The Dollar Stretcher Review

 It's the time of year when many of us start to think about summer vacations.

Where to go, where to stay, what to do? Probably the most frugal of all vacations is camping, even if it's in a cabin or an RV. Our national park system is a great place to start looking for something nearby or across the nation, if that's what you're after. 

Many of the nation's almost 400 national parks are free to enter. Many of them have campgrounds. Many of them all more than one night's stay... get the picture? 

Free Vacation Attractions should get you started looking in the right direction.  

Not all national parks are free, but most entrance fees are reasonable. Also many of these participate fee free days (Martin Luther King Jr Day,  National Park Week, Get Outdoors Day, National Public Lands Day and Veteran's Day weekend), so be sure to do some research in the area you like.

If you can't find a free park and want to go to more often than once in a year's time, you can buy a pass which saves even more money. Seniors get a break even on this.  Either pass can be bought at a Federal recreation site, or you can buy them online. 

So plan on hitting the road and having a frugal, fun vacation this year!  

I grew up (for the most part) in an old log house. Not the kind of log house you see built now, but the old fashioned, real thing. The walls were at least eight inches thick and thicker in some areas. No insulation - how do you insulate a solid piece of wood?

We never even thought of air conditioning. It was always cool in the house in the summer and warm in the winter, just like it should be.

After growing up and moving around here and there, I landed in an old house built about the same time as the log house, which was a few years before 1900.

This house was built of cinder brick and had walls twelve inches thick. It, too, was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. No air conditioning needed.

Does that tell you something about the houses that most of us live in today? It would be miserable to try to live without air conditioning, or at the least fans to move air around.

If you're thinking summer heat and trying to find ways to stay cool and keep your electric bill reasonable today, fans are a lot cheaper to operate than air conditioners. The right fan in the right place at the right time can make a lot of difference in how comfortable you are. It can make a difference in how comfortable your wallet is, too.

Way Cool: A Guide to Fans can help you decide what you need and where to use it to the best advantage. Summer time is coming!

I grew up before there was such a thing as boxed mixes and "convenience" foods. Okay, maybe there were a few... but not many. I don't remember Mom every buying any. Everything we ate was made from scratch and that's how I learned to cook, so I do that most of the time today. I will admit to getting lazy now and then and getting a package of those noodles with dry sauce that all you do is dump into boiling water, but not often.

When I cook like Mom, I use chicken bouillon cubes if I don't have frozen chicken broth. I cook rice in that and season with whatever flavors I'm in the mood for.

Noodles... well, Mom made hers from scratch and I do, sometimes. I'm more likely to buy cheap egg noodles already made, then make a sauce or add spices or vegetables to suit myself.

Not only is cooking like this more frugal than buying packets of this and that, it allows for more variety. I can use what's on hand and I can make the flavors Italian style, Tex-Mex, French or plain old American - whatever sounds good.

I think sometimes we get brainwashed into thinking that things have to be this way or that way. My rice pilaf may not taste or look the same as what I can buy in a store or restaurant, but so what? It doesn't have to.

Alternatives to processed food is a start, but don't stop there. Make your food your own.

 I think Amy Dacyczyn said it first: "Soap is soap." Someone else might have seconded that. If so, I will third it. Soap IS soap. It can be dish soap, hand soap, body wash or laundry soap, but it's all soap and its purpose is to clean something.

That means that it's generally interchangeable. Okay, you might not want to wash your hair in laundry soap, but you can certainly wash your laundry in shampoo. As long as it's just shampoo - no color added, no fibers to thicken your hair or anything like that, you can wash your laundry with it.

And you can use body wash to clean the floor, among other things. I bought a bottle of liquid detergent that didn't get my clothes clean, so I use it to clean the bathroom and the kitchen floors. It worked well for that. Maybe they put the wrong label on it? Probably not... as someone once said: "Soap is soap."

That's not too hard to grasp. We are conditioned to think otherwise, but it's just advertising so we will buy a dozen products to do one thing: Clean.

Other uses for body wash

 When I hear "edible landscaping" my mind immediately goes to flowering fruit trees, then it goes to raspberries filling in an otherwise awkward corner. There are many ways to landscape your yard, both front and back, and grow food at the same time. It's kind of like having your cake and eating it, too.

I have determined to not plant another tree or bush that isn't edible. That means I'm limited to apples, pears, peaches, plums, raspberries, blackberries, chokecherries, black cherries, tart cherries, mulberries, apricots, pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds...

That's just for starters.

Some of these make excellent shade trees, some can be used as property boundaries, some are especially attractive to birds. Why grow anything else?

More about edible landscaping: http://stretcher.com/stories/02/02apr22a.cfm

Last year I let purslane fill in an area where it's hard to grow grass. It's a narrow strip beside the driveway and next to the neighbor's fence, so it's hard to water and to manipulate a mower.

Our city is death on weeds and bare spots so I was a little nervous about doing it, but nothing was said. The purslane looked kind of like what it was: a dense, low growing ground cover with tiny yellow flowers. (Nobody noticed or cared that I went out and picked some of the best stems to eat almost every other day all summer.)

Natural landscaping with plants that are local and easy to care for is not only frugal, it just makes sense. Granted, I sometimes get a little carried away because I like "weeds" growing in my yard. For the most part, I contain them in the back yard, though. Still, vibrantly wild sunflowers cheered up parts of my front yard garden and pale lemon yellow wild salsify plants stationed themselves at front and back of it.

