I decided this week was a great time to go over some of my recent frugal living/household management tips (I find that I often use "household management" in place of "homemaking" since I am still employed full time outside of the home as well). Sharing my frugal living and household management tips with my family and friends has become, over the past year, a HUGE passion of mine!!! My sweet husband is so supportive and told me the other day he thinks I have "found my niche" in doing that. My desire is to help others become better Christian stewards of their household, their finances, and the environment (many of you have heard me mention my love of being "green" when possible). I hope that some of you find these ideas helpful!
Anyway, this week was the perfect time to share some things because our refrigerator died last week (see pics below of empty "dead" refrigerator and sleek new black refigerator delivered to our house this weekend). Sorry the picture of the new one is so blurry and off-center!
In the process of cleaning out the "dead" refrigerator (we did lost most of the food in it). Praise the Lord we had a lot of our food frozen in the stand-alone freezer on our sunporch. In cleaning the old refrigerator out, I gained a LOT of containers that I had used to store things in (that goodness for the help of a dishwasher in washing them all out). I rarely, if ever, have to buy containers of any type for food storage. I resuse ones that I have had for years, and I also save useful containers that come as packaging for food we buy. Just because a container once held brand-name deli meat, or store-bought BBQ sauce, doesn't mean that it has to be tossed at the end of the life of it's contents. I pop many things into the dishwasher and they are GREAT for storage of food and things like homemade salad dressings!
In the picture below, I "rescued" some sauces and marinades from our dying refrigerator and was able to freeze them in the stand-alone freezer before they went bad (just a reminder - if you do this make sure you leave enough space in the bad or container or expansion from freezing). The container with the yellow top on the right is an example of what I was taking about. This is a Hillshire Farm deli meat container (they are some of the best). We long ago finished the deli meat, but the plastic container is definitely sturdy enough to be washed and reused again and again! And with the help of some labels, you can easily remember what was stored in what container. AND, you can simply put another label over the old one when you want to wash it and store something different. This reuse both saves money on buying containers and also keep another piece of plastic out of our landfills!
Another thing I love to reuse are glass and plastic bottles from vending machines. David often drinks Snapple and we have from time to time brought our occasional vending machine soda (even though I'm trying to give up soft drinks - oops). We have found a great use for these! We used to buy bottled water in the individual-serving sized bottles. But then I started to really notice how much cheaper bottled water is by the ounce if you buy it in gallon or larger containers (consumers end up paying for that extra packaing to put the water in individual serving bottles, AND it creates more waste for the trash - not cool!). SO, now we "save" a reasonable number of Snapple bottles and other bottles that have come out of the vending machine. I wash them in the dishwasher (remember - plastic bottles should go on th TOP rack away fron the heating element) and then transfer water from the big "gallon plus" containers into the smaller bottles via funnel. This way, we always have an individual serving bottle to take to work, but we save money AND keep our waste to a minimum. Below is an example of some of the bottles I have filled last week...
And guess what, when we use up the BIG gallon-plus containers of water (or 2 liter bottles of soda) those don't go in our trash, either! In our recent effort to be more preparadness-conscious in case of an emergency, we have started stockpiling tap water over the past month. We take the empty bottled water containers, fill them with tap water, seal them up, and mark them with "stockpile" on he front. We have a place in our house to keep these in case of an emergency when we could not get to the store to get water and city water was shut off. We prefer drinking bottled water in everyday life, but in an emergency tap water would certainly beat having no water at all! We love doing this because it is a way to reuse these containers AND be more prepared for a disaster...
While I was doing all of this in the kitchen this week, I tried a technique that my mother had recommended to me. I took the stuff out of our pantry and wrote the expiration date in large letters on the front of the items. This makes it easier to tell when you open the pantry what you need to use up quickly before it expires. I loved this idea! Now we make sure we don't waste pantry food. Thanks Mom (below is a small sampling of our pantry food with the labeling I did with a Sharpie)...
I was super excited as well to get slipcovers for the wing-back chairs in our living room (the ones we brough back from Mississippi). Recovering wingbacks usually costs about $300 EACH. WOW. And that does not include buying the material. I was able to slipcover BOTH of the chairs for a total of $180. $600 to reupholster and $180 to slipcover? I'll take the latter, thanks. Plus, slipcovers can be taken off and washed when they get dirty (a trait that I'm sure will be especially handy when we have children)...
We also got new lamps for our living room this week, as well as an accent lamp and pole lamp for our den. EXCITING!!! I used this as an opportunity to replace some of our light bulbs around the house with the new energy-saving bulbs. I got a huge box of them for free from Duke Energy (if you are a Duke Energy customer and want to know how, just ask me!). Nice to know that I'm helping the environment AND saving us money with a low electric bill!
And one last frugal & green tip - you know how many linens that you buy (shower curtains, bedding, etc) often come in the zip-up plastic bags? I LOVE reusing these!!! They are quite durable and can hold a good deal of stuff depening on what they originally packaged. I used one of the plastic bags that our slipcovers came in to hold my haircare products, which are typically scattered about all over the cabinets of our bathroom vanity. I have some organization, and one less thing goes in the trash. Love it!!!
So, like I said, it was a good week of saving and reusing. :-) I would love to hear some of your creative tips of reusing things and saving money!!!
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