LILL's LIST

Being frugal is the “in” thing to do nowadays. What with the economy going to Hades in a handbasket, we’re all doing what we can to save as much money as possible. Sometimes, it seems like we’re all competing in the Frugal Olympics. Next event: saving the most money on groceries. But before you go for the gold, let’s make sure that you’re not cheating.

We all know someone who takes those little pink sugar packets from fast food restaurants, don’t we? Maybe you do it. After all, you bought something there, maybe a coffee or an order of fries. So, why shouldn’t you take a few sugar packets? Well, beside the fact that you don’t intend to use them in that coffee you bought, which is what they’re there for, it’s just unethical.

Taking sugar, salt, napkins, straws or anything from fast food restaurants is only okay when you’re going to use them for the meal or snack you just bought. If you take 10 napkins, just so you can have some extra in the car, it’s not a crime. But it’s tacky at the least. If you take a lot of napkins or straws or ketchup packets, it’s stealing.

So is “sampling” fruit, veggies or open packages while you shop for groceries. If you open the packages, yourself, it’s even worse. One of the reasons grocery prices are so high is because of the amount of food that’s lost to damage or theft. And, of course, it’s unethical.

Also, while we’re in the grocery store, damaging a package and then asking for a discount because it’s damaged goods is also unethical. And what with hidden cameras in stores, it might get you into a lot of trouble.

If you don’t buy your kids what they need like shoes that fit and decent clothes, it’s unethical and also emotional abuse. Who wants to feel like their parents don’t love them enough to provide their basic needs? Being frugal shouldn’t mean being mean.

Mooching off friends is pathetic, but many people do it. They never pick up the check at restaurants and bars. They show up at mealtime at their neighbor’s house and bring their kids with them, but they never invite their neighbors over to their house. They borrow things and “forget” to give them back. They never pitch in when there’s a neighborhood cleanup, but they’re always right there at the block party, enjoying the free pizza that they didn’t chip in for.

Food pantries are wonderful places when you don’t have enough money to feed your family. But some people who do have enough money for food treat them as if they’re the local supermarket. They show up and take free food when they should be donating to the pantry, not taking food from other people who really need it. Just because something is free doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to it. Save it for those who really need it.

Worse than raiding the food pantry is lying to state or federal welfare officials to get services when your income level is too high for them. Maybe you can do it with some creative bookkeeping, but the penalty if you get caught is very high. Although on the plus side, if you’re charged with defrauding the federal government, you won’t have to worry about food and board for many years.

While there’s no prison term for giving loved ones tacky gifts, there is a social cost. So next time you think you can get by with a cheap present, ask yourself if it’s worth risking the love you have for your wife or child. Sure, one lousy gift isn’t going to make them divorce you or move out, but not caring enough to choose something you know they’ll like might get them thinking about the other ways that you show that you don’t care about them and their feelings. It’s a slippery slope and you should think twice about being too frugal to show love.

Another slippery slope is taxes. No matter how strongly you feel that your tax rate is too high, it’s not okay to fudge on your return. It’s also very likely to cost you much more than you save by lying. Tell the truth to Uncle Sam. If you want to save money on your taxes, get yourself a good accountant. It’s money well-spent.

Have you ever switched a price tag? Did you think that putting the higher price tag on another item was okay, because that way the store would get its money from someone else? Well, when you switch a price tag, you’re doing two things wrong. You pay the lower price, which is unethical. Someone else, all unknowing, pays a higher price for an item. So you’re doubly wrong. Leave the tags alone and just don’t buy things that are too expensive for your budget.

Frugal means living within your means and not spending more than you have. It doesn’t mean being so cheap that you squeak or make Jack Benny look like a spendthrift. Life is too short to pinch pennies at the expense of your ethics, family or friendships. Be thrifty, but don’t forget to enjoy life and give more than you get from the world.

There’s still time. Don’t panic. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice (like us) or something completely different, there’s still time to come up with a present that is earth-friendly, homemade and frugal as all get-out.

But before you get out the fruitcake recipes, consider these options, which may be just different enough to please even the most persnickety family and friends. My favorite is something I received last year. It’s the present I’ve used the most and its recipient was in my thoughts every time I used it.

My friend gave me a beautiful old teapot that she got for a quarter at a thrift store. It was nice, but even nicer were the 100 teabags that came with it. They were half organic black tea and the other fifty were various herbal blends. The really neat part of the whole thing is that she had removed the tags from every one and wrote her own little taglines.

It is SO neat to pull out a “Cold Cure” teabag when I’m feeling kind of stuffed up and read: “Let my warm thoughts fill your heart while this hot tea chases your cold away.” It’s almost like my friend is sharing a cup of tea with me at my kitchen table. I swear it intensifies that medicinal power of the tea.

You could let your kids help you write the tags for relatives and friends who would love to hear from them – and you – but live at a distance. What grandmother wouldn’t love a cup of tea with her grandson’s red heart and an “I love Grandma” on the tag hanging over her cup?

