Ridiculously Cheap - A Minor Rant

Last Thursday I went to the market to pick up an order of pumpkins and kabocha squash from one of my farmers.  I've been to this woman's tiny farm on the opposite side of our county.  I know how she operates and what's important to her, though I can't recall if she bothered with organic certification or not.  I'd emailed her to ask for half a dozen pumpkins, and half a dozen smallish winter squash to replace the crops that failed for us this year.  I had purchased a single pumpkin from her two weeks prior to that, so I thought I had an idea of what to expect in terms of cost for my bulk order.

When I arrived to pick up my order, it was all put together in a large cardboard box, and the farmer showed me a little receipt with the weights and totals for the two different crops.  She wanted something like $16 - total - for the dozen orbs in the box.  At first I didn't understand, thinking that was the charge for either the pumpkins or the kabocha.  But no, that was all she wanted for everything.  Thirty cents per pound, she said.  I pulled out $30 and told her she wasn't charging nearly enough money for her vegetables.  I was serious. That's about what I'd arrived expecting to pay, and I was shocked that she was asking so little for the fruits of her labor.  Of course she protested, but finally consented to take $20 for more than fifty pounds of her produce.  But only after adding a pepito pumpkin to the box.  She said it was a seed pumpkin, and then added apologetically that the flesh was not edible and that sadly, the pumpkin was a hybrid, so I couldn't save the seed.

Now I know my blog is ostensibly about frugality, and hey, I'm all for the stocking of larders with wholesome, local food purchased in season, when it should be cheapest.  October is certainly the time to stock up on winter squash if you have any storage space and didn't grow your own.  But this was ridiculous, and it has nagged at me ever since, even as I lugged my purchased bounty down into the root cellar.  I really feel this farmer should be charging more for her food.  I want her to stay in business and contribute to my foodshed more than I want to supplement my homegrown food for the lowest cost.  If she can't make a profit from her farm, she won't be around to help feed us in the future.

I suppose I should see this as a good thing, especially for those that are really struggling in this economy.  $20 for a dozen winter squash will give me the basis for at least 48 individual servings; less than 50 cents per serving.  For some people, the lower price per pound might mean the difference between kids going hungry or being fed.  But we can still afford to pay more.  I'd be happy to pay on a sliding scale for the few kinds of produce I still need to buy.  Last month I paid over $1.50 per pound for onions produced at a local farm incubator project, and was happy to do so.  So why should the squash cost so much less than the onions?  In fact, when I was in our local supermarket to buy tofu and some kosher salt the day after my farmers market purchase, I saw a whole display table of non-organic squash in the produce aisle.  You know what they were charging for winter squash?  79 cents per pound - more than 2 1/2x what the local farmer was asking.  The really big and impressive hubbards and pumpkins were going for $1/pound.

I feel like going back to the market this week and telling her about the supermarket pricing.  I don't know why this riles me so much.  Maybe it's because I know how much work it is to raise vegetable crops.  I certainly wouldn't sell my winter squash to anyone for thirty cents a pound.  It would seem downright insulting to accept that little.  I'd feel better about giving it as a gift than valuing it so cheaply.  I'm going to take that farmer a loaf of my bread the next time I have a big baking day.  It seems only fair to me.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this rant.  Bottom line is, if you're worried about food security in the near term, now is an excellent time to ask a local grower about a bulk purchase of winter squash.  They are among the easiest vegetables to store.  Make sure those you buy for storage have stems intact, and don't pick them up or carry them by the stem.  Put them in a cold part of your house, (55-60F/13-16C is ideal) and use them up by spring.  For those of you concerned about long term food security without any immediate personal economic crisis looming, you might consider paying top dollar to your local farmers for what you need to get through the winter.  Food security is, after all, both personal and regional, both immediate and long term.

Natural -and Homemade- Rooting Hormone

 Originally uploaded by peter-rabbit

Hey!  This is important!  I just learned that it's really easy to make a DIY version of rooting hormone solution.  Rooting hormone is used when gardeners and orchardists want to propagate plants from cuttings.  I've never used it, mostly because I've never really wanted or needed to grow plants this way.  Not to mention I'm suspicious of most chemical things sold for use with plants.  But cuttings are one of the best ways to obtain - or give - plants cheaply.  Sometimes it's the best way from a genetic standpoint too, since not all plants produce offspring which share the desirable qualities of the parent plant.  Obviously, I'm no expert at plant propagation by cuttings.  I'm pretty sure that some plants do a lot better than others with this method though, and I know cuttings are made from various parts of different plants (stem, leaf, etc.)  So do a little research before relying on cuttings and rooting hormone for any critical propagation.

So...here's all it takes to make your own rooting hormone dip.  Find a healthy, vigorous willow tree and take several cuttings of its branches with plenty of fresh green leaves on them.  Any variety of willow will work.  Where I live, willows leaf out just ahead of almost any other tree in the spring, so if you don't have a willow tree of your own, keep your eyes open in spring to locate some in the wild or in parks.  Look near running water or in swampy areas.  Spring is a good time to propagate things from cuttings too, so it seems fortuitous that willows are conspicuous at this time.  Strip a small pile of leaves from the willow branches and chop them up finely as you would a culinary herb.  Including some of the very soft willow branches in with the leaves is fine.  You should have 2 cups (~ 0.5 liter) of well chopped willow material.  Put it in a large non-reactive container, such as a stoneware bowl.  Cover with 1 gallon (~ 3.8 liters) of boiling water and let it steep overnight, up to 24 hours.  If you can't boil water, room temperature water will do, but let it steep for a full 24 hours.

That's your rooting hormone dip, ready to use as you would any commercial rooting dip.  After it has steeped you can store it, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for up to two months apparently.  But if you have easy access to willows, it's probably best to make up a fresh batch each time you want to propagate from cuttings.  This willow rooting solution has the added benefit of retarding fungal, bacterial, and viral infections in the cutting.  So you can soak your stems in the willow solution immediately after cutting them if you need to get your pots and soil ready.  Pretty nifty, I'd say, for a product that's free for a pleasant hour or so of effort.

Being able to make your own rooting hormone dip is a great tool for permaculturists, frugal gardeners, and doomers thrivalists alike.  So get out there and get yourself some cuttings, and share some with friends and neighbors!

Other news: honey bee arrival has been delayed by yet another week.  Came home yesterday with fig trees and will get them into their large containers within a few days. Post coming on the figgy details.

Being Thrifty - Or Doomerish - With Seeds: Creating Your Own Seed Vault

During last week's big snow, I began a worthy but somewhat tedious chore. The seed orders for the year had all come in. Not only do I succumb every year to the lure of buying too many varieties of seed, but even the smallest packets provide too much seed for me to grow in a given year. I've always been lackadaisical about storing my seeds. And that has always given me the excuse to buy more seed - so that it's fresh and viable - the following year.

