Those of us attempting to live on what was a shoestring budget even before the Great Unending Recession/Depression have probably been watching the large insanity of vacationing Congresscritters attempting to hold Town Hall meetings with their constituents back home with some bemusement. It’s no secret that the WingNut Network [a.k.a. Fox] and Hate Radio pundits have been inciting their faithful dummies to riot, since this has been ongoing ever since they lost the election last November in a big way. Between the clueless idiots who can’t believe a black man is a real American citizen (or that exotic Hawaii is actually a state) and the Bermuda shorts and gray hair crowd shouting “Keep the government OUT of my Medicare!” one really does have to wonder if maybe there’s something in the water making people lose what few IQ points they might have had back in kindergarten.

Some of us also know that going to a doctor regularly if you aren’t actually sick is not wise, thus are probably better off if we don’t suffer some chronic condition with our very limited access to the health care system than we might be if we had annual check-ups and the ability to demand whatever drug is advertised on television nightly. While it’s a sad truth that ~50 million Americans have no access to the health care system – and that’s an insurance issue – I haven’t seen anybody talking much lately about the health care system itself, which just happens to be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Thus they’re fighting about “Health Insurance Reform” while the dismal failure of doctors and hospitals to confront the outrageous error rate, hospital-acquired infection rate, etc. that KILLS at least 195,000 Americans every year. Americans who DO have access to the system! The U.S. pays more per capita of our GDP on health care than any other industrialized nation – most of which have universal, single-payer health care systems – and are at the very bottom of the list on all measures of health care outcome. Life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality (tied to our ridiculous C-section rate and lack of prenatal care), general health, number of chronic diseases, etc., etc.

We’d all like to see universal access to health care. We’d like for insurance companies to be barred from canceling policies if the person gets sick, from refusing to cover those with pre-existing conditions, and from raising the rates at five times the rate of inflation every year just because they can. We’d like for the poor and working poor to be able to get health care even if they don’t work for a company that offers it, or don’t earn enough to participate. We’d really like to get our bones set and our cuts stitched when we need to without going bankrupt, and we’d like to get treatment for our cancers and our other serious ailments instead of simply dying of them because health care is beyond our reach.

But because something must be done about the current situation in this country no matter how loudly the idiots yell about not offering their government health care to others who need health care, we can expect that something minimal will indeed be done. Best advice to those who have managed to get this far in life without being regular users of the health care system or the drug companies’ medicine chest is to approach new access with caution. Nothing is being done to cure the rate of iatrogenic disease and death (iagrogenic means “doctor-caused”) in any of this political maneuvering, so increased access only means that the delivery system will be able to harm or kill even more Americans every year.

Make use of your intelligence and your access to the internet, go looking for reliable information if you or someone you love gets sick. Merck has their entire medical manual on-line, the Physician’s Desk Reference is available as well with good information about drugs and which ones may conflict with others – something too many doctors don’t keep track of, and a large contributor to deaths from prescription errors. There are lots of physician websites offering information about various conditions, as well as patient associations that often have collected information from people who have or have dealt with particular conditions with even better information. Always be careful of information, make sure it’s good and not just another quack selling the magical ‘cure’ for AIDS or cancer or whatever, because those are out there too.

And if you’ve got questions, write them down, collect the good information you’ve gathered, THEN take it to your primary care provider and ask. Don’t tolerate a physician or practitioner who gets his or her nose bent out of shape because you’ve done your homework, and never put up with a doctor who balks if you ask for a second opinion. If you’re in line for surgery or some other serious treatment, go to the website of your state government’s medical regulatory agency and search until you find a list of the physicians and other practitioners who have been disciplined by the agency for gross or repeated malpractice or errors. If your doctor’s on the list, get a new one.

And most of all, keep always in your mind the fact that your personal choices affect your health for the better more acutely than anything an insurance company or doctor or hospital can. No one else can “heal” you – people’s own bodies do the healing, health care providers can only help it along. Best not to get sick in the first place, and we’ve no excuse not to know that our diets greatly affect our health. Eating well, getting exercise, maintaining our environment, etc. will stave off many a nasty illness or condition – avoiding the plagues that come with obesity is much better than treating this plague or that plague after they’ve developed.

Now, sit back and enjoy the street theater spectacle of the ‘haves’ trying most desperately to prevent the ‘have-nots’ from getting anything! It’s black comedy at its most absurd, something we’ll probably never see again in our lifetimes. Laugh, because that’s the best medicine in the world!

