Frugal Friday Week #41
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Here on the blog, I post a lot of how-tos and recipes, but I’ve often thought that it might be even more helpful for my readership to get a better glimpse inside of what my simple/homestead/from scratch/frugal life really looks like. This series was started in 2023 to provide more of a peek into our regular everyday life and how we put things together.
In 2024, I’m changing things up a bit to fit better with our community here at Little House Living. Here’s what I’d like to do!
The format of Frugal Friday will be changing a little. Yes, I will still show some pictures and things from our everyday lives, but this blog isn’t just about me; it’s about the community that we’ve created here! So from here on out, Frugal Friday will also feature your frugal tips and everyday things as well.
Each week, I need you to go to the Forum and post in the most recent Frugal Friday post about your frugal and simple life for the week. Make sure you share a picture with it! Each week when I post Frugal Friday here on the blog, I will feature a handful of the posts from that thread on the forum. I will also use Random.org to select one of the posts to receive a prize for posting. This might be a great book, a homesteading tool, or anything else I can find that we love using.
Sorry if that sounds a bit confusing for now; I promise it will make sense soon!
My Frugal Week (and Holidays)
I’ve taken a break from Frugal Friday in the last couple of weeks to enjoy the holidays with friends and family, but we haven’t taken a break from frugal life.
We arrived back in South Dakota for the holidays but stopped in Denver before coming home to get groceries while we were here. I spent a total of $500 on all of our groceries for the entire 4-5 weeks. I didn’t think that was too bad for all 5 of us, and that literally included everything (including meat!).
We made a roast for our Christmas dinner. We’ve also made bean soup, Honey and Garlic Chicken drumsticks, hamburgers, spaghetti, and other suppers. Only once did we stop and get frozen pizzas when coming home late from appointments one day. Breakfasts have been french toast, yogurt and granola, omelets, scrambled eggs…all our usuals. Lunches have been leftovers with the occasional grilled cheese or quesadilla mixed in for something different. Simple things, but they fill us up!
Other than that we haven’t done much besides visit friends and family plus catch up on appointments since being back in South Dakota. We are looking forward to making plans for the near future, but as of now, we are still in limbo, so we just live and make do. 🙂
New Blog Posts I Wrote This Week
- Homemade Cheez Its – I updated this recipe that I’ve had on the blog for many years. These are SO good!
- Copycat Sweet Onion Sauce – Yes this is the same as the sauce you used to get at Subway. There are so many fun ways to use it at home!
- Homesteading Supplies from the Dollar Store – Ideas here on what to buy from the dollar store for your homestead if that’s all you have nearby.
- Homemade Diaper Rash Cream – This is probably my favorite DIY recipe I have on the site. It works wonderfully for many kinds of rashes!
- How to Barter – I updated this post because I think knowing how to barter is such an important skill right now.
- 2 Ingredient Zit Zapper Sticks – This is another easy DIY project that you can make any time!
- What To Do With Old Jeans – I try and keep the waste to a minimum at our home so here’s a brand new post I wrote this week on what you can do with your old jeans.
- Free Printable Sewing Patterns – I updated this list to reflect what’s still available. There are lots of good common household patterns here.
- Old Fashioned Goulash – This is such a yummy, easy, and thrifty supper to make.
- Cream Cheese Spinach Dip – This makes a yummy snack!
Deals I Found This Week
These Blue Aquatainers are 32% off. This makes them a really good price (plus free shipping with Prime or orders over $35) because I paid more than that for them a few years ago. I use these for our emergency water storage and they’ve come in handy many times. I have one per member of our family.
I updated the deals on Auguson Farms Freeze-Dried Foods on this page this morning. There are a few worth grabbing!
I noticed that Pleasant Hill Grain has some Berkey Systems on their sale page. If you’ve wanted one, this might be a good way to get it. We have the Royal Berkey size (for 5 of us) and have to fill it about every other day.
Azure has juice-grade apples for just over $16 for an entire case. These are not only good for juicing but for making applesauce as well.
Your Frugal Tips/Life This Week
This is where your post and picture could appear next week!
Post over on THIS THREAD on the forum. Next week, I’ll select several posts to feature here on the blog, and one person will even win a set of my favorite measuring spoons just for sharing!
What have you been up to this week? How did you stay frugal over the holidays? Free free to comment here AND on the forum!