I decided this year would be different. I went through all the seed - both newly arrived and saved from previous years - and separated out the portions of seed that would be planted this year. Some was discarded. The rest of what was still viable would be saved for future gardens. This was somewhat tricky, because I plan to succession plant this year. So I'll need some beet, carrot, spinach, brassica (cabbage family), and lettuce seeds for early season planting, and some for late season planting as well. Because I removed seed from the original packaging I had to make properly labeled seed envelopes for each portion. And to make it even more involved, there are enough seeds in some packets that I could set seeds aside for next year, and still have plenty for years beyond 2011. I wanted those two groups separated into different containers. Oh, and some packets of seed I had agreed to split with other gardeners. A whole lot of repackaging and relabeling, in other words.


I used the cool seed envelope method that El wrote about last year. Hers is vastly superior to the envelope I'd been using previously. So check that out if you're interested. Once the seeds were all divided up into the appropriately labeled envelopes, and the envelopes assembled into groups by anticipated usage date, I typed up a list of all the seeds in each group and printed copies of them so I'd have a record of each group for my garden notebook. I had planned to vacuum seal the seeds in plastic bags, and then put them in canning jars. But I found that even using a wide mouth, half-gallon jar wouldn't give me enough maneuvering room with the larger packs of seeds. So I settled for just putting all the seed envelopes into jars with desiccant packs saved from bottles of vitamin pills, along with seed lists for each jar. I arranged the lists such that they were legible through the sides of the jars. The jars were then vacuum sealed. Finally, I wrote a reminder warning to myself on the canning jar lid and secured it tightly with a canning jar ring.


These jars are headed for my chest freezer. The warning is to remind me not to open the jars or the seed packages until they have warmed up to the ambient temperature of the room. Why? Because if I open up frozen packages of seeds in a warm room, moisture will condense on the seeds and hasten their deterioration. Twenty-four hours at room temperature will prevent this. Now I just need to excavate a spot in the freezer where the jars will remain safe from knocks from heavy frozen items.


Most garden seeds will keep well enough in cool, dark, and dry conditions for 2-3 years. A few will be viable only for one year in such conditions (onions, parsnips), while others may last as much as 5-10 (cucumber, tomato). But we have hot, humid summers where I live. There is no spot I can just leave the seeds and count on favorable conditions for preservation. The method I've just outlined provides nearly ideal conditions for seed storage. I expect to be able to use even the parsnip and onion seed purchased this year well into the future. By separating seed to be used next year from the remaining seed, I will avoid the need to bring all the stored seeds back into bright, warm, moist conditions until I'm ready to divide my remaining seed stores.

So: my own frozen seed bank from the work of a few afternoons. You might do something like what I've done because you're dedicated to saving money, or because you're serious about saving heirloom seeds, or seed you've produced yourself. You might (justly) fear that Monsanto is hellbent on converting the entire global food supply into genetically modified crops on which they own the patents. Or you could do it because you believe the collapse is nigh and that seeds are going to be worth more than their weight in gold.

If you don't have a vacuum sealer, ask around. You might be able to borrow one just for this project if you know someone who has one. Or you could work with ziploc bags and just seal the mason jars tightly with lids and rings. Of course, if you have any serious doomer creds, you know the deep freeze will only last as long as the electricity does. But dry, and dark, and in a vacuum is still a much better storage plan for seeds than a cardboard box sitting in the dining room.

Did You Serve Honorably?

I'm from a long line of people who have served in various branches of the US military. Though I never enlisted myself, I still benefit from my father's service in that I'm a member of USAA. This is a private banking and insurance agency that is known for top-notch customer service, and also for being run on a non-profit basis. As the child of a USAA member, I've always been eligible. It's one of the few military benefits that those who serve can pass on to their children. I've found it to be extremely worthwhile, since their homeowner's and auto insurance rates and policies can't be beat. I also use their totally, 100% free banking services. Anytime I have a question or concern, I can call USAA and quickly get a real, live, competant, polite human being on the phone to help me. I couldn't be happier with USAA, and I don't say that lightly.

The reason I'm posting about USAA is that they recently changed their eligibility rules. It used to be that active duty military personnel could enroll anytime, and then there was a window of opportunity after discharge. After a certain amount of time had passed after discharge, you could no longer enroll, though the children of any USAA member could enroll at any time. Now USAA has opened eligibility to anyone who served honorably in any branch of the US military.

If this applies to you and you're not a USAA member, I urge you to consider becoming one. We save a lot of money and hassle with the services USAA provides. We just got our auto insurance dividends, and next month we'll get our annual rebate from our USAA credit card. And yes, those checks arrive at a particularly nice time of year. Even if it didn't make obvious sense from a financial perspective to use USAA for our banking and insurance, I would seriously consider paying for their services just for the outstanding level of customer service they provide. The sweet thing is, we pay less for that service. A lot less.

So if you or someone you know qualifies under the new eligibility rules, especially if that person is your spouse or parent, check out USAA. I would use any service they provide, with confidence that they would do right by me.

December Frugal Action Item: Plan Next Year's Garden

It's time for another monthly Action Item, and I can tell you I'm glad to wind up this project for the year. While these posts have been fun for me, it's also been a challenge coming up with frugal ideas that work for nearly everyone. I hope they've been of use.

Those of you who read here regularly could be forgiven for considering this more of a gardening blog than anything else. What started for me as a clearing house for all the aspects of frugality in my life has evolved into something that is pretty heavily focused on the food we produce for ourselves on our little suburban lot. Given the degree to which my life revolves around food, this doesn't really surprise me, much as I'd like to be more well-rounded in what I blog. Yet oddly enough, gardening hasn't featured in any of my monthly Action Items thus far. Time to change that.

December is a good time of year to start thinking about next year's garden if you're in the northern hemisphere. In many ways this is the point in time when the garden is in a state of absolute perfection - when it exists as a Platonic ideal solely in our imaginations. If you're not already on mailing lists for seed catalogs, you can check out several good seed vendors online. I recommend Fedco, Johnny's, Seed Savers Exchange, and High Mowing Seeds. I particularly recommend the printed Johnny's Seeds catalog to those new to gardening. Even if you don't end up buying anything from Johnny's, the catalog is a great resource for information about sundry garden plants, and they also have an excellent selection of tools.

Those of you with a backyard lawn: I challenge you to convert at least 100 square feet per family member into a productive food garden. You can grow an awful lot of food in a 5' x 20' bed. If you're in a sufficiently mild climate it's not too late to begin prepping such a bed right now with the lasagna or sheet mulching method: kill the grass, add compost or other soil amendments, cover that with heavy wet layers of newspaper or corrugated cardboard, and then cover everything with a layer of mulch.

