Five Frugal Things

I began my more frugal journey with Rhonda Hetzel's Down-to-Earth blog and book and since then have gathered lots of ideas from many more blogs and books. I really enjoy reading about the simple everyday savings that people make and that I can do in our home too. Here are five frugal savings I've made of late:

Homemade lavender room spray.

I made up a simple and fragrant lavender room spray following the instructions I found on Wendy's blog, My Abundant Life. I mixed up cooled, boiled water and a small amount of water soluble lavender oil (from the supermarket) in a little spray bottle that once held a face toner. This room spray is simple, cheap, took very little time to make and smells beautiful without all the chemicals one would find in a tin of air freshener. I 💜it!

Delicious home baking.

There's always something baking at our place. Lately, some of the delicious mulberries from our dwarf tree, which we picked and froze by the handful, have found their way into homemade apple and mulberry pie. Mmm! The sweet orange juice, squeezed from my friend's homegrown fruit, has been the star ingredient in batches of orange breakfast muffins. A delicious way to make the most of gifted produce. Not one, but two chocolate slices were baked while the oven was already on. One was shared with friends for afternoon tea and one was sliced and frozen for another day. Everyday, inexpensive pantry staples, like flour and cocoa and coconut, became a home baked treat with a simple recipe and some time. 

A little sweet gift.

I made a simple little notelet card, for a loved one in lockdown, by reusing the front of an old greeting card, some homemade paper and a piece of ribbon from my stash. A tiny bar of chocolate was wrapped in some saved tissue paper and, together with my notelet and message, was sent on its way in a salvaged envelope. 

Magazines from the library.

Many years ago, I would faithfully buy this magazine every.single.month. I still enjoy reading it and looking at all of the beautiful country-style homes inside the pages, but I no longer buy it. Instead, I borrow it from the library. This magazine costs $8.50 at the supermarket so over the course of a year not buying it saves $102. I still get to enjoy it but for free!

A second hand bargain!

Two sets of this children's construction material were purchased second hand. Both sets are in excellent condition and cost at total of $50. A single, new set can cost more than that! All these plastic pieces will be used and enjoyed often instead of ending up in landfill. As I use this material regularly, in my work, I consider this a bargain as well as a saving of resources. 

None of these things, on their own, lead to jaw-dropping savings but a more frugal mindset has made me more resourceful, creative and conscious of what I do spend money on. That does lead to healthy savings over time, for us and for the Earth too.

I'd love to hear about the ways you save at your place.

Meg

Some More Simple Savings

Saving at our place is often about the little things, done often and over again. These more frugal things keep a little extra money in our family's cookie jar each week and add up over time. Many of the simple savings we make relate to the food we eat:

A nourishing homemade lunch.

We've had some cold days this past week, and I can think of nothing better than a bowlful of hot homemade soup on such shivery days. I made a huge pot of split pea and bacon soup earlier in the week and we've been enjoying it for lunch each day. I used yellow split peas, vegetable stock, onion and bacon, carrots and celery and a lone sweet potato, and added bay leaves and parsley that I grow in the garden. Here is a recipe, from the Erren's Kitchen website, for just such a soup. One big pot of a soup like this goes a long way!

A healthy & delicious afternoon snack.

Each week, I make a batch of homemade yoghurt. I make unsweetened yoghurt and top this with some fruit, like these locally-grown strawberries, in-season now and so far less expensive. I had one ripe passionfruit, left from those that came in my weekly produce box, so it's juicy pulp went on top too along with a sprinkling of chia seeds. Delicious!

While I use an EasiYo to set our yoghurt, I do not buy the matching sachets. Instead, I follow this recipe from Wendy over on her blog, My Abundant Life. (There are lots of money-saving tips in her blog's archives.) Not buying a tub of yoghurt from the supermarket each week saves us money but also reduces the amount of plastic coming into our home. (*I am not sponsored by anyone to promote EasiYo, it's just what I use to make yoghurt.)

Frozen portions of celery and capsicum.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought two huge bunches of crisp organic celery, 2 for $10, at a local health food grocery on a member's saver special. Celery has been incredibly expensive at times over the past year and organically grown celery even more so. (Here is an article from The Guardian about soaring celery prices.) Currently, at two major supermarkets, the price for a bunch of celery is $4. That's down from $7 a bunch. Given celery can be found among the list of fruit and veg with the dubious mantle of 'The Dirty Dozen', relating to those most likely contaminated by pesticide residue, and that the celery in my garden has not taken off (yet), I thought paying the $1 extra per bunch for organic celery was worth it. 

