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Recently I encountered an article called “Things we do NOT spend money on,” on the ModernFImily personal finance blog. Although we have some differences – they have a small child and universal healthcare, and they don’t drink soda – this is a post I could have written.
That’s because it’s the kind of thing I’ve been writing about, for pay and for my own site, since 2007:
How to have the best life you can on the money you currently have, without losing your dignity or your hopes for the future.
How not to overpay even when times are good, in order to make your money go further in terms of helping others
How to edit the noise in your life so you can focus on what matters to you personally.
Their post inspired me to make my own, and to invite you guys to chime in with your experiences. So here goes, divided into a few broad categories.
Food and drink
Broth/soup stock. Thanks to the boiling bag, we have the most amazing soups and stews. Since these bases are made from scraps that would otherwise be thrown away, they’re free – which means that by adding a couple of cut-up vegetables (some of which we’ve grown ourselves), a bit of seasoning and maybe some leftover meat, we get a meal for two plus leftovers for practically nothing.
Coffee out. Luckily, I never touch the stuff. When DF was working, he made do with the office coffeepot; now that he’s retired, he fills a travel mug when off to do errands or go skiing. When I see what some people spend each week on coffee I think, “That could have been chocolate. Or retirement.” (To be clear: I don’t begrudge anyone a treat, as long as they’ve budgeted for it. But as I noted in this article for Policy Genius, a coffee habit can really siphon away the bucks – especially if you link a card to your bank account.)
Frozen dinners. These work for a lot of people, including my daughter. They’re just not for us.
Microwave popcorn. We have a microwave corn-popping bowl and buy kernels in bulk at Costco. Soooo much cheaper – and no fake butter that leaves your kitchen smelling like New Jersey.
Yogurt. I make my own Greek-style yogurt in a glass casserole dish set atop a warming tray. The cost is anywhere from 99 cents to $1.79 for two quarts of the stuff. (The whey that drains out gets used for cooking projects.) When it starts to smell beery, I know it’s time to buy a new container of yogurt to use as starter. But we use up the bad/beery yogurt, too, to make a really good chocolate cake.
What we wear
New clothes. We can both go literal years without buying replacement duds. He’s retired and I work at home in my freelancer’s three-piece suit: sweatpants, T-shirt and bathrobe. When we do need an article of clothing it almost always comes from a thrift shop or yard sale. Not everyone can get away with this, but those who can will save a flat fortune.
Professional clothing. Again, not an issue with us. I find it very freeing.
Jewelry. Another thing that’s just not for me. I don’t even have pierced ears.
Purses. The last purse I bought was back in 2001, when I worked at the Chicago Tribune. It came from a thrift shop. The last time I used the purse was…I can’t remember.
Personal care/grooming
Mani-pedis. Some people love these. I’ve never been so inclined.
Haircuts (for him). DF has a Flowbee in the basement. Bless his heart.
Subscription boxes. Cosmetics, clothing and the like can come to your house each month. They can’t come to ours, because we won’t let them.
Makeup. Neither of us wears it.
Hearth and home
Cleaning supplies. Here at Casa Frugal we mop the floors with warm water and splash of bleach. We clean surfaces and tubs with vinegar and water, tackle soap scum with a 50/50 mix of vinegar and blue Dawn dish liquid, and clean the sinks with cleanser we pick up at the city landfill’s “household chemicals” drop-off (sometimes we find bleach there, too).
Dryer sheets. The scent triggers my asthma. Fortunately we don’t have hard water, so our clothes come out just fine without dryer sheets or fabric softener. We rarely use the dryer anyway, preferring to use the clothesline or to put our laundry on drying racks.
Kitchen gadgets. We use the heck out of our slow cooker but have decided against an Instant Pot because we’re not in a hurry. We also have a toaster oven (more versatile than a toaster), a coffee grinder and a blender, and that’s about it. No avocado slicer, immersion blender, veggie spiralizer or any other super-specialized gadgetry. Those things are all fine if you want them. We don’t.
Garden starts. Most of our plants come from seed that DF saved from the previous year’s crops. (Sometimes we do buy a pack of seeds here and there, but usually we don’t.) Since a four-pack of starts can run as much as $5, the savings are considerable.
Furniture. Our home is very casually appointed. In the past seven years we’ve spent $10 on an office chair (church charity shop) and $150 on a recliner (with a Groupon deal). Home décor can be amazing and artistic. But we just don’t much care.