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports its latest unemployment figures as of January 2009 as 7.6% of the workforce, compared to 7.2% in December of 2008. We all know that jobs are being lost by the hundreds of thousands across the nation. We also know that these statistics account only for those workers who file and are eligible to receive unemployment benefits. Which makes the real unemployment figures at least twice as high, now more than 15%. That’s definitely edging into ‘Depression’ territory, and there will be no let-up any time soon.

Whether or not you qualify for unemployment benefits – which aren’t enough to pay the mortgage for most people – if you are out of work you and your family probably qualify for food stamps, or what is now termed by USDA as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP]. The Social Security Online website also has good information about eligibility for food stamps, and we most certainly hope that readers of this weblog aren’t too proud to make good use of this program if they find themselves in need. You may hope that another good job will soon be offered, but don’t let your family go hungry in the meantime. DO something!

This blog has examined issues of health and nutrition in trying economic times in several post series. 3 Easy Ways to Eat Cheap outlines best strategies for stretching food dollars without sacrificing nutrition. What’s For Dinner? examines fast-rising food prices and ways to get around paying so much. There are some good resources linked in those posts and their follow-ups, but today I discovered a whole new resource that is dedicated specifically to getting the most from minimal food budgets and food stamp allotments.

The website is called Cook for Good and it breaks things down for all to understand. Food stamps in most instances offer a mere $1.50 or so for a single meal per person in a household. It is difficult to figure out how to feed a family on so little as the price of food goes up every single day at the supermarket, and most government subsidies won’t cover fresh foods, farmer’s market purchases, etc. In this website a host of questions and answers can be found on just how to stretch those fake food dollars to not only keep your family fed, but fed well and without the gross extra calories that have turned the “face of poverty” in this country from rail thin to seriously obese in a short 50 years.

Cook for Good even offers a month’s worth of menus to demonstrate exactly how to feed a family for an average of just $1.25 per meal. Including desserts far less fattening than Twinkies! Going with the “green” menu adds just 53¢ to the cost per meal, but includes fresh and organic foods. Between this example of a month’s worth of menus and the shopping hints, recipes and hints on the website, anyone recently out of work (thus with time to spend), on food stamps and concerned about health and nutrition can plan ahead and feel much better about the whole situation.

Who knows? Perhaps if enough people have to go through figuring out how to eat well on much less money, when the economic situation improves we’ll be generally slimmer, healthier and more involved in eating good food than we ever were before. That would be something very good to come of these trying economic times. So go on over to Cook for Good, check out the links here at Shoestring Budget, and if you know of more resources out there please offer them in the comments.

Eat well, be happy!

Links:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Food Stamp Facts
Cook for Good
Month of Menus
3 Easy Ways to Eat Cheap
What’s For Dinner?

The election is now over, the Neocons and their operatives at Treasury and the Fed are doing their best to loot the nation completely before power changes hands, and the citizens are collectively holding their breath, wondering just how bad it will get, thousands of jobs disappearing every week. The Grinch may well have succeeded in stealing Christmas this year – looks like we won’t have Circuit City to kick around anymore.

As the economy falls (for everyone but the oil companies, who are enjoying record profits as usual), the prices of just about everything keep going up. The most primal of our needs is food, and how we will survive the depression without sacrificing our health, our weight or our taste buds is a question many families are beginning to struggle with.

By next spring we can expect the number of home ‘Victory Gardens’ to explode as patches of lawn are tilled under and favorite veggies are planted. Depending on where you live – thus how long your growing season is and whether you get two a year – a family can produce a significant chunk of its annual consumption of fresh greens, tomatoes, peas, peppers, and various specialty items like melons, squash, eggplant, artichokes and tasty herbs. In a well-managed yard garden of no more than 12×20 feet and a clever porch container garden.

In the meantime, here are some basics for making the most out of short food dollars while getting the most nutrition and least amount of excess fat from your day to day diet.

1. Eat More Soups and Stews

Basic one-pot meals can be hearty, tasty, nutritious and extremely satisfying. If you don’t have a crock pot, consider one as your Gift Wish this year. You can start a soup or stew you prepped the night before when you make your morning coffee, it will be ready to eat when you get home from work.

