We save our pennies on two fronts: First, on the house and our lifestyle; second on our micro-farming operation itself. Last time, I wrote about how the farm saves us money despite the cost of building it. Today I’ll talk about smart spending and little about our fixer-upper.
Like many people these days, our combined incomes keep us housed and warm, while eating out and going to a hockey game are luxuries. My daughter works two part-time jobs and I work part-time at a Starbucks and make a few pennies (so far at least) off my writing. Being self-sufficient in much of our food is something we enjoy doing, while giving us the chance to live larger than our incomes. Still, we need to be self-reliant and spend our funds strategically.
We base our frugal living on two concepts: one, frugal buying and two, applying a DIY approach wherever we can.
Frugal buying itself consists of a five-phase strategy: Smart buying, Thrifting, Buying in bulk, Operating a system of backups, and The Stash.
Beth’s mother, to put it politely, is miserly. So my daughter already has a number of thrifty habits. For instance buying anything, which is not on sale, upsets her, other than the food items we don’t produce for ourselves. And she gets as many of those on sale as she possibly can. If we don’t absolutely need an item right away, we will wait for it to go on sale and then stock up. Part of the model is buying non-perishable items while on sale whether you need them immediately or not. Because more than likely, they won’t be on sale when you need them. When shampoos were two for one, for example, we bought four. It will be 2021 before we need to buy more.
Smart buying requires you to know regular prices. We have seen items marked as being on sale, when they were marked down from $3.79 to $3.75 for example. Keeping track of current prices is key to getting the best deal, and sometimes knowing if it is a deal. We compare prices between stores and make a round of two or three stores at once to buy where the items are cheapest. It helps that our three main stores are clustered within a few blocks of each other. (It also saves on gas.)
To keep from comparing apples to oranges, try to know the prices at a per unit level, i.e. per ounce, or per pound. I have found half-gallon jugs of milk to be cheaper than gallons. Why? Shipping costs. You can fit nine half-gallons (4.5 gallons) in the same crate, which holds four gallons. They cost less per ounce to ship and the savings may be passed on to you. Also, generic items are often made by a brand-name company. Zenith made Montgomery Ward branded televisions back in the day. Generic products are good quality items for which you’re not paying the advertising and other marketing costs accompanying a well-known brand.
As an albeit extreme example of price comparison, when Beth was first learning Excel for school, she created a spreadsheet comparing four local stores to Chewy, variety by variety, for our girls’ (six cats) canned and dry food. She knew exactly where to buy what for maximum savings. What she didn’t order from Chewy, we picked up during one of our rounds.
Price increases at the local brick and mortar stores eventually led to buying almost everything from Chewy. Because buying large orders equals free shipping, and because there are so many varieties of cat food, Beth literally buys nine months of food at a time and we add it to the stash. After she takes the time to sort it out so all we ever need to do is grab a box to bring up and the girls are assured variation. They may have a more balanced diet than we do at times.
As long as you make notes of prices each time you shop, you’ll stay on top of them, even if you are only checking on the main items you buy. Alternatively, you can plan on a longer trip in which you note the prices of most of the items you want to keep track of. This is up to you.
Note this concept relates to all items, appliances as well as food and other consumables. When we bought a programmable pressure cooker (generic Instapot), we purchased the least expensive and highly reliable unit from Aldi. As with my television example above, I know it was built by a major company. It has been performing fantastically.
Thrifting; purchasing from yard sales, second hand shops, individuals online, and the like; is a major portion of frugal spending for us. My espresso and Keurig machines came from resale shops. Total cost for both: $3. Our microwave is a $15 yard sale special and has been working perfectly for over a year. We purchase many kitchen and houseware items from these sources that we might never have purchased otherwise, such as a mini-donut maker for $2. Plates, serving platters, a set of cookbooks older than I am, the list is as extensive as the money we have saved.
One key note to make about buying items from individuals online is this: know the prices of items. I’ve seen several posts by folks who obviously did not know the price of what they were selling and inadvertently asked for a price higher than or equal to a new item. Those deals aren’t always deals. Do your research before assuming it’s cheap because it’s resale. A lot of times, people are simply trying to get rid of things and don’t have any idea of what is a reasonable amount to ask. They pick a number they like.