Tech and stuff
Video games/systems. Not our cup of tea.
Frequent tech upgrades. I replace my laptop every eight or 10 years – but that’s a business expense. After putting it off for years I finally got a smartphone – and I don’t even want to think about replacing it. I bought a headset a couple of years ago in order to be interviewed for a couple of podcasts; as long as it works, I’ll keep it.
Smart home. I can see where this would be helpful to some folks, especially if they want to age in place. And we might eventually find ourselves needing to say, “Alexa, turn out the kitchen lights” because it’s just too far to walk due to joint pain or whatever. For now, we’re avoiding having a home that’s just this side of sentient. #SkyNet
Security system. Having a doorbell camera could also come in handy if mobility becomes an issue. That way we could opt not to answer the door if it appears to be a salesperson, or say, “No, thanks, we’re not interested in a religious pamphlet” via the intercom. Right now it’s not necessary, especially since someone is always home.
Personal services
Housecleaner. Even when DF was working full-time (and I was working at home) we cleaned the place ourselves. With just the two of us it’s easy to keep things tidy. Sharing the housework is one way to create a true domestic partnership.
Garbage pickup. We generate almost no trash, due to bulk buying and recycling. We get at least one free dump pass per year, when he pays the property tax, and other free passes have come our way. The city stages several “free dump days” each year, too.
Lawn/snow service. We have a lawnmower, a string trimmer and a man who’s outraged at the idea of paying someone to mow his yard. He did finally buy a snowblower (on sale, of course) but that’s still much more affordable than hiring a guy. At some point we’ll likely have to break down and pay someone; we plan to ask Orion, the free-range kid.
Car wash. A couple of times I’ve seen DF take the most-often-used vehicle through the car wash in spring, because it’s begrimed with road salt and Alaska breakup slush but it’s still too early to set up the hose and wash it himself. Mostly, he waits.
Staying entertained
Sports events. No thanks! Less-than-zero interest. We do buy tickets to the opera, the symphony or theater, to support the local arts community. Sometimes, however, I’m hired to review a show – and that means two free tickets.
Books. I get a free e-book every month because I’m an Amazon Prime member (clicking on that link will let you sign up for a free 30-day trial). People give me books as gifts (always a good choice!) and I’ve found some great reads at the dollar store during visits to my daughter. We do buy books, but they’re often from Title Wave, a local used bookstore. Sometimes we don’t have to pay out of pocket thanks to credit we’ve amassed by turning in books we no longer want.
Cable/streaming services. We still don’t have a television, and that still works out for us. Sooner or later somebody will offer us a TV so they can upgrade, and maybe at that point we’ll say “yes, thanks,” and take advantage of the shows and movies available on Amazon Prime Video. I’m also interested in the free version of Peacock TV, so that DF can enjoy shows like “Parks and Recreation” and “The Good Place” with me. That is, when we’re both predisposed to watch.
Music. We listen to KLEF-FM, the local classical music station, and to CDs, tapes and albums we already own. At some point in the past couple of years DF used some of that Title Wave credit to buy some new-to-him CDs, and in the past month he paid cash for both volumes of “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” Since then he’s been going through one or two fugues per day, which entertains us both: him in the playing, me in the listening.
Money-related costs
Credit card debt. We never spend more than we can pay off in a month – which is easy, since we don’t buy that much. At our ages we don’t need much, whereas younger people are still acquiring household goods, buying new clothes and shoes for their kids, and the like.
Loans/mortgages. Don’t have them! Thank goodness. If we need to replace a vehicle someday, it will be done with cash.
ATM fees. Luckily, we’re never far from one of the branches of our credit union. And again: We don’t buy all that much, which means we never need a sudden infusion of cash.
Miscellaneous expenses
Pet food and supplies. There’s a doghouse in the yard, and a dog run around the apple trees, but no dog. No cat. No birds, hamsters, snakes or fish. We both grew up with pets and DF had them as an adult, but at this point we don’t want to be responsible for other living creatures.
Dry cleaning. No professional clothing = no dry cleaning. Yay!
Car payment. DF’s method is simple: Buy a Subaru and drive it until the wheels fall off. One of the Subarus in our driveway is 20 years old. The other one is five years old, a former loaner car bought from a dealership – and paid for in cash.
Home repairs/upkeep. We’re not stupid: Certain items, such as furnace inspections, are done by paid professionals. But paint touch-ups, caulking, faucet replacement, toilet repair and other handyfolk chores get done by us. Until last year DF swept the chimney himself; this time around, he hired the company that installed the fireplace insert to clean the flue and also inspect it via camera. (It passed.)
