Take Away Lessons From Our Energy Audit

We had contractors in the house in late October to work on air sealing our 130-year-old home. (For those of you in Europe, any home this old is considered venerable in the US.) We'd had our home evaluated for energy efficiency earlier this year, so this was the follow-on work to improve our "envelope" as they say in the business. We were pleasantly surprised to find that as old as our home is, the efficiency was no worse than the average new construction home. Still, there was room for improvement.

That's a picture of a blower door up above. We latched the other exterior doors and sealed all the windows in our home. Then this was installed in our front door and the fan shown there was turned on. It's a powerful fan, and it depressurized our entire house. Then the workers went around checking for any points of air infiltration from outside, and did their best to seal them up. (I'd done some work on this myself since the initial energy audit.)

Of course, these improvements cost money, and not a trivial amount. For what we spent on energy efficiency improvements, we could have made a couple mortgage payments. We see this as a necessary precondition for installing any form of sustainable energy heating system though. Where we live, we heat our home fairly steadily from mid-November to mid-March, with an extra two months of at least occasional heating. If we're to spend money on passive solar heating, or even if we stay with oil heating as long as that's feasible, it only makes sense to make our home as efficient as possible. It's simply the right thing to do, and we can afford it at the moment.

I know a lot of people out there can't even contemplate spending a few thousand dollars on energy efficiency, no matter how much sense it makes. I've posted recently on cheap insulating strategies, and I urge you to check them out if you haven't already. There are tips there for both renters and homeowners. But I picked up a couple extra tips on air sealing from the contractors that I want to share.

Install safety guards in all electrical outlets on exterior walls. You know those little plastic plugs that prevent toddlers from sticking their fingers in sockets and electrocuting themselves? Put them to good use even after your kids or grandkids are grown. Electrical outlets are very often heat leaks because they reside in gaps in the insulation of your walls. The plastic guards can significantly reduce the infiltration of cold air through these gaps.

Look to the cobwebs. Maybe you're such a tidy housekeeper that there are no cobwebs in your home. We've got 'em in spades. Spiders spin their webs where there is airflow. So when you see cobwebs near windows or doors, it's a good indication that there's an air gap somewhere very close by. Cracks in plaster walls are another major culprit.

Check the trim work around all windows and doors. Very small gaps between the wall and the trim allow for an amazing amount of heat transfer. This can be true even if you have modern double- or triple-paned windows. Silicone caulking is your friend. Use it to seal those gaps, even if they look too small to be significant. Believe me, they are significant. Silicone caulking is cheap and simple enough to use that anyone can learn to do it. Get a good scraping tool for the excess caulk to make it look neat and tidy. After a little practice you'll do very nearly as well as the professionals.

With a blower door installed, every air gap in the house becomes evident. If paying a professional to install insulation or air seal your house is out of the question, you might want to schedule an energy audit that includes a blower door anyway. Many utility companies apparently offer free energy audits to their customers, or some portion of their customer base that qualifies based on income. Ours does not. Even if you have to pay for an audit, it will likely cost a small fraction of what the air sealing and insulation work would, perhaps a few hundred dollars.

The blower door will show you exactly where the air gaps are in your house. Some of them you may not be able to address with silicone caulking and a little ingenuity. It may take professional expertise and/or tools. But if you're better set up than we were to mark the air gaps that are evident when the blower door is in place and operating, you could then go about remedying many of them yourself after the audit is finished. I recommend you use brightly colored sticky notes to mark the location of air leaks. Trying to write down all the locations of leaks while the blower door was in place didn't work for us. There were too many to list, and we sometimes weren't sure afterwards what was meant by our own notes. If you take the time before the energy audit happens to work on sealing the obvious visible gaps, you'll be ahead of the game, with fewer air leaks to record during the brief time the blower door is running.

Adding insulation to an attic is also work that can be done by non-professionals. If you've got a weekend and the motivation to do so, this is a job you can do for yourself. Check out a book from the library for some basic tips if you feel you need them.

If your furnace resides in an otherwise unheated, unfinished basement, you might want to put some insulation on the walls around the furnace. Unfinished basements are very common in our part of the country, and furnaces tend to be situated out of the way and right up against a wall. The basement walls in our house are stone in the oldest part of the house, and that stone obviously conducts heat away from the furnace and into the earth. Stopping that constant draining of heat away from the furnace makes a big difference in how often it must fire up and consume fuel.

The good news after all of the expense and work we put into these efficiency improvements is that our home is noticeably warmer and the temperature steadier. We can tell that the house is losing less heat overnight, and it warms up faster when we put the heat on in the morning. It's nice to have such a noticeable and pleasing improvement for the money spent. We now feel ready to seriously consider alternative heating for our old home. More on that to come soonish.

January Frugal Action Item: CF Bulbs

I'm going be posting one hands-on, nothing fancy, anyone-can-do-this frugal suggestion each month of this year. If I'm on my game, these posts will appear at the beginning of each month. If not, well...we'll see. My goal is to offer money saving tips that will be suitable for either renters or homeowners, and to make them practical for as wide an audience as possible. Some Action Items will challenge you to try something new, some of them will have a seasonal flavor, and some of them will be once and done tasks. I will also sometime offer alternative action items on the chance that you may have already taken care of that month's task.

January's Frugal Action Item is to replace your standard light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. I'm suggesting this one right now for several reasons. First of all, I know a lot of you out there got gift cards (for Target, Home Depot, Kmart, grocery stores, hardware stores, etc.) for the holidays that you can use to pay for the CF bulbs. Second of all, we run our lights for more hours per day during the darkest months of the year. And finally, the sooner you replace your standard bulbs with CFs, the sooner you start saving money. So this Action Item can't wait!

If money is really, really tight for you, buy however many CF bulbs you can scrape up the money for, and put them in the lights you use most often. In addition, be aware that many, many local electricity providers offer coupons or rebates for the purchase of CF bulbs. It never hurts to do a google search for coupons either. As you begin to save money each month on your electrical bill, apply the savings to the purchase of more bulbs and replace more of the lights in your home, in order of heaviest use.

If you're a renter or a homeowner planning to sell anytime soonish, save the standard bulbs for any built-in light fixtures. Take your CF bulbs with you when you move, replacing them with the standard bulbs you saved.

Alternative Action Item: If you've already swapped out all of your standard bulbs for CFs, it's a good time of year to have a look at your hot water pipes, if you can get at them. This is especially important for homeowners who heat with hot water radiant systems, and doubly important for homes with copper water pipes. (PVC water pipes are less conductive, so they lose less heat over a long run.) Pipe insulation has come a long way, baby. If your pipes have old insulation tape on them, it's time for an upgrade. If they're completely naked, throw some synthetic rubber insulation over them. This cheap foam-like insulation is extremely well priced. It's super easy to install and all you need is a box cutter to trim the insulation to fit.