For these you can use cheaper dry legumes and grains, bullion stocks and storage veggies like potatoes, onions and carrots. If you’re meat eaters, a ham hock in the pot adds a lot of flavor. Cheaper cuts of beef make for fine stews, and chicken is a perennial favorite. Can be purchased in tuna-size cans (same aisle), will make tasty chicken-rice or chicken noodle or chicken n’ dumplings. A good pot of hearty soup or stew can last a couple of nights, or provide easily microwaveable lunches the next day. Every time you don’t buy prepared food you’re saving real money for better tasting and more nutritious home-cooked meals.

And don’t forget about pot pies – a great way to stretch a good hearty stew when there’s lots left over, they freeze well and can be made in single-serve portions when you’ve got time!

One Dish Crockpot Meals
All Crockpot Recipes

2. Learn All About Quick-Breads

To go with those hearty soups and stews you’ll want to whip up some good side-breads. A 5-pound bag of cornmeal (self rising) can make a lot of cornbread either for dunking or crumbling or just munching. There are good recipes for various quick wheat breads using leavening agents that don’t require as much work as yeast. Crackers are another side that doesn’t take long to whip up and can be as hearty as you like with sesame, caraway or flax seeds, some herb flavorings and maybe some additional flours (rye, oat, etc.) to the usual wheat.

Homegrown Evolution: Quick Breads
6,718 Quick Bread Recipes

3. Window Box, Porch & House Plant Gardening

Salad greens – your basic variety of leaf lettuces, spinach, etc. – love cool weather. Even if you live in an all-winter-freeze environment, if you’ve a sunny window you can attach plastic weather sheeting in such a way to enclose a window box, which will then pick up enough heat from the house through the window to allow growing salad greens. If you can water and harvest from inside the house, even better!

These boxes need not be deeper than 3-4″ of good potting soil and compost, lettuce and spinach have very shallow roots. If you sow the mixed leaf seed, don’t worry about separating the plants. Just cut the leaves when they get to be about 3″ tall with a pair of scissors, they’ll keep growing back. Spinach should have a bit of room, harvest outside leaves and let the center keep producing more.

Dark green leafies like kale and collards can easily be grown in well-insulated pots on the porch, so long as your porch gets sun. They’ll grow right through snow cover, but you have to keep the pot from “ground-freeze.” Harvest these the same way as spinach (though the leaves are much bigger) – outside first, let the central plant keep producing rather than just cut the whole thing down. I have collard and kale plants in my garden that are two years old, their multi-harvested stems several feet long, still producing fine greens.

And peppers (chili or bell) can grow indoors all year long in a good size pot if it gets sun. They even have seeds for ‘ornamental’ pepper plants just for houseplant use, though the peppers are indeed edible. And like avacado and citrus trees, they’ll live forever if you take care of them.

Container Gardening: Vegetables
Vegetable Gardening in Containers

Awhile back this blog featured a three-part series on Necessary Household Basics for keeping a clean house by concocting your own soaps, scouring powders, metal polishes, starches, fabric fresheners, bug repellants, etc. The list of ingredients were all common, inexpensive substances like salt, vinegar, borax, baking soda and corn starch. Saving serious money on soaps begins with saving the last of the bar soaps (and motel bar-lets) and turning them liquid by dissolving them in water.

Part 2 of that series offered some easy recipes for making the useful products. Like making an excellent metal polish by mixing vinegar and salt into a paste, or a fine scouring powder by mixing borax and soda. And of course, if you haven’t enough liquid soap to produce the laundry detergent or diswashing soap, you can always go ahead and purchase a jug of good ol’ Dr. Bronner’s organic liquid soap for making your mixtures. It’s not the cheapest of ingredients, but it’ll certainly go a long way! The money savings are significant all around.

I personally tested the recipes. I liquified my large collection of motel soaps that a friend who travels for a living gave me last Christmas (dozens of little bars) in a large Coleman cooler, because I didn’t feel like cleaning out one of the garden 5-gallon buckets at the time. Then mixed in the recommended amounts of borax and soda (purchased in the largest sizes available at the store, basic generic brands) and still haven’t put much of a dent in the resulting cooler full of laundry soap. Of which I use two kitchen soup-ladels per load, gets the clothes as clean or cleaner than any commercial laundry soap I’ve ever used, and produces clean clothes that smell almost as good coming out of the dryer as they’d smell coming in off an outdoor clothesline! I figure my batch will last 4 or 5 months at least.