If you’re not into tea and sympathy this holiday season, how about letting the kids decorate a plain white cloth bag for earth-friendly shopping? Or get some cheap stencils and do it yourself with a picture of Mother Earth or a brightly colored bird or a slogan like, “Save The Earth… BYOB” which stands for “Bring Your Own Bag”, of course.

There are so many free or very inexpensive – but really useful – gifts that you can make. There’s no excuse to give the same old tired crafts and knicknacks. Instead of candles, make them some gel air fresheners from jello or gelatin in pretty glasses you’ve found at yard sales or thrift stores. Here’s a recipe I posted last year.

Make a hanging air freshener with some cedar shavings from the local pet store and some essential oil. Put them into small cloth bags so friends and family can hang them up. Or for a gift that’s sure to be appreciated, find out what your friend or relative does that you can give them a gift for so that they don’t have to buy it themselves.

Do they feed the birds? Buy them the kind of bird seed or suet they use. Do they have a hobby that calls for supplies? Find out what they need and get them some. It’s a luxury not to have to buy the everyday things that eat up our budgets, and sometimes people are hesitant to spend money on hobbies or non-essentials this time of year. If you do it for them, there’s no guilt!

The most important part of homemade gifts is using your imagination and time to come up with something that is truly useful and that will be appreciated by the recipient. Homemade gifts have gotten a bad wrap, er, rap because so many times they’re just an excuse not to have to choose or pay for a present.

If you give someone something that was thrown together in haste, with very little thought, only to get out of buying something, your friend or family member might act pleased, but they’ll know it isn’t from the heart. That’s the most important part of gift-giving, whether it’s bought or made by hand. So, while there’s still time, think about what you have on hand or can buy inexpensively and figure out whether that will work for the folks on your list. If it doesn’t, head for the mall and don’t beat yourself up.

White vinegar

If I had to choose one green item to take with me to a desert island, I’d choose white vinegar. My kids joke that our house runs on vinegar, because we use it for cleaning, as a fabric softener, to unclog drains (with my second favorite green item, baking soda), as a mild disinfectant and probably several other things that escape me at the moment.

It’s wonderful for removing that overpowering smell you get from new clothes. It cuts down on static cling and wrinkles if you put it in the final rinse in your washer. It removes the smell of smoke from clothes, curtains and even hair, although we use apple cider vinegar as a hair rinse and detangler.

There’s nothing better than vinegar for washing windows and getting greasy counters clean. Put a handful of baking soda in your drain, add a cup or two of vinegar all at once, and you get a mini-Vesuvius that powers away clogs and soap scum.

Next to vinegar, I’d have to opt for baking soda as a favorite green find. It’s as good as scouring powder for getting soap scum off the tub without scratching. Put it in your water-pic and/or brush your teeth with it. (I add a drop or two of peppermint oil for flavoring.) Put it in the tub to soften the water. Use it as a poultice for insect bites and stings. You can even throw it on a grease fire to smother the flames.

Third on my list of green essentials is Sal Suds. I use Dr. Bronner’s brand and I use it for everything. My son even used it to remove permanent ink from a rug. It’s dandy for deodorizing and cleaning stinky things like diaper pails and cat boxes (after you tip out the litter and any resident cats, of course) and great for toilet bowls. We leave some in overnight, brush and flush the next morning, and avoid the buildup that our hard water causes.

Because we don’t use bleach, we pour a capful of Sal Suds into the whites every so often and it works just as well at getting the gray out. It cleans our wood floors, painted walls, and everything else that’s washable. It is strong, though, so it might be a good idea to wear rubber gloves. I don’t, but I do rinse my hands well afterwards.

So those are my three green stalwarts. There are other things like liquid castile soap and essential oils that are part of my green toolkit, but they’re minor players. The big three take care of 90% of the household cleaning and maintenance chez Hawkins. Best of all, they’re really inexpensive, which is part of being green to me. If it doesn’t save money as well as save the earth, it’s not really green.

It’s summer and I’m busy, so here’s a post I wrote back in March that’s even truer today.)

Most of us are feeling the economic pinch of higher prices these days. Rising fuel and heating costs are contributing to higher prices for just about everything. So how can the average family combine cutting back on luxuries with going greener? True, many organic, natural and eco-mindful products cost more than the cheapest alternatives, but that just doesn’t mean that we have to give up and buy generic detergent at the dollar store. It means that we have to be ever more creative, innovative and clever. It also means that we might have to trade time and/or convenience for cost.

For instance, I love 7th Generation products. I’ve used them for years and I know that they work as well or better than their polluting, less ecologically sound counterparts. At my supermarket, they’re usually priced higher than the generic brands, but sometimes only a few cents higher than the big national brands like that detergent that comes in the orange package, for instance. What really helps is their newsletter and the coupons they almost always have on their site.

I signed up for their newsletter a while ago and have enjoyed several of their coupons since then. Here’s the link if you’d like to sign up to get the Seventh Generation newsletter. And here’s the link for their coupon page. Last time I looked, they had coupons for cleaning products, diapers and detergent. I really like their new 2X concentrated detergents.