While I can understand that renters may not want to bear the expense of insulation, this is still worth considering. First talk to your landlord and see whether he or she will reimburse or split the cost of the insulation. If not, you may still want to eat the cost if you plan to stay in the rental for a while or if you live in a very cold climate. The synthetic rubber insulation is really very cheap, and the return on investment is likely to be pretty fast. And hey, if you're a lucky renter who doesn't pay for heat, you may want to pursue this anyway, as it's good for the environment. And if your landlord's expenses are kept in line, you may be less likely to see a rent increase.

Happy New Year, everyone! Let's fill 2009 with frugality, good food and home cooking, and warm camaraderie.

Further Action Items:
February: Kitchen Competence
March: Rein in Entertainment Spending
April: Go Paper-less
May: Solar Dryer
June: Raise the Deductible on Your Auto Insurance
July: Stay Cool Without Touching that Thermostat
August: Repair It!
September: Insulate
October: Preventative Health Care
November: Frugal Holiday Wish List
December: Plan Next Year's Garden

The Candlewax of Frugality

I recall a practitioner of the Wiccan religion once telling me that every religion burdens its believers with something unpleasant that isn't really the point of the religion, just a necessary by product of sorts. She said that for Wiccans, it's dealing with all the candlewax that has to be scraped off of various surfaces after their ceremonies. She said that celibacy would be one equivalent unpleasant thing for unmarried Christians, especially Catholic priests and nuns. That idea always struck me as amusing, but interesting too. Frugality isn't a religion, but it sure has its share of candlewax.


Today I tackled some of the candlewax of frugality; I defrosted the chest freezer we keep in our unheated garage. This was one of those necessary chores that I knew I should be getting to in order to trim our electricity bill. But the task was about as appealing as scraping candlewax off a floor. All summer long I procrastinated, using the warm weather as an excuse. Today the high temperature forecast was for 35 degrees. No excuses there: the contents of the freezer would thaw only very slowly while I cleaned, and make it less urgent for me to work at top speed. I'm still getting over a nasty and very tenacious chest cold, so I'm not really working at 100% lately.

Our chest freezer is about as full as it possibly can be, thanks to our homegrown, hand-pressed apple cider, several quarts of homemade lamb stock, and my inclination to bake a lot during cold weather. While having a freezer full of food is reassuring, and more energy efficient than an empty freezer, it does make it hard to find things in there. It also makes for a lot of work when it's time for the defrost. But the build up of frost on the walls of the chest freezer is quite inefficient, because the freezer has to work harder to keep things cold.

As you can see in the picture above, I had allowed a full inch of ice to build up on certain parts of the freezer walls. The ice was quite unevenly distributed. But from what I've read, you're meant to defrost a freezer when the frost/ice is 1/4" thick. There were parts of the freezer with no ice at all, but clearly the defrosting was overdue.

You know what? Getting through this chore that I had put off for so long was pretty quick once I got started. It took less than an hour from start to finish, and that was with me having to make trips inside for warm water. Isn't that the way of things? It also gave me the chance to re-organize the chest freezer so that things are easier to get to, and I have a better sense of where everything is. While I had the chest freezer empty, I also pulled it away from the wall and dusted off the coil that is part of the cooling system. There wasn't much dust, but keeping that coil free of crud is another way to maximize the efficiency of the appliance.

So, all you chest-freezer-owning frugalites out there, I know I'm no shining example of frugal maintenance. But I'll just point out that winter is really the best time of year to defrost a freezer if you've got one that needs it. Time to get to some of that frugal candlewax. I hope your necessary but unappealing frugal chores turn out to be as unexpectedly easy as mine were today.

A 10-Day Supply of Moisturizer

I'm in mind of tiny tips these days, during the season of cold weather. All sorts of small economies that I didn't employ over the summer are coming back to me. But today's tiny tip can be used year round. It will seem like old hat to the veteran frugal folk. I offer it as a hint for those new to this path.

Use up every drop of your toiletries and cosmetics. These products are, almost without exception, wildly expensive. The high end cosmetics lines frequently tempt customers with tiny samples of their products sized to last for ten days or less. And yet, how often does a similar amount simply get tossed away because it's not easy to get it out of the package? If it's enough to bribe you into making an expensive purchase, surely it's enough to use up.

I use a mid-priced moisturizer that comes with a pump dispenser. When I get near the end of the bottle, the pump no longer works so well. Yet there's still quite a lot of moisturizer in the bottle. I counted this time, and I got enough moisturizer out of the bottle after the pump no longer worked to last me ten more days.

Consider the price of any cosmetic or toiletry you use. Go ahead and actually crunch the numbers, using the unit price of the product. I spend about $10 for a bottle of my moisturizer, which contains only 70 ml. You know what that works out to? Almost $34 per cup! Now granted, a little of this particular stuff goes a long way. One bottle lasts me about three months. So let's estimate that I use only 11 cents' worth of this stuff every day($10 bottle/90 days). (The application cost of your cosmetics is another number worth crunching.) If I throw the bottle out when it will no longer easily dispense the product to me, I'm throwing away $1.10.

Visualize this: would you throw a dollar and a dime into your garbage can? Didn't think so.

So what to do? Well, in this case it's pretty easy. I take a knife to the plastic bottle and scoop out the rest of the product, as needed, with my fingers. I coax the little bit of moisturizer stuck in the pump tube out by smacking the bottom end into my palm. The cut open bottle stays in a ziploc bag for the few days it takes for me to use it up. I know women can be very particular about what skin care and cosmetic products they'll use. I settled on this moisturizer mostly for how it performed on my skin, but also partly based on its plastic bottle. I knew that I could cut it open and use up every last bit of it.

In the past I've tried and liked moisturizers from department store cosmetic lines. It always infuriated me that I couldn't get every bit of the product out of glass bottles. So I gave up on those. If you're still shopping around for your preferred toiletry items, consider the packaging as one factor in your decision. I hope it will go without saying that a $10 bottle of moisturizer is not necessarily inferior to a $35 bottle that will last you the same amount of time. Put aside the marketing, the hype, and the image, and select something that will work for your skin without breaking the bank.

If you are stuck on a product sold in a glass bottle, at least you can recycle the glass. Use a cotton swab to retrieve the last bits of product before you do so. It's not perfect, but it's better than not making any attempt to use up the product completely. If you're really stuck on using high-end skin care products that come in glass bottles, you might try being a squeaky wheel about it the next time you visit the cosmetics counter. Given the state of the economy, companies selling luxury goods just might be in the mood to listen.

