Free fruit, foraging, drying, and frugal snacks

Today's post is a guest post from Julie over at Juliecache.com

Look at the ground. It was not easy to maneuver the slope and the windfalls.

I spent one morning and one evening picking fruit with my handy dandy fruit picker. I may have to upgrade to a fruit picker like my sister's above -- I got to try it today, and that telescoping handle is pretty convenient for a short person like myself.

"I" of GAIN and I drove a 1 mile radius from our house and picked apples from five different public trees before dusk came the other night. I peeled, sliced, and dried about six apples this morning -- they are already gone. The kids have told me they prefer dried apple slices over fruit leather. But they still like fruit leather, so we also picked pears right as it got dark. The pears will be mixed with apples to become fruit leather later this weekend. (Commercial fruit leathers have pears as a main ingredient.)

This morning, my sister, her youngest, my youngest, and I went to pick more pears before the heat got unbearable. The fruit was like what you'd find at a grocers.

The negatives of picking your own fruit were very insignificant compared to the benefits. We really didn't expect to step in slimy overripe fallen fruit and see so many bees and butterflies, but we did expect to see the toddler eat a few pears (oh, so cute) and we did expect to gather enough for our families to eat. We easily saved a lot a money by not purchasing at the store -- three large boxes were filled in less than an hour. I believe Sara's plan is to can the fruit for eating later in the year. What a blessing to have abundance during our drought.

Julia is a foraging, food producing, food preserving, home cooking, bee keeping, and event producing mother of four. She lives in Iowa and loves to learn new things. You can read her blog at http://juliecache.com.

Dealing with Static Electricity

Photo credit

It's winter which means dry air and static electricity. Boo. I dread folding clothes and having to pull clothes apart all while watching sparks fly. Then the next person I touch gets zapped. Ouch!

I am forced to use my dryer in the winter months because we just don't have room for drying racks. With 7 people in the family we do a lot of laundry.

When I first starting cutting back and living frugally I was still buying dryer sheets, however I made them last twice as long my cutting them in half. I took it a bit further and stopped buying dryer sheets and invested in some dryer balls. While they did work well for cutting back my dryer time I was still having issues with static cling. I found an idea online and decided to try my own frugal fabric softener.

The liquid softener works well but not perfect for these really dry winter days. After getting fed up of being shocked every time I folded clothes I went out and bought a box of generic dryer sheets. The static cling was almost completely gone once I started using the sheets again. A few days after using them though one of my boys developed a really bad rash. I quickly discontinued using the sheets and the rash disappeared.

So now we are back to getting shocked every time we fold clothes and having clothes cling to our bodies while we walk. I have tried a few things including vinegar in the rinse cycle and waded up pieces of foil in the dryer. I also just read that you could run a metal hanger along your clothes and that will discharge any electricity. I have yet to try this method.

How do you deal with static electricity?

Energy Efficiency Tips

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Here are a few easy ways to save some money on your energy bills as well as make your home more energy efficient.

Seal it up. Use weather stripping and caulk to seal air leaks and block drafts. Make sure you check around doors, windows, chimneys and electrical outlets for any potential air leaks.

Insulation. Make sure your home has adequate insulation. This includes the attic, exterior walls, floors, basement and crawl spaces. A few years ago we added insulation to our attic and it made a huge difference in our energy bill. I had no idea how much heat was escaping up there during the winter months.

Watch your indoor temperature. Keep your thermostat set at 68 degrees in the winter and 78 in the summer. You can save the most money by investing in a programmable thermostat. You can adjust the temperature when you are asleep or away.

Install compact fluorescent light bulbs. Energy Star bulbs use up to 75% less energy and last up to 10 times longer.

Wrap it up. Use clear plastic sheets over the inside or outside of your windows to reduce heat loss. We did this in my daughters room and it was amazing how much warmer it made it.

Keep it clear. Keep air registers and radiators clear from furniture, toys, curtains and other objects.

Maintenance. Have your heating and/or cooling systems serviced once a year so that it runs efficiently and properly. Change your filters regularly since dirty filters can make your system work harder and use more energy.

This post is linked to the Frugal Tuesday Tip here at Learning the Frugal Life.

2012 Goals

Happy New Year! I love the new year. A fresh start, a new beginning, time to pause and reflect on the previous year and think about whats yet to come. I have spent a lot of time thinking about my goals for 2012. Things I would like to work on or improve.

It's kinda cliche but here are my 2012 New Years goals, resolutions, inspirations, what ever you want to call them.

Personal
*Drink more water.
*Exercise 3 times per week. It may be nothing too exciting, just a walk around a park would be nice.
*Cut back on coffee. This isn't something I necessarily want to do but I figured if I drink more water maybe my coffee intake will become less. Right now, I drink way.too.much.coffee.
*Read more. I have some awesome magazines and books begging to be read but finding "me time" is difficult.
*Continue to have a large garden and put up enough produce to feed my family for the non-gardening months.
*Keep growing my blog. When I started this blog a couple years ago I never dreamed it would grow the way it did. I LOVE being a resource for helping people and I love the ideas I have gotten and online friendships I have made. I would love to make it to 500 subscribers. I just really like that number! Making a little more money from blogging would be nice too, but honestly it's really not about the money. I truly enjoy blogging.