Here are some other sources for green coupons: Pristine Planet always has a good selection. My favorite coupon site for everything RetailMeNot has a long list of coupons for green goods. However, be sure that you check the expiration date on the coupon you want to use. Some of them are out of date. OrganicCoupon.org also has a very good selection of online, offline and printable coupons.

If you can’t find a coupon, maybe you can use something else. A couple of pieces of aluminum foil for dryer sheets. White vinegar in the fabric softener ball instead of that blue softener that has formaldehyde in it. Hey, you want to soften your clothes, not embalm them, right? Ditch the paper towels and say what we do when we dust. Holey socks, Batman! (Since my only method of darning socks involves dropping them into a trash can while muttering, “Darn these socks!”, dusting with them works better than darning them.)

Use your ingenuity and figure out how to do things without all the gadgets and plastic junk they sell at Wally World. You can do it. You might even find that it’s fun to think outside the box. (And after you’re done, give the box to your kid to play with instead of buying them a lead paint covered cute little toy from the discount store. Kids love boxes.)

If you think of anything that can help save money and the earth at the same time, share it in a comment. I’m always up for new green info – and saving green too.

I’m just back from my spring vacation and feeling refreshed and ready to tackle all the things I’ve been putting off. At the top of my list is Winter. That might sound a little odd considering that the leaves are unfurling on the maple where a pair of cardinals hunt for buds and bugs outside my window, but stay with me here and I promise it’ll make perfect sense.

As I’ve said before, we live in a drafty, old house whose saving grace is that it’s in the middle of sixty private acres of woods and fields. Also on the property is a small building with two studio apartments in it, where my late mother lived until October of 2005. Now, we use it for storage and for a guesthouse, mostly in the summer. Although we installed a pellet stove three years ago, and although we keep the heat down to 68 in the daytime and 55 at night, and even lower at the apartment house, our oil bill is enormous and getting bigger with each winter.

Every winter, we resolve to do something about it and every spring, when warm weather comes, we promptly get sidetracked by gardening and outdoor pursuits. Then, before we know it, it’s fall and we’re scurrying around, trying to weatherstrip and figure out how to cut down on heating costs. This year, it’s going to be different. This year, we’re going to prepare for winter during spring and summer.

While we were on vacation, the kids and I brainstormed and came up with several ideas to save money and help the environment next winter. First on our list of things to do is weatherstripping. Our doors and windows are old and we can’t afford new ones, so we need to do more than stuff the cracks with plastic bags, like we did with the door in the basement. The frame is so warped that no amount of weatherstripping completely fills the cracks, so in desperation one cold winter’s day, I shoved supermarket bags into the cracks around it with a piece of old wire. It worked, somewhat, but it wasn’t pretty.

Next week, a local carpenter is coming over to give us an estimate on weatherstripping all the doors and windows – the right way. In our windy, top of the hill location, we need more protection from the winter blasts than just shopping bags can give us, that’s for sure. If the frames need to be squared, he’ll be able to do it so that the weatherproofing will work.

In order to pay for the carpenter, we’ll be saving money by hanging the clothes outside to dry. In the warmer weather, this is easy, but we’re going to continue to do without the clothes dryer even when it’s cold. Of course, in Maine, hanging out clothes in the winter can mean frostbite and frozen clothes, so we’ve come up with another idea.

We already use clothes racks in the basement near the furnace for delicate items all year ’round. Why not add some more racks and a retractable line or two and use them to dry all the clothes when it’s too cold to hang them outside? That way, the humidity from the clothes will also add moisture to the dry winter air that bothers us all winter. The exercise from hanging them and retrieving them won’t hurt my winter weight gain either, let me tell you.

With the dryer shut off and saving us about $60/month, we’ll be able to turn our attention to another big utility hog – the room over the garage. It’s zoned with our bedroom, bathroom, living room and study and it’s not very well insulated. Of course, the unheated garage beneath it doesn’t help and then there’s the fact that it faces northeast, where most of our windiest, coldest weather comes from. So, we’re going to get rid of it.

No, not by hiring a demolition expert. We’re going to have a heating technician cap off the pipe to the baseboard heater that goes to it. That way, we can just close the door to the room’s stairs and keep the heat in the rest of that zone. We don’t use the room in the winter anyway, only in the warmer months, so the cold won’t hurt it.

We’re going to do the same thing on a more drastic scale to the apartment house. We’re having an expert “weatherize” it by draining the pipes, filling them with food-grade antifreeze and doing whatever else needs to be done to get it through the winter without heat. Because its oil tank is outside, we have to use a higher grade of fuel for its furnace, so this should save us a bundle.

I’m sure there are other things that we’ll discover while we’re waging our campaign to make next winter less costly than this winter was. I’m thinking we could paint the outside of the basement wall black instead of white and get some passive solar heating going and Son is thinking of making a solar window heater he’s seen plans for.

What about your house? Did it cost you a bundle this winter because it isn’t weatherized? Are there things you could do, like drying clothes on a line instead of in a clothes dryer, that would help the environment as well as your budget? Or do you know someone who could use your help with projects like these? Maybe an elderly relative or neighbor or a single mom or dad who’s struggling to make ends meet. Whether you do it for yourself or someone else, it’s never too early to prepare for winter.