Those of you without a lawn but who have a balcony, bay window, a front porch, or even a segment of unused driveway can think about container gardening for next year. So that you don't need to buy expensive containers in the spring, start looking around now for food grade buckets. Delis and bakeries often have buckets of various sizes that held olives or other foodstuffs. These can be had for free by asking around, poking around dumpsters, or placing a wanted ad on craigslist. Once you've got them, drill a few holes for drainage. If you don't already have a compost pile, put the bucket outside and start chucking your kitchen scraps in there all through the winter. They won't decompose much during the cold months, but it'll give you a head start on material for the new year. If you've got a fence with hardly any soil you might consider heavily amending the soil right at the fence line and then growing pole beans up the fence. Beans aren't too particular about the soil they grow in and will generate their own nitrogen fertilizer from the air. The plants will twine around the supports and put their leaves on whichever side of the fence gets better sun. Just be sure you have access to get to your harvest.

A wide variety of plants can be grown in containers, either pots that sit on the ground or those that hang from a hook. Tomatoes will thrive in containers against brick walls that bake in the sun, provided they're kept well watered, and they do pretty well in hanging baskets too, as do cucumbers. We did pretty well with container-grown potatoes this year. Thomas keeps a gorgeous lemon tree in a modestly sized container in his New England home.

If you're really and truly deprived of any suitable space in which to place large growing containers, then consider a few small containers for greens, green onions, or herbs. A south facing window or two with good exposure can supply you with enough lettuce for salads or sandwiches for much of the year. Herbs are great to have on hand right when you want them, without even having to step outside. It's pretty amazing what some determined people have been able to grow in window boxes. If your home doesn't even have a south facing window, then you can grow your own sprouts on your kitchen counter. Fresh sprouts take very little tending, and provide an incredible nutritional boost to your daily diet. When people come to visit you in your dark abode, you can proudly show off your countertop garden. Work with what's possible and always push that boundary.

If you're a determined type with no gardening space, then I would encourage you to seek out opportunities to grow on land you don't own. Community garden plots (US) or allotments (UK) are available in many urban areas. This time of year is a good time to put yourself on a waiting list for some space to grow if you're not already on one. Alternatively, you could pursue a garden-share - an option that many Transition initiatives are encouraging. Find yourself a neighbor with an under-used backyard and ask permission to use it to grow food. The best advantage in this arrangement comes when the homeowner is elderly or incapacitated, but would still love fresh produce from their own property. If you have the motivation to grow healthy food you could help not only yourself but also your landowning neighbor by splitting the harvest with them. Many elderly people who can no longer raise their own food remember well the value of a home garden. They remember an era when thrift was far more the norm than it is today, and would be absolutely thrilled to see their small piece of land put to good use. So don't let social shyness hold you back if there's a nearby property that would work for you. The worst that could happen is that the answer is "no." More likely, your request will be a blessing in someone's life.


Alternative Action Item: If you're already an experienced gardener, then I'm sure there's no need to encourage you to think about next year's garden. You're already getting those seed catalogs in the mail, no doubt. So instead I'm going to challenge you to expand your gardening project in some way. Perhaps you have never bothered with perennials. That's a good direction to expand in - many years of harvest for one season of planting. Or you could work on turning some of your shade areas to production and simultaneously extending your season on the early side with early crops such as ramps and fiddlehead ferns. Perhaps you could concentrate on learning the basics of seed saving this year. Do a little research on some plants that don't cross-polinate very well and find out how to store them. Think about extending your harvest through succesion planting or row covers for use in the cooler months of the year. If none of those ideas appeal or you're already doing all those things then perhaps you could plant a row for the hungry this year and aleviate the strain on your local food bank.


New to these Frugal Action Items? More here:

January: Compact Fluorescent Bulbs & Hot Water Pipe Insulation
February: Kitchen Competence
March: Rein In Entertainment Spending
April: Go Paper-less
May: Solar Dryer
June: Increase the Deductible on Your Auto Insurance
July: Stay Cool Without Touching that Thermostat
August: Repair It!
September: Insulate
October: Preventative Medicine
November: Frugal Holiday Wish List

Random bit of code: DYUDHJ9RV3ZS

Austerity Parties

I've got another post up at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op. It's about a cheap way of entertaining while celebrating and even embracing frugality. Click below to have a wander over there.


Have a great weekend, everyone.

This Weekend: Seed Swapping, Group Ordering & Haggis

In December I asked my farming friend whether she'd like to go in together on some seed and rootstock orders, in order to save on shipping costs. She had too much on her plate to get to it in before the holidays, but she agreed to move up the date of her annual seed swap potluck to this weekend. As an added incentive to lure all the housebound gardeners, she, a sheep farmer, is ponying up "materials" so that I can attempt to make haggis at her house for the potluck to follow.

I've been to two of her seed swaps in previous years, and they've been casual affairs with plenty of gardening commentary, advice, commiseration, and enthusiasm. Inevitably I come home with something that caught my eye that appears nowhere in my on-paper garden plan. We gardeners can't really help such things. This year we'll also be poring over a collection of catalogs, including Fedco seeds, Fedco trees, Seed Savers Exchange, Johnny's, and the Maine Potato Lady to put together one group order per catalog. I expect that by ordering with the group, we'll all save several dollars on shipping costs. If our desired seeds and seedstock overlap, we may also be able to save by purchasing larger quantities. I'm really looking forward to the licentious swapping, and the orgy of vicarious gardening. And I'm going to sniff about with the other gardeners to see if I can find a source of worms for my vermiculture compost bin.

As the foolhardy, formerly professional cook, the haggis making will fall squarely on my shoulders. I'm taking my KitchenAid mixer with the meat grinding attachment. I suspect I'll be the only one there who's ever eaten haggis before. I may be the only one there brave enough to try it after it's made, even though scrapple is a popular treat in these Pennsylvania Dutch hinterlands. I only wish the haggis experiment were happening on Burns' Night, January 25th. I'd love to carry my haggis proudly to the table, to the tune of bagpipes and accompanied by the Address to a Haggis in a lovely thick Scottish accent.

Ah, well. One can dream.

I'll let you all know how the haggis turns out. I know you'll be waiting with bated breath. Have a great weekend.

Rethinking the Non-Negotiable

I've written before on frugality creep, and the incremental changes that happen when saving money becomes a mindset, a way of life. It's very difficult - and very uncomfortable - to shift too quickly from an average endebted, consumeristic lifestyle to severe pennypinching. In our lives the shift from spending to saving has been gradual and is ongoing.