Ok. Moving on.

Financial
*Successfully complete our 31 Days of Nothing Challenge. Would love to have a chunk of money saved up to go towards our medical bills that we accumulated in 2011.
*To go along with the above...pay off all our medical bills. Right now we owe almost $2000. And unfortunately, since it is the new year, our deductibles will start over.
*Start tracking coupon savings each month. I have always been curious how much money I am saving with coupons. I may do this for a few months just to get an idea.
*Stay on track with our budget and go back to using the envelope system. This system really works for me and I don't spend near as much money when I am using cash instead of swiping my debit card.
*Increase our savings account by $5000. This may be difficult, but if we work really hard I think we can do it.

Family
*Read more books together. All my kids love to read and this would be a good thing to do
as a family.
*Spend more one on one time with my husband. With the business of life, sometimes we don't get a chance to really connect just the two of us.
*Establish a good morning routine with the two youngest children. Once the 3 older kids are off to school sometimes I feel lost with what to do with my little ones that are still at home. I want to get some sort of schedule in place.
*In general just spend more time with my kids and husband. I am always so busy and feel like there is so much to get done in the day that I need to just sit back and truly enjoy life.

Greener, Healthier Living
While my family has made huge leaps this last couple years in being more earth friendly there is always room for improvement. I want to step up a few things this year.
*Step up the composting and actually move it around so that is composts!
*Continue to recycle. I need to get a larger recycle bin for our kitchen.
*Completely switch over all cleaning products to homemade. Right now about 80% is made by myself.
*Buy less packaged and processed foods. Cook more from scratch.
*Continue to garden, shop local, attend produce auctions and support our local farmers.

Well I think that is it! Doesn't seem so bad huh? I look forward to 2012 and I hope you continue to follow me and my family on our journey.

Dryer Balls

I have been using dryer balls for a few months now. Dryer balls are suppose to decrease your drying time as well as wrinkles in your clothes. In the summer I hang a lot of my laundry outside but with 7 people in the house and a baby, I can't hang everything. So I thought I would give these a try to see if it indeed cut back my dryer time.

There are a few different types of dryer balls out there. I purchased Nellie's PVC free dryer balls from a local shop. You can find them much cheaper if you shop on Amazon.

Here are the pros:
They do reduce my drying time. For heavy loads like towels and jeans I would say they reduce my drying time by about 10 minutes. For lighter loads like socks about 15 minutes.

I feel like they do a good job at keeping the static down. It does not eliminate it so I am still using my spray bottle of fabric softener.

Here are the cons:
The balls sometimes get tangled up in the clothes leaving me digging around for them and recovering them before I can start my next load to dry. This wastes time and annoys me.

Over all I think they are pretty good. I don't know if I would recommend them or not. I think everyone needs to try them for themselves and make your own opinion.

Do you use dryer balls?

Reusable Sandwich Bags and a Giveaway

My husband has been on an anti-ziplock kick lately after listening to a podcast about plastics polluting the ocean. It really made an impact on him. I am all for finding alternatives to ziplocks. To be frugal, I used to wash out the ziplocks and reuse them over and over. Now I am just trying to find a new way to store/carry our food.

In our quest to become a little more environmentally friendly I picked up some cute little reusable snack bags from the Natural Living Expo a couple weekends ago. I was so excited about them that I checked out my new go to site Etsy.com to see if I could find any handmade bags. I found all sorts of different types of reusable bags.

I ordered 3 bags from Celeste Blake Designs. I was very impressed with her reusable bags. They were made very well and looked like I just purchased them from a store.
These bags are made of 100% cotton on the outside and the inside is lined with waterproof nylon. If they get dirty just wipe clean with a damp cloth, or toss in the washer and air dry. The top is sealed with a zipper which I really like. There are 2 sizes to choose from. I chose the larger size, 7"x7". They hold a sandwich perfectly (or 2 cut up apples).

I am huge fan of these bags and will start using these in place of my sandwich sized ziplocks. If your interested in purchasing one (or more) of these bags you can visit

Celeste Blake Designs and view all the cute bags available.

I am happy to share that I will be giving away one FREE reusable sandwich bag.

Celeste Blake Designs has graciously given me a bag to give to one of my readers. There are 4 ways to enter. You can enter all 4 times.

1. Simply leave a comment on this post. Yes, it's that easy! Make sure you leave your email address.

2. Become a follower of Learning the Frugal Life, leave a separate comment letting me know.

3. Like Learning the Frugal Life on Facebook, leave a separate comment letting me know.

4. Subscribe to Learning the Frugal Life, leave a separate comment letting me know.

This giveaway ends at noon Friday April 22rd, Earth Day! I will randomly pick a winner Friday afternoon. Make sure you leave your email address so that I have a way to contact you. You will have 24 hours to claim the bag. Good luck!