Our Efforts of Conservation and Savings
I’m sure I haven’t spent much time on this topic, but considering the recent post over at Get Rich Slowly about
How Low Can You Go? Cutting Back to Minimum I was a little inspired to spend a few moments on this.
I have to admit though, that my wife is the brains and brawn behind much of this. Here’s just a few things we have done over the past year to save some money and try to be more eco friendly.
- CFLs - Yes, those good old compact florescent light bulbs. If you haven’t looked at these lately, they aren’t your father’s CFLs. There is a much wider variety out now that have a much softer light and you can’t really tell you’ve got a florescent light in. Plus, I LOVE that I haven’t had to change a light bulb in ages.
- Cleaning Spray- My wife has found some recipies using regular old white vinegar (which is amazingly cheap) some essential oils (for scent) and some other stuff that I don’t remember to make a very effective general household cleaner. She uses it for sinks, counter tops, floors and all kinds of other stuff. Trust me, it’s MUCH cheaper than the $4 bottle of stuff you buy at the store.
- Laundry Soap - Another home brew concoction my wife found a recipe for. She uses Borax and Washing Soda to make powdered laundry soap at a fraction of the store cost. It’s also more powerful because it doesn’t have all the fillers you find in most detergents. Having had a college instructor who was once a divisional director for a large conglomerate that made laundry detergent, having fillers makes people need to put in more which makes them feel better about the cleaning. Evidently our psyche is such that we think more soap is better, even if a little will do the job.
- Curtains - My wife is nearly finished with this project as well. The curtains in our bedroom for the last 2 years have been old bed sheets (attractive I know). She had bought some fabric and made camo curtains for the boy’s room, but ours has still been lacking. She dug out her boxes of fabric that have always been intended for quilting and has pieced together some beautiful curtains in her favorite colors. She just needs to put on a backing to help block the light (she bought that yesterday when the fabric store had a 40% off 1 item sale) and then we’ll be all set with some wonderful custom curtains with stuff we mainly already owned.
- Garden - It’s amazing what you can grow in such a small space in your backyard with a few bucks worth of seeds. Our only fertilizer was a bag of crushed up, lump charcoal we mixed in when tilling the soil. We were awash with wonderful fresh tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Our counter top is also getting pretty crowded with acorn squash as well. Oh, and I should mention, we rarely had to water the garden (though we aren’t on a meter, so it doesn’t technically effect our bill if we do). We’d like to get a rain barrel attached to the garage so we can water with that next year as well. To boot, we did almost zero weeding and things still grew just fine.
All little things you can do that not only save you a few bucks here and there, but they can also save the environment a bit as well.
