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

Age Counseling Youth

Once Upon a Christmas… my Mother-in-Law gifted my children with some thickly quilted fuzzy slippers to put on in the morning when the wood stove in our little cabin had gone out and the water in the dog dish was more often than not frozen solid. Unfortunately both of the pairs of slippers she’d bought consisted of two right feet. So off she went right after Christmas to the store where she’d bought them, and let the kids pick out new pairs that they could wear on both their feet.

The saleslady remembered when Mom had bought them, and the story she told about the kids living in the cold mountains without automatic heat. She asked the kids how they could stand living in a house with no heat. The kids looked at her quizzically, my daughter answered that of course we had heat, we just didn’t have electricity. That really threw the young woman for a loop, so she just had to ask…

If you’ve no electricity, how can you have heat? Daughter smiled. “Fire,” she answered calmly. “Fire is hot.”

We lived in that little cabin for less than two years, but it was certainly an adventure in learning the difference between desire and necessity. Much older now, I do admit to liking electricity and indoor plumbing even though I know I can live without. Through the years I have encountered people out in the broader world who, when hearing that we don’t have television, are quite simply at a loss to understand what in the world we find to DO with ourselves. As if parking your butt on a couch to volunteer for hypnosis designed to make you buy things you don’t need for more money than you’ve got qualifies as some sort of art, education or sport. Very strange.

I guess I’ve always had a fairly quirky personality. What other people do with their time and money has never much affected what I do with my time and money. Keeping up with the Joneses always seemed like a total waste of life to me, but then again, I don’t know anyone named Jones. I’d much rather keep up with me, my own friends and my own family.

It was probably inevitable that I missed the point in history when being sensibly frugal and confidently self sufficient became hopelessly un-hip, and conspicuous consumption – fueled by ever increasing debt and complete cluelessness about how to live any other way – became the standard way of life. Judging from the number of shoppers at the mall any given Saturday, it seems like nobody believes the old adage “The Best Things in Life Are Free” anymore.

I’d begun to wonder if there are any people under the age of 50 in this country who really grasp the connection between their wasteful, materialistic lifestyles and things like global warming, air, water and soil pollution, disappearing natural resources and the crushing poverty that afflicts the vast majority of human beings on this planet. I’ve wondered how so many people got fooled into believing that “stuff” and “happiness” are synonymous.

So it was with great relief and a renewed sense of hope that I found some very good articles by young(er than me) bloggers out there in interland who not only understand the connections, but write about living frugally as if it were something to be proud of! As we collectively move into the deep recession that cannot be averted by going deeper into debt, I hope to see more young people coming out the other side of it with a better understanding of life and meaning, as well as a new respect for the very real connections between how we choose to live and the wellbeing of the entire planet. Being ‘Green’ is more than driving a Prius, buying $20 bags of forest-grown coffee beans for the expresso machine, and doing lunch at the organic bistro instead of the steak house buffet.

Check out some of these cool blog articles and let yourself begin to hope! Why, it might one day turn out that Americans remember what they forgot to learn… the best things in life really might be free!

Links:

Does My Frugal Life Make Me Miserable?

Don’t Buy It!

Stop Buying Crap

Staying Frugal in the Age of the iPhone

How to Buy Nothing

Here are some of the best ways to conserve energy and water that are being touted at present. Some of you can put to good use right now, and some of you will want to seriously consider through the coming year as your income allows you to replace things or renovate for a more efficient lifestyle. If you can save a couple thousand dollars a year on your electric and water bills, you’ll have that much more money to spend or save! Check ‘em out…

1. Time Your Energy Usage. It may surprise some people, but the time of day that you use energy has a significant effect on the costs you pay for the privilege. What you want to avoid is using energy during “peak” hours, when drains on the grid are highest. Whenever peak usage goes beyond what can be provided by your local utility, that utility is forced to purchase excess energy from other utilities at a premium. Do a little research on your local utility’s web site by searching “usage” and “peak,” time your laundry, bathing and baking to when demand is lowest.

2. Downsize Your Appliances. Do your laundry loads not take up enough room to justify the water anymore? Get a smaller, more energy-efficient washer! Consider hanging laundry outside to dry if you can, or use in-utility room drying racks for dress clothes, delicates and sweaters. Dryers are notorious energy-hogs.

3. Save Water! Municipal water supplies are under increasing pressure as droughts become longer and more serious, to the point where wasteful water usage is becoming an environmental ‘sin’. Ways to conserve are many. Take shorter showers, turn the water off while soaping. Get rain barrels and put your gutter rainspouts into them. You can drain from the top to make sure they don’t overflow, install a spigot at the bottom to which you can attach a hose. Use this water for your garden, lawn or car washing. Install low-flow toilets, and pressure-increasing shower heads. Wash and rinse clothes in cold water, as full as your machine allows. Naturalize your lawn space with low-water plants native to your area or rock gardens – saves on mowing too!

