Frugal Accomplishments

This past week, I've tried to be really conscious of what we're spending.  This is so that we can build up the baby fund and begin paying down the rest of the home equity line, as mentioned in this post.  To that end, I'm going to try to post a weekly update on our frugal accomplishments.  (I fully realize that the blog rhythm might change when baby #2 arrives.)  So, this past week's frugal accomplishments include:

• regular composting of kitchen scraps, including crumbs and plate scrapings and any brown, unbleached paper to reduce waste and build compost for spring gardening
• catching water from the shower warm up to use to water plants
• pouring leftover water from glasses in the dog bowl
• using the crock pot for one big batch of soup, which provided leftovers for lunch all week
• sharing leftovers with Mom twice this week, eliminating cooking time and energy
• took advantage of Harris Teeter's super doubles sale and spent $50 for $100 worth of groceries, including three packs of diapers for shower gifts and baby #2 when he's too small for cloth
• welcomed the gift of leftover fruit, including apples, bananas, and pomegranates from Mom
• used up some pasta sauce our previous tenant had left behind
• saved two cartons of unopened milk from student lunches from being thrown away
• carpooled every day to school
• combined errands for a single trip and planned the route to be most efficient
• froze cranberries before they went bad in the fridge for later use in cobbler and smoothies
• Benny installed the Ecobee thermostat in the apartment, which should save us substantially from the old model we had.
• hung all clothes to dry using drying racks and hangers and washed only full loads
• purchased little man's birthday gifts online with a promotion
• will finish making Christmas gifts this afternoon to send to family that Mom is visiting, saving on shipping and homemade goodies are always less expensive, and sometimes more thoughtful, than store bought things
• made all thank you notes to send out for Christmas gifts, saving a bundle on stationary
• decided not to purchase another pair of compression tights, since these seem to be holding up with regular washing, saving $30
• found a new recipe to try using ingredients we had on hand, saving the purchase of new ones
• made all meals at home
• plan to post at least five new items to eBay this weekend for sale
• tutored after school two days for $35
• signed up for Ebates, which should earn us some gift cards for online purchases we'd normally make

What did you do to save money or earn money this week?  I'd love to hear from you!

Cloth Diapering with Baby

We brought our little Raygan home from the hospital six weeks ago and my how they've flown by! The first few weeks were definitely an adjustment for everyone, but now we're in a groove as a family and loving our little monkey to pieces. So, hopefully, I can find time to get back to blogging on a regular basis during some of his nap times.

We were committed to cloth diapering and going diaper free (sometimes, when it works for us) well before we even found out we were pregnant. The cost and environmental benefits were huge to us, especially knowing that we hoped to have more than one child and that the cloth diapers could be used with the next baby. The health benefits to him are an added bonus.

Most of the cloth diapers we purchased were Charlie Banana ones, mostly because they were available at Target through our registry. We were given two that are velcro closure style, one from my friend who makes them for her (Etsy store. These are easy to leave in the diaper bag for those times when we need to leave him with someone who's not as comfortable with cloth diapering since they're styled more like the disposable kind in terms of closures. We discovered that people were hesitant to buy cloth diapers, I guess because they either weren't sure we were committed to the idea or because they wanted to buy something cute like clothes or books. So we ended up pooling our gift cards and buying them ourselves, which worked just as well. My school faculty also wanted to throw us a diaper shower, so we ended up getting about 12 cloth diapers that way also. We've found that the 30 cloth diapers we currently have is enough to get us through about two days of cloth diapering, allowing for what's in the laundry. Since Raygan is still so little, he's eating frequently, which means frequent diaper changes.