For me there were certain big changes that happened early on, mostly the obvious ones: keeping and using a price comparison book, switching to CF light bulbs, hanging all my laundry up to dry, eating out less and less, learning to bake bread, selling off extra vehicles. But even as I enthusiastically set aside old habits and took up new ones, there were certain exemptions to my spending habits that I wasn't even willing to consider giving up. I think that's normal, and if you're new to frugality I think it's okay to devote your energies to learning new habits and skills for the time being. But when the new habits and skills have become routine, and the frugality bug has still got you bad, there comes a time when those exemptions start looking more and more profligate. Then it's time to reconsider them.

Confession time: I'm vain about my appearance in one particular way. I always wear foundation makeup when I'm out in public. I don't wear lipstick or eye makeup more than a few times per year, and most of the time I couldn't care less what clothes I'm wearing (so long as they're clean and warm enough). But for many long years I've spent good money on a cosmetics counter brand of foundation. I go through about two and a half bottles per year. That probably adds up to about $100 per year.

This was something I just wasn't willing to consider cutting out of my budget for quite a while. It quietly held non-negotiable status, and was paid for out of my mad money budget. Now you may argue that $100 per year isn't very much money, and that's the exact argument I made to myself. But $100 is $100, and there are lots of efforts I make to save us even smaller amounts per year. Why turn around and blow that much on a non-necessity? So recently I decided that I needed to at least consider some alternatives. If I couldn't simply give it up and let the world see my splotchy skin and the occasional zit, then I would at least try a cheaper brand. Off I went to visit the drugstore cosmetics aisle, a trip I hadn't made since high school.

You know what? On my very first try I found a product that matches my skin tone, has a good SPF rating, and works just about as well as the high end stuff I've been buying for years. It's a little bit thinner than my usual brand, so I may use a little more each day. But it costs less than a third as much for the same size bottle of the expensive stuff I've used for so long. I feel pretty foolish for having let a mental prejudice get in the way of saving money for all these years. And I feel silly for still refusing to be seen without foundation. But I do feel good about finding a cheaper alternative that works. Now I have no reason to go to the mall, ever.

We still have some non-negotiables in our budget. I'm not thrilled about these, but unless and until the feces really hits the rotating oscillator, my husband isn't giving up his beer, and my dirty little canned soda habit will continue.

What are your non-negotiables? Have you managed to overcome any? Please share in the comments!

How to Save, or Not, with a Chest Freezer

Yesterday I talked about how to come up with an exact figure for the monthly cost of owning and running a chest freezer. Today I want to discuss how to evaluate that number in terms of what it would mean in your life.

Ways of Saving Money with a Chest Freezer

In order for a chest freezer to become a tool to use in pursuit of frugality, it must allow you to actively save more money each month than it costs to keep the freezer running. How you might go about this depends very much on your lifestyle, and what lifestyle changes you would make if and when you get a chest freezer. Let's look at some of them.

Eat at home instead of eating out. This is the big and obvious one. For those of you with a full family life of kids, two careers, and an overloaded schedule, the temptation to just get the family fed with fast food can be overwhelming some nights. Paradoxically, you may be one of the best candidates for buying a chest freezer. The catch is that you do actually need to change your habits at least a little. If, by owning a chest freezer, you substitute a few meals at home each month for eating out, you're going to come out ahead. Even if you simply microwave a frozen dinner rather than eating in a sit-down restaurant, you're better off. Of course, frozen dinners for a single meal would probably fit in the freezer attached to your refrigerator. If you switch from occasional restaurant dining, delivery, or carry-out to storing and eating your own homemade freezer-to-oven ready meals, you'll come out farther ahead. And if you entirely break a regular habit of paying for meals out, you'll easily save hundreds of dollars per month.

Also paradoxically, if you already prepare all your meals from scratch without a chest freezer, you need to ask yourself if getting one is really going to let you save more than the cost of owning and running an extra freezer each month. If you're already following frugal ways, what's the advantage to you of making an expensive purchase like this one? Well, you could be a candidate though for...

Gardening extensively. It can't be denied that having storage space in the freezer allows the home gardener to put away an impressive quantity of very high-quality produce over the growing season. If you already garden, then you could use a chest freezer to leverage the effort of working a larger garden space. If you don't currently garden, you could begin doing so. But again, honesty is required here. Gardening is a fun hobby for some, utter drudgery to others, and a serious commitment of time and effort for anyone who does it. So is food preservation. You can't just pick a fresh vegetable and chuck it in the freezer. Some other work is going to be involved. Are you really up to (more) gardening? Could you tackle it as a family project if your kids are of age to help? Consider it carefully before using it to justify a major purchase. If you do pursue this, you also need to think about which plants suitable for your climate and growing conditions will be preserved in the freezer.

Raising animals for meat. This is probably beyond the interests of many people, but it's something to consider if you're serious about moving towards food independence. If you plan to keep rabbits, chickens or other animals for meat, a chest freezer is probably a very good idea. Even having laying hens will let you store some eggs in the freezer for the times of year they don't produce.

Reducing waste. Having plenty of extra freezer space is a great opportunity to prevent spoilage of food you've already paid for or grown. There are times when stuff sits around too long in the fridge. In many cases, there's a way to get it into the freezer for later use. Citrus fruits can be juiced and the zest peeled. Both of these can go into the freezer. Cheese can be grated and later used for pizza or casseroles. Vegetable trimmings can be stored up and saved for making stock. Leftovers can be shifted later in time just by freezing and thawing. Fruits can be peeled, cut up and frozen for later use in desserts or smoothies. Keeping spices and flours in the freezer also preserves them much longer than they would at room temperature. So you may get more use out of your investment in some costly ingredients.

Shopping the sales and buying in bulk. There's no denying that freezer capacity can change the way you shop. Some grocery stores sell their must-go meat in large quantities. If you have a chest freezer, you can take advantage of this. You could also consider buying half of a steer, hog, or lamb directly from a local farmer. Or, when your price comparison book tells you that you've found a great deal on anything you use on a regular basis, you can stock up like crazy. We've got about twelve pounds of organic butter and ten packs of Hebrew National hot dogs in our freezer right now, due to fantastic deals that we spotted several months ago. It's great to know you have the storage space to take advantage of such opportunities. The Frugal Girl has a nice piece on how to freeze large quantities of chicken when it goes on sale, so that it's easy to use later on.

Stocking up on other things. I also use our freezer to store up homemade bread and other baked goods. I can bake ten loaves of bread in one day and freeze them for later consumption. This allows me to save a little bit of money on fuel costs by running my oven less often, and by not heating up my house during the hot summer months. This results in a fairly small amount savings compared to not having the freezer at all. I would probably still bake my own bread without the chest freezer. But the savings, small and difficult to calculate though they be, are there nonetheless.

Driving Less = Lower Fuel Costs. Having a chest freezer and using it to stock up can mean fewer trips to the store, which can save you money on gasoline. This can be accomplished either by buying in bulk, or by using the freezer to store food you grow yourself. But again, you need to look at the particulars of your life. If you drive by the grocery store on the way to work everyday anyway, you probably won't drive less as a result of having a chest freezer.