Gifts for each other. We usually don’t do this, because we have everything we need and most of what we want. In previous years we’ve purchased symphony and opera season tickets as gifts for ourselves, in keeping with our support-the-arts goal. Occasionally there are exceptions, but mostly we opt out.
No doubt there are more
It would take quite a while to list every single thing we don’t buy. But the above give some idea of how we frugal-hack our way through life.
Understand: It’s a damned good life. DF and I are happier than just about anyone we know. Our financial stewardship contributes to that happiness. Every time we sit down to a meal that’s “prepared and shared with love,” as DF puts it, we’re nourished in the abstract as well as the here-and-now.
When we take walks to enjoy summer’s all-too-brief reign, it costs us only a fraction of shoe leather. Quiet evenings spent reading side-by-side or gazing at the fire on a winter night are a reminder of how much we enjoy each other’s company.
As we tend the garden, from seed-planting to harvest and preservation, we take pleasure in knowing exactly what is (and isn’t) in our food. It’s also been a joy to show his grandchildren where that food comes from, and allow them to make free with the peas, raspberries, strawberries and greenhouse cucumbers.
The frugal life is not an endless round of joyless self-denial. By saving where we can, we can spend where we want. Generally it turns out that our wants are fairly simple. But they make us happy, and they’re paid for in cash. We sleep better that way.
How about it, folks: What do you save money on by doing for yourself or deciding to go without?
Related reading:
- Surviving and thriving on $12,000 a year: The reboot
- Living ‘poor’ and loving it
- Scenes from a frugal weekend
- Extreme Frugality: Waste nothing edition
Well, Donna, I DO drink coffee (bought on Amazon for $5 with a swag bucks gift card.) Thank you for turning me on to swag bucks all those years ago! This large canister lasts me over 3 months. And while reading your comment above “fake butter that leaves your kitchen smelling like New Jersey” I laughed so hard that I almost choked on said coffee. Only you, being from New Jersey could make such a comment!It reminded me of when my now adult children were much younger and we lived in Philly and they called it Filthadelfia. Things I don’t spend money on: carbonated beverages, booze, eggs (my son has chickens and lives close by),subscription boxes, make up, car payments (drive a 2005 Jeep,) ATM fees, music. For music I just look on free You Tube for whatever Spanish music strikes my fancy on a particular day. I also just got a smart phone for $50, works just fine and free whatsapp allows me to call friends and family all over the world for my favorite 4 letter word (FREE). I have an individual plan with Consumer Cellular for $25 month with an AARP discount of 5%. So what do I spend my “saved savings” on? Yep, TRAVEL!!!
We’d sometimes say, “It smells like Philadelphia in here.”
I forgot to mention hooch! Except that while I don’t drink, DF will buy a bottle at Costco. It lasts a long time. Every couple of years he’ll make his own beer and store it in bottles in the basement.
And your friends in the DR are very glad that you save your bucks to come visit them.
That comment “could have been chocolate” made me laugh so hard I almost spit out my coffee (that I made at home). I recently gave up my weekly coffee from a famous chain because the rewards program didn’t make sense anymore. Saving more than just the price of a “fancy” coffee but the pennies in gas costs for driving there.
I had been doing without lawn care, having opted for a used riding lawnmower. Saved a ton in paying the landscaping/lawn care services. I went through three such mowers, and countless new batteries and all kinds of repairs on them for almost a decade, before I gave up. The repair expenses just weren’t worth it. According to what I read online, even brand new name brand riding mowers don’t last long. I am not physically able to do a lot of yard work or to manually mow this large lawn with a walk behind model even a self-propelled one. So 10 years ago, I planted a huge swath of English ivy springs under the big oak tree, and the ivy is now full and thick and has taken over one whole side of the front yard. No mowing! I’m going to similarly do some frugal landscaping with ground cover or makeshift patios in other areas. I’m paying a neighborhood guy to mow, he doesn’t charge much, but the less lawn I have, the better. Lesson learned: what was easy in your 50’s gets harder the older you get.
1. We don’t spend money on paying someone to cut our lawn or shovel snow, although like your DF we are considering a snow blower. Our driveway isn’t huge…fits three cars, max…but in our 60s we are both starting to feel it after shoveling.
