I wondered what economies we PCers could share amongst ourselves:

Here's a couple of mine:

1. On finishing a jar of pickled onions, I utilize the aromatic surplus vinegar on my chips. Those lovely oniony flavours seethe through my french fries a treat . . . scrum scrummy and a few pennies saved towards that extra beer.




2. To combat hairdressers' and barbers' increasing extortion of the proletariat, I now cut my own hair. Two mirrors, sharp pair of scissors, a little artistic flair and hey presto. Okay the back sometimes looks a bit of a turd , but who cares if they're laughing behind me? What I can't see doesn't hurt!

I've been living the frugal life for many years. Ever since being a bare-footed flower-toting hippie.

I make all my own tidbits. All sorts of pickles, jellies, wine, cheese, cakes, bread and home canned veg. From scratch. I'd distill my own liquor, too, if it weren't fer the revenewers.

He-who-must-be-obeyed shoots deer, rabbit, and squirrel. Not to mention bass crappie and trout.

Frugal maybe, but I bet those preserves, vegetables and bread etc are far tastier and wholesome than anything bought in a supermarket, Lavonne

Squirrels!  You eat squirrels?  What do they taste like?

Don't make me say it. :)

Squirrel - fried or stewed. Only when the little varmits get too numerous.

I guess with all the running and climbing squirrels do, the meat would be rather tender.  I'm wondering if it's chicken-like, or more of a dark meat. 

I was once offered some beetles -the variety of which I forget- oil-fried in a wok while rambling in the Far East.  But the memory's hazy now and I can't remember if I sampled a spoon. They certainly didn't look appetising!


A money-saving tip has been posted in another group:

"When I get to the end of a toilet paper roll, I use the cardboard insert to wipe my butt.
It's not as good as using corn cobs, but it does a sufficient job and saves money, too."

Thx again Pattie :-)

No thanks! I'll stick to using the cardboard tubes for cat toys, Christmas decorations and doop-de-doops.

I have a squirrel-eating story.  If you're interested I'll tell you.

Frugal to me means don't spend so much money, so that's how I'm frugal.

c

I remember eating squirrels, and rook pie, during the war, and nettles were a substitute for spinach. Some, unkowingly, ate cats, as when skinned they appeared the same as rabbits, though with a slight blueish tinge to the flesh.  Whale meat was also on the menu, and horse meat. The latter very tough, as only horses past their working life were slaughtered. We didn't get to eat rats, as was common at sea or in sieges in older times. As is demonstrated by culinary favorites in many parts of the world, there are a multitude of possibilities.

Cheers

milner

Wonderful memories Milner! OK let's hear the story Cher.

Oh it will just make you sick.  milner's tales of rats and cats almost outdid me.

My ex-husband skinned a squirrel and hung it on a clothesline when I was pregnant with my first baby and had morning sickness.  Then called me out to the back to see it.  Not only was I shocked but it made me SO sick, that later when he made squirrel stew for family and friends, I couldn't do anything but throw-up all night back in the bedroom.  To this day, I can barely even think about a squirrel much less be around cooked squirrel.  Can't bare the thought.  And also can't bear the thought of eating anything wild.  Now and then I can eat venison, but only as chili or barbecue.

cheryl

Oh the trials of Motherhood!

changing the subject swiftly:


Summer being in the air, my thoughts are turning to tottering further afield for my nightly gargle.  But aren't beer prices dear in town-centre pubs?  Having tried smuggling my own cans into the pub in a small suitcase and doing the under-table quick pull and pour technique and been forcibly ejected - bloody CCTV!  It's omnipresent nowadays - I have come up with a new ploy.  My friend Roy, a cleaner at the local hospital, has pilfered me a pair of 3 pint catheter bags* from the urology dept.  I shall be strapping them on the next fine evening, filling them with supermarket bitter, extending the penile tube to an oral one and . . . cheers!

Summer in the air, my thoughts are also turning to romance.  I thought this year along with my new courting trousers, I might get rid of the gray hair.  But isn't hair dye expensive?  I know shoe polish doesn't have the same variation of shades, but dark tan is close and to avoid pillow-soiling, I'm going to seal my hair afterwards with a clear auto-varnish.  So job done. & cheaply.  Here's to the summer!


(*used catheter bags from the bin, I must stress. I don't condone stealing from hospitals)

Probably, the only thing I buy new is underwear.  The used market has always helped
my family not just get by, but thrive. Purchasing much of our needs second hand has
left us money for vacations and the ability to spend on special occasions that arise.  This
has been the most effective method of cutting costs for us.

However, it troubles me to see that what was once second hand, is now third or forth. Our
economic downturn has seen the emergence of a consignment industry. People who before
donated their surplus items, now profit from them. Consequently, the merchandise that now
ends up at thrift stores is of less quality and poor condition.

I have tried many things over the years, canning, coupon clipping, sewing.....but many of those
methods have a time investment that when factored in.....sort of cancels the actual savings.
Naturally, if one enjoys the activities, then time is not an issue for them.  I enjoyed sewing, but
I couldn't say it saved me money.  It cost more to buy the material new than buying a comparable
item used.

I think this was supposed to be a funny commentary.  I guess I don't joke about money.

Interesting topic, especially in these times. (And Desiree, I enjoyed your post.)

Good times or bad, I try to live by Thoreau's dictum in Walden: "Simplify, simplify." My car is 15 years old, a Corolla, and although it looks horrible (great deterrent to theft), it drives wonderfully, and I have no plans to rid myself of it until it refuses to budge. As to other possessions, I am constantly surveying what I use and what just sits and adds clutter to my life. I employ the "use it or lose it" rule in my life: If I have not used something within a year or so, I look at auctioning it off (thank you, eBay!) or throwing it away. Whenever I think now of adding some thing in my life, I ask what purpose it will serve, for how long, and I ask how difficult it will be to rid myself of it when the time comes. You would be surprised at how little you actually need to live and be happy. Take a walk around to look at the things in your "possession" now and ask how many of them you have used or even looked at in the last year. Make an imaginary pile of all of that stuff. Now throw it all away in your head. How much lighter would you be?

It is all too easy to become not only encumbered by our debt and our possessions but absolutely imprisoned by these as well. I loved Desiree's comment about being able to take vacations because of the thrift she exercises, for in her example we see clearly the advantage that thrift allows--the advantage of freedom to do things that, in the end, are truly important and meaningful.

I could go on and on about this subject, but I'll say just this: when many of us think back to the "happiest times" of our lives, we return to a period of few possessions, few commitments, little or no debt--in short, a period of freedom. The challenge is to maintain that state throughout life.

Ah, yes. As summer approaches, it might just be a good time to revisit Walden, a book I have not read in years. Summer is the perfect time for it.

---

Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so - called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.

--Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

and from the great final chapter:

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/thoreau/ghindex.html