Washing is a cinch with these. We keep a diaper pail beside his changing station, so we just toss the dirty diapers, liners, and cloth wipes we use in there at each change and wash them when the pail is full and we're down to about six clean diapers. We love the design of the Charlie Banana diapers since the pocket is in the front, it means its less messy to get the liner out, and they're really adjustable with the elastic in the legs and the snaps in the front. We wash them on warm with a phosphate free detergent and either line dry them or toss them in the dryer on low heat. Stuffing them is easy; we can do it while we watch an episode of White Collar on Netflix and it takes no time; it's really easy to do with him in the Moby Wrap too.
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All told, we figure we "spent" about $300 with gift cards to get the cloth diapers for him and we had a few given to us as shower gifts. Since we're cloth diapering exclusively now (he was a little small for them at first), we're not having to buy any disposables, which is saving us probably $20 a week right now. Rough estimates from various sources figure we'll save between $1000 and $2000 on diapering costs alone with him, and that doesn't include the cloth wipes we're using instead of disposables (they're flannel ones a friend made and thin washcloths). This savings is huge, since it's helping us cut costs so that Benny can stay home with him when I go back to work in August.

And then there's the environmental benefit of not filling the landfill with all those disposable things. Of course, there are folks who would argue that it's a toss up since we're washing with warm water, which uses more energy, but hopefully our new water saving washer will help to offset that somewhat. And we wait to wash until we've got a full load of diapers, which means we're saving some energy there too. Being able to line dry them in the summer will be great, and it'll help sun bleach out the poop stains. By using cloth diapers, we're also able to cut down on our chemical consumption as a family, since there are far fewer chemicals used in these than in the disposables (all those super absorbent polymers, etc.).

Plus there are health benefits for Raygan to using cloth diapers. Since he can feel it more in cloth diapers when he's wet or dirty, we change him more frequently than we might in disposable diapers. This means there's less diaper rash and less of a risk of yeast infections for him. It also means that potty training will be far easier, because he won't have lost that feeling of what it's like when he "goes", which means hopefully we'll be out of diapers sooner than if he were in disposables. Friends who cloth diaper also report that they've seen fewer accidents with their kids who were in cloth diapers exclusively, probably because they're more aware of the signs of needing to go and so they don't wait until it's urgent. And, we're exposing him to fewer chemicals by cloth diapering, which makes us feel better, since many of these chemicals haven't been researched in terms of long term effects.

So, all in all, we're thrilled with our decision to cloth diaper. Some might say it's more work; we just see it as a different kind of work (more laundry vs. more trips to the dump). We love that it allows us to save some significant money, and it allows us to save a huge amount of landfill space. Do you cloth diaper? Thinking about it? I'd love to hear from you! Here's to living green and saving green bringing up baby.

A New Washer on a Shoestring Budget

So for the longest time we've had a hand-me-down washer from Benny's sister from her college days. It was totally serviceable, but we knew with the baby coming and using cloth diapers, we would want something that had a higher capacity and was more energy efficient. (We had planned to sell our old washer to a friend, but ended up donating it to the ReStore instead, so we'll get a tax credit.) Since we hang dry most of our laundry, the dryer we had was totally worth keeping and we didn't feel the need to upgrade.

Of course, Benny broke out his Mr. Consumer Reports mode and we narrowed down our choices to this lovely model by Samsung. We chose this one for a variety of reasons, but primarily because it was a top loader (something that was necessary for the configuration of our laundry area) and because it had excellent energy and water efficiency. Even with this being the washer we wanted, we knew the original purchase price was out of our budget, so we were hoping to find a sale.

We went to Lowe's to purchase our washer because we had been able to cash in some credit card points for Lowe's gift card money, about $500. We also had some birthday and anniversary gift cards stashed away that we put towards the purchase, as well as a Lowe's coupon we found online. We figured these combined with a sale would allow us to purchase the washer for maybe $100 out of pocket. The day we went to Lowe's to check out the washer and talk with the sales clerk was the week before Labor Day, when we knew some sales would be going on. When we talked with the sales guy and explained what model we were looking at and asked if he'd had any experience with them, he said the same thing we'd read online, "They're great machines. A few people think they don't use enough water, but generally this means they aren't loading the machine according to the manufacturer's instructions." Then, he said, "Hold on a sec..." as he walked over to the scratch and dent section. At that moment, there was a gleam in both of our eyes; we knew we were on to something!