Staying Warm with the Thermostat Set Low

Winter approaches in the northern hemisphere. I'm invariably ready for the next season by the time we're most of the way through the current one. I like the significant changes of season where I live. I've lived in several places without four "real" seasons, and I always felt slightly ripped off. Still, winter is a tough sell when your region experiences prolonged months of cold and dark, and when heating is a major expense.

So, confession time. In wintertime, I keep the most popular room in the house at 64 F (less than 18 C) during the day. The rest of the house is cooler, some used areas as low as 56 F during the day. I crank the thermostat down to 52 F (just over 11 C) when we go to bed. I actually love sleeping in a really cold room with warm blankets. Sleep has never come easily for me, but a cold room helps considerably. Daytime is another story. Our house is not toasty, but we manage. So I thought I'd share some of the tips I've found useful.

Get used to it. Slowly. If you're trying to reduce your heating bills, don't crank your heat down from 72 to 60 from one day to the next. You can accustom yourself to significantly cooler house temperatures, but you're less likely to succeed if you attempt an abrupt change. So adjust the house temperature by a few degrees every other day or so. You'll find the going much easier.

Layer Up. Fleece clothing is a godsend in winter. So are a few pairs of long underwear and sweatpants. No, it's not sexy. But it'll save you money if you use it to compensate for 5-10 degrees of heating for three or more months. Invest in a really warm pair of slippers, and the best thermal underwear you can afford. Camping stores have good options for very thin, layerable clothing that can keep you very warm. Keep an eye out for sales on these in late spring.

Really Layer Up. Plenty of people have given me crap for this, but I don't care. I wear fingerless gloves and a comfy fleece hat for most of the winter. I'm cheap and I'm a wuss. I don't want to suffer too much in pursuit of saving money. Remember your mother's admonition that you lose more body heat through your head than through any other part of your body. Find yourself a comfy hat that you can wear indoors for warmth. If you're crafty, you can make pairs of these knitted fingerless gloves for yourself and other family members.

Activities I know winter is hibernation time for many people. The temptation to hunker down and become sedentary is always there for me. But I've found that having small activities spread throughout a winter day helps keep me pretty warm. Even five minutes of vigorous movement will make you feel warm for quite a while, especially when you're layered up. If a part of your day requires you to be sedentary, then try to break it up with some of these activities:

• Handwash some dishes. The water will warm up your hands nicely. This is a nice excuse for not tackling all the dirty dishes right after dinner, too.
  
• Vacuum one room at a time. Rather than cleaning the whole house all at once, break up the chore so that you get your blood moving several times during the day. If your rooms are small or few, then do the details, like using the brush attachment to get the cobwebs, clean the trim, and vacuum under the couch cushions.
  
• Shovel some snow or rake some leaves. Do a little yard work, whatever you've got. This will warm you up with aerobic exercise, and when it's cold out, the house will seem warm by comparison when you come back inside. Again, when your goal is to warm yourself up, working in 15-minute increments is totally legit. No yard work of your own? Offer to help an elderly neighbor or nearby relatives. You'll earn good karma and maybe a warm cookie.
  
• Shake that cosmic thang. No productive chores to tackle? Then just put on some music that makes you want to boogie. It's hard for frugalites, who won't pay for gym memberships, to get enough exercise in winter. A few minutes of dancing around your house like a lunatic is good for you in more ways than one.

Have a hot cup of tea. The igloo-dwelling Eskimos have a theory of warming up that differs from our own. Obviously, heating their homes is not the best option. So they warm themselves directly, from the inside out, most often by drinking warm liquids. You might be surprised how well this works, and the cup will heat your hands as well as the rest of you. Keep a supply of herbal tea on hand so that you don't need to overcaffeinate to use this trick.

Bake something. Wintertime is a great time to use your oven. Not only does it warm up your kitchen, but the smell of something freshly baked, whether it's bread or brownies, is just incomparable in a winter house. Consider stocking up on homemade goodies now if you have the freezer space to store them. That way you won't have to heat up the house in the summer months. Pot roast, casseroles, and meatloaf are great choices for oven dinners too. (While you've got the oven going, throw in a head of garlic, some beets, a winter squash, or a few potatoes to maximize the value of the energy you're using to heat the oven. There are lots of good uses for leftover baked potatoes.)

Cuddle up with a loved one or a (mammalian) pet. Body heat is the best blanket, in my opinion. Get cozy with someone you love for a reading session, a movie, or something more interesting.

Go to the library, or somewhere else that's heated, preferably where you won't be tempted to spend money. Make a day of it; hang out for hours. Hey, I'm not above mooching heat off someplace that's funded by my tax dollars anyway. The library is one of my favorite places: cool in summer, warm in winter. It's a great way to save money on books, magazines, movies, music, and heating or cooling costs. You're paying for it, so you might as well get your money's worth. Before you leave, turn down the thermostat halfway to your overnight setting.

Devices The old standbys are old standbys for good reason: they work well and cheaply. A hot water bottle will warm your lap during the day or your bed at night. When I was a poor student, I rested my feet on a hot water bottle while I studied and read for hours each night. Hot water bottles are cheap enough to replace on a regular basis, and they do need replacing every so often. Eventually the rubber breaks down and makes a catastrophic high-temperature leak a real possibility. Check your rubber hot water bottle carefully each winter before you begin using it. Or make your own substitute with a one-liter plastic bottle stuffed into an old sock. Old tube socks can also be used to make the "bed buddy," which is just a cloth tube half filled with whole grain barley or rice. Sew up the opening and any holes or just tie off both ends of the tube sock to prevent the grain from coming out. Then microwave for 2-3 minutes and enjoy the steamy warmth for 30 minutes or more. This project is easy enough for kids to make one for themselves.

Eat hot foods, especially soups. I remember reading an account of an obscure part of World War II, the Russo-Finnish theater. The border between Russia and Finland is a rather chilly part of the world in wintertime, which is when most of those battles took place. The history book I read said that a hot meal often meant the difference between life and death for those soldiers, which occasionally played out in tragic ways. No joke. Warm foods affect our body temperature powerfully. Include a soup in your weekly meal plans for the winter months. You can make great soups with beans or potatoes, two extremely economical staples.

Did I miss anything? Sound off in the comments if you've got a good way of staying warm when the heat is set low.


Related post: Stop Wasting That Heat!

Wrong season for you? Check out Stay Cool Without Touching That Thermostat

In Further Praise of Domestic Poultry

I like gardening well enough, but I've never been able to work up much enthusiasm for dealing with common insect pests. I just don't like thinking about all the things that might go wrong, so I take a wing it sort of attitude. For the most part, this has worked well for me, which I suppose is why I still adhere to this way of thinking. Sure, not everything succeeds. But most of my gardening endeavors do, and I see acceptably good returns on my efforts.