Thirdly, some items we go through so much of it makes sense to buy in bulk from a local restaurant supply shop, GFS (formerly Gordon Food Service). A twenty-pound bag of flour does not last long, when I make bread weekly, as well as banana bread, pancakes, brownies, etc. Wheat flour and semolina flour last a little longer than white flour, though we purchase those in bulk also.
We bought the big bag of semolina flour because pasta is a weekly favorite. Naturally, we make our own sauce with our organically grown produce too. A meal for two of pasta is simply 1 cup semolina flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 Tbs. olive oil, and 2 large eggs. Mix this as thoroughly as you can in an electric mixer, then squeeze it all into a (somewhat sticky) ball. If you don’t have a pasta machine, roll it out in the counter with a wooden roller, flipping and dusting it with white flour to prevent sticking. Once you’ve created ten or twelve layers it should hold together nicely. Then roll it up loosely and cut it into noodles of whatever width you wish. We’ve done it so many times, I can make enough pasta for four and have it in boiling water in thirty minutes. It really is that simple and easy. And, it’s pennies on the dollar of store bought boxes, plus no unpronounceable additives.
Pasta sauce cooking with garden fresh herbs as well as vegetables. 
Pizza sauce
Backups: The fourth facet of our system grew out of my frustration at running out of anything. Little frustrates me more than discovering I don’t have a key ingredient for something I looked forward to all day and suddenly can’t make for dinner or dessert. Food is such a big part of my life and leisure routine that this sort of event really does ruin my day. Also, if it’s something I need to run out for, the likelihood of paying full price, because I had to go to a convenience or the closest store, increases.
To prevent this, I created a simple system of having backups. That is, for every key item (most actually) I had a backup bottle, box, bag, etc. on the shelf. The trigger point for purchasing was when I took that backup item from the shelf rather than relying on remembering to buy it when the one I was using got low. I always forget something that way. With this system, I always had everything I needed by immediately adding it to the shopping list.
Of course, with our buying non-perishables on sale before we may need them, we often have several backups. The question has evolved to how are we on each item, when something is on sale. Are we down to the last one or two? Still, should we get to where we’ve pulled the last one from the shelf, we know it’s time to buy more (hopefully on sale). In this way, we never run out and therefore never have to pay a premium price because we had no other choice.
Obviously, we have to keep these items somewhere. We have four, metal shelves in the basement for stocking up on sale items, etc., which we call The Stash. Small items and those in paper or plastic packaging go into small tubs for safekeeping. We store our home canned produce here as well and one shelving unit is dedicated to the girls. We’re not preppers, but you might think we were for the amount of non-perishables and canned goods on these shelves. We simply grow enough of everything for an entire year.
We didn’t just go out and buy tons of stuff to create the Stash. Beth built it up slowly over a period of six months with a set, monthly budget for extra items. She spends much less now keeping it stocked.
Pick a space out of direct sunlight and away from sources of water, e.g. the laundry room, to set up your stash. Direct sunlight heats up anything it touches, thus it creates a temperature extreme you want to avoid. For this reason, a garage or attic is unsuitable for this purpose. The space we use is in the center of the basement away from windows where the light and temperature are most constant throughout the year.
Note we also have a chest freezer and a second refrigerator (which came with the house). You can locate these anywhere as long as they are not in sunlight or somewhere which becomes extremely hot.
Our second approach to frugality is DIY. Never pay for what you can do yourself. Caveat: be sure you truly do know what you’re doing. Take classes if you need to. Watch videos. Educate yourself. Don’t learn the hard way that you only thought you knew what you were doing. Voice of experience here.
What comes to mind, when I say DIY? Home improvement projects, right? Yes, and then some. DIY is NOT limited to household repairs and enhancements. I’ve already mentioned two kitchen DIY activities: making our own bread and pasta. Further, canning our produce, including pasta and pizza sauces, and salsas, etc. is DIY. Yes, cooking from scratch is DIY in the kitchen. The idea behind DIY is saving money and cooking from scratch does that. It’s also healthier.
