Take Away Lessons From Our Energy Audit

We had contractors in the house in late October to work on air sealing our 130-year-old home. (For those of you in Europe, any home this old is considered venerable in the US.) We'd had our home evaluated for energy efficiency earlier this year, so this was the follow-on work to improve our "envelope" as they say in the business. We were pleasantly surprised to find that as old as our home is, the efficiency was no worse than the average new construction home. Still, there was room for improvement.

That's a picture of a blower door up above. We latched the other exterior doors and sealed all the windows in our home. Then this was installed in our front door and the fan shown there was turned on. It's a powerful fan, and it depressurized our entire house. Then the workers went around checking for any points of air infiltration from outside, and did their best to seal them up. (I'd done some work on this myself since the initial energy audit.)

Of course, these improvements cost money, and not a trivial amount. For what we spent on energy efficiency improvements, we could have made a couple mortgage payments. We see this as a necessary precondition for installing any form of sustainable energy heating system though. Where we live, we heat our home fairly steadily from mid-November to mid-March, with an extra two months of at least occasional heating. If we're to spend money on passive solar heating, or even if we stay with oil heating as long as that's feasible, it only makes sense to make our home as efficient as possible. It's simply the right thing to do, and we can afford it at the moment.

I know a lot of people out there can't even contemplate spending a few thousand dollars on energy efficiency, no matter how much sense it makes. I've posted recently on cheap insulating strategies, and I urge you to check them out if you haven't already. There are tips there for both renters and homeowners. But I picked up a couple extra tips on air sealing from the contractors that I want to share.

Install safety guards in all electrical outlets on exterior walls. You know those little plastic plugs that prevent toddlers from sticking their fingers in sockets and electrocuting themselves? Put them to good use even after your kids or grandkids are grown. Electrical outlets are very often heat leaks because they reside in gaps in the insulation of your walls. The plastic guards can significantly reduce the infiltration of cold air through these gaps.

Look to the cobwebs. Maybe you're such a tidy housekeeper that there are no cobwebs in your home. We've got 'em in spades. Spiders spin their webs where there is airflow. So when you see cobwebs near windows or doors, it's a good indication that there's an air gap somewhere very close by. Cracks in plaster walls are another major culprit.

Check the trim work around all windows and doors. Very small gaps between the wall and the trim allow for an amazing amount of heat transfer. This can be true even if you have modern double- or triple-paned windows. Silicone caulking is your friend. Use it to seal those gaps, even if they look too small to be significant. Believe me, they are significant. Silicone caulking is cheap and simple enough to use that anyone can learn to do it. Get a good scraping tool for the excess caulk to make it look neat and tidy. After a little practice you'll do very nearly as well as the professionals.

With a blower door installed, every air gap in the house becomes evident. If paying a professional to install insulation or air seal your house is out of the question, you might want to schedule an energy audit that includes a blower door anyway. Many utility companies apparently offer free energy audits to their customers, or some portion of their customer base that qualifies based on income. Ours does not. Even if you have to pay for an audit, it will likely cost a small fraction of what the air sealing and insulation work would, perhaps a few hundred dollars.

The blower door will show you exactly where the air gaps are in your house. Some of them you may not be able to address with silicone caulking and a little ingenuity. It may take professional expertise and/or tools. But if you're better set up than we were to mark the air gaps that are evident when the blower door is in place and operating, you could then go about remedying many of them yourself after the audit is finished. I recommend you use brightly colored sticky notes to mark the location of air leaks. Trying to write down all the locations of leaks while the blower door was in place didn't work for us. There were too many to list, and we sometimes weren't sure afterwards what was meant by our own notes. If you take the time before the energy audit happens to work on sealing the obvious visible gaps, you'll be ahead of the game, with fewer air leaks to record during the brief time the blower door is running.

Adding insulation to an attic is also work that can be done by non-professionals. If you've got a weekend and the motivation to do so, this is a job you can do for yourself. Check out a book from the library for some basic tips if you feel you need them.

If your furnace resides in an otherwise unheated, unfinished basement, you might want to put some insulation on the walls around the furnace. Unfinished basements are very common in our part of the country, and furnaces tend to be situated out of the way and right up against a wall. The basement walls in our house are stone in the oldest part of the house, and that stone obviously conducts heat away from the furnace and into the earth. Stopping that constant draining of heat away from the furnace makes a big difference in how often it must fire up and consume fuel.