My sugar pumpkins are pretty well done for the year. The leaves have been withering for several weeks now, and this rather unsavory looking bug has been conspicuously hanging about on the leaves and ripening pumpkins. I don't think they're squash bugs, unless I have a whole lot of young bugs that are going to change appearance as they grow. (Update: El from Fast Grow the Weeds confirms that these are, in fact, squash bugs.) Nor do they quite match the descriptions I've read of cucumber beetles, which will sometimes attack squash vines. Whatever they are, I figure if they're around in such numbers, they're up to no good.

Enter my frugal and very non-toxic solution. I walk around knocking these little critters into a wide plastic container, where they collect pretty easily. Then I dump a load of them straight into the chicken pen, where their life expectancy is roughly that of a tissue paper mouse being chased through hell by an asbestos cat. I don't know the name of these bugs, and neither do my hens. But they recognize them sure enough as snack food. It's frugal because I don't spend any money to deal with the insects, and because I reduce my feed costs for the girls, who then turn these bugs into eggs that I get to eat. I spent about 10 minutes this morning collecting the bugs, and plan to repeat this minor chore daily until the bugs are too few to collect. If I were able to keep my hens as free range birds, I wouldn't even have to make that much of an effort.

It's nice to use the chickens as pest control. My girls are getting older, and their egg output is becoming rather inconsistent. So it's gratifying to have them providing other services. Now someone please tell me what these bugs are. I really hope I'm not feeding the girls some beneficials.

Related Posts:
Going Mobile with a Backyard Flock
Putting the Livestock to Work
Meat Rabbits On Pasture

Simple Frugality: Do Fewer Dishes

I feel like I've been talking about food, gardening, and harvesting a lot lately. Well, it is August, folks. It's to be expected. Still, I felt it was time to get off that one-note tune for at least a few days.

So here's a tiny frugal tip, with credit to the redoubtable Amy Dacyczyn: Stop doing so many dishes. When my husband isn't traveling, we run the dishwasher a lot. More than twice as often as when he's away on business. I think this is because with more than one person in the house, we're each more likely to clean up after ourselves so as not to leave a messy table for the other. And so, with the dishes promptly put in the dishwasher, it's not so easy to re-use a plate or a glass that is essentially clean after a single use.

So I suggested that we try a rubberband trick. He'd put a red one on his glass, and I'd use blue. That way we could easily distinguish our glasses and have a visual reminder to use our own more than once if it's not dirty. Presto! The dishwasher filled up a little more slowly, so we ran it less often.

Now, I'm sure there are some folks out there who would be scandalized by this re-use of glassware or plates. In a restaurant, I want a clean plate. In my own home, where I know who's touched it, what's been on it, and who ate off of it, I'm pretty laid back. My dishes don't need to be autoclaved between meals. Granted, if it looks dirty, it gets cleaned after the first use. A few crumbs on my plate from my morning toast are no bar to putting my lunch on it, in my book. It's a meal, not invasive surgery.

Anyway, this works for us. It probably saves us $1 or more per week in detergent and hot water. And it costs us nothing but a little more of our attention. If it seems like you're constantly doing dishes, you might give this a try. If you wanted to take it to the next step, you could mark a bowl, plate, cup and mug with different colors of electrical tape for each member of your family. Then each person would be responsible for their own dishes, and could decide how often and when to wash them. Just watch out for someone lazy sneaking uses from the clean freak's personal set!

It's Tea Time - Sun Tea Time

I'm a devoted tea drinker. I can't get my morning properly started without it. I know the difference between a teapot and a tea kettle, and I know that hot tea will not brew in a paper cup with kinda hot water. Most of the year, a couple of blisteringly hot cups of tea are welcome in the morning. But right now, I'm waking up to temperatures in the high 70s Fahrenheit (mid 20s Celsius), and the mercury only rises through the day.

So I made my first annual batch of sun tea a few days ago. The process is simple: just put teabags or loose tea in a large glass jar and put the jar somewhere where it'll get a strong blast of sunlight for several hours. The heat of the sun warms the water and brews your tea for you. After that, you put the jar in your refrigerator and enjoy the tea chilled. It keeps for several days and you don't even need to strain it if you don't want to.

Sun tea is one of those tiny tips that I employ to save money. But it's a little unusual in that it saves me tiny amounts of money in several ways. The first and most obvious is that I don't have to pay for any energy to boil water. Not a huge savings, granted. But in the summer months, I also save a little because the heat of that boiling water would make my house warmer too. So if I'm running any fans or air conditioning, I get a tiny savings that way. Thirdly, it seems that I get more tea out of the same amount of loose tea or tea bags when compared to brewing it in a pot. Maybe it's the slow and steady brewing done by the sun, but I can get more than a gallon of sun tea from just three tea bags or a generous tablespoon of loose tea. Ratchet up another savings by making my ingredients stretch farther. Finally, I save (potentially) another tiny amount on cooling by keeping myself cool with a cold drink instead of a hot one.

I have two large glass containers for sun tea. One is specifically a sun tea jug, which I got for 75 cents at a charity thrift store. The other is just a very large (1 1/2 gallon) glass jar with a screw top lid. I picked it up in a bulk foods store for less than $3. I don't need anything else, other than tap water and tea leaves to make the most necessary of morning beverages.

An Unlikely Frugal Kitchen Tool

One of the least obvious frugal tools in my kitchen is the humble plastic ice cube tray. I keep several of these around to use whenever I have a surplus of several different kinds of food. By freezing stocks, sauces, fresh herbs and even some soups, I save up what I can't use immediately in a stable form and a convenient size. This lets me buy some items in quantities much, much larger than my two-person household would otherwise be able to use.

For instance, there's a particular tomato sauce that I like to use on our homemade pizzas. I first came across it in an expensive antipasto bar at our local upscale grocery store. I soon identified the brand of sauce that they were selling and sourced it from an Italian deli/grocery store. The cans were large, but the price was great. So I opened the can and used just what we needed for our dinner. Then I filled three ice cube trays full of tomato sauce for three days running. I ended up with frozen cubes of tomato sauce, which lets us thaw just a tiny bit of sauce at a time, just enough to lightly sauce our pizza pies. I store these in a ziploc bag in the freezer.

