What did you do to save $ today?

[Big Daddy]

I made my own carrot seed tape. Worked just fine. I placed them in the garden, scattered a little dirt on, watered 'em, and put some boards on top so they won't dry out. I plan to uncover them in about a week or so.

That's a great idea. What kind of tape do you use? Would that be a good way to do lettuce and cabbage?

 

[me&thegals]

Hey, BD. I will butt in here since I was going to post anyway. There's a thread on TEG. Basically, you use a water-flour "sauce" like you would to do homemade pinatas on newspaper strips. Drop the seeds in a row on the strip and let it dry. Then "plant" your newspaper strips in the garden. Brilliant, Tallman! I think I will set my kids up with a project like that for their mini gardens

To save $ this week, I am seriously scavenging in my freezer. This is the time of year where I say, "Oh crud! The freezers still have a lot of food and in 2 months harvesting will start again!" So, lots of frozen foods being used this week in soups and stews.

Also this week I got my inside seedlings started. How crazy cheap to start 100 tomato plants inside for about $4 rather than spend about $40 buying them by plants. But, of course, this is a way bigger $ saver only if you're planting a pile.

Also, I use the bottom 2/3 of empty egg shells as the planters, styrofoam egg containers for the holders, Saran wrap on top to make a greenhouse effect until they're sprouting.

 

[Tallman]

I made my own carrot seed tape. Worked just fine. I placed them in the garden, scattered a little dirt on, watered 'em, and put some boards on top so they won't dry out. I plan to uncover them in about a week or so.

That's a great idea. What kind of tape do you use? Would that be a good way to do lettuce and cabbage?

I can not take credit for this idea, but here is what I did.

I made a paste using all purpose white flour and water. It needs to be about the consistency of white cream gravy. You don't want it too runny. Mine just barely dripped off of the stir stick. I cut newspapers into strips and pasted them together so they were about 7 feet long. Using a stick about the size of a pencil, I dipped the sick in the paste and put a dot every place I wanted a seed. A little dab'l do'ya. With my pocket knife I dropped one seed on each dot. I would do about 2 feet at a time like this until that strip was finished. I let all the strips dry, took them to the garden and put them down with the seeds up. The information that I looked at said that some people paste another strip of news paper on top so the seed is sandwiched in the middle. I am thinking about doing this for the next planting as it might help with weed control. The paper decomposes and you are supposed to have what ever it is you planted. Time will tell.

 

[On Our own]

Not buying any seed or plants this year!!

All of my seeds are from last years crops except for the seedlings I am getting in barter from a neighbor greenhouse! Talked to him today when I delivered bread and eggs and those plants are looking great!!

 

[Dace]

Dace,

How did you do that?

That's incredible!

It is really pretty easy and we have discussed it here a few times so I will keep it brief.

Each weekend I cut all the coupons out of my Sunday paper. The rule of thumb is 1 paper for each member of your household. There are six of us so I get 6 newspapers.
Cut and sort by category into envelops for simplicity....hair care, snacks, frozen foods, dairy, paper products, cleaning supplies etc.

The basic idea is to hold on to your Qs (coupons) until the best sale on the item...like playing poker, you got know when to hold 'em LOL Anyway, rather than pay $5 for a bottle of shampoo, when it is on sale at it's rock bottom price say...for $2.50, use your $1 off Q and get it for $1.50...AND instead of buying 1 bottle at that price you use all of your Qs so for me that would be 6. Now I have 6 bottles of $5 shampoo that retail for $30 but I paid $9. and because I was smart and stocked up on the good deal, I don't have to ever pay fuill price, I just keep buying a little bit ahead to keep a stockpile of the things that we need on a regular basis.

To make it work for me and avoid making looking for deals a full time job I subscribe to a web site called The Grocery Game
http://www.thegrocerygame.com/ but there are free versions out there like couponmom.com , but I have never found one as effective.