2. We don’t spend money on entertainment other than the TV we watch with our wifi which we pay for anyway for internet connection. We cut the cable cord over a year ago and have never looked back. We read library books and a few secondhand books we pick up at indy book stores or yard sales. We are lucky enough to live on a cove of a lake which has an amazing amount of birds including bald eagles. It’s too shallow to swim here but the peacefulness is nice. We spend a lot of time out here enjoying each other’s company and a cup of tea.
3. DH is retired and I still work but my work is 4 miles away so we don’t have to spend a lot of our gas money on work commutes.
4. We rewear our clothes, old as they may be. I don’t dress up for work as it is in a deli/small grocery store so there is no problem with not dressing “professionally”. Dungarees and a t shirt suffice. DH stays in his “comfy” clothes (sweat pants, t shirts, sweatshirts) most days.
4. I go grocery shopping once a month at the cheapest store in our vicinity, about 6 miles away. At age 61, I’m quite sick of food shopping and prefer to do one big trip and be done. I do pick up milk and sometimes bread in between once a month trips.
5. We walk for exercise instead of belonging to gyms. It’s more meditative anyway and we have lots of trails near us within walking distance to two trailheads.
4. I just put out my fall decorations and am happy to say I’ve had them all for eons with the exception of a cute sugar pumpkin I bought for $1.79.
I know there’s more but those are the everyday ones. Thanks everyone and Donna, for sharing yours.
We live in a fifth-wheel…by choice. That saves a LOT of money. Who knows; we may buy a piece of land or a small cabin, eventually. But for right now, the fifth-wheel is working out just fine. (Donna, I’ll write a post on this for you, if you’re interested.)
I do all my own writing, but thanks for offering. If you write it for your own site, however, message me and I’ll link to it in a future Monday Miscellany column.
I don’t spend money on finance charges on our credit cards since I pay all cards in full every month.
I like reading your column for inspiration but enjoy some of the items on your list.
However, I’ve been very frugal during my working life. In retirement I allow myself some luxuries I used to deny myself.
Monthly pedicures and house cleaning are my treat. I make my own coffee, popcorn, cheese, and sometimes sausage.
We are getting to be better cooks so meals out are rare these days.
As always, you are my frugal role model.
Don’t deny yourself those treats! Budget for them and then enjoy the heck out of them.
“That could have been chocolate. Or retirement.” Loved it! Reminds me of what some people spent on breakfast, each and every day, when I worked for the IRS in downtown Baltimore, MD. And we were making minimal money!
Have two immersion blenders, and will not give up. One bought on sale and the other with points from completing surveys years ago. Cleaning is a breeze: immerse in a half cup of water and turn it on.
I do splurge on crockpot liners, so I do not have to pick up the crock and drop it. You can put the food in the liner, close with a twist tie, and freeze it. When ready to cook, remove from freezer, take off twist tie and plop bag and all into crockpot. Refreeze leftovers in the same bag, but do not recook in the same bag. Saves the cost of a ziploc bag for two, and or washing a dish.
Credit cards are paid in full each month, so no interest charges. Nice to be able to finally do that. Mortgage paid in full; taxes and insurance are saved for monthly. Still working on Parent Plus Loan, but did move it to a credit union (at a higher interest rate) to save on my sanity but not dealing with Navient. Worth the extra money, as more is going to principal than interest, saving me years of payments.
Spend very little on fresh veggies while garden is producing. At present am spending very little on canned items as neighbor has twice this summer put out large boxes of canned items her kids have not cooked for themselves. What we and others did not take, we transported to the food bank for her.
Frozen dinners are out; not enough food to fill you up unless you eat two and no coupons to cover the expense.
Food shopping: I buy what is on sale and plan the meals around that. Leftovers = planned overs that are repurposed into something else.
Spending very little on gas every day due to retirement. No more $100 + per wk just to get back and forth to work. Reduced mileage has resulted in lower car insurance bills. (This might take a year to be effective.)
Spending very little on paper towels as have been cutting up spouse’s worn out t-shirts for cleaning purposes.
Make my own coffee, unless I win or am gifted a gift card. Will get the large coffee for $1 from McDonalds, as it is good coffee in my area, if the line is not too long. Usually also make my own unsweetened iced tea. Lately having a hard time finding orange pekoe tea bags.
Spending almost no money on spices and seasonings; took inventory and was amazed at what I already had. Only things I am replacing are salt, pepper, dried/dehydrated onions, Italian seasoning, and vanilla.