I've done the same with coconut milk. Cans of coconut milk inevitably seem to contain more than my recipes call for. Rather than trying to come up with an additional use for the remaining milk, I just freeze what's left over. Same goes for chicken and beef broth or any leftover cooking liquid. The size of the frozen cubes makes it easy to garnish with small quantities. I've also used frozen cubes of broth to rapidly cool down soups that need to be refrigerated. I try to prepare the soup with a little less liquid than called for when I want to do this. So when the cubes melt, I don't have soup that's too thin. When storing broths this way, or anything that looks less distinctive than tomato sauce, I label the bag so I can easily distinguish between beef broth and chicken broth. It saves rummaging around in the freezer and letting out too much cold air.

One of the less intuitive uses for the ice cube tray as a stocking up tool is preserving fresh herbs. When basil is in season, I grow a lot of it, clean it, chiffonade the leaves and pack them tightly into the compartments of a tray. Then I cover them with olive oil and freeze. The cubes of oil and herbs make a great accompaniment to meats, some soups, pasta dishes and of course, pizzas. Naturally, frozen "fresh" herbs aren't quite as good as the real thing. But it's better than letting anything go to waste, paying through the nose when it's out of season, or worst of all, going completely without the taste of basil in the winter. I try to match the oils with the herbs. Olive oil goes with parsley, basil and sage. Canola oil goes with Thai basil, mint and cilantro.

Hope you found this tip useful!

Scrounging Money Around the House

For me frugality is a means to an extra principle payment on the loan we have for our vacant land where we plan to build a log home for our retirement. This mortgage has the higher interest rate of our two loans, and it's the property that means the most to us. So every nickel I scrape up is earmarked for that purpose. The extra principle payment is why I don't drive my car more than a couple times per week; why I keep the thermostat set at 64 during the day; why I'm selling our extra stuff on ebay, and looking for any possible way to cut expenses.

Recently, I discovered a bag of money just sitting in our home office. It contained not American greenbacks, but a large variety of foreign coins and bills we'd collected over our pre-mortgage years of vigorously decadent travel. I opened it up and sorted through the bills, some of which were for obsolete European currencies replaced by the euro. There were Australian dollars, Hong Kong dollars, Iranian rials, Estonian kroner, Finnish marks, Venezuelan Bolivars, New Zealand dollars, Russian rubles, Swedish kroner, British pounds, Irish pounds and Italian lira. I didn't even bother trying to sort the coins.

After sorting through the paper money, I called up my wonderful bank, USAA, and asked about depositing foreign currency in my account. They said they'd take everything but the Iranian rials and the expired European currencies: the lira, Irish pounds and Finnish marks. Best of all, they wouldn't charge me a currency conversion fee. Yet another reason why I love USAA! Running a few quick calculations on the exchange rates, I estimated that I'd just scrounged up around $250 towards next month's extra principle payment. That felt great! It may be a drop in the bucket, but it all adds up.

I was a little sorry to see the Estonian currency go. It's among the prettiest I came across in my travels. And also a little disappointed that we'd hung on to the old European currencies long enough for them to be worthless today. I have no ideas about how to cash in foreign coins. I'd probably do it if there was a somewhat easy way. In the meanwhile, the coins are fun for my nephew to play with, and they're nice mementos of our travels. We might see about selling the Iranian rials to some Persian acquaintances of ours who occasionally travel back to that wonderful country. We'll keep at least one 10,000 rial note as a souvenir. The rest would only be worth around $9 anyway.

At some point, I'll tell you about USAA and why you should definitely do business with them if you're eligible.

Sweating the small(er) stuff

I've mentioned Amy Dacyczyn's wonderful Tightwad Gazette on this blog a few times already. Her collected books were the perfect fulcrum for shifting my viewpoint to a more frugal mindset. Most of all, she assured me that it was okay to "sweat the small stuff." More often than not, the thousands of tiny economies we could be practicing are pooh-poohed by both spendthrifts and frugalites who are more "big picture" types.

But the philosophy to be found in the Tightwad Gazette struck home for me so profoundly because Amy Dacyczyn's family and mine are similar in a financial sense. I'm not raising six kids on a single modest income, as the redoubtable Mrs. Dacyczyn did. But I am free of credit card debt and other crippling sea-anchors that so many other households struggle with. I don't worry about meeting my basic needs from paycheck to paycheck. I've never had a financial, life-altering crisis. I really admire those who labor long and hard to get out from under mountains of debt. But I'm not in that position, so I come to the frugal lifestyle from a different place and with a different perspective.

Still, I hope that my experiences and my advice can be of use to a wide variety of people in a lot of different circumstances. Today, I'm going to focus on some tips for energy efficiency that can be of use to new homeowners and other money-saving tips for those who are just breaking free of debt other than the home mortgage. Credit card debt is obviously the single highest priority for those trying to make it into the black. If you're still carrying a balance on credit cards or other loans, I would urge you to skip these most of these tips (because most of them are going to require some outlay of money) and instead make a higher monthly payment. But if you've finally arrived at the point where your car loans, your credit card debt and your student loans are things of the past, congratulations! There must be a symphony of emotions for people in such a position: euphoria, pride, relief, gratitude, giddiness. And this is where I step in with some grounding, no-nonsense suggestions on how to use some of the money you've been putting towards paying down the debt each month, now that it's gone. Implementing these suggestions will cost money, but it's money that will be working for you for years to come. If the monthly surplus you have freed up by eliminating debt is tiny, then choose the cheapest of these tips to make a start. In time, the savings from each tip will snowball into a larger and larger saved amount, which can then be plowed back into more expensive cost-cutting measures or an extra principle payment on your mortgage. So dig deep and find the money to do these things early on.

• Change out your regular light bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs. These bulbs are more expensive than incandescents, but each one will save you 50 cents per month on average. If money is tight, buy just a few bulbs and put them in the lights you use for the most hours per day. Add more compact fluorescents as your budget allows. Do not install a compact fluorescent bulb in any light that is on a dimmer switch. The bulb will get burned out in seconds and you'll have wasted the money spent.

• Insulate your hot water pipes and your hot water storage tank. Long tubes of foam pipe insulation are cheap and easy to install. If money is really tight, start with the tank itself and the pipes in unheated spaces, closest to your water heater. Be sure to measure the diameter of your pipes and buy the smallest tubes that will fit them. Also be sure not to cover the thermostat on the tank.
  

• If you rely on forced air heat, make sure your ducts are well insulated. You can lose as much as a whopping 60% of your heated air if your ducts are passing through unheated areas of the house. You may need professional help to insulate and/or repair damaged ducts. But if you're relying on this form of heat, it's well worth the investment.
  

• Check your outlets and light switches that are mounted on the exterior walls of your home. Remove the plate covers and see if there's a piece of foam insulation there. If not, buy some and install them.

