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30
Jun 2010

Vinegar As An Herbicide

FrugalBabe

In addition to our awesome backyard, we also have a really big front yard.  We started getting rid of some of the grass last summer, putting down weed blocking fabric and using a wheelbarrow to spread out existing areas of gravel (happily, the former owners had ordered more than they needed when they put in gravel, and it was 18 inches deep in some areas).  This year, we planted a bunch of tiny trees out front, and we’re babying them along right now.  Hopefully one day we’ll just have a little forest out there, which will provide shade, wind protection, and minimize the amount of watering and mowing that needs to be done.

There is a vast amount of gravel in front of our house (don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have the gravel than grass, since it doesn’t need to be watered or mowed).  It doesn’t seem as vast until you start trying to pull all the weeds out of it.  Over the years, dust has blown into the gravel and made it a great spot for weeds to sprout, and the former owners were pretty much oblivious to them.  We have been pulling weeds all summer out there (our son knows that whenever we go out to get them mail, we have to pull 20 weeds first, and he says “weeds, first” whenever we go out front).  I spent two hours doing nothing but weeding a couple days ago, and I made it through about 1/10 of the gravel.

So I went searching for another solution.  I refuse to buy any sort of commercial herbicide – our property is strictly organic and staying that way.  But I found several articles about vinegar working as an herbicide.  I use vinegar to clean our whole house, so I buy it in gallon jugs at Costco and always have several on hand.  It’s inexpensive, but most importantly, I don’t have to worry about harmful effects – to us or the environment – from using it.  Our son went out with me to help me spray it, which definitely wouldn’t have been possible if we’d been using something created in a lab at Monsanto.

We started with a small patch to see how well it would work.  That was yesterday morning, and when I checked this morning, all the weeds in that area are completely dead.  The weather here has been really hot (nearly 100), sunny, and dry, which is supposed to be the best weather for using vinegar to kill weeds.  Obviously I’m very happy with the results, and will be spraying all the gravel with vinegar over the next few days.  I’ll pull out the bigger weeds that are easy to grab, and spray the small ones.  Hopefully my vinegar herbicide will continue to be successful!

Category: home improvement, organic living, the simple life  Tags:  17 Comments
22
Jun 2010

New Furnace Trumps New Shoes

FrugalBabe

Last weekend a good friend stopped by to visit us.  And she had fantastic shoes.  I wanted some too!  I knew that they would be expensive, but I figured that I could fit them into the budget and after a few months we wouldn’t even remember spending the money.  But then I thought about the furnace upgrade we’re in the middle of doing, and about how we’re working so hard to pay off our mortgage and live debt-free here on our mini farm.  And then I thought about clutter.  That was actually what convinced me that I don’t need those shoes after all.  I’ve recently pared my shoe collection down to a total of 10 pairs, plus winter boots, hiking boots, and snowshoe boots.  That’s down from about 20 pairs that I had before I started purging stuff.  And what I really like – more than a great new pair of shoes – is a nice clean closet without a lot of stuff in it.  I already have two pairs of flip flops and a couple other summer style shoes… I don’t need any more.  All of my current shoes (except running shoes) should easily last for another few years.  And since I don’t want to add to my shoe collection, I really have no reason to be thinking about shoes at all.  There.  See?  I talked myself out of spending $90 and adding something I don’t need to my closet.  Feels good!

Now about that furnace…  That is our big expense of the summer.  Well, that and central air conditioning.  We decided that we wanted to have air conditioning installed after spending a good part of last summer melting.  Our number one criteria for a new system was energy efficiency.  But we soon found out that the efficiency of the air conditioning would be limited by the efficiency of our current furnace, as the two systems are linked together.  Our furnace is only 11 years old – definitely not ancient – but it’s 80% efficient, and has a single stage fan (basically, it’s always blowing at 100% capacity).  So 20% of the energy from the natural gas the furnace burns is venting to the outside, and the fan is drawing more electricity than really needed to keep the house comfortable.  Replacing the furnace with a new 95% efficient, two-stage model would increase the SEER rating on our air conditioner from 13.7 to 16 (thus qualifying it for the federal tax credit).  It would also mean that only 5% of our natural gas consumption would be wasted, as opposed to 20% with our existing furnace.  And the new furnace will use about one fifth of the electricity of the old one for the fan.  We found this website to be very helpful while we were working on our pros/cons list regarding the furnace upgrade.

