3 Self-Reliant Ways to Be Frugalby Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 28 Oct 2008 03:40 AM
Heating Heating is a big concern this winter. Prices are very high on oil, natural gas and even electricity. You can become more self-reliant by heating your home or at least supplementing the heat with a wood-burning stove or wood furnace, for example. Wood can be purchased of course, but why not advertise that you will haul away dead trees in exchange for the wood. Many people are happy not to have to pay for their dead limbs, logs and whole trees to be removed, and you can then cut and split the wood yourself to use it as a heat source. Food To become more self-reliant in this area, start by making your own meals from scratch. Then go one step further to grow and raise some of your own food. From a vegetable container garden on a patio to a henhouse full of chickens, you'll get the reward of a fun activity combined with actual food you can use. And food prices are sky high right now. Another idea is to mill your own flour from grain. You can purchase the grain in bulk, or grow it yourself. Home Improvement With the state of the housing market, adding on to your home or contracting a large home improvement project may not make the most sense. But the components, materials and tools for home improvement are affordable, especially since they are not as much in demand as they were during the housing boon. Buy the paint and paint your home yourself, fix that faucet leak without calling a plumber, do your own landscaping, even build a shed or garage. Not only will you save, but you will surprise yourself about how self-reliant you are! Click here for more articles by Mary Ann Romans. Pay for Your Gas with Your Scrap Metal Your Reuse Ideas Could Earn $100
Just look to the right of this blog and find the subscription center (it looks just like this picture, although you'll have to find the "real" one just above the category listing ). Click on "Subscribe via Email". You'll be instantly subscribed and the email address that you registered at Families.com with will receive an instant notification whenever we post a new Frugal Living Blog! Don't miss a thing - subscribe now! Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantfrugal tags User Comments  elizabeth32 (166) 28 Oct 2008 11:47 PMBack in March, I got 10 chicks. I now get around 8 eggs a day and the eggs I sell pays for their feed, so I get free eggs, insect and weed control, and an abundance of fertilizer. They are also keeping my small greenhouse warm, so, I'm still harvesting tomatoes even though we've had freezing tempertures at night for the last month.  Mary Ann Romans (26876) 29 Oct 2008 05:52 AMWow that is amazing. I love the fact that you combine the chickens with the tomatoes. Do you need to heat the chicken house/greenhouse at all in the winter? elizabeth32 (166) 30 Oct 2008 10:17 AMThis is the first year for the greenhouse, so this is all experimental for now. I have a red heat lamp in there, and all of the tomatoes are in wall-o-waters, so the base of the plants should be protected if it does get below freezing inside. The chickens body temperture is over 100 dgrees, but they're are small in an 8x8 ft space, so I'm relying mostly on thermal mass from the sun's heat stored in the tubs of soil and closed containers of water. So far this is working well, but we haven't seen any really cold tempertues yet, it can go below zero here. Community Tags Chickens, frugal living, off the grid, self-reliance, wood burning stove Discuss this article
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Doing things for yourself often means that you will also save money. There are so many ways that you can be a bit more self-reliant that will naturally make you frugal as well. I'm just going to cover three of them here today, but the next time you are confronted with an area of your budget that you want to tighten up, see if there is a way that you can be more self-reliant.
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