• Wash all your clothes in cold water. If you're not satisfied with the results, use an overnight soak before returning to a hot water wash. The average load of laundry run on a hot cycle uses 32 gallons of heated water, compared to 20 gallons for a hot bath. If you've been washing in hot or warm water out of habit, give the cold cycle a try and see if you can really tell the difference.
  

• Buy some clothespins and rig up a clothesline inside. You can use it anytime, despite rainy or cold weather. On average, it costs 50 cents to dry a load of laundry, and more if your dryer is electric. If your family goes through just two loads of laundry per week, that's $52 per year. No excuses here. There are plenty of suitable spaces for a line or two in most homes. Consider the attic or the basement if space is really tight. I have two 7-foot lines, one above the other, just inches from the wall in my small laundry room. I also hang socks and underwear right off the edge of my rubber-coated wire shelving in the laundry room. A collapsible drying rack handles the rest. If you can't abide scratchy towels or clothing, it is permissible to put the dried towels in the dryer on "air fluff" (or whatever the unheated cycle is called on your machine) for 5-10 minutes. That's really all it takes to soften fabrics up. So long as the clothes are already dry and you use the unheated cycle, the dryer will use an acceptably minute amount of energy.

• Add insulation to your attic if it needs it, and it probably does. Heat rises. So a poorly insulated attic is the equivalent of an open door during the wintertime. Same goes for crawlspaces. Though the expense is higher than for many simple fixes, this is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make to improve energy efficiency.
  

• If you live where the summers are hot, install an attic fan to vent hot air. These can be hooked up to sensors that only turn on when the space reaches a certain temperature. They can make an enormous difference to the overall temperature of the house, and thus to your cooling bill.

• Check with your local electric company about a home energy audit. Many utilities offer these for free. Heed their suggestions as your budget allows.

• If you rely on window unit air conditioners to cool your home in summer, place them on the shady side of your home. Or plant a fast growing shrub where it will shade the air conditioner. This also applies to condensers for central air conditioner systems. Operating in the shade can increase the efficiency of the unit by as much as 10%.

• Air dry your dishes, either in a drying rack, or by not using a heated drying cycle on your dishwasher. If you can time it right, the dishes in a dishwasher will still be hot enough to dry very quickly if the machine is opened and the racks pulled out for better air circulation.

• If you're going to be living in your home for years to come, consider replacing your windows with newer high efficiency models. Windows are often the biggest culprits in heating loss during the winter, losing as much as 25% of the heat in the home. Be sure to run a return-on-investment analysis if you don't plan to live in the house for years to come.
  

• When it's time to replace a major appliance or furnace, buy an EnergyStar rated model.

• Install a programmable thermostat, especially if you are out of the house for hours each day.
  

• Plug your electronics into power strips with on/off switches. Turn off the power on each strip when you're not using the appliances plugged into it. TVs, VCRs, DVD players, digital projectors, kitchen appliances and stereo equipment all continue to draw power when they are turned off. In fact, on average an astonishing 75% of the energy these appliances draw is consumed when the appliances are not in use. Power strips eliminate this problem by cutting all power to our gadgets.
  

Most of these tips involve a once-and-done monetary investment. Pick and choose among them according to the budget you must operate within. As the small savings accrue, you will be able to afford the more expensive investments.

Tips for the frugal car owner

A car is a practical necessity for many of us. It's also among the most expensive items purchased by many households, and it continues to cost money over its lifetime of use. I'm going to present a few tips here for saving money while owning and maintaining a car. It should go without saying that a frugal person would strive to pay cash for a used car in good condition, which was shopped for very carefully. These tips focus on keeping costs down between auto purchases.

• Drive your car efficiently. Don't take your car out to run a single errand - ever. If you must get to work by car everyday, then make a habit of doing all your grocery shopping and other chores on the way to or from work. If you don't work outside the home, wait until there's a time-critical need to use the car, and then do all your other "whenever" errands on the same day. Always ask yourself if there's anything you need to do along the route you need to travel before you leave the house.

• Clean the junk out of your car. Every pound of weight you add to your car burns up a little more fuel per mile. Keep only what you really need in the car for each trip. Obviously, you need certain items in case of emergencies. The rest of the stuff that just gets left in the car is costing you money for no reason.

• Drive 55 (or less). There are so many frugal reasons to keep to a modest speed, even when the legal speed limit is higher. Fuel efficiency plummets dramatically as a car's speed increases beyond 55 mph. Accident mortality increases in a direct relationship to speed. You're more likely to walk away from an accident that happens while you're moving 40 mph than 60 mph. Also, you won't get a speeding ticket, which can cost you in more ways than one. Not only is paying the ticket like burning cash straight out of your wallet, but your insurance premiums will go up. You could end up paying hundreds of dollars per year for that excessive speed, for years to come.

• Keep the air pressure in your tires at the level recommended by the manufacturer. Low air pressure in the tires results in more drag between the road and your car. That in turn results in lower fuel efficiency. Checking the pressure on your tires is easy and requires only a simple pressure gauge. Make a habit of adjusting the pressure in all four tires once per month at a gas station that has a free air pump.

• Keep your air filter clean. The air filter is another part of the car which can be easily maintained by the owner for a small but significant increase in fuel efficiency. This maintenance is commonly done every 5000 miles. But I recommend that you make it a part of your monthly car care routine. It takes only a few minutes to clean off an air filter with a vacuum cleaner. Check your owner's manual for guidance on locating and removing the air filter in your car.

• Ask yourself if you really need to drive a car. If you live in a major city, there are lots of other options aside from driving a car. And the costs for driving a car are likely higher as well, because you must often pay for parking in the city. The favorite frugal option is to walk, as this provides both free transportation and free exercise. A scooter is an excellent solution for many city-dwellers who travel ten miles or less per day. A scooter is much cheaper to buy, maintain, insure, and operate and it removes a lot of the hassles of driving and parking. How many days each year do you really need those extra empty seats, or weather protection offered by a full-sized vehicle? If a scooter isn't for you, then evaluate your public transit options carefully. Also look into carpooling or ride sharing if your work schedule is regular.

• Don't stint on maintenance. Change your oil on schedule, or get it changed for you. If you live where icy roads are salted in the winter, wash your car so that a simple thing like salt doesn't destroy its value. Sometimes to be frugal you have to know how to spend wisely. Regular maintenance keeps your vehicle running longer and safer to drive. You don't want to end up dead with a lot of money in the bank in the pursuit of false frugality There is such a thing as tightening the belt too far.

• Raise the deductible on your auto insurance. Your insurance should protect you from financial crisis, not protect you from ever having to spend any money at all. Figure out the highest amount you could pay for auto repair without seriously jeopardizing your budget. Set the deductible as close to that amount as possible.

