea kettle of boiling water and it's good enough.

Tea kettle...for heating water for everything including showers, tea, coffee, and dish washing...on cloudy days.

Clear 3 gallon jugs are another key element in the warm water system.  These look like the jugs one sees in office water coolers, but smaller.  I have 2 3 gallons and also have 4 of the large 5 gallon versions.  All but one of these is from the free bucket bin.  The other is from next to a dumpster at a state park.  I cleaned them with borax followed by vinegar.  The new, shiny, clean ones are drinking water storage.  The questionable ones are the warm water system.  Just fill and leave in the sun.  It gets plenty warm enough to do dishes, wash hair, fill the gap when I forgot to ready the solar show in time to heat it up.  The 3 gallon size is manageable.  the 5 gallon size is heavy and awkward which is why they ended up as long term storage rather than active use.

That's about it for the water system. It works well and other than buying gallons of water initially, often at the dollar store, to get the gallon jugs, it's free.

Personal Pantry Challenge Lessons Part 2

I went through 10 lessons, or things, I learned in my 2 week PPC in the previous blog.  Here are some more:

11) Points out where I over/under buy.  E.g.  I have too many dried tomatoes.  I like to buy 20lb boxes of local tomatoes at the end of the season.  I dry tons of them.  This is fine because they store for ages, but not great from a food variety stand point.  More of them diced and canned, more as tomato powder, and using what I have before I buy again would be good.  Next fall I will try to remember to get OTHER things than just tomatoes.  We won't even discuss the number of pints of ketchup...  On the other hand, I ran out of grains.  I could use a bit more backstock of rice, barley, and the like.

12) Inspires me to be more creative with cooking.  Turns out you can make a damn fine soup with a jar of diced tomatoes, the remains of a can of fire roasted diced tomatoes, dehydrated onion, spices, a bit of fried garlic, and a can of coconut cream.  Coconut milk would be great too, but I had coconut cream.  It was quite a rich soup.

13) Made me plan ahead so I had protein and veg at every meal. I bought a dozen eggs at the start.  I didn't want to run out after the first week.  So I paid attention to how many I was using up.  At the end I boiled the last 3 so I could eat per meal without being tempted to make a giant frittata and use them all up at once.  I also rationed the carrots, onions, and celery a bit so I would make it 10 days with those to start a meal like soup, or lentils and cracked wheat.  Dehydrated veg are good, but not a soup is much much better with a newly sauteed onion rather than just dehydrated onion.  At the end, I remembered the sprout seeds in the cupboard and had sprouts under pickled beets as my side salad.  Quite nice really.

14) Made me more careful to use of all of a jar/bag/can of something.  If you've only got one can of coconut cream, scrape ALL of it out when making that soup.  I made muffins with the dregs of 3 different flours (regular, whole wheat, and cornmeal). I also remembered a tip that making salad dressing in the scraped out but unrinsed jam jar adds a bit of berry to the dressing (and avoids dirtying a new jar).

15) It was easy to meet calories per day due to honey and nut butters and seeds.  It was harder to feel filled up once the fresh fruit and veg dwindled.  I added gelatin (homemade jell-o with 2 envelopes knox gelatin, 1 can of zevia soda, a tablespoon of blackberry shrub, and 2 C hot water) for volume.  I even tried to be thrifty and filling by making gelatin with the juice from pickled beets.  It wasn't great and didn't all get eaten.  I'll go back to putting peeled boiled eggs in it as a quick lunch.

16) Some starchy veg like squash or potatoes was sorely missed after I ran out in the first week. With also being so low on grains, I was eating a very dense diet. 

17) Found the Mennonite cookbook, More-with-Less by Doris Janzen Longacre, very useful.  Of course the internet and having decades of cooking experience helped too. 

18) Herbs/spices became important for nutrition, such as putting 2T of herbs in an egg for a breakfast with a bit of fiber.

19) Condiments became side dishes.  I have large quantities (all homemade) of mustard, ketchup, kim chi, sauerkraut, and fermented carrots.  I started eating larger quantities than most people would.

20) It takes time, energy, and creativity to work with the remains of a food supply, even with a good amount in stock.  People in tough circumstances may not have time, energy, and creativity enough after coping with the rest of life. 

I'm sure I learned more but let's stop now, shall we?

I'm thinking of trying a food stamp budget one of these days.  I watched the documentary Food Stamped.  It's excellent and it's easy to point out all the mistakes both the bourgeois dabblers trying to live one week on a food stamp budget, and the actual food stamp recipients are making...but when one tries it either for interest or through necessity it's different. The documentarians tried living on a food stamp budget for a week.  They ended up not eating enough calories to maintain their healthy weights and activity levels.  One of the documentarians is a nutrition educator and was trying to find out if she and her husband could eat healthily on the budget.   Well...sort of. They were a bit low on the number of servings of fruit and veg, and low on calories.  A couple of the long term food stamp recipients knew the calorie game instinctively and bought foods that provide calories and bulk for the price.  These are cheap processed foods.  Neither approach is sustainable.   One thing the documentarians didn't do was buy flour or other grains.   I'd like to see if one could make up the calorie gap by making one's own bread and pancakes and muffins, and still leave enough $$ for the fruit and veg. 

I got my dander up on this watching them buy a challah for the sabbath dinner (this was a giant compromise since they should have had 2)...I was thinking that they could have gotten pounds of flour for the price of that one loaf of bread.  To that end, I looked up a recipe for refrigerator dough.  I already own yeast.  With refrigerator dough I won't need to make a giant quantity of bread at once.  It should also make a 100% whole wheat loaf more doable since it will have lots of time to slowly digest the flour.  I'm starting with regular flour though because that's what I found on sale (along with organic blue corn meal!  Gorgeous stuff!)  Sourdough bread is one way I got through a couple of my poorer times.  Not the world's most nutritious food, but not bad and extremely cheap.   Clearly I'm going to have to try it.