The good news after all of the expense and work we put into these efficiency improvements is that our home is noticeably warmer and the temperature steadier. We can tell that the house is losing less heat overnight, and it warms up faster when we put the heat on in the morning. It's nice to have such a noticeable and pleasing improvement for the money spent. We now feel ready to seriously consider alternative heating for our old home. More on that to come soonish.

September Frugal Action Item: Insulate

September's Frugal Action Item could be a relatively costly one. Back in June I suggested that those of you who own vehicles "re-invest" some savings to reduce your insurance premiums. I know we haven't had all that many months to build up another pile of savings. But with cold weather coming on again, I'm going to urge you to think hard about improving the energy efficiency of your home. If we wait much longer, it'll be too cold outside (in my part of the world at least) to undertake some of these projects. The good news is that if heating is a major expense for your home, every dollar spent on improving energy efficiency will start paying dividends very quickly.

Because I try hard to come up with Frugal Action Items that suit both renters and homeowners, I've included a few low-cost hacks that will help a little bit with heat loss around windows. But those homeowners who can scrounge up the money to make significant improvements in insulation around the house will see the best return on investment over the long term. We covered pipe insulation back in January, so I won't rehash that here. Instead we'll look at the bigger scale insulation projects.


Basement - If you live in a home with an unfinished or semi-finished basement, the walls are radiating cold during the winter months. Depending on where you live, that could be a whole lotta cold. This is great if you want to portion off one part of it and turn it into a root cellar. But not so great if it simply produces a chilly air mass under your living space. For this sort of project, you'll probably do best to have professionals in for insulation and air sealing.

Attic - Most homes in the US do not have sufficient insulation in the attic space, if there is one. And doubly true for old homes. Fortunately, this is usually one of the easier parts of the home to insulate. Since most attics are used only occasionally it's also one of the less disruptive insulation jobs. Best of all, since hot air rises, insulating above the living space of your home is extremely effective in cutting the heating bill. If you're willing to get a little dirty, this is a project you might be able to tackle on your own. Get a good handyman reference book out of the library to guide you.

Blown-in insulation - This is one of the more disruptive and intrusive type of remedial insulation, addressing heat loss that should have been dealt with when the home was constructed. Basically, it involves filling the spaces between either floor joists or wall studs with loose material that prevents heat from leaking through the walls. A lot of the rentals I lived in in a warmer climate had no insulation whatsoever in the walls. If you've bought such a property, you're paying more to heat your home than you should. Obviously, if you already have insulation between the studs in your walls, no action is needed.

Windows - Window replacement is one of the most expensive insulation projects we can undertake. Really, we're talking some serious outlay of cash here. If you have an old house with single pane windows, you're probably losing quite a bit of heat through them. But replacing them is going to cost dearly too. And replacing a window isn't one of those jobs around the home that I would recommend for a DIY-er. Unless you already have quite a bit of experience doing this job, it needs to be hired out. A poorly installed window could lead to more heat loss and water damage around the window frame, not to mention aggravation and marital discord. If the money isn't in the budget to replace all your windows, consider replacing those located closest to your heating source, if you happen to have a woodstove or other single source of heat. After that, prioritize those windows in the rooms most heavily used during the heating season.

If you have drafty or old windows but simply don't have the money to replace them, here are a few lower cost suggestions. Even if you're a renter, these hacks could be worth your time and effort.

Silicone caulking - this stuff is cheap and easy enough to use that just about anyone can learn to do it. You can use it to seal up cracks around window or door frames. Even if you have modern, well installed windows, you might have some air leaks. Anywhere you see cobwebs, that's an indicator that there's airflow. So when you find them near windows, look to see where that airflow is coming from.

Kathie posted quite a while back at Women Not Dabbling In Normal about a sewing project for window quilts. While this blocks a great deal of light, it also helps keep out the chill radiating from windows in the winter, and helps block drafts if you've got them. This could be a very cheap project if you repurpose the needed fabric and batting, and if you're already a somewhat competent sewer. Although each window quilt is fitted to the window it's made for, if you're a renter, you can take these with you when you leave and either use them as is, or alter them to fit windows in your new location.

Shrink-sealing window kits - These cheap and semi-permanent window seals can help with old windows that leak heat like a sieve. You can find these sorts of kits at a hardware store for not too much expense, and install them around your windows in an afternoon. You'll need a hairdryer, and if you don't dust much you'll need to make sure the window trim is cleaned off. Beyond that, no expertise is required, so any adult could manage this. If your windows lack a wooden frame, or if that frame is blocked by some other architectural feature, it may be tricky or difficult, but you could probably hack something if you put your mind to it.