And boy, were we ever! It turned out that they had two of the exact model we wanted in the returns section for the exact reason he had mentioned. The prices were incredibly reduced, even from the Labor Day sale price, and the previous customers had only had the machines a week before returning them. So, when the sales guy said we could have the washer for $700, we took him up on it. This meant that we were able to use our gift cards (but not our coupon, which we saved for another purchase) and credit card rewards to get our washer for free!

Having had our washer for a few months now, we can say with all confidence that we love it! It has a much higher capacity than our old one and allows us to do fewer loads of laundry during the week, and the spin cycle on it is incredible. Our laundry now dries in about half the time it used to when we hang it. The bonus: it has a glass lid so you can watch the whole thing while it runs, and it sings to you at the end of the cycle! We were like little kids watching cartoons the first time we ran a load of clothes through.

So, that's how we got our washer for free. Have you found any major deals in the scratch and dent section, or scored an appliance for free? We'd love to hear about it!

Updates and Apologies

Wow, so it's been ridiculously too long since my last post... six months?! Crazy! Not that it's an excuse, but we've had a lot going on here. So, a few quick updates:

1. We're expecting a baby boy! So, I'm just now feeling up to doing all my normal stuff now that I'm over the makes-you-feel-gross-all-day nausea (but nothing much worse than that) and the few weeks accompanied by hormone induced migraines. Now, I'm just exhausted after every day at work.

2. We hosted a wonderful Duke Divinity School intern over the summer who has become a fabulous addition to our family. He loved Lavender from the start, even if she didn't feel the same way, and he was such a blessing to us and our church family. He shared our love of cooking and good food, which was a huge plus, and helped cook meals whenever he was free. We had the pleasure of hosting his family from Washington state last week and discovered, not surprisingly, that they are just as wonderful as he is.

3. Mom's been busy with building her house and making all the decisions that go along with that, and now she's in the home stretch. So, we've been trying to be good sounding boards without putting in too much of our opinion. And of course, Benny has been the resident paint expert in that process.

So, the next several posts you read will probably have more to do with getting things ready for this wonderful baby boy and knocking things off our to-do list before he arrives on the scene. We've already tackled several projects, which I'll probably highlight in later posts, but here's the list of things we've already managed to accomplish:

1. Purchase a new washing machine with a budget goal of $800 (We managed to do it for free with gift cards--more on that in a later post)
2. Purchase and install a new storm door on the side door with a budget goal of $200 (We did this for about $70 after gift cards and coupons)
3. Purchase a new rug for the kitchen/living room to help ground the dining area a bit more with a budget goal of $80 (We bought this at the Capel sale for $99, and ended up moving the living room rug to the dining area)
4. Mosaic the dresser top of the ReStore dresser we applied the paintable wallpaper to earlier in the year for the nursery
5. Price out the cost of built-ins for the upstairs landing and have those built and installed or DIY (we opted to hire a contractor and he's in the process of doing those now)
6 Purchase and install under the cabinet lighting in the kitchen (we purchased the lights from Daily Steals, a deal website that Benny subscribes to, for much less than we saw them at Lowe's for and have been really happy with them)

Here's the list of things left to accomplish:
1. Paint kitchen chairs
2. Paint bed frames for nursery
3. Finish the stone patio we started this summer and got side tracked on
4. Purchase and install blinds on the other window in the nursery
5. Purchase and install programmable thermostats for the house (we'll probably purchase these during Energy Star weekend or from Costco)
6. Paint the upstairs closet doors that still have the factory primer on them
7. Rewire and paint wall lamps for the nursery (this should happen this week if the repair kits we ordered come in time)
8. Sell the desk that's currently in the nursery to help pay for the updates to the nursery (hopefully we can do this through word of mouth or maybe a Craigslist ad) and make room for the crib
9. Make some wall art for the nursery and figure out where to hang the art that is currently in the room (it's street art from my trip to Italy in college, so we want to keep them up somewhere)
10. Make a duvet cover that's jungle themed for the comforter that's currently on the twin bed in the nursery
11. Would be nice if the budget allows to reupholster the barrel-backed chair that we got from my grandmother's for the nursery. It will make a great nursing chair, though it's not a rocker.