Drawbacks, Concerns, and Risks

Increased work load. As with many ways of saving money, chest freezer frugality takes more effort as compared to the "convenience" of paying to have your food prepared for you. In order to save, you must do the food processing.

The fallacy of "saving." Remember that you aren't saving anything when you put food into the freezer. Whether you got a fantastic deal on a roast, or raised your own vegetables, you don't save any money by putting these things in a freezer. You only save when you pull that food out of the freezer and eat it in lieu of something else you might have eaten that would have cost you more money. If you buy and stock a chest freezer with the good intentions of eating at home, but then ignore that food and continue to eat out or bring prepared food into your home, you're just wasting money. Eventually, the food in the freezer will become a total loss. Don't fool yourself into stocking up more food than your family can eat before it gets freezer burned. The best sale prices don't mean much if you only prepare a few meals at home each month.

Extended power outage can lead to a big loss. The whole premise of using a chest freezer to save money rests on a steady supply of electricity. Losing power during a cold winter might not matter much if your chest freezer is located in an unheated space. As a rule of thumb, food in a chest freezer that loses power will be okay for up to 48 hours if the freezer remains closed. But if you experience frequent power outages during warm weather, consider this risk carefully. You could lose hundreds of dollars worth of food in one go.


Making the Decision

So, is a chest freezer for you? Think about the monthly figure you came up with based on yesterday's calculations. For us, that number is around $5.80. Let's look at it by crunching the numbers. We're a family of just two, which means we eat 180 meals per month (2 people x 3 meals per day x 30 days). On average, that means the chest freezer must be directly responsible for a savings of just over 3 cents per serving for every single meal we eat ($5.80/180 meals). Or we could say that we need to use it to save $1.45 per week in food costs ($5.80/4 weeks per month). This is just a break even point. To come out ahead, we need to do better than that.

How many meals do you prepare each month? And how many people do you feed in your family? The more home cooked food you serve each month, the better your potential savings. And by contrast, every meal you eat out or buy prepared food lowers the savings contribution of your chest freezer. Assess yourself and your lifestyle honestly. If two working adults eat out for lunch every weekday, that's 40 meals per month that aren't going to be affected by having a chest freezer. You can't use a freezer as a frugal tool if you don't eat at home.

Thinking about all the possible ways of saving money mentioned above. How many are going to apply to you? Does this look like a smart purchase to you? Can you realistically expect to save more than the monthly cost of ownership? If you are comfortable with the increased work load needed to save a lot more than that monthly figure, you're a good candidate. If you just don't cook that many meals at home, and you don't see that changing anytime soon, this purchase probably doesn't make much sense. The same is true if you already eat quite frugally without the benefit of a chest freezer.

Tomorrow I'll give some other tips for those of you who already own or are ready to buy a chest freezer.

The Chest Freezer: A Good Frugal Tool for You?

I love having a chest freezer. We've bought it less than two years ago and I already take it for granted. In addition to my meager forays into canning vegetables, I've been socking away garden produce in my chest freezer for the last few months. So even while I've been following the $50 per Month Grocery Challenge, we've actually been adding to our food stores.

A while back, My Money Blog posted about our exact situation: having an extra chest freezer in the garage. I wanted to add to that discussion. If frugality is your prime concern, there are many things to think about before making the decision to buy a chest freezer. Some factors are obvious. If you're in an efficiency apartment or a very small home, space considerations probably rule out a chest freezer. But for most of us, the question comes down to costs vs. savings.

Over the next few days, I'm going to walk through the issues around owning a chest freezer. Naturally, if you're in the market for a freezer you'd want to consider several options:

Sizing your freezer. Think carefully about how big a freezer you want. If your family is large, and you cook from scratch most of the time, it makes sense to get a large freezer. If it's just you and one other person, choose a smaller model. The potential monthly savings goes down with the number of people you need to feed. So your costs must also go down if you want to come out ahead. Though it's tempting to buy large, having a large stock of stored food that doesn't get eaten up doesn't save you anything at all. A small family can store a large supply of meat and vegetables in a small freezer. My husband and I bought half a hog and half a lamb one year, and though it took us a long while to eat through all that meat, the meat itself took up a surprisingly small amount of space. As a rule of thumb, chances are good that you could get by with less freezer than you think.

Of course, if you fill your freezer with a lot of prepared meals and frozen dinners, you're allocating a significant amount of dead space to packaging. So consider how densely stored your food is going to be. Volume per volume, pre-packaged food will give you fewer servings than unprocessed meats, fruits, and vegetables. If you make your own prepared foods to freeze (such as quiche, casseroles, etc.), you're unlikely to use up extra space around them for packaging.

Energy efficiency. There are many stand alone freezers out there. Chest freezers are usually recommended over uprights because they are more efficient. This is due to a law of physics: cold air is heavier than warm air. Open an upright freezer and all the cold air falls out at your feet. Open a chest freezer, and the cold air more or less stays put where it is. If you're paying for your electricity, or if you only generate your own in small quantities, it'll probably pay for you to get a well insulated chest freezer, if you're going to buy any freezer at all. On top of that, it would be wise to choose a model that does better than the average in terms of electricity usage. The EnergyStar website has a good tool for evaluating all EnergyStar rated freezers. It would be a good place to begin looking for an individual model.

Shopping around for the best price. If you're reading this post, you have access to the internet, which gives you a wealth of opportunities to compare prices for durable consumer goods. Once you've narrowed down your choice of freezer models, shop around for the best price. Be sure to include any differences in sales tax and shipping or delivery costs. Then spend a little extra time speaking directly with any local vendors of this freezer who might not have an online presence. If you find a competitive price locally, be sure to ask if they could offer you a discount for paying cash. 'Cause you're not putting this on the credit card, right?


In order to make a smart decision about a potential purchase, we need to get down to brass tacks. In other words, we need to know what it will cost us. So the first task is to come up with an actual monthly cost of ownership.

Cost of buying the freezer itself. This is going to make a difference not only in the amount of money you have to lay out up front (because of course there's absolutely no question of putting this purchase on a credit card), but also in figuring out what it's going to cost you to have the freezer on a monthly basis. Of course, this isn't literally true. Once you've bought the freezer there wouldn't be any further cost if you left it in the garage unplugged. But for the purposes of evaluating the purchasing decision, we need to divide the purchase price by the life expectancy of the appliance. Ten years is the average life expectancy for a chest freezer. When you figure out the price, be sure to include any sales tax you would pay, as well as delivery charges if any. Then just divide the total cost by 120 (12 months x 10 years). This is your monthly cost of ownership.

