Showing posts with label Money Saving Tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Money Saving Tips. Show all posts

Saturday, September 19, 2025

Easy Homemade Laundry Soap Recipe Tutorial

Homemade Laundry Soap
I promised that I would share more money-saving tips to help you get through tight times. Laundry soap can be very expensive! This recipe makes several gallons and costs only pennies per wash and works very well. My original post can be found here.

Because some folks prefer to watch video tutorials, I finally made a video showing how simple making your own laundry soap can be! 


If you decide to make this easy and effective laundry soap recipe, I'd love to hear your thoughts! If you have your own recipe, please share with us in the comments. Thanks for stopping in!

Saturday, September 12, 2025

Reducing Household Expenses (Every Penny Counts)

In addition to cutting your food bill, household expenditures are a prime area you can reduce spending. I learned many of these cost-cutting hacks from my grandmother, who grew up during the Great Depression.

1.  Laundry -

Wear your clothes more than once before washing. I remember being mortified when my grandmother told me that she only had three dresses at a time during the depression. One for school, one for play, and one for church. She was tickled when I told her that she must have been stinky. She quickly assured me that only her dress for play got dusty and smelly. 

While I’m not suggesting that you wear dirty clothes or let your children run around looking like street urchins, consider wearing jeans, pajamas, and sweaters more than one time before washing.

Friday, September 11, 2025

10 Tips For Feeding Your Family On A Shoestring Budget

I won’t insult your intelligence by going into great detail about the obvious changes you can make to save money on your food bill each month. Clearly, eating food from restaurants is generally more expensive than cooking your own meals. If you’re reading this article, you’re likely on the right path and have already taken basic steps to reduce your food expenditures.

The simple principles that I’m going to share with you have helped me immensely in keeping my family’s food cost low. Do I always follow these guidelines? No. There are times when I fail miserably. However, when needed, I use these “rules” to get myself back on track.

1. Plan Menus -

I find that it’s easy to get off track and give into that fast food drive-through whenever I’m pressed for time and exhausted. We’ve all been there, right? Your day was long; the kids are starving; and you feel like your battery is in low power mode. Even worse, the roast that you’d bought last weekend is still in the freezer.

Wednesday, September 9, 2025

Drastic Changes Coming Our Way - Surviving 2020 and Beyond

This year has been one heck of a ride so far. Not only have we been confronted with a global pandemic, strange weather patterns, and political unrest; our economy is feeling the pain of lost jobs, food shortages, and general instability.

It’s a time of great upheaval - leaving most of us feeling unprepared for what may come. Many of us have little, if any, money saved. Our modern lifestyle isn’t conducive to storing food. We make multiple trips to the grocery store each week or buy take-away meals on the drive home from work.

We have become a throw-away society, accustomed to simply buying new when something becomes broken or a little worn out. Most people lack the general skills to make small repairs to their home appliances and vehicles.

On top of our careless stewardship of our money, we are encouraged to give in to self-gratification. Easy payment plans, a constant barrage of advertising for the next, latest, greatest things, and the ever-present message on social media to accumulate more has given us a sense of entitlement. We are told that we must have the best of the best to be good enough.

We’ve become a slave to our things, putting in 60-hour work weeks to pay for what we are told that we can’t live without. Families are disconnected and marriages suffer.

Tuesday, September 8, 2025

My New Normal - Walking Away From My Business to Home-school

I’m about to make some big changes in my life. I’m talking about the kind of changes that make me question my sanity...

For over six years, I’ve worked very hard building a reputable cleaning service. The business has been good to me. It has allowed me to comfortably support my large family, as a single mother, with flexibility and control over my schedule that I wouldn’t find working for another company. In addition, my little cleaning business has put me in front of many wonderful people who’ve enriched my life in ways that I hadn’t imagined.

Which makes what I’m about to do seem all the crazier…

I’m going to turn my business over to my young adult children or mostly walk away from it. The “or” is because they don’t really know if they want to take it over. Either way, I’m letting it go within a week’s time. And I’m doing this without a backup plan to replace the income.

Why the urgency, you ask?

The simple answer is this - my two youngest children (ages 10 and 15) will be attending school remotely from home.

Friday, May 18, 2025

How to Replace the Insulated Panel on Your Garage Door - CHEAP!

Title Image - Repair your garage panel cheaply.

Our bad doggies chewed the styrofoam insulation panel off our garage door during a rainy spring day. I had hoped to hide it from the man of the house, so I fixed it myself along with the help of my kiddos. It turned out better than I'd expected. I decided to make a video of the process just in case another desperate soul might need some direction. Watch to see how easy it really is to make this small repair.


Tuesday, February 20, 2025

DIY Weatherstripping - Free and Easy!

Free and Easy DIY Weatherstripping

Is the cold weather making your utility bills skyrocket? Use this quick, free, and EASY trick to seal up the cracks and gaps in your doors and windows!

This money-saving hack only requires trash bags or plastic shopping bags and a flexible straight edge, such as a spatula, or a credit card.  

Keep your family warm in a pinch with this super easy tip!

Thursday, September 1, 2025

Yes, You Can Plant Dried Beans From the Grocery Store and Grow Green Beans!

Check out our green beans which were planted from dried beans in the grocery store! Dried beans can be a very economical source of seed as you can see in this video -


Monday, August 29, 2025

Urban Garden Update August 2016 - It's a Jungle Out There!

Take a walk with me through our back yard jungle - I may rethink how closely I've planted our plots next year! 