Effectively, these shrink kits add a pane to your window. So single pane windows become double pane, and double panes become triple pane windows. I used these kits during my student rental days and they helped enormously. Once installed, these seals aren't all that noticeable, and they block no light. So they're suitable for just about any leaky window in your home. The kits are cheap enough that you could take them down each year in spring and replace them each fall, though it's better in the long run to just upgrade your windows.

Finally, the ultimate cheap window insulating hack is simply to lightly mist the pane of glass with water and then place a cut-to-fit piece of bubble wrap over it. The water helps the bubble wrap stick to the glass, but if you have trouble with this, you could try adding a bit of dishwashing soap to the water before spraying the glass. This is cheaper and less labor intensive than the window quilts. It also lets more light come through. It doesn't look too great, I have to admit, and it only covers the cold glass; it doesn't do anything much about drafts. But if you have windows which usually have blinds drawn in front of them anyway, it won't change the appearance of the room.

Doors - If you don't have proper exterior doors on your home with good weather stripping, replacing them should be very high on your list. Interior doors are not made with weather or security in mind. On the other hand, replacing an exterior door that's in decent shape just because it's old or you find it ugly probably isn't going to make much difference for your heating or cooling costs. Upgrading an older exterior door might save you $15 over the course of a year, but you'd get a better bang for your buck with a different efficiency project. It is however worth checking the frame around your door for air leaks, just as recommended for window frames.


If you live in the US, one thing to keep in mind before beginning any insulation upgrade to your home is that many of these expenses can reduce your income taxes. Tax credits for 30% of the cost, up to $1500, are available for various energy efficiency home projects. If you live in another country and can link to any tax credits or incentives available in the comments, I'd appreciate it.


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!
October: Preventative Health Care
November: Frugal Holiday Wish List
December: Plan Next Year's Garden

Tiny Tip: Parboil Your Pasta

I've been trying out an energy saving cooking technique lately, and it's been working great for us. It consists of boiling our dried pasta for only a fraction of the recommended cooking time, and then turning off the heat and letting the pasta "coast" to doneness. It works well when I bring the water back to a boil after the pasta is added and give it a few good stirs to make sure the noodles won't stick to each other. This takes just about three minutes and then the burner is turned off. I find that the noodles generally need one more minute to cook than they would if the pot were kept boiling.

For instance, last night I made a batch of my pumpkin-sage pasta (with dehydrated pumpkin from last year's garden). I brought the water to a boil, added the fusilli, stirred well, and set the timer for three minutes. Just before those three minutes were up, I gave everything another good stir while it was boiling. At three minutes I killed the gas, and covered the pot with a towel. The package said the pasta needed nine minutes of cooking time altogether, so I set the timer for seven additional minutes of coasting. The pasta came out perfectly cooked to our taste.

I'm pretty sure I heard of this cooking method from several different sources before I tried it. The English have a dish called "crimped shrimp" in which shrimp are added to hot liquid and then the pot is covered and removed from the heat. I believe the method is specifically mentioned for pasta in the highly enjoyable Depression Cooking with Clara series. If you haven't seen any of the episodes with this 93-year-old home cook yet, it's well worth checking out for some seriously frugal cooking suggestions. There are probably other dishes that could cook by coasting too.

I'm not sure how much of the total energy is saved by this method, but I would guess it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one-quarter. Obviously, the most energy is used to get the water up to boiling in the first place. Keeping it boiling after adding the pasta is probably relatively cheap. Still, this technique saves me six minutes of running the burner, so that's something. It's also less likely that the pot will boil over, which means less cleanup. And it only takes one additional minute to cook everything. This is an especially useful trick now that the weather is warming up and the house is hot in the evenings. Less heat added to the house in the process of cooking dinner. Try it and see what you think!


More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Repurpose Your Credit Card, Make the Most of Old Man Winter, Broccoli Stalk, Scallions

Your Turn, Dear Reader

It's time for something a little different here at Living the Frugal Life. Today I'm asking for help and advice from my readers. Just a little while ago, the google reader subscription to this blog passed 150 people. It's not much by many people's standards, but it's certainly a bigger audience than I ever expected this blog would have. It's also a large enough group of readers that I know there are plenty of things I could learn from my readers. I'm more than happy to share what I know and learn by way of my own mistakes. But I'm not above asking you for help either.