Of course, we have done DIY on our fixer-upper from the day I moved in in July 2016. I slept on a camp cot in the kitchen for the first two days because the first project was sanding and refinishing the neglected floors. Next came painting the walls which were so old and drab you couldn’t tell them from the new plaster I put on to repair the scratches and divots.
The yard had to be reclaimed from the wild tangles of shrubby trees and out of control day lilies. We did it ourselves rather than hire a landscaping crew and used a manual push mower on the quarter acre lot that first summer, before buying a mower at half the big box store by getting it from Aldi of all places. It has a Briggs and Stratton engine and has been a champ for three seasons now.
There was no walkway from the house to the parking pad at the alley. Our lot is long. In the winter, we wore a muddy path one-hundred feet from house to cars. We applied our frugal buying model to creating a walkway. When Lowe’s closed some underperforming stores, Beth found a paving stone she liked and bought everything they had left and got free delivery. This was in November. We covered them with tarps for the winter. Our area is safe enough we didn’t have to worry about theft or vandalism, though covering and parking next to the three pallets helped.
In the spring, I rented a manual sod cutter and got a workout removing the grass from the path we’d laid out. I would have rented a power one, but it had rained for a week straight and the ground was too wet for it. I relocated the sod to a barren area under a tree and trenched the pathway with our garden tiller, hauling the soil to the new berry beds one wheelbarrow full at a time. We bought the sand and gravel for it in bulk. The weed block beneath it all was bought at 30% of original price in a closeout the previous year. We laid all of the blocks ourselves and had enough to replace a broken and tilted section of the gangway beside the house. I broke up the walkway with a rented jackhammer (so much fun) and repurposed the stone along the back of the house in something of a mosaic pattern for storing the grills and lawn furniture on something solid (as well as hold the weeds down).
Finished walkway six months after completion. 
Relocating the sod. 
In progress in the spring.
This was easily $5000 worth of work we did for $1500.
In the basement, we fixed a chronic flooding issue (maybe why the rental management company sold the place) for $20. The original design of the house had a bathroom in the basement once (or intended to). But they didn’t install a Palmer Valve, a backflow preventer. In the 50’s, when the house was built, this wasn’t an issue. In these days of torrential spring rains, you could count on at least one annual flood. The solution: cement a paving block over the drain opening. It’s still there, only capped. Dry ever since. No more litter boxes floating around in circles.
Other problems only needed inexpensive solutions as well. For instance, all of the windows in the house were replaced at one time, except the bathroom. They didn’t forget to buy a window, just to make it privacy glass. It’s in the basement. We’ll use it in the shed probably. In the meantime, I channeled my jack-of-all-trades grandfather and went old school, building a storm window for winter and a screen for summer. When we remodel the bathroom, we’ll install a new, frosted-glass window.
Our kitchen DIY has not been limited to cooking. We gave our upper cabinets a facelift by stripping the varnish and applying $40 of washable wallpaper and painting the frames, plus a couple of LED lights under the cabinets. The lowers were slated for similar improvement, but had suffered severe water damage from a previous owner. The counter is also crumbling from beneath beside the stove. The lowers need replacing. I’ll build the frames myself and include a narrow width dishwasher. More on that when it happens.
The uppers used to look like the lowers. Much nicer now and the room is brighter. 
Open and easy access storage for our most used pans.
Most recently, I constructed a bread-slicing guide for less than half of what one cost in Walmart, and it’s much better, of course. Seriously, I built it to last a lifetime. I’m actually considering selling them. I’ve already had one request. I had to do something about slicing our bread, though. Thirty years I’ve been making bread and I still can’t freehand slice a loaf nicely to save my life.
Sized to fit a standard loaf pan and produce half-inch slices. 
The greatest thing since…well, it is sliced bread.
Next time: Let’s Get This Garden Started. Time to start this season’s seedlings.
The Little Farm in Town 