• Check the annual mileage that your insurance policy is written for against your actual annual mileage. If your real usage is higher, the ethical thing is to inform your insurer. If it's lower, you may well qualify for a reduction in your premium. This is especially important check if you no longer drive your car to work. Remember this if you suddenly lose a job and find yourself needing to rein in expenses.

• Use a grease pencil to write a message on the inner face of your hubcaps. Include your name, phone number and a message about a monetary reward for the hubcap's return. Make the reward amount somewhere between 25% and 50% of the replacement part of your hubcap. If you lose the hubcap, you and the finder might both get lucky.

• If you vehicle doesn't already have them, look into VIN etchings for all your windows. There are kits you can order which put an unobtrusive copy of your vehicle identification number on each window in the car. This seriously erodes the car's value to car thieves. Many auto insurers will give you a discount on your insurance if your car includes these identifiers. Check with your insurance company about this before investing in the etching kit.

Hope you found some of these tips useful. Feel free to add your own in the comment section.

Sometimes it pays to spend a little money

While the point of frugality is usually to avoid spending money, there are some good frugal tool investments that are worth spending on, because they really do save you money in the long run. Of course, I'm going to recommend that you pick up as many of these items second-hand as possible. Many tools are just as good used as brand new.

For any number of kitchen applications, rubber spatulas are a frugalite's friend. Spatulas help you get an extra few tablespoons of sauce, the last of that soup, and an extra muffin's worth of batter. A good rubber spatula will last for years and help you waste not, want not in the kitchen. I like the Kitchen Aid spatula. I have a couple of these in my kitchen.

A food processor is a great frugal kitchen tool, provided that it actually gets used on a regular basis. This tool can mean the difference between tiresome drudgery and quick preparation time for many foods. I most often use my food processor to grate large blocks of cheese so that they can be frozen to use on homemade pizza at a later date. True, I could get out my hand grater and do it all with elbow grease, thereby saving a few pennies in electricity. But if I knew that I'd have to grate it all by hand, I'd be much less likely to stock up on cheese when I found a good deal. The same goes for preparing large batches of morning glory muffins. Grating a couple pounds of carrots and apples takes seconds rather than half an hour with a food processor. So this is a tool that helps and encourages me to make good frugal choices in both shopping and cooking. Some bakers also use a food processor to knead their dough. I sometimes use mine to puree sauces and soups. You don't need a very fancy food processor, nor a new one, to get good results. For those making a real commitment to a frugal lifestyle, I think a food processor is a worthwhile investment.

A Chest freezer is a great thing to have in the basement or in the garage. If you own your home and have the space, think seriously about investing in a freezer. It will allow you to stock up on all sorts of food when there's a good sale, or when produce is in season. This is one item that you should probably buy new. Chest freezers are more efficient than other kinds of freezers for one very simple reason. The cold air won't spill out of them when you open the door. And the efficiency of freezers has improved so much over the years that you will quickly recoup your costs for a new freezer as compared with an old one by virtue of the lower electrical bill. Look for the EnergyStar label as you do your shopping research.

Durable, re-usable food containers - these are essential items for any frugal home. Use them to store leftovers and to pack lunches for work or school. They are sturdier and more cost-effective than disposable plastic bags. They come in a variety of shapes to suit sandwiches, fruits and vegetables, and even soups. Ziploc brand has some good screw-top lid containers that I've used to pack soup in checked luggage on an airplane. I've never had a spill with these, though I continue to double bag them. The brand is much less important than having a plentiful supply of these around. You can even save yogurt containers and the like to use for leftovers. Just don't forget what's in those opaque containers. If you tend to the out-of-sight, out-of-mind school of leftover management, as I do, it may be better to store your food in clear plastic containers or bags - even if you have to pay for those containers.

Other basic kitchen tools are needed to do any serious amount of cooking. And cooking is one of the irreplaceable frugal skills. So make sure that your kitchen contains a working version of a colander, paring knife, chef's knife, wooden spoons, chopping board, mixing bowls, measuring cups and spoons, and a set of good-quality cooking pots. Without these and other staples of the kitchen countertop, you'll be hard pressed to prepare your meals at home. Going without basic kitchen tools is a false economy if you end up ordering takeout because you can't face the task of preparing a thrifty meal in a frustratingly under-equipped kitchen.

No household should be without basic hardware tools. Whether you rent or own your home, you'll eventually need a hammer, screwdriver, wrench, measuring tape and probably a wrench and a pair of pliers. Sears Craftsman tools are guaranteed forever, and can often be found at garage sales. I remember a story about a young woman who was given a basic set of Craftsman tools by her practical father when she went off to college. Before he gave them to her, he painted all of them pink. She objected mildly to this, because she wasn't exactly a girly girl sort. Her father reassured her that the color was not a means of accessorizing, nor feminizing the tools. Instead, it was insurance that she'd always have her tools returned to her when they were borrowed, especially by men. Sure enough, not one of her tools ever disappeared after being borrowed. Many years later, she still had the same set.

I'm going to go ahead and recommend a hot glue gun, even though I'm somewhat on the fence about this tool. I haven't had mine all that long, but I have gotten a good amount of use out of it. I don't do a lot of crafts. I suspect that crafty sorts and parents who like to keep their kids busy with creative projects would find this tool enormously useful. I find mine great for a myriad simple repair jobs and the few crafts projects I've tackled. If this tool makes sense in your frugal life, then by all means pick one up.

A hot water bottle is your friend if you live where the winters are cold. A good frugal housekeeper knows that it's cheaper to keep a small spot warm than to heat a whole house. If you have time during the day when you have to sit still for hours on end (homework, writing, research), you know how hard it can be to stay warm in a house with the thermostat set to 63 degrees. Invest in a hot water bottle for each family member. Make simple cloth covers for each one out of old clothes or an old comforter. The covers keep the bottle hot longer, and also help keep you from getting burned on the hot surface. When your water bottle wears out, it makes a good kneeling pad for garden work. It'll keep your pants cleaner and you can put a little sand in it to cushion your knees.

Tiny Tips

Lots of people think of saving money as getting $50 off a big ticket purchase, or buying a two-year-old car instead of a brand new one. Far too often I've heard disparaging remarks about sensible frugal practices. I agree that it's possible to be penny wise and pound foolish, but I bristle just a little bit when people imply that small economies are silly or not worth it.

My gut feeling is that all the little homely economies I practice every single day save me as much each year as the "big ticket" items. Small changes such as these are as much a part of a frugal lifestyle as getting debt under control, and then getting out of debt entirely. Moreover, not everyone can get out of debt overnight. But anyone can make the choice to clean a sheet of aluminum foil or wash ziploc bags. If you don't have the immediate means to clear your debt, at least you can start with the small things.