Thus it was with some interest I read an article from ScienceDaily entitled Toxic Chemicals Found in Common Scented Laundry Products, Air Fresheners. Seems a University of Washington began a study due to reports from regular people that bathroom air fresheners and smells from laundry products that cling to their clothes were making them sick. The researcher found that all six top-selling products tested emitted at least one chemical regulated as toxic or hazardous under federal law. Not a single one of those toxic or hazardous chemicals was listed on the product labels. Whoa.

The chemicals identified included such nasties as acetone (if you can smell it, brain cells are dying), limonene, acetaldehyde, chloromethane and 1,4-dioxane. In all, researcher Anne Steinemann identified nearly a hundred volatile organic compounds emitted from the six products tested, and NONE were on the label. Five of the six emitted one or more “hazardous air pollutants” known to cause cancer, all considered by the EPA to have NO safe exposure level.

Yet another good reason to do it yourself and save a lot of money in the process. Dr. Bronner’s soaps (I love the peppermint particularly) do have scents, there from organically grown plant substances like… peppermint. Or lavender or lilac or… well, you get the picture. Borax and soda don’t release volatile organic compounds, they just clean and freshen clothes while getting out some persistent stains. Your health will certainly thank you for it – asthmatics reported adverse reactions to scenting chemicals at a rate of 20% – and health care isn’t cheap these days either.

Isn’t it nice that people doing things for themselves and saving money can also be living happier, healthier lives in the process?

Links:

Necessary Household Basics
Dr. Bronner’s
Toxic Chemicals Found in Common Scented Laundry Products, Air Fresheners

Part 2: Keeping Things Clean

In Part 1 of this 3-part series I listed some basic ingredients to purchase that can do double or triple duty in your home cleaning, disinfecting and treating small first aid issues while saving you big money and at the same time NOT polluting your home or our collective environment.

In this part of the series I’ll list some easy recipes for mixing your basic ingredients into useful household products. This doesn’t take a lot of time or heavy effort, and can be done on a weekend afternoon easily once every month or two (as they get used up), or mixed on the spot for particular jobs.

In The Laundry Room: Everybody must do laundry. Whether or not you’ve got an infant in diapers (cloth is best!) or small children who love to make mud pies, or older kids who sweat a lot, or just working adults who must wear good clothes or uniforms daily in their jobs, you’re going to have to wash clothes. And while the price of food and gasoline keeps rising out of sight, most people already know that good laundry products are a significant chunk of change out of the budget.

I mentioned in Part 1 how to make liquid soap out of the dregs of bars that melt all over your tub and sink by just putting them in a container with water and letting them dissolve. That’s good hand soap that can be put into a dispenser, but can also provide the basis of laundry soap if you’ve enough of it. I have a friend who must travel for her job, and who collects those little motel soaps through the year, gifting them to me at Christmas so I’ve got sizeable baskets of rock-hard teeny-soaps still in their wrappers. I use these to make liquid soap, and liquid soap to make laundry soap. Alternatively, you can use Fels Naptha laundry soap bars, which are inexpensive and go quite far. The three bar package can make about 6 gallons of laundry soap, which should get most households through at least that many months even if there’s a lot of laundry to do! Ivory soap bars or flakes work very well for baby laundry, and is still among the least expensive of basic soaps you can buy.

Recipe: 2 gallons liquid laundry soap

1.5 cups liquid soap or 1 cup grated bar soap
6 cups water
3/4 cup baking soda
1/2 cup borax

Mix water and soap in a large pot. Stir in soda and borax. Heat over low medium stirring with a wooden spoon until everything is well dissolved. Bring to a boil and boil slowly for 15 minutes. Remove from heat (it should have the general consistency of honey). In a bucket with tight-fitting lid add 1 quart of hot water, then add the soap mixture and mix well. Add enough cold water to make 2 full gallons and blend the ingredients thoroughly. After 24 hours this mixture should set to a light gel. Store the bucket next to the washer, stir it with a wooden slat or spoon before each use, use 1/2 cup per full laundry load.

It doesn’t really have to be a gel, a liquid will work fine. It also won’t suds up in the wash, but that’s okay. The ingredients will all do their jobs. This laundry soap costs about 50¢ a gallon, which is many dollars cheaper than a gallon of liquid detergent at the grocery store!

Recipe: 2 cups dry laundry soap

Some people simply prefer a dry laundry soap to a liquid. This is also easy enough to make.

1 cup grated bar soap
1/2 cup borax
1/2 cup baking soda

Put these into a quart size jar and shake well. Use 2-3 tablespoons per laundry load (depending on size and soil). This mixture takes up less room that a bucket of liquid, and works quite well.