Monthly electricity costs. Now you need to know how much you'll pay in electricity to keep the freezer cold. It so happens that the EnergyStar website also includes a nifty spreadsheet that will let you calculate the cost to run your freezer to a very high degree of accuracy. To use it though, you'll first need to know how much you pay the electricity company per kilowatt hour. If your bill looks like mine, figuring this out is very confusing. But somewhere on your bill there should be a total dollar amount for the month, as well as the kilowatt hours you actually used. Simply divide the dollars by the kilowatt hours, and you'll have the amount you're paying per kilowatt hour this month. It may vary from month to month. If you want to track this figure to find your average cost per kilowatt hour, go for it. But the calculation from any given month gives you something to work with. Plug that number into the spreadsheet, along with other details on the model of freezer you're considering. This will give you a figure for your monthly cost to keep the freezer running.

Now add the monthly cost of ownership to the monthly electricity cost to run it. This is your actual cost of keeping your chest freezer running. It's also the amount of money you need to save in food costs each month in order to just break even. Any savings over and above that amount will be money in your pocket.

So we've now come up with a specific dollar amount with which to make a purchasing decision. Tomorrow we'll discuss ways you might or might not recoup that cost, and some other pros and cons of ownership.

Sometimes Frugaller is Healthier

I was at a local food event recently. There was an ice cream vendor selling cones and cups from a truck. Since I'd gotten in to the event (which included a meal) for free by volunteering to do a little work, I decided to splurge just a little for a cool treat on a hot day. I duly queued up to await my chance at commerce.

There was a list of flavors on the window, along with three prices: child for $1.50, single for $2.50, or double for $3.50. One older gentleman in front of me got a lovely looking cone of mint chocolate chip. I noticed that he had only asked for the "child" size. He started eating it as he ambled away, so it wasn't for a young person he was with. It looked like plenty of ice cream to me. I admired his restraint and his frugality, and I thought he set a fine example. So I asked for a child sized cone of black raspberry when it was my turn, and paid just $1.50. Even the "child" size was two scoops of ice cream.

The ice cream was indeed good. And after a rather generous meal, that portion was all I really could have or should have eaten. And yet I saw actual children wandering around with towering cones of three scoops or more. (This after eating the same meal I had - everyone who attended got a freshly grilled 6 oz. hamburger.) I know this shouldn't surprise me, but it still does. Well over half the kids there were overweight. I doubt many of them were earning their own pocket money, so they weren't paying for those cones themselves. There was a perfectly sufficient portion size specifically designated for children. And yet their parents apparently thought that wasn't the right size for these kids. Did they give in because the kids whined? Did the kids not even need to whine because the parents have relinquished all control over such decisions? Or is this just the American stigma against anything small?

I enjoyed the ice cream. Sure, the most frugal thing would have been to just eat the meal I earned by volunteering and to enjoy the atmosphere of the event. But I don't feel any guilt about a $1.50 splurge. It's the only money I've spent to have food served to me in more than twelve weeks. It did occurred to me though that my frugality was a stronger motivator than any desire to curb my eating habits. I'm not overweight, and I think that's because I eat well and am reasonably active. But on reflection, a lot of my eating well is closely tied to my frugality. For instance, I garden, so we eat a lot of fresh and unprocessed vegetables. I cook almost every meal from scratch, so we don't eat much junk food. These practices are good for my body and good for my budget.

Anyway, that little incident just made me wonder about the connection between frugality and diet. For an extra $2, I probably would have gotten another 600 calories or so. That would have been 600 calories I didn't need. I was too cheap to do it, and that's good for me all the way around.

Frugality Creep

Frugality became an important issue for me about a year and a half ago when my husband and I took on two mortgages (one for 50 acres of farmland, the other for the home we live in) totaling about $400k. Suddenly I felt the need to start saving money everywhere I could. I read blogs and books about getting out of debt, doing it yourself, voluntary simplicity, and modern homesteading. At this point the smaller of the two mortgages is completely paid off; we own that farmland free and clear. But we still owe the bank for the roof over our heads.

I'm still looking for ways to save money. But I've incorporated many more ideas and techniques than I ever imagined I would when I first started thinking hard about ways to save money. All the suggestions and recommendations you get from frugality websites and books can be overwhelming at times, no matter how willing you are to change. We're creatures of habit, and change is easiest to take - or to make - in small doses.

I started first with simple household things, like hanging up every single load of laundry to dry inside, installing compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and turning off the hottub. We stopped eating out and cooked all our meals at home. But after all the easy and obvious changes were made, I was still looking for more ways to save money.

I took Amy Daczyczyn's advice and tackled a new skill at the beginning of 2007: baking bread. I didn't expect world class bread, but I was hoping to beat what's available in the stores near us. Truth is, after a few so-so results, I learned fast. I found it easier and more enjoyable than I expected to. So now I not only make all of the bread we eat, I barter it too. That's not a situation I would have predicted when I started looking for ways to save money. I thought that I'd make some of the bread we eat, but continue to buy some from the store.

We gardened on a small scale last year, and cleared another enormous garden bed this spring. Given how quickly food prices are going up, I'm glad I had this planned out already and that the seeds and seedlings are already in the ground. The garden plot takes up a very significant chunk of our backyard, and reduces the amount of grass we have to cut: savings in groceries, gasoline, and time spent on a boring chore. I imagine that we'll buy very little produce for the remainder of the year. Depending on the yields I get, I may even sell some produce to local restaurants or at a roadside stand, after I've canned what I think we'll use over the winter. Again, this expanded food production wasn't something I had envisioned when my attitude began to change.

Another unforeseen change is that we now have four Red Star laying hens. We built a mobile pen and a mobile coop for them, mostly out of materials salvaged from dumpsters on building sites. We started dumpster diving for wood and other items without any specific building projects in mind. But I built sawhorses for ourselves and for friends as a Christmas gift with 2x4's pulled out of various dumpsters. The hens now get moved every morning in the rotational grazing system popularized by Joel Salatin. We move them around the perimeter of the garden and in the fall we'll probably put them in the garden itself where they'll help fertilize and work the cover crop into the soil. The four hens we got were scheduled for "retirement" (the stock pot) earlier this year at two years of age. Our girls apparently never got that memo, because they still pump out eggs at the rate of one egg per hen per day. The eggs are huge, fresh, nutritious, and so abundant that I can sell a dozen now and then. The girls eat dandelions, purslane, prickly lettuce, and other weeds quite happily, along with our table scraps, and they return that to us in eggs! The grazing system we use means even less of the lawn gets cut on a regular basis. Really, it's hardly a lawn any more. It's now our "pasture in training." The kicker is that I bartered for these four hens and a bale of hay with just two of my organic loaves of bread.