In addition, there are a boatload of rebates available to help pay for the high-efficiency furnace.  We’ll have to fork over almost $4000 for the furnace and $3000 for the air conditioner, but we’ll end up getting nearly $3000 in rebates from our state, the federal government, our electricity company, our gas company, and from the furnace manufacturer.  We’ll put the old furnace on Craigs List so that someone with an older, less efficient furnace can upgrade theirs too.

Because we’re going to have to pay upfront for everything and then wait for the rebates to come in, we’ll have to skip paying extra on our mortgage in August, and basically not spend money on anything other than food for a couple months.  But we’re ok with that.  The new furnace will make our air conditioner much more efficient, and our heating will be more efficient in the winter too.  Once the rebates and tax credits show up, we’ll only have spent about a thousand dollars more to have the air conditioner and the new furnace than we would have spent to just get the air conditioner.  And if our calculations are correct, the amount we’ll save in natural gas and electricity usage will be about $250/year.  So in four years, the furnace will have paid for itself.  After that, it will start paying us back.

Anybody else made the decision to put in a new, higher efficiency furnace, even when your current furnace was still working just fine?  It wasn’t an easy decision for us, but that’s what we came up with.

Category: home improvement  21 Comments
05
Jan 2010

Free Wall Mirrors (Craigs List Is Awesome)

FrugalBabe

Sometime later this year we’d like to start finishing our basement.  For now, it’s just a huge storage area, but we have big plans for it.  Our first financial priority this year is our HSA and our IRAs, but after that, we’re planning to start putting some money into the basement.  We’d like to use as much recycled, reclaimed, and salvaged material as we can for the project.  There are two Habitat for Humanity ReStores in the area, as well as at least two other construction material yards that sell salvaged materials.  In addition, I’ve been watching the free section on Craigs List.

Tonight, I hit the jackpot.

One of our plans for the basement is a workout room.  For now, my husband and I both do our workouts in our bedroom, and our weights are stored under our bed.  It works, but since we have all that space downstairs, a workout room makes sense.  One of the things I wanted for it was big mirrors, as we both feel that mirrors help us maintain our form when we exercise.  But mirrors – especially big ones – are not cheap.  Tonight I found a free listing on Craigs List for two wall mirrors; each one is 3 feet by 8 feet.  I have no idea how much those would cost if we were to buy them new, but I’m sure the price tag would give me shivers.  Happily, all we have to do to get these is drive ten miles into town.  I was the first response the lady had, so they’re ours.

For the last few days, I’ve kept the local Craigs List free page open as a tab on my computer, and I just refresh it every few hours.  As long as you can resist a whole lot of stuff that you might like but don’t really need (since that equals clutter!), it’s a great way to find awesome deals as soon as they get listed.

Category: Our stuff, home improvement  8 Comments
11
Oct 2009

Kitchen Decluttering

FrugalBabe

I don’t particularly like cleaning.  I love to cook, do laundry, work in the garden… but cleaning is pretty far down on my list.  But I love living in a clean house, and having lots of wide open, clean space around me.  And therein lies the conundrum.  Lately I’ve been on a mission to purge stuff from our house, so that it’s easier to clean and less likely to get messed up ( if you don’t have it, you can’t mess it up, right?)  I’ve pretty much stopped going to thrift stores, as there really isn’t anything we need, and thrift stores tend to entice me to buy stuff just because it’s there and it’s a screamin’ deal.  So at least no new stuff is coming into the house.

