Clean Green (and frugally) in the bathroom

The amount of poisonous chemicals most households use to clean is astounding to me. I use only 3 totally safe, edible ingredients for the majority of my cleaning - baking soda, vinegar and elbow grease (okay I don't recommend eating elbow grease but you know what I mean). For my porcelain tub and sink I generally use a plastic mesh pad. You can either make your own out of an onion or potato bag or buy one with a handle. It lasts for a long time and it is easy to scrub off the soap scum that accumulates. If you use chemicals to scour you are not only touching and bathing in the residues of those chemicals but also inhaling them as you work. When you rinse these chemicals away you introduce them to the natural environment through our wastewater. For natural cleaning you can add a little baking soda to your mesh pad to make the job even easier and baking soda acts as a natural deodorizer. For the toilet I use a toilet brush and a mixture of 1/2 white vinegar and 1/2 distilled water from the dehumidifier. I keep this mixture in a spray bottle that you can get from the dollar store or simply reuse one you already have. The vinegar is a natural cure and preventative for mildew. You can also spray this mixture on your dish strainer if that tends to get moldy to inhibit mold growth. This can also be used as your glass cleaner. For our tile floor I generally just use an old dish rag and water. Do not expose yourself, your family and the environment to the chemicals in bathroom cleaners and do not expose your money to being spent on them when you have a safer, cheaper, greener alternative.

cheap and easy kettle corn

Supersize rip-off - popcorn at the movie theater
Giant Rip-off - popcorn at a popcorn shop
Really big Rip-off - microwave popcorn
Good Deal and way better for you - homemade popcorn

I have an air popcorn popper that I got at Goodwill for $2.55 (I know this because I've never bothered to take off the price tag). Popcorn that I make in this costs pennies a serving and has none of the fat and sodium that all of the other popcorns have. The problem is that when served plain, air popped popcorn also has none of the taste of the other options and salt doesn't stick to air-popped popcorn. That's why I invented homebrewed kettle corn. In less than 5 minutes you can whip up a delicious batch of something approximating a cross between kettle corn and fiddle faddle. Load up your air popper with a couple of tablespoons of kernels per person. In a non-stick skillet melt half a tablespoon of butter per person, 1 tbls of corn syrup per person and about a tbls of brown sugar. Cook and stir until sugar is dissolved. Now turn on popper. Once popcorn is done add a pinch of baking soda to the still hot sugar mixture. This causes it to bubble up a bit so it spreads more evenly over the popcorn. Pour sugar mixture over popcorn. Toss to coat with a spoon and if so desired add a few peanuts. Delicious, fairly nutritious and costs pennies a serving! Also doesn't have all the packaging that microwave popcorn does along with all the chemicals. Super easy to make and you will be amazed at how long a bag of regular popcorn lasts. Way cheaper, way healthier and less waste!! Enjoy!

a few favorite frugal websites (say that 10 times fast)

I can not take full credit for all my mad frugal and environmentally friendly skills. Here is where I get my online help.

epinions.com
This site has reviews of products like consumer reports but the reviews are by actual owners of the product. Useful for making the best purchasing decisions on both the big items (which car to buy) and small items (do those glade pet hair rollers really work and can they be jerry-rigged for multiple use). You can also add your own reviews which is very therapeutic for both wonderful purchases and things you bought that turned out to be pieces of crap. Producers of pieces of crap feel my wrath!... verbally.

half.com
Best for frugality and the environment is your local library for all your book needs but sometimes a book is soooooo good (Jane Austen, Charles Dickens) and you know you will read or refer to it sooooo many times (cookbooks) that you must own it. Go to half.com (owned by ebay) for great deals on used and some new books. Buying used instead of new is always friendly for the environment and your wallet. You can also sell the books on here that you no longer use. Fatten your wallet while that bound dustcatcher gets a loving new home.

allrecipes.com
If it were possible to love a website so much that you could marry it (circa 3rd grade) I would be happily married to allrecipes. Tons of recipes but they also thought of every helpful tool in the book. Having 30 people over for pumpkin pancakes? Tap a few keys and your recipe automatically converts to ingredient list for 30 servings! Nutrition information, metric conversion, but most helpful is the number of stars people give the recipes and their reviews and feedback on it. Also earning the star of total awesomeness is the ingredient search. You have 3/4's of a tub of sour cream left over after making brownies to mail off to your favorite frugal maven??? Put "sour cream" in the ingredient search and get a whole list of recipes that includes sour cream. No more science experiments growing in various tubs in the fridge!!! Frugal (check), Less wasteful thus environmentally friendly (check).

Happy hunting!

buttermilk

This idea is covered in many other places but I'm always surprised by how many people don't know about it. If you have ever bought buttermilk for a specific recipe, used some, put the rest in the fridge with the fine intention of using it up someday soon only to unbury it weeks later looking like it is well on its way to making very stinky butter this tip has your name on it. You can make your own buttermilk by simply adding a a tbls of white vinegar or lemon juice to regular milk (skim or whole) and letting it sit for a minute or two until it starts to separate. You won't taste the difference and it is cheaper and easier than buying a separate container of buttermilk.

