Re: Re: Shoe string budgets

[Guest guest]

Freecycle is wonderful! I've gotten pretty much all of my maternity

clothing off of it (I'm just wearing larger sizes, not maternity specific

stuff). I've also gotten a dresser, printer, patterns to sew my own

clothing with, and many, many other useful items. I'm even gonna pick up a

kombucha scoby from a listmate. Our list has even had grains, legumes

and other food items coming through recently.

Right now my diet is most like the isolated swiss diet in NAPD - lots of

dairy (milk, butter, cheese, buttermilk, half-and-half) supplemented with

grains (as well as potatoes and some legumes) and more butter or cream with

my veggies I eat meat only a few times a week and when I do it tends to

be chicken (sometimes fish when I can afford it) - and I make sure to use

the bones for stock to cook my grains in. I do spend the extra money on

pastured chickens because I just don't like commercial ones (they taste too

bland so I end up not eating as much of them) and I only buy organic livers

(since they're the only ones I can find that aren't sickly looking). My

biggest expense is easily the dairy...

On to how I save money:

Most supermarkets have online sales circulars that they'll email to you

weekly if you have a savings card with them. I check the local circulars

every week for good deals - be it on cheese, produce, meat, grains, etc.

The supermarkets near me are almost always running buy-1-get-1 on something

(and occasionally even buy-1-get-2!!) A good example is WF is having a

blowout sale on Kerrygold butter: 2 for 3.99! I never thought I'd see it

that cheap and will be buying several more and hopefully getting a rain

check so I can buy a handful next month too (these are wonderful things

because they'll give them to you even if you're the one that bought the last

ones).

I'm still working out what I'm doing with cleaners - I have baking soda and

vinegar for a lot of things. I've been thinking of adding some 35% H2O2 for

areas where I don't like the vinegar smell. I use commercially produced

castile soaps right now for the dishes, my skin and the laundry, but am

reading a book on how to make my own to see if I'd save enough money to make

the effort worth it. I don't use toothpaste as I've found my teeth do

better with just water. I use a salt and 3% H2O2 mix for deodorant (it

works fantastically compared to the salt crystals I used to use) and I make

my own saline to use for things like mouthwash and nose spray/eye drops/ear

drops when needed.

When I do have to buy clothing (such as when freecycle doesn't have any

available) I tend to visit small consignment stores. They often have items

sitting around for a long time so not only are they cheap because they're

second hand, they're also marked down anywhere from 33% to 75%. Most of the

stuff I pick up couldn't even be hand made for as cheap as I find it. For

the most part, I only buy two items new: socks and underwear - and typically

they're on sale when I do.

I plan to cloth diaper and since water is included with my apartment the

extra loads of laundry won't impact me financially (I calculated out the

yearly savings to be a minimum of $1,000). There are several sites out

there where you can get second hand cloth diapers for the cost of shipping.

I'm also planning to try out some homemade mama cloth when baby comes along.

That's about all I can think of right now.

-Lana

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 4:50 PM, cstraq1 <cstraq@...> wrote:

> Just thought I'd put my two cents in.... I recently signed up for a

> group called FREECYCLE. It's specific to your area and you can

> look for things you need for free - and you can give away things you

> no longer need. So far I've received some baby clothes for my daughter

> and a blue bird house.

>

> Carol S.

>