So. There's something I'd like your advice on. First, check out this funky house in Texas that features a full house curtain made out of the bottoms of aluminum cans. I want to know how to cut up an aluminum can in a time-and-effort-efficient manner that leaves me with a fairly uniform piece of metal. You see, I've had a small bee in my bonnet about trying to reproduce the house curtain ever since the good folks at Homegrown Evolution posted about the Beer Can House. Check out their post, by the way, because I think they have an even better picture of the curtain than the House's own website. We could sure use a full house curtain for summertime low energy cooling of our house. I'm willing to give it a try and see if it works for us. But I've stalled on an early production problem.

I tried several ways of cutting up aluminum cans to reproduce this feat of creative genius, but I'm not having much luck. I've already tried the box cutter blade in a closed book technique recommended at this site. It works, but it takes a fair bit of time and effort to accomplish. It would be manageable if I only needed to cut two cans. As a technique for cutting up thousands, it's a little too slow.

Another possibility that I've already rejected is filling each can with water, freezing it solid, and then using a saw to cut the can. Again - fine for a few cans, but far too time consuming for the numbers I would need. A hack saw on an empty can would work, I'm sure. But it would leave a very ragged and uneven edge that I'd rather avoid.

And yes, to all you clever canners out there, I have realized that used canning jar lids would be a good substitute. I'm willing to use canning lids as I use them up, but I don't go through all that many in a year. So they can supplement, but not replace the large numbers of aluminum cans needed for a house curtain project.

One of you out there must have a clever idea or some practical experience that I can apply to this problem. Help me out!

January Frugal Action Item: CF Bulbs

I'm going be posting one hands-on, nothing fancy, anyone-can-do-this frugal suggestion each month of this year. If I'm on my game, these posts will appear at the beginning of each month. If not, well...we'll see. My goal is to offer money saving tips that will be suitable for either renters or homeowners, and to make them practical for as wide an audience as possible. Some Action Items will challenge you to try something new, some of them will have a seasonal flavor, and some of them will be once and done tasks. I will also sometime offer alternative action items on the chance that you may have already taken care of that month's task.

January's Frugal Action Item is to replace your standard light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. I'm suggesting this one right now for several reasons. First of all, I know a lot of you out there got gift cards (for Target, Home Depot, Kmart, grocery stores, hardware stores, etc.) for the holidays that you can use to pay for the CF bulbs. Second of all, we run our lights for more hours per day during the darkest months of the year. And finally, the sooner you replace your standard bulbs with CFs, the sooner you start saving money. So this Action Item can't wait!

If money is really, really tight for you, buy however many CF bulbs you can scrape up the money for, and put them in the lights you use most often. In addition, be aware that many, many local electricity providers offer coupons or rebates for the purchase of CF bulbs. It never hurts to do a google search for coupons either. As you begin to save money each month on your electrical bill, apply the savings to the purchase of more bulbs and replace more of the lights in your home, in order of heaviest use.

If you're a renter or a homeowner planning to sell anytime soonish, save the standard bulbs for any built-in light fixtures. Take your CF bulbs with you when you move, replacing them with the standard bulbs you saved.

Alternative Action Item: If you've already swapped out all of your standard bulbs for CFs, it's a good time of year to have a look at your hot water pipes, if you can get at them. This is especially important for homeowners who heat with hot water radiant systems, and doubly important for homes with copper water pipes. (PVC water pipes are less conductive, so they lose less heat over a long run.) Pipe insulation has come a long way, baby. If your pipes have old insulation tape on them, it's time for an upgrade. If they're completely naked, throw some synthetic rubber insulation over them. This cheap foam-like insulation is extremely well priced. It's super easy to install and all you need is a box cutter to trim the insulation to fit.

While I can understand that renters may not want to bear the expense of insulation, this is still worth considering. First talk to your landlord and see whether he or she will reimburse or split the cost of the insulation. If not, you may still want to eat the cost if you plan to stay in the rental for a while or if you live in a very cold climate. The synthetic rubber insulation is really very cheap, and the return on investment is likely to be pretty fast. And hey, if you're a lucky renter who doesn't pay for heat, you may want to pursue this anyway, as it's good for the environment. And if your landlord's expenses are kept in line, you may be less likely to see a rent increase.

Happy New Year, everyone! Let's fill 2009 with frugality, good food and home cooking, and warm camaraderie.

Further Action Items:
February: Kitchen Competence
March: Rein in Entertainment Spending
April: Go Paper-less
May: Solar Dryer
June: Raise the Deductible on Your Auto Insurance
July: Stay Cool Without Touching that Thermostat
August: Repair It!
September: Insulate
October: Preventative Health Care
November: Frugal Holiday Wish List
December: Plan Next Year's Garden

The Candlewax of Frugality

I recall a practitioner of the Wiccan religion once telling me that every religion burdens its believers with something unpleasant that isn't really the point of the religion, just a necessary by product of sorts. She said that for Wiccans, it's dealing with all the candlewax that has to be scraped off of various surfaces after their ceremonies. She said that celibacy would be one equivalent unpleasant thing for unmarried Christians, especially Catholic priests and nuns. That idea always struck me as amusing, but interesting too. Frugality isn't a religion, but it sure has its share of candlewax.