* If you have a baby in diapers, you may wish to use Arm & Hammer laundry soda instead of regular baking soda, as it will absorb more acid than the regular. But for general laundry needs, the cheaper baking soda works fine.

Recipe: stain remover spray

1/3 cup tap water
1/3 cup household ammonia
1/3 cup rubbing (denatured) alcohol

Mix ingredients into a clean spray bottle, shake to mix and use as needed to pre-treat stains on clothing (particularly good on collar and underarm stains).

Recipe: fabric softener

2 cups white vinegar
2 cups baking soda
4 cups hot water

Mix the vinegar and water, then carefully mix in the soda (slowly… or it will foam like you won’t believe!). Add about 20 drops of essential oil (lavender is nice, so is cedarwood, rose, whatever you like). This recipe will make about a gallon, you can put it into a cleaned-out gallon plastic jug. Shake gently before using.

You can also put some of this in a spray bottle and use it as a freshener like Febreeze.

Recipe: starch

If you like your shirts crisp or work in a uniform that needs starch, you can make your own by simply mixing a tablespoon of corn starch in a quart of water. Put it in a spray bottle and keep it near the iron.

In The Kitchen and Bath

The most important household products you’ll be using in the kitchen and bath are scouring powders and disinfectants of some variety. These of course will do double duty, so you’ll want to keep a spray bottle of disinfectant separately in those rooms, along with a jar of powder.

Recipe: surface disinfectant

1/4 cup ammonia
1 cup rubbing alcohol
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 cup water

Mix these ingredients together and put into spray bottles to store in the kitchen and bath. It cuts grease and kills bacteria, can be used to clean countertops, sinks, tubs, showers and toilets.

* Remember… NEVER mix ammonia and bleach! None of these recipes use bleach, but don’t get careless!

Recipe: scouring powder

We all need some good scouring powder on occasion to get tough stains off sinks, tubs and toilets. Mix equal parts baking soda and borax, put into a lidded jar and keep where it’s needed. Shake it a bit and shake onto a wet surface, scrub with a sponge, rag or brush.

* Always be sure to label your home made cleaning products when you make them. You can use printer labels and a Sharpee (waterproof ink). That way nobody makes mistakes!

Around The House

There are other cleaning, deodorizing and disinfecting jobs to do around the house. Here’s some hints on those…

Stains and odors

Salt works great for getting serious stains out of carpet. Wet the stain and shake salt on it amply, let it sit overnight before vacuuming.

Carpet odors (pet or baby urine, general funk) are well absorbed by plain baking soda. Shake it onto the carpet and allow to sit for at least an hour, then vacuum.

Urine stains on kid’s mattresses can be sprayed with a borax and water mixture, allowed to dry, then vacuumed with the brush attachment. You can add a little soda too, it won’t hurt and will absorb even more odor.

Mildew anywhere in the home is best cleaned with a mixture of salt and enough lemon juice to make a paste.

To deodorize plumbing drains pour a cup of white vinegar down it once a week. Let stand for half an hour and flush with cold water. If your drain is slow due to hair/grease clog, pour a handful of baking soda down the drain and then add 1/2 cup vinegar. Rinse with hot water, the clog should dissolve.

If your dishes from the meal are greasy, add a tablespoon of vinegar to the soapy wash water. Vinegar also cleans dishwashers, steam irons and coffee makers well, just run some vinegar through once a month. Wash microwave ovens with vinegar and water.

In the third part of this series we’ll look at some recipes for first aid and insect repellants that will come in handy over the summer months, using these same cheap ingredients. See you then!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

Part 1: The List of Ingredients

Now that it’s late May, it’s time to stock up for the summer – and our many summer visitors – on things like bug repellant (we really do live in the Deep Woods), anti-itch solution, insect sting remedies, poison ivy treatments, cut and scrape treatments, etc. The basic summertime First Aid Kit, all ingredients of which will be used as regularly as the usual household cleaners, deodorizers, detergents, polishes and disinfectants get used all year round.

Might as well get items that do double or triple duty as household cleansers and disinfectants as well as personal skin and hair care products too. I’ll use this post to make the basic list of things to buy, and later posts will give specific recipes and hints on how to use them to best advantage. And the best thing about these products? They’re Green and Eco-Friendly to boot!