4. Turn Your Electronic Gizmos OFF at Night. That’s computers, VCRs, DVD players, stereo/radios, any gizmo that has a red light showing it’s really ‘on’ when you aren’t using it. Even in ‘sleep’ mode they consume electricity, and there’s no good reason for it. Turn off bathroom space heaters when you’re not bathing – you can use the toilet when it’s a bit chilly, it won’t hurt you!

5. Keep Your Thermostat Settings Reasonable. No more than 68º in the winter, no less than 75º in the summer. Humans can handle both temperatures just fine. Wear a sweater when it’s cold and very little when it’s hot. Keep the air moving with fans and your house will seem cooler/warmer at these temperatures by eliminating cold and hot spots.

6. Consider Alternative Heating and Cooling Technologies. If you live in an area with less than 75% relative humidity, an Evaporative Cooler (water cooler) can keep your home comfortable while saving you lots of money on air conditioning. If you have to air condition in order to sleep at night, consider a window unit in the bedroom. If your house traps heat in the upper story, install window or attic vent fans to blow the hot air out while pulling cool air in from the slab or basement. Moving air (ceiling fans, vent fans, floor fans) will make your house more comfortable in all seasons.

7. Replace Light Bulbs With Compact Fluorescent or LED Bulbs. The cost is reasonable because these bulbs last a year or more and use much less electricity than standard incandescent bulbs. New LED technology is on the way too, which will likely end up conserving a vast amount of energy every year.

8. Make Good Use of Drapes and Blinds. These can prevent heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer. Plan your lighting to make up the difference, or think about installing skylights in rooms where a lot of light is desirable. Heat rises, so a good insulated skylight won’t let too much heat in and won’t allow too much heat to escape in winter.

9. Insulation and Weatherstripping! Adding extra insulation to the attic and making sure your doors and windows are well-sealed helps a lot to save heat and cooling costs. This is old advice, still as good as it was 20 years ago. Be sure to have your home tested for radon first, particularly if it’s a masonry home on a slab.

10. Ignore That Fireplace! A cozy fire can make you feel warmer psychologically, but most fireplaces waste way more heat than they provide. An open flue sucks heat right out of your home, and leaves cold spots you’ll be tempted to compensate for by turning the thermostat up. Resist! If that fireplace takes up a whole wall (as mine does) consider decorating with a mirror where the opening used to be, a nice collection of scented candles in front that you can light for effect.

11. Replace Old Appliances With Energy Efficient Models. High energy efficient models are now becoming more readily available on the second-hand market, as they have been increasingly marketed to new buyers for some years. If you can buy new, get the one with the highest rating possible, and don’t buy more than you need – do you really need that double-door monstrosity of a fridge, or can you make do with a smaller one and get an efficient chest freezer. Learn to use ice trays or a standard ice maker, they work just fine.

12. Replace Your Old Cookware. For range top use, pots and pans that readily conduct heat will save minutes every time you turn on the burner. There are some really good, naturally non-stick sets available now that will serve well for many years. Also keep your range top drip pans clean. Use the reflective (not-enameled) variety, they will reflect more heat to the pan. Use the right size pan for the burner. If your oven is self-cleaning, don’t clean it very often.

13. Turn the Hot Water Temperature Down! The temperature of your hot water straight out of the tank should not scald you (or anyone else). 120º is as hot as it needs to be for any task. If you have to compensate too-hot water with cold water, your thermostat’s set too high.

14. Get a Tankless “Instant” Water Heater. Heating water as you use it is more energy efficient than keeping a 30 or 50 gallon tank full of water hot. There are some good models available, and even some microwave in-line heaters in development. Big energy savings!

15. Use Small Appliances When You Can. Making a big pot of soup or beans-from-dry in a crock pot instead of on the electric stovetop saves electricity. Baking a few muffins, a loaf of bread or some biscuits in a toaster oven instead of in your oven big enough for two turkeys saves a lot too. If you’ve an energy efficient microwave, use it for heating single or double servings of leftovers instead of your regular oven or stovetop. A microwave uses 75% less energy than a range oven.

Useful Links:

Brighter LED Lights Could Replace Household Light Bulbs Within Three Years

Aquabarrel Rain Collection Systems

Suburban Links: The Water Page

Rainwater Harvesting Guide

In-Line Water Heaters on ThomasNet

Tankless and Instant Water Heaters

Energy Saving Appliances (Heating and Cooling)

Consumer Energy Center: Small Appliances Save Energy

In the 21st century almost all of us are acutely aware of the challenges of global warming, unsustainable consumption habits, the real human costs of petroleum dependency and the ever-rising cost of all forms of energy. When it’s difficult for regular middle class city and suburban dwellers to maintain their few hours of home down-time due to rising costs, the burden on rural dwellers can easily be impossible to bear.

Anyone committed to sustainable and self-sufficient living should have already begun planning their energy strategies. There are many things to consider before investing in energy sources. One of the first things a homeowner needs to become aware of are the various federal and state incentive programs available to them if they choose to meet some or all of their own energy needs with ‘green’ sources. These incentives have been fluctuating at the same time the per-watt price of the technology has been steadily falling. In some places the cost trade-off – where the cost to install is paid for by the incentives and further energy is basically free-for-upkeep – is down to 3-5 years. Which is a point when someone planning to live the whole rest of their lives on their homestead has no really good excuse not to invest! The Database of State Incentives offers a clickable map with details for all 50 states and is updated as incentives are tweaked or changed.

