Plastic Bread Tabs

You know those flat, hard plastic tags that come on bread, buns, bagels, etc.  I have 2 good uses for them:

1. Mini pan scrapers (just like the Pampered Chef ones, but free and smaller so you can toss them more frequently)
2. Tagging cords going into one of those strip plugs so you know what is what without unplugging the wrong thing, or without following the cord all the way back to the appliance.

Empty Milk Jugs

I enjoy having a little food storage around.  Nothing fancy, and not too detailed or whatnot.  But when I purchase things like rice, sugar, beans, etc., I want to be able to store them in smaller packs that are handy, and that you can see.  In comes the empty milk jug.  I clean it out with hot water, a little dawn and a little white vinegar, rinse it really well, then set it on it's side in a cabinet to dry out for about a week to make sure there is no moisture in it.  Then I fill it with whatever I'm wanting to store, label it with contents and date, cover the top with plastic wrap and a rubber band, then put the little plastic top back on it.  If I have silica gel packs from other household items I have purchased, I put one of those on top.  These are easy to work with and hold about 4lbs of dry items.  You can see through them somewhat, and they have a helpful handle.  Best of all, they are already around and every one that gets reused stays out of a landfill. 

Words to the wise.  Milk jugs are great for short term storage of lots of things, but I would not recommend them for long term storage.  they are not intended for use in the types of food storage that people don't use for 10 years.  I also would never put anything liquid or semi liquid in them.  Pretty much anything that has moisture, I would avoid.  Just dry stuff.  And if you don't want to use them for food, you can use them for your powdered items like laundry soap, dishwasher soap, kitty litter, epsom salts, beads, lego's, etc.

Use your imagination, and use your head.  Happy Storage!

Compost

Great soil for gardening or flowers is hard to find, and when you do find it, it's expensive.  So make your own.  I know, the word compost conjures us memories of terrible odors and grossness.  But's here's the thing, you don't have to have a big smelly pile of rotting material in order to have compost.  And you don't have to buy a $200 dollar compost bin.

Did you know you can compost right in your flowerbed/garden.  I never knew this until a gentleman in my neighborhood did it.  The trick is that you spread it out instead of dumping it into one huge pile, and you use one of those 3 pronged fork things (looks like a small pitchfork) and you turn your soil frequently.  What I discovered is that doing this helps the material you are composting decompose faster, and at the same time, you are turning your soil often which helps aerate it, and because it's turning, water absorbs more quickly and weeds are easier to pull, plus there are fewer of them.  Now I don't turn all of my soil at once.  I have 3 distinct patches of garden, so if I turn one every day or 2, I can keep up with it.  I also don't have tons of stuff to compost.  Mostly peeling, eggshells and stems and seeds.  We don't generally have cooked veggie leftovers.  I did it with rotten tomatoes that fell off the vine last year and within a couple of weeks, the seeds had sprouted into new tomato plants!

If you are still a little fidgety about putting your compost all over your garden, then just pick a small corner and do it there, then you just have to turn that one small patch every couple of days.  It'll work the same without have a big ugly separate pile to have to maintain.  Just have little ones instead.

Leftover Bread

One of the pitfalls of making your own bread is that it goes stale pretty quickly - usually within about 2-3 days.  Alas!  My heart distresses over waste! (Yes, I'm embellishing a bit :)  Anyway, when my bread is going stale, I just go ahead a replace it with a fresh loaf and slice up whatever is left of the stale and put it in the freezer in a big (gallon or 2 gallon) size ziploc bag.  You see stale bread is perfect for french toast  or bread puddings or those casseroles that require stale bread.  I personally love to use my stale bread for french toast in order to create my favorite concoction ever - the Monte Cristo!  And with a sandwich like that, you need your bread to hold up a little :)

If you want to know what to do with the bread loaf heels - buzz them in the food processor and freeze them - you now no long have to purchase bread crumbs!!!

Scrubs

I am not a huge body and facial scrub user - not because I don't like it, just because it can irritate your skin if used too often and there was a point in my life that I felt like I had to use it every day because it made my skin feel super-soft. Unfortunately after 2 weeks, my super soft skin was red, itchy and irritate - even my moisturizer burned. So I cut back to about once a week for my face and whenever I can remember for my heels. Okay, so maybe that was a little personal to share, but anyway -

There are several things you can use for scrubs without having to break the bank for the fancy smelling-good kind (especially since the scent doesn't last very long and you generally lotion up anyway. The most common one i see is: place fine granulated sugar in a screw top jar (about an 8-16oz flatter, squattier shaped jar - something like an empty chicken base jar - and oh yeah please remove the label and write scrub on it) up to about half full, the fill with baby oil until it reaches the base of the neck of the jar. Put the lid on and agitate until mixed. It's ready to go. If you like it thinner just add more baby oil, if you like it thicker, use less

However, the most interesting one I have ever heard of came from a comment left on this blog on Sunday evening:


zolocafe said... I also use coffee grounds as a bath scrub. Instead of buying fancy scrubs (which I love), I have a moisturizing soap bar that I coat in the coffee grounds and scrub my needed areas. It really makes my skin feel soft. Although it does look messy, it rinses off cleanly. My DH thought I was crazy! BTW, don't fill the bathtub with water, do it in an empty tub or shower. March 1, 2009 8:06 PM

I never would have thought of that one, but what a clever idea! Think about it - the high dollar moisture creams claim 'skin brightening' and 'lifting' effects, but most of them just contain some caffeine - so why not just get it for free from a good source of caffeine - coffee!