Baking Soda: It all starts with good old baking soda. You can purchase generic or the primary name brand we recognize (Arm and Hammer). It’s cheap either way, and the same product though generic will tend to clump and solidify quicker and easier. Compared against the multitude of specialty chemicalized products you could be buying to do many of the same tasks, you could save hundreds of dollars a year with a cleaner, fresher house and a healthier family to show for it!

Baking soda is a good deodorizer for carpets and upholstery (even effective against pet and human urine odors), disinfectant, anti-fungal, a surface-safe scouring powder, cockroach insecticide, drain unclogger, silver and copper polish, laundry aid and pH equalizer for things like pool water. It is used medicinally as an anti-itch wash, insect sting treatment, toothpaste, mouthwash, gargle for sore throats poison ivy neutralizer, soothing treatment for athlete’s foot, an antacid, deodorant and anti-acne scrub. Given that it doesn’t cost much – particularly in 4-5 pound boxes – it can save you a bundle on all these sort of products that cost several dollars apiece.

Borax: Our list of necessary household basics continues with another sodium product, borax. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, while borax is sodium borate decahydrate. It’s a laundry booster (improves detergent action, natural colorsafe bleach), a water softener, multipurpose cleaner, fungicide, preservative, insecticide, herbicide, disinfectant and dessicant.

Plain Salt: The final sodium product on the list of must-haves is salt. You should always keep a one-pound box of plain (Kosher, iodine-free) salt on hand for non-table uses. This can be fine grain or coarse, basic sodium chloride purified from a mine rather than more expensive sea salt (which comes with quite a few extra minerals and chemicals than even iodized table salt). Salt has many general household and medicinal uses, such as water (and skin) softener in bath water, soothing soak for sore muscles and arthritic joints, anti-microbial mouthwash for gum disease, sore throat gargle, nasal decongestant spray (with soda in water) and eyewash.

Vinegar: Next on the list is your basic gallon jug of white vinegar. Vinegar is also a good disinfectant, a strong degreaser, streak-free glass cleaner, no-wax floor cleaner, stain remover from carpets and upholstery, wood furniture polish and ring remover (with olive oil), garbage disposal and drain deodorizer, brass polish, ant deterrent, stainless steel cleaner, bathroom water and soap deposit scrub, faucet and shower head unclogger and in the yard, an effective weed and grass killer (spray directly).

Olive Oil, Light Safflower Oil: These are of course useful for maintaining leather and wood furniture, and in certain recipes can be substituted for liquid soaps (they also provide fats for homemade soaps). But you’ll want these primarily for skin and hair care products and bath oils and such. Buy basic 12-ounce bottles for these purposes and keep them separate from the oils you use normally for cooking and baking.

Lemon Juice, Rubbing Alcohol, Liquid Soap: Lemon juice and rubbing alcohol are household and medicinal necessities to keep on hand for a number of uses, along with liquid soap. If you save the dregs of your soap bars (those annoying left-overs that end up melted all over your sink or tub holder) in a pump jar with a little water (shake occasionally), you’ll be surprised at how much normally gets thrown away. Or, if you’re really enterprising, you can make your own soaps!

All told, I could go to the store today and bring home ample supplies of all these items for about $20, knowing they’ll last through the crowded summer and some will last through the rest of the year. If you were to do an inventory of all the specialized products you buy – furniture polish, drain opener, toilet bowl cleaner, bathtub and sink scrubs, spray-on spot removers, laundry additives, bath, skin care and beauty products, insect repellants, first aid sprays and creams and gargles and washes, etc., etc., etc., you’d find yourself spending hundreds over the next six months. Sometimes the best products are the old-fashioned (still cheap) ones!

Below are links to some basic uses on the web that readers may find useful. I’ll provide more specific recipes in my next post for household cleaning and disinfecting. Then I’ll list specifics on the first aid and medicinal recipes and uses. Later in this series we’ll look at personal care basics and how you can save a whole lot of money not buying fancy facial masks, skin treatments, moisturizers, wrinkle creams, bath treatments and skin soothers. So please stay tuned to put all this together!

Links:

Vinegar Institute: Uses & Tips
64 Uses for Vinegar
Uncommon Household Uses for Salt
Top 6 Uses for Borax
20 Mule Team Borax: Many Household Uses [pdf document]
FAQs: Arm & Hammer

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

Perhaps many readers have become aware of the looming worldwide food shortage, there was a story on NPR’s The World just Monday night (March 31) about rising tensions in the bread lines of Egypt. London’s Guardian reported this past November that the crisis can be attributed to climate change (crop failures and ag diversion of rice and wheat crops) and fuel shortages – both the increasing price of petroleum fuels for transportation and agriculture as well as the diversion of staple food crops like soybeans and corn toward biofuels production.