San Antonio Style Tortilla Soup Recipe (Cheater Version)

In an effort to help out my kindred spirits, those poor overwhelmed souls who want to make home-cooked meals every night of the week but sometimes have more demands than time, I've decided to share some of my family's favorite "cheater" versions of my home cooking. Hands down, my San Antonio Style Tortilla Soup is the fastest from start to finish. If I crank my burner up to high, I can have dinner on the table in 15 minutes flat! That's impressive in my house!

One of the nicest things about this recipe is that (except for garnishments) the ingredients can be kept on hand in your pantry or long term food storage indefinitely. This makes the meal perfect for unexpected company or a backup dinner!

Saturday, August 27, 2025

Cheater Series - The Easiest Tortellini Bake in the World!

I'm so excited to share with you my next "Cheater" recipe! It's a delicious Tortellini bake that will knock your family's socks off. And like all my other Cheater series recipes, it has only a handful of ingredients and can be prepared in 5 - 10 minutes and on the table in less than an hour (45 minutes in my house - even with interruptions). 

Friday, August 19, 2025

Kick Your Cravings to The Curb With (Almost) Calorie Free Chips!

I love salty, crunchy snacks and I especially love chips and dips! 

Unfortunately, even healthy, wholesome chips can be very high in calories. When you are as short as me, you don't get a lot of calories to play with in a day and those extra calories really add up. 

I found the perfect way to get the crispy texture I crave without the extra calories. In fact, I would venture to say that by the time I'm done chewing these chips, I've probably burned more calories in the process of eating them than the chips themselves contain! Brilliant!!! 

The best part of this chip recipe is that it is so simple to make. With just two ingredients, it couldn't get any better in my book! Watch this video to learn more - 

Sunday, August 7, 2025

How to REALLY Remove Splat Hair Color (In About an Hour)


My eleven year old son wanted to dye his hair blue at the beginning of the summer, and since we are cool parents like that, we agreed. 

Little did I realize, it would be nearly impossible to completely remove the stain from his blond locks. I innocently thought that the dye would fade gracefully away over the summer. Oh, how wrong I was!  

Now that summer is nearly over and the school year is looming, he's decided to enter the sixth grade with "normal" looking hair. Since his hair hadn't faded completely, I knew that I'd have to use some sort of process to help remove the remaining stain. Naturally, I decided to consult the experts on YouTube! 

I found a ton of videos on removing Splat naturally. 

The most popular concoction seems to be a mixture (or variation of) crushed vitamin C tablets and dishwashing liquid. I'm all about natural so, with an open mind, I watched several how-to videos.

To my dismay, it seems that this method is only slightly effective at best and requires repeated applications (sometimes up to 20 times - at an hour each). Forget that!

Sunday, July 31, 2025

How We Grow a Lot of Food in a Small Space - The Garden Tour Video

Take a garden tour with me and see how we save space when we plant to get the most vegetables possible in our garden!

Friday, July 22, 2025

Summer Squash Hummus Recipe Video - Paleo Friendly!




Sometime around mid July the summer squash and zucchini starts to produce bucket loads! It's an amazing feeling to pick all of those free, beautiful veggies but it can be a little overwhelming. I have really struggled with ways to preserve squash and my family can only take roasted squash, grilled squash and steamed squash for so long before they start to turn their noses up.  

In my journey to preserve squash I've made squash pickles, squash relish, squash pancakes, squash bread, squash mock apple pie, and squash butter. The other day I decided to experiment a little and created this yummy squash hummus dip! Watch this video to see how easy it is to make this delicious dip -




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Friday, July 15, 2025

Make This Delicious Relish with Almost Any Vegetable - Video Tutorial



One of the most prolific vegetables in my garden is summer squash. Usually by late July, we have more yellow squash and zucchini than we know what to do with! A delicious way to preserve squash (or any vegetable) is to make relish. 

You will only need a handful of ingredients to make this yummy preserve to enjoy all season -

Thursday, July 14, 2025

You Can Make Pickles Out of Almost Any Vegetable!


One of my favorite ways to preserve my garden harvest or store buys is to make pickles! It's super easy to pickle a little or a lot using this basic brine recipe -  1 cup of vinegar (any type will do) to 1 cup of water plus 1 1/2 tablespoons of pickling or kosher salt (don't use iodized salt). 

You will only need some simple supplies which can be picked up at your local supermarket or online - For your convenience I've linked the supply list with items you can purchase online.

Sunday, July 10, 2025

How to Dehydrate Bananas - Easy and Healthy!


The dehydrator that I am using in this video is the Nesco FD-1040 1000-watt Gardenmaster Food Dehydrator.  It runs about $95 on Amazon and the link I connected has free shipping. The 1000 watts ensures that your food dehydrates as quickly and efficiently as possible and is best for larger batches. It comes with 4 trays and you can purchase additional trays for around $16 per two. To view the add on trays click this link -  Nesco TR-2 Add-A-Tray for FD-1010/FD-1018P/FD-1020, Set of 2.

If you are not ready to spend a $100 or more on a dehydrator there are other models available that are perfectly fine for dehydrating. 

Friday, July 8, 2025

Shopping for Deep Discounts on Groceries - No Coupons!



As promised, I took a trip to our local supermarket and filmed it to show you how I look for bargains. Normally I hit the stores between 8 and 9 a.m. and find a ton of great deals. Today I went at 11:30 a.m., so the bounty wasn't quite as amazing but you can still see how I search for cheap food for our family.

Tomorrow, I will show you how to dehydrate all of those bargain bananas that I found today!

Happy Food Saving, and please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this video! 

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