These are some of the small, practical things you can do every day to save a little money at a time. As Amy Dacyzcyn says, it's okay to sweat the small stuff. Remember, it all adds up!

• Buy the heavy duty aluminum foil so it will hold up to repeated washings. See how long you can make a single piece of aluminum foil last. The heavy kind is stiff enough to stand up in a drying rack after you've washed it.
• Spices - If you have the room, keep your spices in the freezer. I use a shoe box to stand all the jars upright so it's easier to find what I want. I even go to the trouble of writing the name of the spice on a piece of masking tape taped on the lid of the can. That way I can see at a glance what's what. Spices are among the most expensive ingredients in the kitchen, and they lose their potency quickly, especially ground spices. Buying whole spices and/or keeping them in the freezer is the best way to prolong shelf-life.
• Use cloth napkins. Most of us have a few of these lying around. Start using them! If you don't have any, you could cut some out of the better part of worn clothing or bedding. Around your birthday or the holidays, let it be known you'd like some everyday cloth napkins. These will last you for years or even decades. And you'll save money each and every time you choose a cloth napkin over a disposable paper napkin.
• Keep a plastic bottle of water in your car at all times. Not only will this save you from making a purchase because you're thirsty, it could conceivably save your life in an emergency.
• Wrap feminine hygiene products in pages from an old phone book (which is free) instead of toilet paper (which you pay for) . If you have a septic system, this will mean fewer solids in the tank, and thus longer intervals between servicing.
• Sign up for electronic bill payment whenever possible. This will save you the cost of stamps, the price of which is always nudging up, and also on your checks if you must pay for them. Be sure, however, to review your bills for errors just as carefully as you would if you were writing out that check. Sign up for automatic bill pay with caution. Make sure you will always have the funds available in any account that has an automated payment coming from it. Don't save the cost of a stamp only to get dinged with an overdraft fee.
  
• Bake multiple items at a time & freeze some for later. In the winter, make the most of the heat by leaving the oven door open after use.
  
• Capture the hot water from boiling pasta or making tea and leave it in a pot to moisturize the air and impart a little extra heat to the house.
  
• Choose the size of your pans with care. They should be wider than the burner below them, so that the heat goes into the pan and not up around its sides.
  
• Cover every pot or pan you cook in, unless you are trying to reduce the amount of liquid in a pot.
  
• When baking potatoes or sweet potatoes, pierce them lengthwise with a metal skewer. They'll cook faster by about 10 minutes.
• Turn off the oven when whatever you're cooking is 90% done. Don't open the door until the food is ready though. This won't work for everything, but it will for many things.
  
• Use only as much shampoo and toothpaste as is really necessary. Don't believe the commercials. You don't need a palmful of shampoo or an inch of toothpaste. If you get lots of frothy suds in your hair when you shampoo, you're using too much. Switch to a dollop of shampoo the size of a quarter and a quarter inch of toothpaste. Adjust up or down as necessary until you use just what you really need.
  
  
• Cut down on fridge load by cooling your leftovers well before refrigerating. Place food outside in the winter if you have no animals to worry about. Tiled, brick or natural stone floors will also help cool food in metal pots quickly. Move the pot around the floor every few minutes for a while so the heat is always dispersing into a new cool spot.
  
  

Please add your tiny tip in the comment section, and I'll add more of my own as I think of them.

Trimming the grocery budget

Here are some practical tips for saving your pennies in the grocery department.

• When buying produce that is bunched and sold by unit, weigh the bag. Onions, potatoes and other produce are often sold in net bags or paper containers. Invariably, there is some variation in the actual weight of the items. Don't be ashamed to use the produce scales to select the one that is heaviest! Someone is going to get that free extra half pound of potatoes, so it might as well be you. Get yourself a little extra value for the money you're paying.
• When buying produce that is sold by weight and is iced or kept moist with sprayers or mist, shake off that ice or water. Water is heavy, whether melted or frozen. There's no sense in you paying the grocer for that water. Give the food a vigorous shake before you put it in the bag. You've saved yourself a few pennies at least.
• Use it all up. Lots of different kinds of vegetables are trimmed at home. All too often, too much is thrown away. Just about anything that is sold in a grocery department is really edible. Yet we turn up our noses at eating broccoli stalk or discard a corn cob once we've gnawed off the sweet kernels. Learn to eat and enjoy beet greens; they're good for you! Peel that broccoli stalk and add the tender white center to the dish you're cooking. Save parsley stems, corn cobs and celery tops for flavoring broth. Small leaves on broccoli and cauliflower are tender and delicious. Whenever you cook meat with bones, save the bones in the freezer until you have enough for some broth. Think before you throw any food item away. Can you get some value out of it? Even if you don't want to eat it, consider freezing the item to add flavor and nutrition to a broth. Get more mileage out of what you've already paid for.
• Eat seasonally. Buying asparagus in September or peaches in January is a bad idea on so many different levels. Not only has this food been flown in from half way around the country or the world, using up more calories in transit than you will get from consuming it, but such produce was probably picked early to withstand the rigors of shipment. You'll pay more for an out-of-season item that is less fresh and less nutritive. And the bottom line is: it's just not going to taste very good. So why bother? Timeliness is an essential ingredient in many dishes. Learn to think of tomatoes, peaches, asparagus, sweet corn and strawberries as seasonal treats. When they're in season in your area and thus cheap, buy them, celebrate them and glut yourself on them. Store some away in the freezer or canning jars for later. When the season for that food is over, you'll probably be sick of them anyway. Then it'll be time to move on to the next seasonal food that's at its peak nutritionally and at its cheapest in the grocery aisle.
• Buy in bulk, when it makes sense to do so. If you have the room to store extra goods and you know the consumption patterns of your family, stock up! Buying in bulk can give you access to much better prices than small-portion retail usually offers. Check your price comparison book and use your calculator to be sure that the bulk price represents a real savings. Only buy in quantities you know you'll be able to use up before it spoils. Canned goods such as tomato sauce and beans have very long shelf lives. So if you know for sure that you will use the item and that the price is good, buy as much can be stored easily at your home. Toilet paper, diapers and soap have no expiration date, so these are also excellent candidates for bulk purchase. Don't buy any product in bulk if you are unfamiliar with it or have any doubts as to whether or not you will use it. Better to pay a few more cents on a single unfamiliar item and discover you don't like it than to save a few dollars on a case of the same item. Once you know a particular product well, you might look into buying it by the case. Some regular retail stores will pass along savings if you special order a case or more through them. It can't hurt to ask.