Soaring grain prices are now exploding into full-fledged food riots in many corners of the planet, while Americans are stunned by rising prices every time they go to the grocery store. As of December, 2007 the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that 37 countries face immediate food crises, and 20 nations had imposed some form of food-price controls. Reuters lays additional blame on panicked speculators trading on global futures markets in the wake of recession fears fueled by the increasing defaults among Wall Street’s investment banks and stock market gamblers.

But there is hope on the horizon, particularly for those of us who were smart enough to purchase diesel powered vehicles, despite the ruinous and increasing costs of gasoline. That hope is a new source for producing biodiesel (which can run the entirety of our transportation system, including passenger cars if GM can be persuaded to come off their new diesel they’ve been sitting on in joint patent with the EPA).

Ride Lust reports that a new process to produce biodiesel from algae – thus leaving staple food crops for people who eat staple foods – may be ready to hit the market. Green Fuel Technologies has begun construction on a “Closed Water Algae” bioreactor facility that will feed from the smoke stacks of a local power plant. PetroSun has also announced that their many acres of algae ponds will be going commercial today – April 1st!

The Closed Water System technology uses energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from industrial smoke stacks to feed the algae growth, thereby ‘closing’ the carbon dioxide loop from fuel use to fuel production. This is an exciting development. Biodiesel is readily available in my locale because the nearest city requires all its mass transit and truck fleets to run on biodiesel, thus it’s available from several area stations. The problem is that it’s still more expensive than regular diesel, and goes up at the same rate as petro-diesel. That is mostly due to greed, of course, since I’m not dumb enough to believe any producers or dealers are actually pouring the excess profits into greater R&D or production. But one day soon regulators will step in, producers will recognize the gold mine doesn’t need seeding, and distributors will remember that they’ve plenty of underground tanks at truck stops that could fuel the shipping fleets. And the price will go down.

If biodiesel development can be made to go with switchgrass, algae and agricultural green-waste instead of actual food humans need to survive, basic staple food prices should go down too. Even if the financial sector goes into deep depression, you can’t have bread lines when there’s no bread. And nobody can make a market killing if nobody’s got any money to spend. So in addition to growing your Victory Garden this year to supplement your own family’s food supply, we should all be cheering these alternative biodiesel sources and technologies, helping to support production and getting in line for demand. Governments aren’t going to fix our problems. We’ll have to do it!

Ford Prodigy, cutaway view of a ‘concept’ car we could someday be able to buy… maybe. Or not.

The 100 miles per gallon car. One that carries four adults, has all the safety features that protect in accidents but weigh a lot. Peter Diamandis’ X Prize Foundation has turned their focus from space travel to automobiles. The automotive X Prize went live in April of 2007 at the New York Auto Show with a $10 million award to the winning designers of a production-ready vehicle capable of exceeding 100 mpg.

It’s not that hard to get 100 miles per gallon if you don’t mind a seriously “minimalist” vehicle. Heck, if you make it lighter than a motorbike and gin it up with solar cells, it’s not that hard to get 1,000 miles per gallon (downhill, with a tailwind, driver lying flat). But the solar cell idea isn’t that bad, now that we hear there are new plastic coatings that will generate even in low-light situations. And what about a hood scoop to use the wind of forward motion to help charge those batteries too?

Here’s hoping that a 100 mpg production vehicle that meets all safety and practical criteria does get invented. That of course won’t necessarily convince Detroit to actually make any of them, and it’s a sure bet that any designers who use the $10 million to gear up their own factory will be held to a strict quota on how few of the vehicles they’ll actually be able to produce per year (corporate welfare to Detroit). Heck, GM is still sitting on their new diesel engine (joint patent with EPA) developed years ago, that can get 60+ mpg on biodiesel. They’ll never deploy it until America demands it.

Meanwhile, Toyota’s selling more hybrids than Detroit is selling anything, though the tax incentives have sunset and the import lid is still screwed on tight. What does it take to convince these old robber barons that we need the technology they’ve been sitting on just so nobody can have it? When do we get our 100 mpg hybrids? At what point do we taxpayers quit bailing them out of their stupid decisions and let them die the death they’ve so richly deserved since the 1970s?