Of course there's all the little stuff to do like the deep cleaning I'd like to accomplish (mopping, cleaning trim and windows, cleaning the appliances, etc.) but we'll get to that hopefully. We have some friends who have offered to help out with that over the holiday break or to come after the baby arrives to help with those projects, so at some point these will be done.

So, what about you? Are you in fall baking mode or enjoying the cooler weather to get some things done outside? I'd love to hear from you!

Green Energy on a Shoestring Budget

So, snow day number seven (in a row) begins... Before getting the real post for the morning, I had to share this with you all. One of my former students produced it and it's highlighted on booneweather.com today. It absolutely fits how we're all feeling right now! If "Groundhog Day" Was Set in Boone Now, on to this morning's post...

As I said before, we have the vision of having solar panels on our roof one day, but that simply doesn't fit into our budget right now. We did try to plan the home with that end goal in mind, choosing electric kitchen appliances and electric tankless hot water heaters. Of course, the southern orientation of the house will mean that we'll get the most out of our solar panels when we finally get them.

In order to save energy now, we had higher R-value insulation put into the walls and attic space, so that the home would heat and cool more efficiently. (And also insulated the slab in the basement--see below for more details.) We chose double paned windows (which have pretty much become standard) that will help retain the internal temperature of the house. Our heating system is zoned and sized for the basement as well, so we can control each level independently. Some of the most common sense things we did were to install ceiling fans in almost every room (again, thanks to my uncle, a family friend, and Benny). When we have the windows open in the spring and summer with the fans on, we don't need AC. (In fact, I think we ran it about a week last year. Yes, we're blessed to live in the mountains with wonderful breezes most days.) And, as I mentioned in the laundry post, we don't use the dryer that much.

We did a few more things to increase the energy efficiency of the home:

1) We installed insulation behind every outlet and light switch. (These are readily available at most home improvement stores.) All you do is screw the cover off, put the foam sheet in place, and screw the cover back on. It's amazing how much cold air you can feel flowing through those spaces once you remove the cover!

2) We stuffed insulation (or spray foam insulation) into every other possible leak, especially behind the dryer and around the holes where the cable and HVAC system come into the home.

3) We installed CFLs in every possible fixture in our house. (We did leave out the chandelier because you can't dim CFLs, but we most often eat by candlelight or have an oil lamp, so we don't use that light that much.) And, of course, we only use the lights when it's dark so that we can make as much use of the natural light as possible. (This means that in the spring and summer, when it's light outside when I'm getting ready, I don't turn the light on in the bathroom until I put on makeup. We have a sheer shower curtain, so it diffuses the natural light nicely into the shower.)

4) The thermostat stays at 62 in the winter for us. I know this sounds extreme to some people, but we've really gotten used to it. With our insulation being higher than most homes, the heat stays in well and the cold stays out. I've learned in the evenings to put on a sweater or sweatshirt, and we sleep better with the cooler air. If you can't make an adjustment like this all at once, try it one degree at a time. (It's more energy efficient to run your heat that way anyway, than bumping it up and down several degrees at once.)

5) We kept all of the trees on the property that we logically could. This means that in the winter, the evergreens on the north side act as a windbreak and keep the house a little more protected. In the summer, the deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves in the fall) help to nicely shade the house. It does still get a little warm on the southern side of the house in the summer, but we installed curtains to help control that.