We use a lot of celery, in soups and stews, during Winter time. Storing two bunches of celery in my fridge crisper would lead to wastage (It's a lot of celery!) so I rinsed and chopped it all up and then bagged handfuls of it in the clip lock bags we wash and reuse over and over again, and froze it. I know we'll use it before our Winter time is over. While it's not for stir fries or salads, when you want crunchy celery, it's fine for the soft, cooked celery of soups and stews. There are delicious things, such as pesto, that you can make with celery leaves, you can add them in to the mix when making stock or you can put them into your compost bin or worm farm where they'll break down to become food for your soil. No waste!

Some smoothie bananas.

Overripe bananas inevitably end up in banana breads or smoothies at our place. For smoothie bananas, I simply slice them up into chunks, spread them out on a baking tray and snap freeze them. Once frozen, I transfer them all into a container and use them up by the handful in smoothies. No waste and frozen banana makes for creamy smoothies!

Homemade muffins & silverbeet pie.

With silverbeet, spring onion and parsley, picked from our garden, I made another scrumptious Silverbeet Impossible Pie. We had a slice of this with soup for lunch on the day it was baked and then warmed up for dinner the following night. It's just so good! 

While the pie was baking in the oven, I used fresh juice, from the oranges my friend grows in her garden, to make batches of orange and chocolate chip muffins. I simply added chocolate chips to Nigella Lawson's Orange Breakfast Muffins recipe. They freeze beautifully and are perfect for adding to school lunchboxes.  

Tangy & luscious lime butter.

The juice from the limes I have been foraging from a local tree has been made into batches of tangy and luscious lime butter. While there's jars of jam in our pantry, they remain unopened while lime butter is in the fridge. It's sublime on toast!

Making the most of our homegrown produce, as well as that so generously shared by friends or foraged for free, baking up a storm while the oven's on, making big batches of simple and nourishing food that can be frozen or enjoyed as leftovers, eating seasonally and having ways of eliminating food wastage means that we eat well and save at the same time in multiple ways.

What simple savings have you been making at your place?

Meg

Brown Rice & Vegetable Rolls

A rediscovered recipe, scrawled on a piece of paper and found languishing between pages of a rarely-used recipe book, reminded me of a lovely version of sausage rolls that I haven't made for a good twenty years of so!  Instead of a meaty filling, these rolls are filled with healthy brown rice and lots of nutritious vegetables. They are most lovely, warm from the oven and with a dollop of fruity chutney on the side. 

Delicious!

Brown Rice & Vegetable Rolls

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked brown rice 

1/2 cup corn kernels

1/2 cup frozen peas

1/2 cup grated carrot

2 spring onions, finely chopped

1 capsicum, finely chopped

1 cup grated tasty cheese

1 Tablespoons fruit chutney

2 eggs, beaten

3 sheets puff pastry

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 210C.

2. Combine all ingredients, except pastry sheets, in a large bowl to make the filling.

3.  Spoon filling along  one edge of each puff pastry sheet.

4.  Roll up the filling inside the pastry and seal by pressing pastry ends together.

5.  Cut evenly into individual rolls.

6.  Glaze with a little egg or milk before baking. (You could sprinkle with sesame seeds too.)

7.  Bake for approximately 30mins or until pastry is golden.

8.  Serve with some extra fruit chutney.

Ingredients for a meat-free meal.

These rolls are a delicious alternative to everyday sausage rolls and have lots of extra goodness wrapped up in them from the brown rice and the vegetables. It certainly won't be another twenty years before I make them again!

Meg

Some Simple Savings

The simple savings we make here don't usually come via a flashy sale with price tags advertising huge discounts. Instead, they tend to reveal themselves in the everyday things we do over and again. These are some of the little savings we've made of late by making, growing, reusing, mending and finding our own:

This plant, grown from a cutting I brought home from my Mum's garden, has filled out its hanging basket. Both the wire hanging basket and its liner were 'rescued' from my stash of old pots that I keep on a table under our house. I am not sure what this plant is called but it has pretty tangerine bell-shaped flowers. A free plant from my Mum's place that's now growing here too.

I stamped a plain piece of brown paper, which came wrapped around a little bunch of flowers I received, with tiny flower heads. I added it to my ''saved" gift wrap along with this silver and black piece that came with flowers too. I think both will look lovely once re-used and tied with black ribbons.

A large dish of lasagne was baked to share as a meal with friends. I used grated zucchini and carrot and pumpkin to add to the very small amount of meat I had to make the filling. I sprinkled the creamy sauce on top with a little parmesan cheese and baked it until golden.  I served it with steamed veg. Warm and chocolatey prune muffins, from a recipe I found in a Grass Roots magazine, with homemade vanilla ice-cream, made a lovely dessert too. As we were feeding two extra hungry teenage boys, this homemade meal saved us quite a bit as I'm sure you can all imagine just how many takeaway pizzas growing boys can eat!