Today I tackled some of the candlewax of frugality; I defrosted the chest freezer we keep in our unheated garage. This was one of those necessary chores that I knew I should be getting to in order to trim our electricity bill. But the task was about as appealing as scraping candlewax off a floor. All summer long I procrastinated, using the warm weather as an excuse. Today the high temperature forecast was for 35 degrees. No excuses there: the contents of the freezer would thaw only very slowly while I cleaned, and make it less urgent for me to work at top speed. I'm still getting over a nasty and very tenacious chest cold, so I'm not really working at 100% lately.

Our chest freezer is about as full as it possibly can be, thanks to our homegrown, hand-pressed apple cider, several quarts of homemade lamb stock, and my inclination to bake a lot during cold weather. While having a freezer full of food is reassuring, and more energy efficient than an empty freezer, it does make it hard to find things in there. It also makes for a lot of work when it's time for the defrost. But the build up of frost on the walls of the chest freezer is quite inefficient, because the freezer has to work harder to keep things cold.

As you can see in the picture above, I had allowed a full inch of ice to build up on certain parts of the freezer walls. The ice was quite unevenly distributed. But from what I've read, you're meant to defrost a freezer when the frost/ice is 1/4" thick. There were parts of the freezer with no ice at all, but clearly the defrosting was overdue.

You know what? Getting through this chore that I had put off for so long was pretty quick once I got started. It took less than an hour from start to finish, and that was with me having to make trips inside for warm water. Isn't that the way of things? It also gave me the chance to re-organize the chest freezer so that things are easier to get to, and I have a better sense of where everything is. While I had the chest freezer empty, I also pulled it away from the wall and dusted off the coil that is part of the cooling system. There wasn't much dust, but keeping that coil free of crud is another way to maximize the efficiency of the appliance.

So, all you chest-freezer-owning frugalites out there, I know I'm no shining example of frugal maintenance. But I'll just point out that winter is really the best time of year to defrost a freezer if you've got one that needs it. Time to get to some of that frugal candlewax. I hope your necessary but unappealing frugal chores turn out to be as unexpectedly easy as mine were today.

So Now You've Got a Chest Freezer

Two days ago we discussed how to evaluate the cost of a potential chest freezer purchase. Yesterday we talked about how you might or might not make that purchase a frugal one. Today we're going to assume you've run right out and bought yourself a new chest freezer. So now what? Well, as a frugal person, you naturally want to get the most out of this expensive appliance. Here's how to do it.

Maximizing efficiency

Reducing the costs to run the freezer. There are a few things you can do to slightly lower your electricity costs to run your freezer. Regular maintenance tasks such as defrosting and cleaning the coils are the chores that no one wants to do, but which really do make a difference in efficiency. Most chest freezers are not frostless. This means the food inside will keep longer because the unit does not cycle, but instead maintains a steady temperature. But it also means you'll need to unload the freezer and defrost it about once every year or two. Doing so allows the unit to cool more efficiently and lowers your electricity costs.

Be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions on where to situate your chest freezer. My model needs there to be good airflow around it, and there are guidelines for the range of temperatures the room should be at for many models. The company that made your freezer probably did fairly extensive research on the optimal conditions for operating your new investment. So take advantage of their findings.

The other thing that helps a little is to keep the freezer full. You don't have to use this as an excuse to load it up with "bargain" foods that aren't really bargains. Ice will fill space in your chest freezer just as well as anything else. You could stockpile ice cubes for your next party, or fill old milk jugs or soda bottles and freeze those solid. You can easily add or remove sealed jugs or bottles as needed to fill up or make room in your freezer. Just remember to leave a little headspace inside the bottle for the water to expand when frozen. Bottom line is: if you have trouble keeping your freezer full of stuff that's truly useful to you, you probably bought a model that's bigger than you needed in the first place.


Organizing your Chest Freezer.

You can't benefit from, or eat, what you can't find. As an owner of a chest freezer, I can attest that organization becomes a very real issue as the freezer gets full. The new chest freezer owner invariably succumbs to the allure of all that empty space waiting be filled, and commences stocking up with abandon. Unless you get a model with some serious built-in compartments, keeping a chest freezer organized is more of a challenge than it might seem.