Once you have a good idea of how much you can offset your costs with incentives and tax rebates, you’ll need to have a good idea of exactly how much electricity you use. Gather at least 6 months’ worth of electric bills – including the hottest and coldest months – and write down your actual kilowatt usage. If your bill includes a breakdown of peak usage include that in another column. Some utility companies don’t include that information on monthly bills, but will supply it if you ask them nicely. It is important for you to know your peak usage so you will be able to supply enough energy to cover that.

If your overall kilowatt usage over the months falls within a fairly small range of variation but your peak usage looks really high, you’ll need to figure out what is using the most energy of all your activities and appliances. There are significant ways to lower a homestead’s energy demands, both overall and peak, but that requires knowing what you use and a willingness to pare your usage wherever you can.

Decisions about heating system and appliances you’ll need to replace in order to consume less electricity will also have to consider whether your future plans include energy on-site in banks of batteries, or whether you’d choose to use the commercial grid to its own advantage as a supplier. Battery technology is getting better all the time, but no cheaper.

My plan is is to use the grid, as our electric company is required by regulatory law to provide us with a “backwards meter” if we ever install our own electrical generating capacity. The deal is that we purchase our energy from the utility the same way we always have for running our appliances, power tools, lights and such. At the same time, the electric company must purchase all the energy our system produces. If we’re producing more than we’re using, it goes back out on the grid for other people to use. That pays down the difference, and conceivably could bring our monthly bill down to less than $50, or have the power company paying us!

We have been slowly but surely replacing appliances over the years with more energy efficient models, and are keeping ultra low-use and pedal powered models in mind as they develop for our next computers, radio/stereo, TV/video replacements. And of course we’re buying nothing but low-watt flourescent bulbs for lighting, even while keeping a stash of mantle-type oil lamps on hand.

So start your homework by organizing your needs and understanding your usage, check out some of the links below to help. Stay tuned for the next installment!

Links:

The Economics of Going Off-Grid

Grid-Connected Solar or Wind Systems

Solar Power at Half the Cost

MSNBC: ‘off-grid’ community

Wholesale Solar

October 15 has been designated “Blog Action Day”, when bloggers are encouraged to write about our environment and things regular people can do to reduce their environmental footprint on the planet and help steward the environment we all depend upon to sustain our lives.

This is pretty easy to do if you’re living on a shoestring budget, as our previous excursions into bargain-hunting, recycling, thrifting and doing for yourself have demonstrated amply. Yet at a time when the Nobel Peace Prize can go to Al Gore for his crusade to educate the nations of the world about the threat of global warming and how our poor choices of lifestyle are contributing to it, this is a great time to do some thinking about how we live. Maybe earn a new appreciation not just for our cleverness in being able to get by on less, but for our wisdom in doing so. Even if we didn’t have to.

We have only one world. It has to nurture us and sustain us for as long as we live, and still have enough left to offer the same benefits to our children and grandchildren, on down the line. Politicians come and go, generations come and go, even nations come and go. Our world doesn’t have that kind of flexibility. It has what it has. Only so much water, only so much air, only so many resources. Once we’ve used it all up, this old world won’t be making more.

So the conscious choices we make about how we will live will affect generations of our descendents down the line. Living on the thrifty ‘fringe’ of this greedy, thoughtless, conspicuously consumptive American society can make us more aware of our responsibility to tread lightly on this earth. It can give us a source of real knowledge about how much our habits matter to the future. It can – and likely will before current economic tough times are over – turn more than a few of us into “rabid environmentalists” who will not only choose to keep on living consciously when easy money comes around again, but who will become effective evangelists for convincing others to live consciously.

It might just be that we’ll find ourselves enjoying a greater affinity with the 6+ billion other humans on this planet who aren’t conspicuous consumers, and motivate us to get involved in helping to make their lives better. It might be that we’ll find ourselves getting healthier and happier for the physical efforts we put into doing for ourselves, in the learning that the best things in life really ARE free.

Our children may happily learn that lesson too, finding that a week’s camping, fishing and hiking in the mountains is a greater adventure than a day at Disney World. Why, before we know it, those kids just might be collecting food and clothing for area charities, volunteering their time to tutor younger children, perhaps even volunteering compassionate caregiving to the old and sick in our communities who are too often shut away from the world like an embarrassment.

So on this Blog Action Day, I hope my readers will take just a moment from the worry and cares of daily life and the stress of having to make do with less, just to appreciate that by making do with less they are contributing much to a more sustainable world. Check out some of the great blogs linked below for good ideas on how to do even more. Congratulate yourselves! You’ve earned it…

Links:

Raising a Healthy Family: Going Green with the Kids

5 R’s For A Greener World

Are You Green?

How Can We Help Save The Earth?

Not Just Sun and Wind: Power from the seas