cold wall first aid or poor person's insulation

If you live in a cold climate and in an old house you know that some north facing walls could double as extra freezer space if you just added some shelving. My solution for this is borrowed from the freezing, drafty castles of the days of yore... tapestry. In my case I'm not referring to hand made wall hangings of a hunting party chasing down a unicorn but a simple blanket that you can hang from a rod to be attractive but more importantly prevent frostbite of your extremities. I took some old fabric and sheets I had lying around or picked up cheap at Goodwill and a quilted mattress cover from Goodwill for the backing (cheaper than buying batting) and sewed a scene using the colors I had on hand. I then added loops of fabric at the top to run a dowel through (or in my case a leftover piece of trim). Put a few screws in the wall to hang it from and you will be surprised at the difference in comfort level. Mine is next to my side of the bed and on a frigid north facing wall. My nose no longer looks like I've spent years hitting the bottle on cold January mornings. Big improvement!

homemade eye cover / sleep mask for traveling

Tired of looking like a zombie as you get off the plane after a long flight? I have a handy bag of airplane sleep supplies that I take with me on all plane trips.
Item 1: Blow up neck cushion
Item 2: foam earplugs
Item 3: my homemade eye cover/sleeper's mask/ fancy blindfold
To make your own sleep mask take a middle sized scrap of medium to lightweight fabric and fold it in half longways. Cut out a rectangle that will fit across the front of your face. Cut a narrow triangle out of the middle for your nose. Put wrong sides together and sew up 3 of 4 sides. Turn right side out. If you want to get extra fancy get some dried lavender flowers or rose flowers from the bulk spice section of your local health food store and drop some of that in then sew the remaining side up. Last just sew on a ribbon across the top of the back so you can tie that puppy on around your head. I also made a little bag out of the same material to store it in. You may look like a dork on the plane as you're getting your beauty sleep but I'll take being conscious for the first day of my vacation to looking normal to everyone making their way down the aisle to the cramped airplane bathroom. Added bonus - sends a definite message to any Chatty Cathy you have the bad luck to be seated next too. Double added bonus - you have a blindfold ready to go for your next pin the tail on the donkey game. Also makes a good gift for people who travel a lot and aren't too vain.

more efficient fireplace

Fireplaces are beautiful and cozy but are actually 5% to -5% efficient. Yes that means your furnace may run MORE with a fire going in the fireplace because it has to replace the warm household air that is going up the chimney with the smoke and heat from the fire. You can increase your fireplace efficiency by investing in a fireplace insert. This is a glass fronted box with a blower. Once your fireplace reaches a certain temperature a blower turns on to circulate air around the hot box of the insert and then blows this heated air into the room. The air is heated by the fire but the air is not from the fireplace. This means almost no smoke unlike a regular fireplace and an efficiency of around 80%. An insert essentially turns your fireplace into a woodburning stove. It is an investment but if you can collect your own wood from people cutting down trees in your neighborhood (allow 6 months for the wood to fully dry and season) it will provide you with heat from a renewable energy source unlike your furnance. Learn more with this Mother Earth News article. We had one installed soon after moving into our house and absolutely love it. When we use it, the furnace does not turn on and the wood burns much more slowly than in a conventional fireplace.

firewood tote from old jeans

Got a fireplace? Got pine sap, bark and sawdust on your coat from carrying in armfulls of wood with a trail of sticks and bark behind you that would make Hansel and Gretal proud? If you have an old pair of jeans and a sewing machine you will no longer have to wear your badge of firewood toting honor down your front. Cut the legs off the jeans and cut open each leg near the inseam. Sew the wide end of the open legs together with a several rows of zigzag stitching. This needs to be strong since this is where most of the weight of the wood will rest. Take a wooden dowel like you would use for hanging clothes in a closet or an equally thick branch and cut it so you have 2 pieces of wood about 2 feet long. At either end of your now sewn together jeans cut out a rectangle out of the middle. Sew up each end so the dowel fits through and the cut out rectangle allows space for your hand to grasp the dowels directly. Slip in dowels. Carry your new tote outside, lay it on the ground and put in a bunch of wood. Pick up with the handles you cut out, holding on to the dowels and skip back to the house with your now contained load of wood. Beautiful? Hell No! Practical? Absolutely!
2017 update! I'm still using this exact same tote. Has worked great and held up beautifully!

brown sugar

Want to get the good sale price on brown sugar every time you use it? Go look at your ingredient list on the bag of brown sugar in your cupboard. Go ahead, I'll wait. See, it says granulated sugar and molasses. Now if you are like me, you have a dusty bottle of molasses in your cupboard for gingerbread and baked beans. If you want to make your own brown sugar just mix 1 tbls of molasses into each cup of regular sugar. Price per lb of white sugar at local bag your own store = $.42. Price of brown sugar per lb. at same store $.59. This means $.34 per bag of brown sugar savings and equally important less bags in your cupboard.

old towels

Do you have old towels that are starting to be transparent? If you have enough good section you can sew them into great, sturdy hotpads. Put wrong sides together, add a few layers of old flannel or other fabric, sew up three and a half sides, turn right side out, sew up remainder and pick up that honking iron skillet without third degree burns. I've used these for years as you can maybe tell!

fabric you know deep down you will never use

Got fabric laying around that you suspect may be buried with you when you die? Despair not! If you know how to knit get out some wide gauge knitting needles and cut the fabric into a continuous strip about 1.5-2 inches wide. Knit that into a trivet, hotpad or if you have a lot of material you can make a small throw rug. My rug below is far from gorgeous but its perfect to set wet boots on near the door and used up a ton of old fabric I was unlikely to ever use for anything else. You could also use old clothes.