Other sources tell us 100 mpg hybrids already exist – but you have to build them yourself. Guess I need to get me and my ‘vintage’ diesel Mercedes into an auto shop class down at the local community college, see if I can’t convert it into an SVO-Electric hybrid using that hood scoop idea and some nice new solar cells the college can probably order at cost… we could all learn the mechanics and details, open a conversion shop, and have about half the locals in 100 mpg’s before 2010!

Links:

Progressive Automotive X PRIZE
Popular Mechanics: 100 mpg Available Now!
Edmunds: Automotive X Prize Seeks 100-mpg Car
MSN Money: 100 mpg Car is Coming

This is the second installment of the 20 ways to live on little-to-nothing. Obviously, not all of these alternatives will appeal to everyone. But perhaps some will appeal to some.

6. Personal Housing for the Gypsy Tread-Lightly

If your lifestyle doesn’t require thousands of square footage consider the advantages of an RV or travel trailer. No, not one of those $200,000 new fancy jobs, but one just “big enough” and in desperate need of some handy TLC.

Getting “free” will take more ingenuity that most people have to spend, but getting “cheap” is entirely possible. Unless you’re a serious mechanic, travel trailers are a much better option than RVs or old city buses that probably need totally rebuilt engines. A trailer can be moved as regularly as necessary (many state and national forest sites have 2-week limits) so long as you’ve something to haul them with.

7. Take Advantage of Gypsy Food Sources

If you move around quite a bit, you’ll have more opportunities than most people to take advantage of wild foods along the back roads and byways of your travels. Did you know that your basic cattails are a regular supermarket of goodness? Or that acorn flour makes great bread or breakfast mush that’s extremely healthy? Did you know that violets, tiger lilies and nasturtium flowers make a very tasty salad?

There are apple and pear trees that have escaped old homesteads, often right beside the road. In some producing regions you can glean fruit from orchards after main harvest. Grapefruit, oranges, peaches, apples, sometimes cherries and grapes as well. Truck and grain crops can sometimes be gleaned as well, allowing you to pick vegetables that weren’t ripe for the main harvest and will otherwise be left to rot.

8. A Place Of Your Own

Free land? In the 21st century? Believe it or not, there are towns in the Midwest offering land for free to people willing to build new homes within 2 years. Of course, this means you’ve got to invest in building a new house, and that’s certainly not zero cost! Do not be fooled – the US Government [BLM] stopped offering free land in 1976. You can’t just go claim some.

Yet an industrious and/or well-connected professional caretaker could end up with space enough to put a home in exchange for simply living there to take care of things! That way you don’t have to “stuff-less” or rootless, your home is your own. This takes some diplomatic skills and might take years to work yourself into, but there are people who got their property (including yard and garden!) for free on a corner of someone else’s property.

9. No-Cost Housing for the Handy

People might be surprised at what’s available out there for those willing to do the work or bargain with others for the services. Older houses on acreage that’s being subdivided for development are often given away rather than simply torn down, but you’ll have to move it to where you want it. Those who can build and re-build can often tear them down and keep everything for rebuilding on their own property. Which is often much cheaper than moving a farmhouse…

Careful inspection to decide the best relocation option is required. If that house will fall apart two blocks down the road, you’ll be better off just taking it down and hauling it off in pieces. Building materials, bathroom fixtures, plumbing, wiring and electrical box equipment, kitchen cabinets, cabinets and even sinks are often available for free where a developer is tearing down older dwellings to make way for new too.

10. Powering Your Living Space

Cost of electricity is always going to be with us, it seems. Still, there are alternatives out there that a handy person could make good use of. There are ways to obtain free solar panels that would make a real dent in a traveling home or even a stationary one. If you’ve some land of your own or you end up in a community of like-minded people, think about developing a diversified alternative system.

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Items 1-5
Part 2: Items 6-10
Part 3: Items 11-15
Part 4: Items 16-20

In addition to the good ideas in this video, there are other things you can do through the year to save energy. For instance, I use the gas grill for canning in the summer. Canning is an energy-intensive project even if you grow your own as I do, which can make your home grown cost more than just buying canned goods at the store. The gas costs less than electricity, heats more efficiently (it’s nearly impossible to get my canner boiling on my electric stovetop!), and it’s outside – doesn’t heat the house.

For all-day type soups, stews and beans from dry in the winter, I put the pot on top of the wood stove instead of in the crock pot or on the stove. Cooks just fine, doesn’t boil dry if it’s covered adequately and set properly, costs nothing!