My ambitions are not yet satisfied in terms of self-sufficiency or frugality. I've started building a solar cooker now that the days are getting hot again. I'd also like to start a vermiculture trench (earthworm "farming") to improve our composting system and enrich our garden soil on the cheap. I liked both of these ideas when I first read about them, but there were many other more immediate changes to be attended to. Now that keeping hens, hanging up laundry, and baking bread have become routine for me, I can tackle a little bit more change. That's what I call "frugality creep." Incremental changes over time seem to work best for me. If I had tried to make too many radical changes too quickly, I would have failed. I look forward to seeing where the creep has taken me by this time next year.

If you're new to frugality, balance the need to make serious money-saving changes with an awareness of what's feasible for you and your family right now. Make the common sense changes immediately, especially those things that are once and done, like switching to CF lightbulbs. Then start with the daily, weekly, or monthly tasks that save money without needing skills you don't have, such as hanging laundry and making sure the tires of your car are properly inflated at least once per month. After those are part of your routine, follow your own interests for acquiring a skill that helps you save money. In my case baking was the obvious first skill. For you it might be sewing or auto maintenance. Try to pick a skill that interests you, that you are otherwise paying someone else to perform, and also one that won't require you to invest in expensive tools (borrowing them is okay). Stick with it a while even if you see only mediocre results at first. These skills are worth money for a reason: they're difficult to acquire. From there you'll likely see your own frugality creep.

Frugal Philosophy - When You Feel Punished

Frugality gets a bad rap from many people today. Too often it is seen as stinginess, or indicative of poverty. Those who are forced to abruptly change their spending habits by financial difficulties are especially apt to feel that frugality is synonymous with deprivation and unhappiness. Yet those who embrace frugality as a voluntary lifestyle don't see the practice in this light at all. Those voluntary frugalites have attitudes that might mystify those who come to frugality through necessity. So for those new to frugality who are feeling deprived in an unfamiliar lifestyle, I offer these ideas.

Try to look at frugality not as a punishment or as a penalty for lack of savings in the past. Instead, look at it as a challenge, a game and a choice you have made for yourself. Because even when money is scarce, it still is a choice, isn't it? You're choosing to live responsibly: within the means you now have, rather than racking up credit card debt you can't repay in order to live your former life.

Look for little ways to economize. Pat yourself on the back when you find each way to stretch a dollar a little further, to get by with a little less. Everyone is different and will find different ways of conserving their hard-earned money. Many aspects of a frugal lifestyle truly do allow you to live well on less. Comparing prices and buying in bulk saves you money without requiring you to go without. Learn some new recipes built around cheap ingredients. There are plenty of frugal meals that have no taint of deprivation about them.

Remember that a lot of people who live the way you used to have very little money in the bank. They look like they're rich and they behave as if they are, but in reality they're not rich (and never will be) if they're not saving. Only a tiny number of people, the multi-millionaires, can act rich and be rich at the same time. A lot more people can choose between looking rich and eventually being rich. And then there are those who can't choose at all and will never be rich. You may yet end up in the middle with a lot of the rest of us.

Look at your new lifestyle as an opportunity to teach your kids to do better than you did. Model frugality to them, talk to them about it frankly, so that they might avoid the patterns you followed earlier. Parental behavior is an enormous influence on children. You might not think your children listen to you, especially when they reach the teenage years. But they are assuredly watching you and learning from what you do. The most powerful lessons your children will learn are when your actions match your words. Challenging them to rely on their creativity and industry, rather than on expensive conveniences, will provide them with invaluable skills for their early adult years when their incomes will be modest.

A good way of thinking about expenditures is to ask yourself whether a brand new gadget is really worth 10 times as much as the same gadget bought used at a yard sale or thrift shop. Sometimes, we really need new things. No one will tell you that a used toothbrush is a good buy. But clothing, toys, furniture and tools can often be had for a fraction of the price of the new item. And often in excellent condition. Well made furniture will last more than a lifetime if well taken care of. The same can be said for most metal tools. It takes an investment of time to collect what is needed from yard sales and consignment shops. So try to see the time spent as a bonus: free entertainment and recreation.

Most importantly, when money is tight, try to retain a positive outlook. Don't beat yourself up over the past and don't despair for the future. You may have made less than wise choices with your money in the past. But every little step you take today to work your way out of debt, and to spend your money carefully means a better future for yourself and your family. Each little effort adds up. It really does!

The USDA's Cost of Food - How we measure up

The cost of feeding ourselves is one area where I've been focusing a lot of my efforts in saving money lately. Eating out is a thing of the past for us. Our grocery bill therefore represents our total expenditures on food. I wanted some objective indication of how well we were doing at saving ourselves money in this area. A link found on a frugal discussion forum sent me to the USDA's Cost of Food page. Here the US government breaks down the average price of food at home across the country on a month by month basis. There are four different budgetary plans, ranging from "thrifty" at the low end to "liberal" at the high end. The chart makes it easy to look at average food costs for families of different sizes, and as of this writing the data is complete through December of 2006.

Although I have shopped carefully with my price comparison book, baked our own bread, prepared home-made breakfast items, and relied on cheap staples for dinners, I had never actually tracked our grocery expenses to the dollar. I decided that this month - February, 2007 - would be the month to start. With my husband's cooperation, the receipts started piling up. And yesterday, with a well stocked refrigerator and no need to shop before the end of the month, I toted up the grocery bills and checked in against the government website.

Since no data is available yet for this month or even last month, I looked at both the December, 2006 and the February, 2006 figures for a family of two adults. Extrapolating from these figures, I estimated that under the thrifty plan, the figure for this month would be only about $315-$320 dollars. I'll check this against the actual posted figure when the government catches up on its data.

At first I thought we were doing just fine, with almost $29 to spare until the end of the month. But then of course I remembered a receipt I'd set aside for an item that needed to be returned. That receipt put us over the USDA's thrifty plan figure by $6-11, even when we eliminated the vitamin pills we purchased, moving them out of the grocery budget and into the health care budget. The good news turned to not-so-good news.

My husband and I spent a little while going over our collected receipts. We'd done some stocking up this month, buying a couple cases of "three-buck Chuck" wine for less than $75. I noted that there were quite a few snack items and beer listed on my husband's receipts. He keeps a small apartment in another city that he travels to regularly for work, and the urge to splurge just a little is irresistible for him, I think. He suggested that we not count the beer he bought because he hadn't yet drunk all of it. I demurred, pointing out that we've been eating foods throughout the month that were purchased earlier and stored in the pantry and freezer. Besides, stocking up during sales and once-a-month runs to specialty stores is our usual practice. So it's not our consumption costs, per se, but our food expenditures that we're tracking. In the long run, it should all even out.