Little harvests from the garden are finding their way into lots of our meals. There are handfuls of crunchy snow peas for stir fries, juicy yellow tomatoes for salads that are also lovely and sweet when roasted. I've made two Silverbeet Impossible Pies now, with silverbeet and spring onion and parsley from the garden, which is just delicious hot or cold, for lunch or for dinner. The little limes, from a tree that I walk past almost every day while out with Sir Steve dog, are destined to become lime curd to dollop onto our homemade scones. At one of the big supermarkets, limes are 72c each. These were foraged and free!

 

One of my favourite op-shops is open again now and I found this black button-up cardigan amongst the racks of clothes. It cost me just a few dollars. I will get a lot of wear out of it because it's lightweight and thus perfect for our mild sub-tropical Winters. I also mended one of my son's favourite t-shirts to extend its life a little longer. 

Making things last that bit longer, reusing what we already have, growing and making our own, buying second hand and keeping an eye out for that which is free or a good bargain saves a little here and there which, over time, adds up to dollars and cents not spent but saved.

Meg

Lined Drawstring Bags

From fabrics leftover from earlier projects and some reclaimed ribbon, I sewed three little & lined drawstring bags. 

Little lined drawstring bags.

This is the YouTube tutorial, from Whitney Sews, that I followed to sew up these bags. While I used an A4 size sheet of paper as a template for these bags, you could make a larger or small version.  The only change I made was to thread one long piece of ribbon right around the casing at the top of each bag before tying the ends together to form a long loop for hanging the bag up.

One little drawstring bag sewn from a sweet fabric.

 A peek at the soft blue lining inside this bag.

These drawstring bags are the first handmade things I've crafted for gifting this Christmas.  I am going to fill them with scented bath products, like these soaps that I purchased a little while ago and these bath bombs which I am very keen to make this coming weekend from ingredients I already have on hand. Together with a soft organic cotton hand towel, that I bought at Aldi much earlier in the year, I think they will make sweet gifts. 

 A pretty and reusable bag. 

Drawstring bags like these are also a very pretty alternative to wrapping paper and can be re-used over and over again. Something to keep once all the sweetly-scented bath products have been enjoyed.

What are you in the midst of making at the moment?

Meg

Some Small & Simple Savings

The savings we make here are not usually of the jaw-dropping kind. While hubby saved 15% off our car insurance renewal last week, with a phone call and a question, most savings here are of the small and simple kind. They are the little things that save a $ here or a $ there. 

$2 for three little plants purchased from a school market.

(One plant at a nursery would cost more than $2 so three is what I consider a bargain!)

Homegrown tiny tomatoes for salads.

(I'm growing these in pots and they are fruiting well.)

A stale bread roll made into breadcrumbs.

(I froze these for later use.)

I purchased an "odd bunch" of pears.

(These are sold more cheaply because they are not quite "perfect".)

Free entertainment for a boy who loves flags!

(Perfect for when it's too hot to kick the footy at the park.)

$2 birthday cards from Big W. 

(Given cards can cost upwards of $5each, I bought 5 and saved at least $15.)

I mended the pocket on my son's school shirt.

(This weekend, I have to mend his hat!!)

I added these half-price crackers to my stockpile.

(My son takes a little tub of these with cheese to school for a snack.)

While none of these little savings are particularly astounding, they all add up. What simple savings have you made lately?

Meg

My Routines for Saving Money on Food

Working part-time takes me away from our home for a significant portion of the the week now. That's a lot less time in the kitchen but I am looking for and finding routines that see us continuing to save money on food. Given food can be one of a household's biggest expenses, I am trying to make sure the amount we spend doesn't blow out with last-minute takeaways!

One of the routines that I find really works for me, in terms of keeping homemade food on our table and in our lunchboxes, is baking on Sunday mornings. I get up early, when all is still quiet, and bake at least two items ready for the week ahead. Biscuits, slices, muffins and cupcakes that freeze well are popped into lunchboxes for morning tea and are ready for a hungry, high school boy to "gobble up" after school.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

(Recipe from Nigella Lawson)

Being organised for breakfasts is another routine that is working well. There's always eggs and either baby spinach or leftover roasted veggies for omelettes at our place. This is my favourite breakfast, as I really believe that it's important to have some veg at brekkie time. I am NOT a fan of boxed cereals as they typically have significant amounts of sugar in them, so on my days off work I make homemade granola and batches of breakfast muffins. I adore Jude Blereau's muffin recipes as they are made with healthy and nourishing ingredients.  I have a tub of her breakfast muffins, from her cookbook Whole Food for the Family, in my freezer right now and it's just so easy to take one or two out to defrost for a quick breakfast if I'm running late. Faster that a drive through queue even!  

 Homemade Granola

(A lot less sugar than supermarket cereals.)