You guys rock!! Keep the ideas coming!

Aloe Vera Gel

This stuff has been around as a sunburn cure for ages. I have a ton of it, and in an effort to find a good use for it in order to use it up, I tried something new that worked REALLY well. . . . I used it in place of shaving gel. I noticed a couple of very specific things about it; it clings to the skin really well so that the shower water doesn't rinse it off as easily, it moisturizes at the same time, if you nick yourself you get instant first aid, it's cheaper per oz than the gel you get made just for shaving that has aloe vera gel in it, it's safer in case you kid tries to give it a taste test, LESS RAZOR BURN!!!!

Reuse - and be creative

I consider myself a moderately frugal person. I shop sales, I reuse, I reduce my waste, I trim the budget, I don't eat out, etc, etc. Tonight I had some free time so I looked up a favorite topic of mine in relation to my frugalness - reusing. I love to look at something not only for it's face value, but for the potential it has past being what it is. For instance, I look at today's jar of spaghetti sauce and see tomorrow's dry storage for bulk-purchased rice. I can look at today's cereal box (which we rarely have nowadays) and see tomorrows standing filer. Today's used coffee grounds are now being saved (in the freezer) to be reused in the spring in my flowerbed as a fertilizer enhancer (hope my herbs like Dunkin! - BTW, I did not realize this was a possibility until tonight, apparently this is an old trick from back in the day that now in this penny stretch society is coming back to light). My empty milk jugs store extra sugar, extra rice, clothespins (after being modified slightly) and even small dried beans. Why pay money for Tupperware and Rubbermaid (both of which can leach nasty carcinogenic chemicals into your food anyway) when Ragu and Classico give you sturdy glass jars for free. If you decide to keep the plastic off of your food - please don't toss the plastics, just use them for you non-food items like buttons, craft supplies, crayons, q-tips, cotton balls, safety pins, paper clips, etc. Have great day!

The candle with staying power - or at least reuse power

I had a good idea today. I was putting away Christmas decor and it included some old candles. So, I'm trying something. I melted out the little bit of wax in the jar, dumped it and then cleaned the jar and voila! A new storage canister!


*****update - I ended up using it to store a snack - homemade granola. The airtightness seal on the candles canisters is so much tighter than on a food grade one (who knows why that would be) and my kids can't even get it open (maybe that's why). But it works great and would probably hold small amounts of things like beans, rice, brown sugar, etc. pretty well. If you buy the 50lb bags of rice or oats like I do, you can use one of these to keep a small amount handy and keep the rest in a cellar or pantry for longer term storage.

Breadcrumbs

Please don't ever pay money for these - just take leftover stale bread, bread heels or just over baked homemade bread and throw it in a food processor and toss them in a bag and in the freezer. Store bought ones are about 1.50 for a small canister, leftovers are free and if you don't use them, they just get wasted.

Junk Mail Coupons

I have put a little extra thought into this one. Printing coupons online does cost money, a few cent, but nevertheless, it's still money. One way to cut down on the cost of your coupons is to use junk mail, old mail, etc. For instance, the letters you get asking for help in promoting McCain or Obama are usually printed on one side only, so why not use the other side. This way, you save on the paper that you have to purchase for your coupons and that cuts down the cost of printing your coupon. Also, it reuses the junk mail paper in a creative way so as not produce more waste than needed.

The Cleaning Rag

I was a paper towel user, big time, many a day, sometimes a half a roll if I was doing a whole house spruce up. As I was going through my expenses and rethinking some things, I realized I use a TON of paper towels. So, I now use an old rag. I have probably 5 or 6 old rags, in previous lives they may have been washcloths or dishtowels, but now they spend their days in the lively profession of homecleaning. Some days I just use one if I'm not doing much other than the casual table and coutner top wipedown a couple of times a day. If I'm doing some serious work, I may use 3 or 4. The cost of tossing them in the laundry then drying them on the line is pretty much nil, especially compared what the cost of papertowels used to be (and even the good papertowels will only stand up for so long. A couple of words to the wise about this though - rinse often so they don't get nasty, sweep up the crumbs first (I sweep the table, counters, etc. with a little dustpan and brush set). Sweeping up the junk first takes only a few seconds, and disposes of the particles so that you rags and your home feels cleaner.

Re-use

This is something I used to hate to do, re-use stuff in a new way. I don't know why, but when I was younger I just never saw the need to do this. Hmmm, I wonder how many bucks I could've saved then?

Re-use does not mean washing out and reusing your ziploc bags or butter containers, although that is a useful habit (the butter containers, not the ziploc bags - could be dangerous bacteria since a bag is harder to clean). I use the term reuse to describe taking something and creating it into something new. For instance, I was looking through a pottery barn book at some of their decor ideas, and one thing that they had was 3 purchased open cynlinders (like oatmeal cylinders) that were stacked in an offset fashion between a wall and printer and they were being used to cubby things like scissors, writing utensils, rulers, etc. Well, what about the good 'ol oatmeal container? You can cut it to your desired length, decorate it with leftover wallpaper, wrapping paper or just let the kid color them and add bows, ribbon, jewels, whatever and use them for storage. For girls they're great for brushes, hairbows, doll clothes, etc. Boys may use them for toy soliders, blocks, or matchbox cars. When I get mine done, I'll take a pic and show you what I use mine for, but be creative and take a second look at things that are going to be tossed out, or are just collecting dust on top of a shelf or shoved in the back of a closet somewhere.