What Would William Morris Do?

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” 
-William Morris, Textile and Wallpaper Designer, Artist, Socialist. 1834-1896.
 
If your house caught on fire, would you be able to list all your possessions for the insurance company? Most of us would be hard pressed to name everything in [...]

The Dilemma of Wallet vs. Idealism

When frugality and green living intersect, it’s a thing of beauty. The perfect bike commute on a spring afternoon, lowering your electricity usage with CFL’s, growing your own tomatoes. These actions not only save you money, but also help to decrease your environmental impact. No dilemma here.
What about when making the right choice for our [...]

“Waste No Food Challenge” – An Update

I wrote a few days back about how I have an embarrassing tendency to let perfectly good food go to waste. I’m so good about being the queen of frugal with my grocery purchases, but it doesn’t take Allen Greenspan to see that it’s not exactly good money management to allow your leftovers to rot [...]

How I Gave Great Gifts Yet Bought Nothing New

When I started doing The Compact, (international movement to buy nothing new) back in January 2007, I worried about what I would do for gift giving. It’s one thing to replace shiny new packaged goods with secondhand items for yourself, but it’s entirely different when it’s for your father-in-law. Surprisingly, it was pretty much a non-issue. [...]

Cheap Eats – Katy’s Black Bean Burgers

Even if you are bound and determined to spend as little money as possible, you still have to eat. Sure, there are a number of “Freegans” who are happy to haul still edible food stuffs from dumpsters, but most of us will not be choosing that route and do have to open our wallets in [...]

“The Complete Tightwad Gazette” – A Review

“I have also understood that one family making a supreme effort to live entirely without any harm to the environment makes little impact. But the collective effort of the majority of the population to make smaller, seemingly insignificant changes can make a difference.”
-Amy Dacyczyn, “The Complete Tightwad Gazette”

Most of the time I am satisfied to [...]

5 Ways For Pain-Free Electricity Savings

Last year I started becoming very interested in lowering our utility usage (OK- bills) as much as possible. The process was surprisingly easy. Nothing that we did required any great investment, see for yourself.

We swapped out the incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL’s) throughout the house. The prices have drastically decreased on [...]

Why am I not eating my leftovers? – My “Waste No Food” Challenge

Not being wasteful is very important to me. I bring my own bags to the grocery store, I bike to the library, I recently even darned a pile of socks – you get the picture. So why, why, why am I wasting so much food as leftovers?!
Maybe it’s because my containers are opaque and I appear to [...]

The Rule of Halves

How would you like to get 50% off many of your household goods? It’s easy and it’s called ”The Rule of Halves.”
By using half the amount of a product that you normally would, you are not only getting a terrific half-off deal, but you are essentially decreasing by 50% the amount of packaging. It’s only having [...]

Let’s Play The “Lower Our Credit Card Interest Rate” Polka

Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes and credit card offers. We all receive them (and then hopefully shred them). Carrying a credit card balance is less than ideal, but statistically most of us do it. Even if you don’t carry a balance on your card, having the lowest interest rate possible is still worth pursuing. 
 
I [...]