6) We insulated BEFORE they poured the cement slab in the basement. After we laid the vapor barrier (which is easy and will save you on labor costs if you're looking at building), we laid down blue board (the hard, Styrofoam type insulation). Although this was not the most earth friendly product, it did mean that we'd get a lifetime of savings out of the insulation factor. It also means that we have to worry less about condensation in the basement because the insulation acts as a thermal break between the interior temperature and the temperature of the ground underneath the house.

7) Our current project is to install new weather stripping around the exterior doors. Since the doors have settled a bit and shifted when they were moved with the house, the weather stripping that was originally installed now has gaps. This is an easy project, just do your research first so you know what type of weather stripping would work best for your application. I've also made a draft dodger from some dried beans, dryer lint, and scrap cotton fabric for the basement entry. Since I used these materials, it means that if (or when) the beans start to get a little funky, I can compost the entire thing.

8) We bought the most energy efficient appliances our budget could afford for the kitchen. This meant a fridge with the freezer on the bottom (warm air rises, remember, so this model makes tons of sense), a range with double ovens (the top one is smaller than the other, so it heats quickly and uses less energy... the bottom one uses convection, which runs about 25 degrees cooler and makes fantastic cookies), and the most energy efficient dishwasher we could buy (you don't have to rinse and it recirculates the water, sensing the cleanliness of the water with an electronic beam... oh, and we have a Lavender prewash cycle!). (Yes, that's a horrible run-on sentence for an English teacher.) We did take the hand-me-down washer and dryer from Benny's sister, which are not terribly energy efficient, but we know that when we have to replace them, we'll purchase the most energy efficient models our budget can afford.

9) I started landscaping last year, which included bushes as foundation plantings. Although foundation plantings provide a nice visual, their primary purpose here was to provide an additional wind block and temperature break between the yard and the house. Once the bushes grow up well, they will shelter the house from the winter winds and snow, meaning that heating the basement (one day, when we finish it) will take less energy.

10) We installed curtains in every window we could to act as another thermal break. We have a few odd shaped windows upstairs that will need something custom, so we're still working out the details there. When we do have something on those windows, it will probably be something that I make because that is generally cheaper than store bought materials.

Now, I know many of you may be thinking... with all those electric appliances, hot water heaters, two floors, tons of windows, you can't possibly have an economical electric bill! Not so fast... in the spring and fall, when we don't run the AC or fans, our bill is around $30 a month. In the winter, it might get up to $90, maybe $100 if it's really cold outside. So, when you average that out, that means we spend about $40-50 a month on electricity.

Certainly, we could make that greener by opting into the program offered through Blue Ridge Electric, where we can purchase green power from TVA for an additional cost. Right now, that's not in the budget for us, but maybe in a few years we'll have our own solar panels!

So, I hope you've found something useful here that will help you make your home a little more energy efficient. Also, if you haven't seen the documentary Kilowatt Ours, you should. It's amazing in what it reveals about the American energy industry and what individuals can do to make a difference. It's probably available at your local library, and if it's not, they usually welcome requests from patrons about new material to add to the collection.

Green Clothes and Laundry

Again, as with most things green, this is all about careful consideration of resources and reuse.

Let me say that I don't remember the last time that either of us bought a new item of clothing... it's been years. We've become avid Goodwill and consignment store shoppers, as well as the welcome recipients of hand-me-downs. We've found that the Goodwill in Raleigh, off of Glenwood and behind Target, has exceptional values, as it's in a rather affluent area, so it means that things are generally more gently used and are of better quality to begin with. With Benny working at the paint store, it hardly makes sense to buy new clothes, so all of his work pants come from Goodwill or another thrift shop. My clothes are either gifts, hand-me-downs, or from thrift/consignment stores. The only things we buy new are socks and underwear, which we try to buy using a gift card, coupon (sometimes around Christmas you'll see Hanes coupons), and/or at the outlet stores (Benny found his favorite socks at Costco). By purchasing the majority of our clothing from thrift stores, we're supporting their mission while keeping these gently used clothes out of the landfill. Certainly, our next steps here would be if we need to purchase new, to purchase from a reputable company that does organic or natural clothing. (Did you know that 25% of the pesticides used on crops goes toward cotton?! Outrageous... and then we bury our heads in a cotton pillowcase at night... Pottery Barn has some incredible organic bedding at relatively affordable prices if you're appalled by this statistic as much as I was.)