In addition, I’ve been going through the house and really looking at our stuff.  Asking myself if we’ve used it lately, or if we could do without it.  The back of my car is full again with stuff to drop off at the thrift store next time I go to town, and it feels great.

Yesterday, I tackled a set of kitchen cabinets.  The cabinets where we store tea, coffee, some spices, baking stuff, random kitchen gadgets that rarely get used… sort of the catch-all cabinets.  I took everything out, and tossed the stuff that I never use.  There were spices that were more preservatives than spice – and that I knew I would never use again – but were somehow still lurking in the back of my cabinet.  There was a beautiful glass pitcher that we got as a wedding gift from friends of my in-laws and have used one time.  One time, and we’ve been married since 2003.  Regardless of how pretty the pitcher was, in our kitchen, it was taking up space.  Now it’s in my car to donate, and will hopefully end up in a home where it gets used often.  By the time I had finished, I had a large stack for the thrift store, and an equally large stack for the trash.  And my cabinet looks and feels SO much better.  I can find everything.  I know that everything in there is stuff that we regularly use.

A while ago, I started saving plain glass jars when they were empty, instead of putting them in the recycle bin.  Yesterday I cleaned off all of the labels, and transferred all of the stuff that was in plastic bags in my cabinet to the jars.  Cocoa, dried coconut, spices… all of the stuff that our health food store sells in bulk bags.  Now it’s all in pretty jars instead.  I made labels out of scrap paper and black ink and glued them to the jars.  I love how it looks with all the different jars, and it’s easy to tell if I’m running low on something.  And with the cabinet all cleaned out, I can see all of the jars at a glance.

Ah, kitchen decluttering.  Perfect activity for a cold, snowy weekend.  And it’s free, which is always a bonus in my book.

Category: home improvement, the simple life, thrift stores  11 Comments
03
Oct 2009

Wrapping Up The Outdoor Chores, And A Few Good Links

FrugalBabe

I got a blog award last week, and in the process I discovered a new blog.  Kristina writes at Growing A Better Me, and has all sorts of interesting things to share.  Thanks for the award Kristina!  As far as passing it on goes, the blogs on my blogroll are my favorites, and I highly recommend them all!

While I was browsing Kristina’s blog, I found this recipe that she shared for spinach burgers.  I didn’t have any cheese (we’re mostly vegan these days) so I made cashew cheese by blending cashews, water, garlic salt, apple cider vinegar, and some spices.  It turned out creamy and wonderful, and I added it to the spinach mixture in place of cheese.  The dish was fantastic, and smelled great while it was baking.  I didn’t have bread either, so I whipped up a batch of tortillas, and we had spinach burritos.  Very yummy – thanks for the inspiration Kristina!

I also came across this article last week, with 100 ways to recycle a t-shirt.  My favorite?  The diaper, of course!

My husband is hard at work in the backyard right now, building two more mini-greenhouses to put over our other garden beds.  We’ve had to cover them with tarps for the last couple nights, as it’s been below freezing.  So it will be nice to have them covered now as we head into the cold season.  He’s using a lot of scrap lumber that we got for free from a lumber yard (check around, if there’s one in your area, they might let you come in and pick up offcuts).  We had to buy several long 2x4s, but all of the shorter pieces were free.

We’re starting to wrap up our list of outdoor chores.  I’ve been moving gravel in the front yard for the last few weeks, and finally finished this week.  We have a huge front yard, and it was all grass when we got here (well, sort of – it hadn’t been watered or mowed in a very long time… but it was supposed to be grass).  We didn’t want to be watering and maintaining all of that grass, and decided to xeriscape a chunk of the yard instead.  The previous owners had purchased gravel to go along the driveway and between the street and the sidewalk.  They had also put gravel back by the fence, and had apparently over-ordered.  The excess was in the area by the fence, which was over a foot deep in places.  So I got out the wheelbarrow and shovel, and started moving gravel.  We bought weedblocker to put down under the gravel, and I’ve filled in roughly 400 square feet of yard with xeriscaping.  We planted a few low-water plants and grasses, and I put in a wavy edge along the gravel using some old bricks that the previous owners left.  Even the plants were mostly free – a neighbor didn’t want them any more, and offered them to us if we’d come over and dig them out of her yard.  I love our new front yard.  It’s still mostly grass, but not as much as it was before, and we paid almost nothing for the new landscaping.  I also got lots of good workouts by shoveling gravel, which was an extra bonus.

