Frugal Living Today

Another week has come and gone and that means it is time for another edition of the Frugal Living Podcast.  This week I share a great frugal tip sent in by one of my readers (Judy in Arizona) for a way to reuse those six pack rings that come on canned drinks as well as some great frugal tips for how to buy, prepare and cook chicken.  If you haven’t subscribed to the podcast yet, you can do so through iTunes by clicking on the icon in the right hand menu bar.

Enjoy the show and keep those great frugal tips coming!  Your ideas might be featured on a future episode!

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Let me start this entry with an admission:  My name is Michael Nolan and I absolutely have an unhealthy addiction to yogurt.  I can eat the stuff every day and never get sick of it.

Now even at the relatively low cost of store brand yogurt the stuff can run up a grocery bill if you aren’t careful and to be honest most of the store brand yogurt is just not up to par in my advanced yogurt palate!  What to do, what to do?

Well it would seem that there’s a fantastic web site written by a woman with an unhealthy attachment to her crockpot.  Her unhealthy addiction collided with mine when someone taught her to make homemade yogurt in her crockpot!

Please stop by her site, tell her I heart her and that you heart her too!  I’m trying this out this weekend!!

We live in a wasteful society who seems to think that when a button falls off or a seam rips, they should just run to WalMart and buy a new one instead of spending five or ten minutes to fix it themselves.  The seeming low cost of these throwaway clothes makes it more appealing than actually having to sew a button on yourself (God forbid!), but why?

Even if a new blouse only costs you $5.00 at a discount store, a basic sewing kit can be had for the same amount and you can then repair all sorts of clothing and other fabric items without the need to replace them or even leave your house.

Your local dollar store probably has a tiny little sewing kit that can get you through a few minor emergencies and even though the scissors don’t work half the time, the selection of six or so tiny spools of various colors of thread are worth the purchase price.

Fixing a button is one of the easiest sewing repairs to do and only takes a few minutes at most.  I’ve even replaced buttons while I was wearing the shirt - and managed to not stick myself too!

I’ve been a bad frugal blogger lately but there are times when life gets in the way of my Internet time and these past few days have been some of those times.

I took a rare few hours to myself recently and actually spent money on me for a change.  The vast majority of what I purchased were things that I really needed but I did happen to splurge a bit and purchased two huge books that were reasonably priced and right up my alley, so to speak.

“The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living” is an impressive tome with the subtitle “Advice and Information on Just About Everything You Need to Know to Live on Planet Earth” and from what I’ve perused so far, they aren’t that far off.  Editor Walter Szykitka seems to be a guru of self-sufficiency and self-reliance.  Seriously folks, this book even tells you how to replace worn webbing in a bra.  I’m not making this up.

The second book is called “Country Widsom & Know How - Everything you need to know to live off the land”  from the Editors of Storey Books.  It even tells you how to cook a porcupine.  Again - not kidding.

While I’m pretty sure I won’t be replacing any bra webbing or broiling a porcupine anytime soon, my dream is to someday live a live of self-reliance and to live as close to the earth as I possibly can and while these two books may have cost me forty bucks, they will provide me years of information and entertainment and for that reason I think them well worth the price.

One of the simplest ways to save money on holiday gifts is to wrap them yourself without spending a bundle on wrapping paper, ribbons and all the other accessories that are lining store shelves just aching to clog up your attic.

My favorite frugal wrapping paper is made from a large roll of kraft paper or white deli paper that can be purchased quite inexpensively and will last for years.

These papers are quite sturdy and can be decorated in an infinite number of ways, including:

• stencils
• markers, crayons
• decoupage

Try to think outside the holiday box and customize the packaging to the person who is receiving the gift.

Down with Debt is another great Today.com blog that shares much in common with this site, in that the author regularly posts frugal living ideas and her own frustration with the wasteful mindset of our society and the business economy bailout that doesn’t do a thing to help those of us who need it most (and are paying for it, by the way).

There’s even a post on how to process fresh horseradish and I mean - who doesn’t need to know how to do that?  I had to leave her a comment that I was now hungry for some real horseradish thanks to her description of the stuff I love so dearly.

Down with Debt has an advantage over me in one regard; as a parent she is uniquely positioned to answer some questions that I may not be able to.

As much as I know you love hearing from me, the thought occurred to me that some of you might like to know where I get my inspiration.  I mean no one could just come up with all of these frugal tips on their own, right?  The truth is that much of what I write here does come out of my head, but that’s a product of years of frugal living.

When it comes to frugal blogs though, I do have my favorites.  I have gleaned tons of useful frugal ideas from many sites all over the web, so I have decided to share a few of my favorite frugal blogs with you over the next few weeks.

Frugal Cuisine

On this site, Pepper shares Chinese food and snack ideas for less than $3 per day.  Everything from main dishes to salads, street food to snacks can be found here and believe me, I’ve tried quite a few of them!

The beauty and elegance of Asian cuisine is captured in the photos and the descriptions so be warned that you’ll end up hungry when you visit this site!

Be sure to stop by Frugal Cuisine and tell Pepper you heard about the site on Frugal Living Today!  More of my favorite frugal blogs coming soon, so stay tuned!