Using up the food we do spend our money on is something else that I am trying to keep on top of. If I buy fruit in bulk, like the tray of mangoes I bought earlier in the Summer for a really good price, then I chop them up and freeze portions. It's easy then take out a portion of frozen fruit chunks for smoothies. There's always at least one banana in our fruit bowl and at times they reach that over-ripe state where the only thing I think they are good for is banana bread. 

 Making sure food, like these over-ripe bananas, doesn't go to waste...

 Banana bread instead!

Freezing extra fruit. 

(Ready for quick and easy smoothies after school.)

Making breadcrumbs from the ends of loaves.

(I use these when I'm make meatballs.)

Another routine working for me is doing my grocery shopping on Friday mornings straight after school drop-off. I don't work Fridays so this means I am not rushing around the shops and I have time to spot bargains. I picked up some bottles of our favourite pasta sauce (and one with a much lower % of sugar than many on the shelves) for half price last week. I bought bulk and have these stored in my little stockpile. 

 A bargain on our favourite pasta sauce.

(I now have many bottles in my stockpile.)

When I do forget to defrost something for dinner, which I inevitably do, then these bottles of pasta sauce come in very handy. One of my go-to meals, besides homemade pizza, is to fry up a chopped onion with some diced bacon and capsicum (if I have it). I then add lots of diced zucchini (I always have zucchini) and fry that until it's cooked but not squishy. I usually throw in a handful of frozen peas too! I then turn the heat down and add a bottle of this pasta sauce. While all that is happening, I boil some pasta. Mixed through the pasta, and with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese, it's yum and it costs a lot less than takeaway.

Leftovers are still making it into lunchboxes though we have 'tweaked' the lunch-making routine somewhat. When I wasn't working, I would pack lunches each morning. Now, my sweet hubby makes his own lunch the night before, popping leftovers in, making sandwiches and getting fruit and yoghurt ready. I still make my lunch and my son's lunch early in the morning but somehow, only having two to pack instead of three seems to work better up at our kitchen bench. I have no idea why!

These are the routines working for us at the moment. I think those working and trying to save money at the same time would have their own routines that work for them. I'd love to hear what you do at your place!

Meg

Saving Money on Work Clothes

Returning to work has the decided advantage of extra income but it would be easy, if I abandoned the simpler and more frugal things we do here, to fritter those additional funds away. We are keen to save as much of our extra pennies as possible!

So, after spending much of the past four non-working years in shorts and T-shirts, and the occasional skirt if I had to "dress-up", I needed some 'fancier' clothes for work. Rather than spending a small fortune to buy brand new clothes, I looked at what I already had, sewed a few extra things myself and found a few bargains at the local op-shops.

A fully-lined dress with a little belt I already had.

(I love these colours!)

 A creamy top and a $7 pair of sweet little shoes.

A versatile, pleated skirt.

(I can match this will lots of different coloured tops.)

 A light and cool Summer dress.

($18 for an expensive label.)

What I paid at the op-shop for these well-made clothes was but a fraction of what they would have cost at the dress shops. Clothes that would retail for much, much more but cost me far less and they are in new, or near-new, condition. My purchases also saved adding to landfill and the money I spent supports the charities, Vinnies and the Asthma Foundation, who run my local op-shops.  More money left in my pocket, purchases that are better for the environment and community and clothes that I will wear often. Bargains!

How do you save money if you work outside the home too?

Meg

Lemongrass Mulch

Just about a year after I planted out many little lemongrasses, for the specific purpose of growing some of our own mulch, it was time to give them a haircut! 

The abundant, strappy leaves of lemongrass.

One of the little lemongrasses I planted last April.

Lemongrass grows well in our climate and has loved the hot and wet conditions of the Summer just gone. Each thriving plant has provided an abundance of long, strappy leaves for us to chop and use as mulch.

One year's growth and ready for a haircut!

While we predominately grow lemongrass as a source of mulch, it has lots of great uses as Morag Gamble explains in this post over at her blog,  Our Permaculture Life.  

Roughly chopped!

I cut each lemongrass clump back quite a bit. As I worked, a lovely lemony scent filled the air and masses of chopped leaves dropped onto the ground. I left some of this to cover and protect the soil around the lemongrasses themselves and gathered up the rest in my trusty wheelbarrow to move to an area of the garden that needed some new mulch.

A barrow load of homegrown lemongrass mulch.

A blanket of lemongrass mulch around the mandarin tree.

A blanket of lemongrass leaves now covers the soil around our mandarin tree. This loose tangle of strappy mulch will allow plenty of water to seep through while protecting the soil and nourishing it as it breaks down over time. A second, lighter "trim" of our lemongrass will yield a little more of this mulch for use in our garden too before I leave the clumps to regrow their long, strappy hair-dos!

Meg

p.s. The other plant we chose to grow as a mulch, Canna Lily or Queensland Arrowroot, is also doing well. I will need to chop them back soon too. More free mulch!

A little Canna Lily just beginning to grow.

One year of growth.