In terms of shoes, we generally try to purchase items on sale and/or with a coupon or promo code online. Many of my shoes I've had for years, finally having to part with some I've had since 8th grade because the sole literally came off (yes, I know I could have had them repaired--but wasn't it about time I had a new pair of brown shoes!). I have a thing about purchasing used shoes, since you can't always wash them, so we generally buy those new. We either go to the outlets, or Mast General Store. Although Mast is expensive, they do carry lots of brands that are being made with earth friendly materials. Once I found those brands, I went to 6pm and found them there for a fraction of the cost. Other brands that Benny likes are Land's End shoes and Crocs, although the ecofriendly part of these is more questionable, the health of his feet and back is important since he's on his feet all day.

When we do laundry, we use Charlie's Soap, an all natural, biodegradable soap. We purchase it here at EarthFare, but you can find it online or at most any natural foods market. We also add our own laundry booster, using the lavender we currently purchase from Sunshine Lavender Farm, a family run, organic lavender farm in Hillsborough, NC. When we get our lavender plants in the ground, we'll begin using our own lavender. I may try using mint in the booster this summer for an alternate fragrance. (You will soon be able to purchase our lavender and handmade gifts at Moonlight Lavender, our online store and website. It is our hope that through this store and careful saving, in a few years, Benny will be able to be a stay at home dad.) The great thing about using all natural, biodegradable soaps is that the water is not contaminated. One day, we'd like to be able to run a greywater system from our washing machine to water the gardens with. (If you don't know about greywater systems, check them out on Google or another search engine. They're amazing, if your area allows for them in the building codes.)

None of our clothing is washed in hot water, or even warm. Even though we have tankless water heaters, we feel that it's a waste of energy to wash our clothing in hot water. The detergent gets them clean, and washing in cooler water maintains the integrity of the fabric longer. I've also found that by turning clothing inside out before washing, if the fabric is going to fade, it does this on the inside, rather than the outside. The only time I use hot or warm water is on bedding and towels (and handkerchiefs, which Benny carries daily), so that we get rid of dust mites (which live in bedding... gross!) and germs. This is especially key when one of us is sick.

To save energy on drying, we've employed a few methods. First, we hang all clothing, either on drying racks (mostly socks and underwear) in the half bath that is adjacent to the laundry closet, or on hangers. Currently, we have one rod installed in the laundry closet to hang clothes on, but it's a bit too low for Benny's shirts and my pants/skirts, so for now, we rest the hangers on the moulding around the closet. We're hoping that with our next trip to the Restore (the local Habitat for Humanity reseller--fantastic for building supplies), we can score another closet rod to install a little higher to hang those longer items on. We'll install clothesline outside under the deck in the spring. Last summer, all the towels, blankets, sheets, etc. were hung on the deck railings, but there were times we had to chase them through the yard, because they weren't weighed down. The clothesline will fix this. The only thing we dry in the dryer is towels, sheets, etc. in the winter. When I do use the dryer, I save the dryer lint to do a few things with: 1) Use it as stuffing in draft dodgers I make for the doors. 2) Compost it along with our other compost-ables. 3) Toss it outside in spring for the birds to use as nesting material. (Yes, we find another use for almost everything in this house, meaning that we only have to take away one trash bag about every two weeks--much less than the average American family. And it saves us on trashbags, but that's another post.)

So, here's to a new lease on laundry for you and your family! May you find many deals at Goodwill and fall in love with biodegradable soaps as much as we have. :)

P.S.

I'm linking this post up to: Join us at Heavenly Homemakers for the little Green Project!