Rarely spend money on car washes, as that is what rain is for. Heavy use of road salt sometimes changes this.
We do spend wayyyy too much on TV, cable, internet, phone services but options are limited in my area and husband is a TV addict.
Gym membership is a very reduced senior citizen rate; all you have to do is ask for it!
Looking forward to seeing further tips here!
Nancy,
Great idea about crock pot! I am going to be trying that real soon! Thanks, Ann
Last summer one of the Buy Nothing folks advertised an estate sale that had several bins full of canned foods up for grabs for free. Only rule was that you had to take ALL — no picking and sorting. Naturally DF did this and we were delighted by the haul. Probably the best item: a bottle of vanilla, slightly more than a quart, with only a little bit missing. I wrote the date on it so we can keep track of how long it lasts. Given how expensive vanilla is, we were absurdly pleased that he made the trip to pick this stuff up. We ate most of the canned goods, and are still picking away at stuff like relish and jam.
Here’s the thing about leftovers: Why would people NOT repurpose them into something else??? I know it’s cultural in some cases (you make fresh food every day! you never feed your family “old” stuff!) but these days it’s pretty hard to justify throwing something out just because you didn’t finish it. Personally, I’m a fan of “engineering” leftovers: Before you serve the meal, put one serving into a container and freeze it. After you’ve got a bunch of them, declare “leftovers night” and let people take their pick. Or use them in brown-bag lunches.
We are finishing up the garden now; the only things still in the ground are the carrots, which we’ll probably pull up and can in a couple of weeks. This morning I picked a handful of strawberries from an heirloom variety called Toklats; DF got several starts this year from a local man he calls “the Strawberry King.” They have been out in some pretty chilly, gray, rainy weather lately but by gum they’re still producing.
I also picked a handful of Asian greens and dandelion leaves to put into the boiling bag. The last batch of broth contained those kinds of greens, a ton of peapods (last of the crop), onion skins, apple cores, and probably one or two other things I can’t remember. They were cooked with about a quart of liquid saved from cooking vegetables (which this time included liquid from a jar of home-canned carrots and some ramen water) and some chicken bones from the freezer. All this went into the slow cooker after we made a black bean and smoked pork stew — and oh, my goodness, did the resulting broth taste marvelous. It had a silky mouthfeel (probably from the apples) and a savory taste that made me want to eat it with slices of bread. Instead, we froze it to make another stew or soup later on.
Okay, now I’m hungry.
Thanks for being such a consistent reader and commenter.
Now I’m hungry too!
Love all the ideas!
No carbonated drinks for us. No hooch…just beer now and then
No car payment. We drive a 2005 Toyota. I refuse to pay an ATM fee.
Any clothes we get come from the nice Goodwill near us…Pre Covid that is.
I clean our home. I just found that I do it slower and less often now that I have hit my 70s but that’s fine. We keep it neat unless grand kids are here.
We never have been frequent fast food eaters but since Covid we decreased even more.Interestingly my high blood pressure decreased to the point I no longer take medication. My internist asked what had changed and the only thing I could think of was less Fast food. He said that was probably it! So win win!
Medicare silver sneakers pays our gym fee though we still are not comfortable going there with Covid being still high in our area. But we have many parks near us that are safe and not terribly crowded so we walk
Most definitely a good life!
We do most of what you do, Donna, especially a huge garden that feeds us all summer plus I can, freeze and dehydrate. I also trade eggs from our four chickens (who are champion producers)and garden vegetables for moose and salmon. We wear clothes several days in a row (both work from home) before throwing them in a washer, unless it has been an especially stinky day. We use chicken food and dog food bags for garbage bags, we make excellent compost that gets a boost from our chicken poop—so good that we have given chicken feed bags full as gifts for friends who are crazy about gardening (at their requests). I make a great chocolate babka and challah, so for gifts we often give loaves of those and a coupon for three more loaves throughout the year. We have no mortgage or debt of any kind, so after a lifetime of frugality we now have a few splurges. My husband loves a fancy coffee, so on Saturday morning we goes to Holiday gas station and gets one of their flavored coffees—cheaper and he says better tasting than Starbucks (I don’t like coffee at all). I like sausage egg mcmuffins, so during our Saturday errands, we get one each of those, usually made cheaper by an app coupon. We seldom go out to eat, in fact I cannot remember when, but we do like to get his drink, our breakfast, and go sit by the river to eat. The other splurge is that we have a housekeeper come in for two hours every Saturday, while we are running errands/getting breakfast. I have a genetic disorder that sometimes lands me in a wheelchair, so our garden is all three foot tall raised beds (repurposed large animal watering troughs) and our house is completely handicap friendly. This means the burden of the housework often falls on my husband, who is in his 70s now. A few years ago I got him to agree to trying a house cleaner for six months…and he was a convert. It also gives work to a wonderful woman we know and since we are not there when she cleans, we have kept her working when many of her other contracts let her go during the pandemic. In fact, we were able to hire her for a few other jobs around the house, like cleaning out the basement and taking stuff to the dump or recycling or Salvation Army, which helped her but really helped us.