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

Category: home improvement, the simple life  3 Comments
27
Sep 2009

Now I Can Cook In My Underwear

FrugalBabe

When we moved into this house, there was no blind on the window in our kitchen.  The rest of the house has basic plastic blinds – which are fine with us – but the kitchen window was bare.  It only looks out onto our side yard, and beyond that is our neighbor’s garage, so there isn’t really anybody looking in our kitchen window.  Still, it’s nice to be able to close the blinds at night, so we had planned to get something for that window. 

A couple weeks after we moved in, a neighbor mentioned that she and her husband were remodeling their whole house, and were replacing all of their blinds with plantation shutters.  She asked if we needed any, and we told her about our kitchen window.  She offered us the entire stack of blinds, most of which we’ve since given to my parents for a house they are remodeling.  But one of the blinds was a perfect fit for our kitchen window.  It even matches the paint on the walls.  And it was free. 

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Category: home improvement, just my life  6 Comments
13
Aug 2009

Another Do It Yourself Project

FrugalBabe

My husband finished a window well cover earlier this week, and is nearly finished with the second one.  I’m pretty darn impressed, especially given that this is his first real welding project (he considered the umbrella stand practice, since it just involved attaching a piece of pipe to a piece of I-beam).  Here’s a picture of the finished window well cover:

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He spent $58 on the grating (enough to make covers for both windows), and about $10 on the angle iron.  He ran out of angle iron on the second cover, so he’s been using scrap metal that we found in a dumpster behind a welding shop here in town.  He talked with the owners a few weeks ago, and they said that he’s welcome to dig through their scrap metal dumpster any time he wants.  So for the last couple weeks, he’s taken me over there on Friday nights, for a “dumpster date.”  He gets in and pulls out the good metal, and hands it out to me so that I can load it up in our wagon.  And he gets a kick out of telling all the neighbors what a romantic guy he is, taking his wife dumpster diving on Friday nights ;)

Category: home improvement, just my life, the simple life  4 Comments
03
Aug 2009

I’m Married To A Welder

FrugalBabe

My husband is teaching himself to weld (with a little help from YouTube and Google).  It’s something he’s wanted to do for a long time, but now that we’ve moved, he has more space to do it, and lots of things to weld.  He found a welder on Craigs List, and a welding mask on eBay.  He got all of the other supplies at various places around town, and found some metal shops that let him take their scraps for free.  There’s one place just a half mile or so from our house that has a dumpster out back where they toss their scrap metal, and they told him he can dumpster-dive anytime he wants.  It’s all mostly small stuff, but it’s been perfect for practicing.

He made his first project last week.  We had bought an umbrella for our patio, but had skipped the $50 umbrella stand, because my husband decided that would be a good place to try out his welding skills.  He welded together a chunk of old I-beam and a metal pipe, and they make a great umbrella stand:

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I love it.  It’s unique, very effective, a great example of recycling, and very frugal.