The exercise of tracking all our grocery expenses has been a good one - one that we will undoubtedly repeat in the coming months. I'm a little bit disappointed that we didn't meet our goal of living within the thrifty plan as defined by the USDA. But I'm glad that we definitely come in at the low end of their "low-cost" plan, even when purchasing organic products whenever we can. The snack foods and beer that my husband buys have been noted, but that's as far as I'm willing to go in addressing the issue. He's the bread winner, and I'd much rather have a contented spouse than see him feeling deprived and unhappy for the sake of another $20 per month.

We learned that even under the thrifty plan, we could buy organic products and a fair amount of meat, or buy a small amount of snack foods and alcohol - but not both. This is very useful information for me as the primary grocery shopper for the household. I'm not sure yet how it will change our spending habits, if it does at all. But having the knowledge is always a good thing.

Frugal Menstruation - the Diva Cup

The High Price of Menstruation in America
A recent frugal practice in my life is the use of the Diva Cup instead of tampons. I had long resented the high cost of tampons and other "feminine hygiene products." As with many toiletries and grocery items, when making the switch to a frugal lifestyle I initially looked for the cheapest price on the items I was accustomed to using. Unfortunately, I came up empty when looking for good deals on my preferred brand, OB tampons. The best unit price I could find was about 15 cents per tampon. I never actually counted the number I used each month, but I know that I bought the large boxes (40 count) and used at least half a box per month. Estimating conservatively then, I was obligated to spend $3 for a disposable, non-environmentally friendly product each month.

I didn't want to switch to the cheaper Tampex tampons because they introduce even more waste into the landfills. Finally, I got annoyed enough by the high prices that I looked into menstrual cups as a radical alternative. I ended up buying the Diva Cup based on the consumer comments on the product website. I was especially interested by the reports from some women that using the cup instead of tampons reduced cramping. But I bought the Diva Cup from an online retailer that offered a better price than buying directly from the manufacturer. Go figure. I paid about $26 out of pocket for one cup delivered to my door.

About the Diva Cup
The Diva Cup is made of silicone, which is a well-tested material used in many medical implants. It looks a little like a diaphragm, and it comes in two sizes: one for women under 30 who have not had children, and a slightly larger cup for women over 30 and any woman who has had a child. It also comes with a small draw-string bag for storage. It sits snugly in the vaginal canal and collects blood, rather than absorbing it as a tampon does. It might seem like a small cup would fill up quickly and need to be changed regularly. But the average woman only loses a moderate amount of blood over several days of bleeding. According to the manufacturer, the risk of toxic shock syndrome is significantly less when using a silicone cup than when using tampons. Still, the company recommends that anyone with a history of TSS not use the Diva Cup.

Using the Diva Cup
A childless woman in my mid-30's, I found the larger size Diva Cup easy to use. It's definitely a more hands-on way of dealing with menstruation. I came into a lot more contact with my own blood. I'm not a particularly squeamish person, and after all, it is my own blood. But I can imagine that some people would just not feel comfortable dealing with this. There was a learning curve to removing the cup when it was full. I had a few small messes to clean up, but I quickly got the hang of it and had no further problems. In my use of the Diva Cup, I found that even on my heaviest flow days, the cup did not need to be emptied anywhere near as often as I would need to change tampons. This made it seem feasible to use a Diva Cup even in a public restroom. If I was forced to use a public restroom while using the cup, I simply wouldn't empty it until I got back home. I'm confident that even on my heaviest days, I could go at least eight hours without dealing with the cup at all. At home, I empty the Diva Cup into the toilet, rinse it out, wash it well under hot running water, rinse it again, and then re-insert it. When my period is over, I wash it well, let it dry and then store it in the drawstring bag until next month.

The Diva Cup was extremely comfortable when in place. Most of the time I couldn't tell it was there at all. Inserting it comfortably took a little bit of practice, but I never had any pain associated with its use. I don't know if I would recommend this product to younger menstruating teens or those who have never been sexually active. I might be wrong here; it's just something that I would leave up to women in that category to decide for themselves. I think that anyone else would be able to use a menstrual cup without discomfort.

Results
I was curious to see how the Diva Cup would perform overnight during the heaviest days of my period. I have had overnight leaks with tampons in the past. Unfortunately, I did have some leakage during the heaviest part of my period the first time I used the Diva Cup. Since then I have learned to make sure the cup is emptied last thing before I go to bed, and emptied first thing when I wake up. I've had no further problems. Women with especially heavy flows might see different results. I would consider using a water douche along with the cup during my heaviest days if I experienced more overnight leakage. Still, I can say that the Diva Cup performs no worse than tampons for me in this regard.

I have noticed some apparent reduction in cramping when using the Diva Cup, which frankly surprises me. I wasn't expecting to see this benefit. But I can't be 100% certain of this yet because the amount of cramping I experience varies quite a lot from month to month. I haven't been using the Diva Cup long enough to know whether these have just been easy months or whether the cup is making a difference. One other possible benefit is that the Diva Cup also eliminates the increased risk of yeast infections associated with tampons. I have had a few yeast infections now and then, and I had never heard that tampons contributed to this problem. Apparently, tampons dry out the vaginal canal too much, thus making it harder for the body to maintain the population of healthy bacteria in that environment. So two possible points there for the Diva Cup.

To sum up, I'm glad I've started using the Diva Cup. According to my calculations, my financial break-even point for the purchase of the Diva Cup is about nine months. ($26 divided by $3 per month in tampons.) With at least another ten years of menstruation ahead of me, I should see a net savings of $335. And I don't have to worry about running out of tampons in the middle of my period, thus eliminating one possible reason for an emergency run to the store. Additionally, there's the benefit of introducing less waste into the environment. Now I wish that I'd started using the cup ten years ago. I can recommend this product or others like it to any adult menstruating woman who wants to save money and/or be environmentally responsible.

Life Changes

Three months ago, my husband and I committed ourselves to two mortgages as well as building a new log home on vacant farm land. We've always been financially comfortable and have denied ourselves little while saving a moderate amount for retirement. We took a good deal of money out of our savings to put down sizable downpayments on both the home we now live in, and the land we purchased. In these past few months, I've undergone a sea change in my spending habits and the way I run my home.

Certain changes have been pretty easy to make and not very noticeable. For instance, I've always cooked most of our meals at home. I now cook all of our meals at home. Other frugal practices are new to me, like keeping a price comparison book. This is something that I never bothered to do before, even though I suspected it would be a good money-saving practice. Now I know just how empowering a tool this little notebook is. I've also recently taken up home baking as a way to further reduce my grocery bill.

I am constantly looking for new ways to conserve resources and make our dollars stretch further. I don't work outside the home right now, though that may change. I plan to be the general contractor for our log home building project, which will keep me very busy in the months to come.

My hopes for this blog are to document my own progress in becoming a more frugal person, and to perhaps begin a little dialog with others who wish to make the most out of the money they earn.