I tried the milk crate system and rejected it. For one thing it left too much difficult to use space outside of the crates. And for another, the cold temperatures left the crates more vulnerable to cracking. We tried keeping a written inventory of stuff going into and coming out of the chest freezer. This might work for some families or individuals, but we're just not that meticulous.

Eventually I hit on the idea of using the heavy woven plastic bags that are sold as reusable shopping bags. It's easy to fill these by theme: pork, lamb, garden vegetables, fruit, fish, dairy, etc. Generally, the tops of the bags stay somewhat open when mostly full of stuff, making it easy to see some of the contents. That way I know generally where to find things, and the handles provide a good way of pulling things out of the freezer without throwing out my back. I can grab the handles and pull out one bag at a time without having to bend and lift. Then I rummage through the bag with the freezer closed, and return that bag to the freezer when I've found what I wanted. I use easily identifiable, miscellaneous stuff to fill the gaps around these shopping bags. I have found that the regular thin plastic shopping bags aren't very good in a chest freezer; at such a cold temperature they tear quite easily on several kinds of packaging.

How you go about filling your chest freezer will depend on both your tastes and your personality. But eventually it comes down to balancing the desire to use space efficiently with practicality. In my experience, the most important habit to get into with a chest freezer is to label everything you put in there. I mean everything. You will probably do as I did and tell yourself a few times that you'll recognize this extra pie crust/turkey giblets/baking experiment when you next see it. Trust me: you want to label that stuff. Anything that doesn't already have a clear explanation - write the name and date on it. If you buy labeled fresh meat with the intention of sticking it in the freezer, you may want to put the date you froze it on the label anyway, especially if you sometimes buy meats close to their "sell by" dates. That information gives you some sense of how quickly you need to use up the meat once it's thawed. Because if you're looking at a roast that's been in your freezer for a while and is now three months past its sell by date, how long is it safe to keep it in the fridge before you cook it? Label everything. In the end it'll save you mystification, frustration, and money.


Portioning what you freeze

Thoughtful portioning is especially important with a chest freezer because a chest freezer usually runs at a lower temperature than the freezer attached to your refrigerator. So it's going to take longer to thaw a given item from the chest freezer.

I want to store foods in ways that make them easy for me to use quickly once I decide to take them out of the freezer. So I use a variety of storage methods. Soups and stews can go into plastic quart-sized yogurt containers. This leaves some difficult to use space around the containers, but it's a good portion size for a family of two. I typically make soups I intend to freeze a little on the thick side, then thin them after thawing. That way I can get 5-6 servings per quart.

I use the ice cube tray trick for things like citrus juice, pizza sauce, beaten eggs, and sometimes for pesto. Again, this is not the most efficient use of space in the freezer. But it allows me to thaw just as much of these items as I need very quickly. I've learned to portion meats the along similar principles. When I buy large quantities of bacon, I lay out a long sheet of plastic wrap, and then lay out the bacon in groups of two, three, or four slices, with a fold of the plastic sheet sandwiched in between each group. That allows me to reach in and remove only as much bacon as I want, without having to thaw the entire package at once.

Last year, the couple at Future House Farm showed off their beautiful array of produce stored in the freezer using the clever file method for ziploc bags. This consists of putting a liquid or semi-liquid food into ziploc bags, squeezing out all the air pockets, and then freezing the bags solid in a very flat shape. Once frozen, the bags can be stood up on edge and packed together like file folders. This works best when you either plan to thaw the entire contents at once (soup), or when the food will be frozen in a thin enough layer that you can just break off the amount you need whenever you need it (tomato paste).


Meal Planning & Freezer Inventory

Having a chest freezer full of food is a good feeling. But remember that you actively need to use this stuff up rather than just let it sit there as a hoard. It's a good idea to inventory what you've got at least a few times per year. If you have a lot of one particular item or items, make a note of the quantity on hand. Then keep that note in the kitchen to remind yourself to find a way to incorporate that item into your cooking at least once per week. If you've gone to the trouble of preparing ready to eat meals, keep a list of those as well. You're more likely to turn to them on the spur of the moment on a night you don't feel like cooking if you can simply look at your list and decide what to thaw. Isn't that better than just calling for pizza delivery?