The next project is window well covers.  Our basement windows don’t have well covers, and with a toddler, those are a must.  We were shocked to discover how expensive they are if you hire someone else to weld them for you.  We were finding prices of $300 – $400 per window (we have two).  My husband went to a metal supply shop last week and got all the supplies he needs to make both well covers for about $70 (angle iron and heavy duty grating).  By the time he’s finished with the window well covers, the welder and all its accessories will have more than paid for themselves.  And there are many more projects to come…

Category: hobbies, home improvement  7 Comments
20
Jul 2009

Progress On Our Little Homestead

FrugalBabe

It has been a busy three weeks around here, but we’re making progress.  We finished building a gate in our fence that will allow us to move large things in an out of the backyard.  The previous owner had tried to construct a 15 foot gate.  He bought a bunch of expensive hardware that would have allowed the gate to slide from side to side, but he didn’t install all of it, and didn’t build the gate well at all.  The neighbors tell us that it was forever blowing down – he had it propped up with 2x4s when we got here, and it wasn’t usable as a gate.  It was so heavy that my husband and I could barely lift it.  We took it apart and were able to salvage a lot of fence pickets from it to use in making a better gate.  We spent about $150 on supplies, and now have two six foot gates that swing inward, giving us a 12 foot gate opening.  We had to build a three foot section of fence to finish closing the gap that was there from the old fence.  It took a few days, but we now have a solid, sturdy, functioning gate and fence.  From the street you can’t even see that there is a gate at all – it just looks like fence.  So we’re happy with that project.  

We also built new compost bins from recycled pallets and wood.  My husband found a place where they were giving away all sorts of good quality pallets, and he snagged a bunch.  He built two good sized compost bins, and we’re working away at building up a supply of compost again.  It will take a while to get back to what we had before we moved, but we’re on our way.

I’ve been scrubbing the basement floor, and have pretty much rid the house of the cat smell that was here when we arrived.  Luckily the cat smell was really only in the basement, and the floors down there are all concrete, which is easy to clean.  The stairs leading to the basement are carpeted, and the cat smell had made its way into the stairwell a bit.  For several days, I used a spray bottle to spray white vinegar onto the stairs, and then just let it dry.  This weekend we had a friend over and she said that she couldn’t smell anything at all (and she doesn’t have cats, so she’s a good judge).  Is there anything vinegar can’t do? 

I’ll leave you with a picture of our garden at the moment.  It’s a bit on the small side for mid-July.  We have cucumbers, watermelon, cilantro and lettuce in this tray, and we have another tray with equally small swiss chard.  They better do some growing to make up for our late start!  I worked the soil in two garden bed areas this weekend, and we’ll be adding compost (purchased, unfortunately) and getting our seedlings in the ground this week.  We still have about three months left in the regular growing season, and by fall we should have a greenhouse set up so that we can extend the season. 

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Category: home improvement, just my life, the simple life  6 Comments
09
Jun 2009

Sailed Through The Inspection

FrugalBabe

We had our inspection today on our house today, and the results are pretty sweet. The only things the buyer is asking us to do is add GFCIs to the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room (the new section of the kitchen that we remodeled last year has GFCIs, but the rest of the house was wired in the 80s), and fix a leak that was found under our kitchen sink. We had never noticed a leak under the sink, and there’s no evidence of one when we look under there. But our realtor said that inspectors will sometimes fill the sink with water and then let it all out at once to check for leaks. So we’ll do that ourselves to find it, and it should be an easy fix. The GFICs are easy too, and cheap. One for each circuit should be about $60 total, and the whole project can be done in an afternoon (with a little supervision from my parents, who were planning to visit next week anyway).
So things are moving along very well this time around. Now that the inspection objection deadline has passed, the buyer would lose her earnest money if she backs out, unless it’s due to an appraisal or financing issue. If the house doesn’t appraise for at least the current sale price, we’d probably just have to drop our price. Our buyer is getting an FHA loan, so it will be an FHA appraisal. Our realtor said that those stick with a house for six months, and that the vast majority of loans that are being done in this region right now are FHA. So we’re somewhat at the mercy of the appraiser. But we’re hopeful that it will work out. As far as financing, our buyer is supposedly pretty far along in the mortgage approval process, and everything looks good.
We’re thrilled that the inspection turned up such small things, and things that will be easy and cheap to fix. Now if we could just figure out when to lock in an interest rate on our new mortgage…

Category: home improvement, real estate  One Comment
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