Merissa Alink
Merissa has been blogging about and living the simple and frugal life on Little House Living since 2009 and has internationally published 2 books on the topic. You can read about Merissa’s journey from penniless to freedom on the About Page. You can send her a message any time from the Contact Page.
Thankful that it senna that everything is going well. I enjoy hearing about your journey, and getting inspiring tips. I got the impression you sold your homestead, but it seems like you still have it to go to? That sounds like it could be a good strategy when you’re done with this chapter of your ministry.
We aren’t sharing the details of that part of our lives at this moment. Hopefully we will have an update in a couple of months. South Dakota will always be our home since that’s where our family is.
As long as you keep the kitty pictures!! lol
I will keep going with some pictures! For some reason I only had kitty pictures on my phone that I took recently. 🙂
As we’re getting back to our normal routine after the holidays and the company, I’ve been focusing on our energy usage. We had a lot of company over December (it’s easier to count the days we didn’t have company) and none of them live off-grid. Our main source of electricity is solar, with a back-up generator. The dark winter months have a huge affect on our fuel bill if there’s no thought to conservation as we have to use the generator to charge our batteries. In addition, having so many people in our little cabin creates a space issue when I want to hang dry my clothes by the fire instead of using my electric dryer. I also didn’t realize how much TV and internet ‘gridders’ watch/use in a day, how often they wash/dry clothes, how many lights they want on when not even in the cabin, etc. All these things consume a LOT of battery usage. My mom is up at the ranch today and handed me our December fuel bill and I almost cried. It was 4X our normal amount. The last of our company left Monday and I’ve been re-focused on keeping our battery percentage maintained without the use of our generator. The clothes are drying in front of the fire, I only wash dishes once/day (okay, maybe every other day), and I haven’t been to the store in over a week which is surprising with the amount of food we went through. It will take me several months to make up for the holidays, but I will live frugally and do it.
Just a little FYI, Berkey no longer sells their black filter elements. So the systems are all on back order, or out of stock, thru 3rd party sellers, like the one linked in this post. I’ve been on the waiting list thru Berkey since May. They finally emailed me about a month ago offering a competitor brand, that doesn’t filter as many things out.
Just thought I’d let you know. Personally I’ve decided to try my luck with a comparable product on Amazon and see if it works nearly as well.
Bummer, they were in stock from Pleasant Hill Grain when I posted. I’ve been trying out some of the competitive brands but haven’t written my reviews of the filters yet.
Dear Merissa and Family,
Happy New Year! I’d love to hear about your life in the mission field, the projects you work on, the people you meet, etc. How do your kids help? I also love seeing your shopping posts as you travel. I’m jealous there aren’t any Amish stores near me. Looking forward to more of your adventures!
Great to hear you were home for the holidays! This week we tried several “scratch” recipes. I tried to cook from our freezer instead of shopping. My favorite meal was the French dip sandwiches made from a very cheap cut of meat. I roasted it at home instead of buying deli meat for our sandwiches. The meat was originally purchased to grind for hamburger but got shoved into the freezer when life got too busy to get the work done. We moved my SIL back home from the care center where she had been staying, (many reasons but that is another post). To save trips to the store and to make use of what we have already bought we have started your annual pantry challenge early. Sadly, I did not get the bread for the sandwiches made and I went to our local market (an old general store turned Mexican market) and bought some Mexican rolls, and they were not frugal at ALL! $6.99 for 5 very dry and unusable for dipping, rolls. Because the roast was a good size there would be extra, so I went ahead and made that French bread for the next day! I used about a third of the roast for the “crummy” sandwiches and another third for vegetable beef soup the next night. It was so tender and delicious I might use the other roast in the freezer for the same thing! Only this time I will bake the bread first 😉 On a lighter note we baked sandwich bread and cinnamon raisin bread for the week. Sadly, my hound dog couldn’t wait for a piece of bread and stole the sandwich loaf off of the counter 🙂 It is Sunday, and more bread is baking. We took down all holiday decorations and focused on getting organized for tax season. Most of our meals this past week were simple, sausage and noodles with a veggie, spaghetti with meatballs, I did bake meatballs for the next month last Sunday. We are doing pretty good at using up leftovers using the one day a week method. I am pretty sure I read about that on your blog, and decided the chickens get enough without the leftovers too! Have a great week and keep posting those recipes!!!