Try to get into the habit of thinking about the evening meal early in the day, perhaps before you leave for work, or even the night before you cook. If you need to thaw something large from your chest freezer for use in the next 24 hours, place it in the topmost part of your refrigerator as early as possible. If your habits and lifestyle aren't going to include this much anticipation, then consider devoting one weekend per month to preparing meals that can go straight into the oven from the chest freezer. Search the web or your library for books on once a month cooking. You can find thin aluminum trays similar to pie plates in a range of sizes and shapes at most supermarkets. These are great for preparing small versions of casseroles and other dishes. And if you're careful with them, they can be washed and reused many times before they wear out.


-Whew! That's three days of talking about chest freezers. You know, when I started crafting these posts about chest freezers, I never imagined there'd be so much to say about them. I sincerely hope I've covered enough of the issues to put the chest freezer theme to bed. Onwards.

It's Tea Time - Sun Tea Time

I'm a devoted tea drinker. I can't get my morning properly started without it. I know the difference between a teapot and a tea kettle, and I know that hot tea will not brew in a paper cup with kinda hot water. Most of the year, a couple of blisteringly hot cups of tea are welcome in the morning. But right now, I'm waking up to temperatures in the high 70s Fahrenheit (mid 20s Celsius), and the mercury only rises through the day.

So I made my first annual batch of sun tea a few days ago. The process is simple: just put teabags or loose tea in a large glass jar and put the jar somewhere where it'll get a strong blast of sunlight for several hours. The heat of the sun warms the water and brews your tea for you. After that, you put the jar in your refrigerator and enjoy the tea chilled. It keeps for several days and you don't even need to strain it if you don't want to.

Sun tea is one of those tiny tips that I employ to save money. But it's a little unusual in that it saves me tiny amounts of money in several ways. The first and most obvious is that I don't have to pay for any energy to boil water. Not a huge savings, granted. But in the summer months, I also save a little because the heat of that boiling water would make my house warmer too. So if I'm running any fans or air conditioning, I get a tiny savings that way. Thirdly, it seems that I get more tea out of the same amount of loose tea or tea bags when compared to brewing it in a pot. Maybe it's the slow and steady brewing done by the sun, but I can get more than a gallon of sun tea from just three tea bags or a generous tablespoon of loose tea. Ratchet up another savings by making my ingredients stretch farther. Finally, I save (potentially) another tiny amount on cooling by keeping myself cool with a cold drink instead of a hot one.

I have two large glass containers for sun tea. One is specifically a sun tea jug, which I got for 75 cents at a charity thrift store. The other is just a very large (1 1/2 gallon) glass jar with a screw top lid. I picked it up in a bulk foods store for less than $3. I don't need anything else, other than tap water and tea leaves to make the most necessary of morning beverages.

Sweating the small(er) stuff

I've mentioned Amy Dacyczyn's wonderful Tightwad Gazette on this blog a few times already. Her collected books were the perfect fulcrum for shifting my viewpoint to a more frugal mindset. Most of all, she assured me that it was okay to "sweat the small stuff." More often than not, the thousands of tiny economies we could be practicing are pooh-poohed by both spendthrifts and frugalites who are more "big picture" types.

But the philosophy to be found in the Tightwad Gazette struck home for me so profoundly because Amy Dacyczyn's family and mine are similar in a financial sense. I'm not raising six kids on a single modest income, as the redoubtable Mrs. Dacyczyn did. But I am free of credit card debt and other crippling sea-anchors that so many other households struggle with. I don't worry about meeting my basic needs from paycheck to paycheck. I've never had a financial, life-altering crisis. I really admire those who labor long and hard to get out from under mountains of debt. But I'm not in that position, so I come to the frugal lifestyle from a different place and with a different perspective.

Still, I hope that my experiences and my advice can be of use to a wide variety of people in a lot of different circumstances. Today, I'm going to focus on some tips for energy efficiency that can be of use to new homeowners and other money-saving tips for those who are just breaking free of debt other than the home mortgage. Credit card debt is obviously the single highest priority for those trying to make it into the black. If you're still carrying a balance on credit cards or other loans, I would urge you to skip these most of these tips (because most of them are going to require some outlay of money) and instead make a higher monthly payment. But if you've finally arrived at the point where your car loans, your credit card debt and your student loans are things of the past, congratulations! There must be a symphony of emotions for people in such a position: euphoria, pride, relief, gratitude, giddiness. And this is where I step in with some grounding, no-nonsense suggestions on how to use some of the money you've been putting towards paying down the debt each month, now that it's gone. Implementing these suggestions will cost money, but it's money that will be working for you for years to come. If the monthly surplus you have freed up by eliminating debt is tiny, then choose the cheapest of these tips to make a start. In time, the savings from each tip will snowball into a larger and larger saved amount, which can then be plowed back into more expensive cost-cutting measures or an extra principle payment on your mortgage. So dig deep and find the money to do these things early on.