Wow. I hope that DF and I can have a bigger garden but it sounds as though we could never have a better life than the one you folks have.
Maybe next time we head to Fairbanks we could meet at Holiday for a coffee and a chat by the river?
Diet gimmicks. Need I say more?
I had no idea you could opt out of garbage pickup. It wouldn’t be an option for me, but it makes sense if you’re recycling and composting, you would be able to get to almost zero trash. I think our garbage is a package deal with water and recycling. We are setting up our winter garden right now, and as soon as it’s under 100 will plant it. I’m looking forward to fresh vegetables in the back yard.
Like you, we reap the riches from our garden. While we buy berries in the summer to put in our yogurt, our own veggies plus the ones from our CSA subscription have resulted in no grocery store veggie purchases all summer.
Since I am semi-retired and home more during the pandemic, I have discovered the joys of cutting flowers and leaves from our garden. The leaves from our fig tree make a pretty backdrop to the zinnias that I harvest every few days.
I don’t buy books. I use our library’s Libby and Hoopla services for ebooks and audio books and am an active Paperback swap user. Work allows me to mail things for free, so my PBS books have no mailing cost.
Whenever we went to someone’s house for a gathering in the Before Times, I would always bring a food contribution using ingredients we have on hand. I load up on Duncan Hines brownie and cake mixes when they are on sale for 99 cents.
As a midlife college student, I found out that cake is always appreciated. When there was a potluck or just-because, I would bake and frost a 13×9 cake using mixes and icing I bought for as little as 29 cents (this was back when coupons and rebates were a much bigger deal, as I’m sure you remember). People would get so excited, whereas mentally I was apologizing for not having made the cake from scratch.
Wish we could grow fig trees! But we’re lucky to have apples. Apparently it is possible to grow other fruit trees in select microclimates, but ours is not one of those locations.
#skynet.
LOL.
I drive a 20 year old Toyota that’s a gem. I can’t even imagine a car payment.i don’t buy clothes, carbonated drinks or books.I turn my used ones in for more used ones.I cook alot and grow much of my own food year round. I purchased a new cell phone for the first time this year, before that I got one wen the young folks upgraded.
Popcorn is popped on my stove since years ago it was decided that microwaves are unsafe. I try often to find things I can live without.
Chocolate is a main food group in our house!
Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful prose.it has been lifting me up for years, as does the beautiful community you have gathering around you.
I am very lucky to live five minutes from one of the world’s best beaches . Living amid much wealth while going against the grain with my frugality is sometimes difficult. My resolve benefits from your support and the like minded people on your website!
What a wonderful thing to hear! Thank you. And yes, the community is stalwart — and kind about sharing their own stories and advice.
Thanks for reading.
Hi, Donna. I have also been living frugal for a long time. I thought I had my game figured out until I saw a post on your blog about using vegetable peels and leftovers in making broth and my mind was blown. I had been composting that stuff for years. Anyway, I now have a veggie scraps for broth bag. When it gets full, anything else I have goes to the compost pile. This year, I grew onion successfully for the first time. I chopped or sliced nearly all of the bounty and it will help me to get through the winter without having to buy onions at twice the price they are in the summer. Thank you for your blog! 😀
If I understand you correctly, you put scraps into the compost once the boiling bag is full…? If you have room in the freezer, I suggest you do what we do: Make a batch of broth every time you have enough scraps, then freeze the broth and start a new boiling bag. That way nothing gets wasted, and you always have soup stock on hand for a fast meal. (Note: Once the scraps are boiled, they do go into the compost.)
We didn’t try any onions this year. But when someone gave us a big red grown-in-Alaska onion, it still had its green top attached. We cut that part into pieces and dehydrated it, for use on future baked potatoes. If it’s edible, we’ll use it.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.