If you have to go looking for native plants, here is some advice: Inexpensive landscaping with native plants

Remember to never dig up plants without permission, no matter where you are. Once you get native plants home, treat them like nature would. Don't fertilize unless your ground is poorer than where they were growing and don't over water unless they were growing near a water way or in a swampy area.
 

Well, I hate to write about the same topic twice (not really), but some of the articles in the coming week's Dollar Stretcher really got me going - about spring and gardening, seeds, plants, dirt... that sort of thing.

There are some really good ideas in those articles, so be sure and take a look.

One thing I didn't see mentioned was how to make sterile potting soil. One article mentioned using dirt straight from the garden and I've done that. It works, but it has its problems.

You can kill weed seeds and anything else in plain old garden dirt by putting it in a metal or glass container and heating it to at least 250 degrees for a half hour. You won't have to worry about pulling up the baby seedlings along with the weeds and you won't have to worry about bugs crawling out of the ground in your seedling containers.

It's simple and easy to do, so why are you buying potting soil? '

Frugal Garderning

 When spring comes, can gardening and landscaping be far behind?

Spring time seems to give us an urge to spruce things up and make changes in our yards, our homes and our gardens. One of the things that most quickly satisfies this urge is to grow new things. Whether that means a new potted plant for the window, a new tree for the front yard or a pickup truck full of compost, plants and seeds, it means you want to grow something!

That's all well and good, but it can be expensive even for the smallest plant. Of course, there's a better (frugal) way. The most important thing you can have is rooting hormone. If you have access to willow trees, that's the best kind, but if not, you can buy commercially prepared plant hormone powder that will help cuttings set root.

See where I'm leading? Don't buy plants unless you can't find one somewhere to take a (free) cutting from. A bucket of water with a piece of willow or a small willow tree in it has all the plant hormone you'll need to start enough cuttings to plant your entire yard or to start a small forest!

When you take a cutting of a woody plant, like a bush or tree, be sure it has at least four sets of leaves or leaf buds on it. Put it into the water and let it set until roots begin to form, then put it into its growing medium, keeping it well watered (but not soggy) until it takes off. For other plants, two leaves or buds can be all you need. These will root faster and be ready to transplant into your garden in a few short weeks.

If you use commercial rooting hormone, follow the directions on the package and you'll soon have as many plants as you want.

Do some research and find out how to get those plants and trees you want for nothing and save your money for something else.

Landscape on a budget

Homemade rooting compound

Starting plants from clippings

Frugal gardening

P.S. If you have more seeds and/or bulbs or tubers than you need, trade them for plants, seeds, etc., even if you have to use Craigslist or something similar to do it.  

"Random" is a peculiar word. Dollar Stretcher doesn't publish randomly, by any means, but you can find an awesome variety of topics covered, all dealing with handling your money. This week, as I perused the offerings (I like that phrase), a few of these randomly jumped out at me, so I'll share them along with a few thoughts of my own:

1. I beg your pardon! I don't consider items found at Goodwill and other thrift stores "junk."

Okay, so I know that's not what he meant. He has a good point. All that stuff in there is someone else's "junk." It's good stuff for me and you. Well, part of it is, anyway, until we've had it awhile and it becomes our junk. If it's worn out, we toss it, but sometimes we pass it on and someone else enjoys it, until it becomes their junk.

A Slave to Your Possessions
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2. It could be about anything, but here they're talking about getting outdoor furniture for much less than running down to the nearest retail store and handing them whatever they ask for.

It's a way of life and it can be a lot of fun. Just imagine the look on your boss's face when you casually mention that your "new" car only cost you a hundred dollars plus the license fee, title change and two hours at the mechanic's. Yeah, it happens.  Just because they're talking about outdoor furniture here doesn't mean you can't apply the concept elsewhere.

Outdoor Furniture
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3. I'd like to know if there is a really easy way to clean blinds, mini or not! Here are some great ideas, but I have to ask: Some of the advice includes using expensive (to me) cleaners. For a small mini blind, it might be almost as cheap to buy a new one. Almost. But make up your own mind; there are other methods.

Cleaning Miniblinds

Or, if you have vertical blinds, this might be more interesting:

Cleaning Vertical Blinds

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Didn't I tell you it was random?

Are you still drying all your laundry with a clothes dryer? If you're serious about saving money, here is one place you can cut back easily.

A typical electric dryer uses about 4.4 kilowatts in one hour. Simply multiply that by the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity in your area. It's 7.8 cents here, so I multiply and get 34.32 - 34 and a third cents every time the dryer runs an hour. How many hours do you use your dryer per week? Multiply that times your cost of kilowatt hours. Mine typically runs an hour or less per week, so I'm paying an extra $1.37 and a quarter of a penny each month to use the dryer. My use is far from typical, so do your own math. 

Now, this is per hour, not per load. Most loads of laundry don't take an hour to dry, although some can and some will take even longer. To figure your average cost of drying clothes (not including the cost of the dryer and any repairs, etc.), you'll have to pay attention to the actual amount of time the dryer is on. Try it a couple of weeks and see what it's costing. You might decide that hanging clothes to dry is worth the trouble.

I'm not adding in the cost of wear and tear on your clothes from being tumbled in a dryer and the extra stain remover and bleaching agents you'll need to keep them looking good and I'm not considering health benefits from a little activity and fresh air!

Hanging laundry

The cost of using your dryer

How much does electricity cost?

How much do you save by line-drying?

Drying clothes on a clothesline