• Change out your regular light bulbs for compact fluorescent bulbs. These bulbs are more expensive than incandescents, but each one will save you 50 cents per month on average. If money is tight, buy just a few bulbs and put them in the lights you use for the most hours per day. Add more compact fluorescents as your budget allows. Do not install a compact fluorescent bulb in any light that is on a dimmer switch. The bulb will get burned out in seconds and you'll have wasted the money spent.

• Insulate your hot water pipes and your hot water storage tank. Long tubes of foam pipe insulation are cheap and easy to install. If money is really tight, start with the tank itself and the pipes in unheated spaces, closest to your water heater. Be sure to measure the diameter of your pipes and buy the smallest tubes that will fit them. Also be sure not to cover the thermostat on the tank.
  

• If you rely on forced air heat, make sure your ducts are well insulated. You can lose as much as a whopping 60% of your heated air if your ducts are passing through unheated areas of the house. You may need professional help to insulate and/or repair damaged ducts. But if you're relying on this form of heat, it's well worth the investment.
  

• Check your outlets and light switches that are mounted on the exterior walls of your home. Remove the plate covers and see if there's a piece of foam insulation there. If not, buy some and install them.

• Wash all your clothes in cold water. If you're not satisfied with the results, use an overnight soak before returning to a hot water wash. The average load of laundry run on a hot cycle uses 32 gallons of heated water, compared to 20 gallons for a hot bath. If you've been washing in hot or warm water out of habit, give the cold cycle a try and see if you can really tell the difference.
  

• Buy some clothespins and rig up a clothesline inside. You can use it anytime, despite rainy or cold weather. On average, it costs 50 cents to dry a load of laundry, and more if your dryer is electric. If your family goes through just two loads of laundry per week, that's $52 per year. No excuses here. There are plenty of suitable spaces for a line or two in most homes. Consider the attic or the basement if space is really tight. I have two 7-foot lines, one above the other, just inches from the wall in my small laundry room. I also hang socks and underwear right off the edge of my rubber-coated wire shelving in the laundry room. A collapsible drying rack handles the rest. If you can't abide scratchy towels or clothing, it is permissible to put the dried towels in the dryer on "air fluff" (or whatever the unheated cycle is called on your machine) for 5-10 minutes. That's really all it takes to soften fabrics up. So long as the clothes are already dry and you use the unheated cycle, the dryer will use an acceptably minute amount of energy.

• Add insulation to your attic if it needs it, and it probably does. Heat rises. So a poorly insulated attic is the equivalent of an open door during the wintertime. Same goes for crawlspaces. Though the expense is higher than for many simple fixes, this is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make to improve energy efficiency.
  

• If you live where the summers are hot, install an attic fan to vent hot air. These can be hooked up to sensors that only turn on when the space reaches a certain temperature. They can make an enormous difference to the overall temperature of the house, and thus to your cooling bill.

• Check with your local electric company about a home energy audit. Many utilities offer these for free. Heed their suggestions as your budget allows.

• If you rely on window unit air conditioners to cool your home in summer, place them on the shady side of your home. Or plant a fast growing shrub where it will shade the air conditioner. This also applies to condensers for central air conditioner systems. Operating in the shade can increase the efficiency of the unit by as much as 10%.

• Air dry your dishes, either in a drying rack, or by not using a heated drying cycle on your dishwasher. If you can time it right, the dishes in a dishwasher will still be hot enough to dry very quickly if the machine is opened and the racks pulled out for better air circulation.

• If you're going to be living in your home for years to come, consider replacing your windows with newer high efficiency models. Windows are often the biggest culprits in heating loss during the winter, losing as much as 25% of the heat in the home. Be sure to run a return-on-investment analysis if you don't plan to live in the house for years to come.
  

• When it's time to replace a major appliance or furnace, buy an EnergyStar rated model.

• Install a programmable thermostat, especially if you are out of the house for hours each day.
  

• Plug your electronics into power strips with on/off switches. Turn off the power on each strip when you're not using the appliances plugged into it. TVs, VCRs, DVD players, digital projectors, kitchen appliances and stereo equipment all continue to draw power when they are turned off. In fact, on average an astonishing 75% of the energy these appliances draw is consumed when the appliances are not in use. Power strips eliminate this problem by cutting all power to our gadgets.
  

Most of these tips involve a once-and-done monetary investment. Pick and choose among them according to the budget you must operate within. As the small savings accrue, you will be able to afford the more expensive investments.