They print out a list from the stores that are in my area of what are the best deals....so combining my coupons with good sales allows me to really save a lot! Stores have different degrees of 'sale' so one week my favorite shampoo is down from $5 to $4.25 but my list will let me know that is not the best deal they have to offer (based on the products sale history) So I wait until my list tells me that it is as low as it will get and then I use my Q. You can get a 4 week trial for $1. There is a bit of a learning curve so if you do join you need to hang in there and ask a lot of questions on their message boards. After your trial you pay $10 every 8 weeks for 1 store and $5 for each additional store. I have 3 stores and pay $20 every 8 weeks...that works out to be $5 per week plus about $6.60 for my newspapers and you can see by this weeks total that I save WAY more than that weekly investment of $11.60.

If you have anymore questions feel free to PM me

 

[freemotion]

Hmmm.....I give my coupon flyers to a friend, without even looking at them anymore. I find that since I do almost everything from scratch, there are no coupons for anything I buy anymore....basic ingredients. When I used to combine coupons with sales, back when there were triple coupon coupons and double coupons always, I would regularly spend about 25% of the going prices of most of what I bought, and got many, many items for almost free. DH and I would both go into the store to get multiples of limit-per-customer items.

We still spend almost nothing on groceries and eat better and healthier than almost anyone I know!

Today I saved money by canning 12 quarts of peanuts, making three batches of laundry soap (until I ran out of containers, now I won't have to make it for a while......unless I give some away, which is likely.....knowing me.....it will be given with a set of instructions!)

We will have pizza for supper tonight, the dough was made from wheat I ground. I previously rolled out a bunch and froze them. We will use some of the lactic cheese I made along with some store-bought mozzarella, hopefully the last time!!! and home-canned pizza sauce.

I worked on another batch of 6" flannel napkins.

I made arrangements to trade a turkey with a neighbor for killing and cleaning two turkeys, one for each of us. Hope he does it soon!!! The toms are getting feisty...

I'm gonna clean my coop later, and I located a nice pile of dry leaves and pine needles in the pasture that the chickens have been fluffing, I will rake them up to re-bed the coop.

This is my last day off from being sick, so I feel a need to be productive!!!

 

[Dace]

Freemotion, you are much further along on the path than I am I still do not buy most things in bulk.

If you are making all of your own personal grooming and cleaning supplies then maybe coupons would not help but if you buy any of that (including pain & cold meds) then it maybe worth holding onto your coupons!

 

[TanksHill]

Today we are blessed with light winds and temps in the low 80's. My dh put up my laundry line yesterday and today I'm on my 3rd load. Amazing how great it feels!!!

 

[gettinaclue]

Thanks Dace!

I'll look into it!

 

[freemotion]

Freemotion, you are much further along on the path than I am I still do not buy most things in bulk.

If you are making all of your own personal grooming and cleaning supplies then maybe coupons would not help but if you buy any of that (including pain & cold meds) then it maybe worth holding onto your coupons!

There are also just the two of us, so the workload in doing everything from scratch is not as much as with a family. I work part-time, sort of, so that gives me blocks of time that I did not always have. So I am not criticising anyone, just bragging a bit! It was like a snowball rolling downhill and picking up size and momentum, once I started, I kept moving forward, and I enjoy it so much. Food is SOOO much better from scratch, and now that I am no longer chained to all the advertising hype and bad nutrition info out there. Just real, old-fashioned food like great-grandma used to make....well, still working on that, read about my cheese failure on another thread!

I rarely get sick anymore, I can usually fight off the viruses with a couple of days of mild symptoms. I only get really sick when I am under extreme stress, and it has been an extremely stressful month, so here I am, taking cold meds. We buy a bottle every 2-3 years, this was the year!

That's why I say over and over that real nutrition is a basic ss "skill." And basic financial management, too, especially when one is self-employed and has to take time off to be sick! Aaaarrrgh!