Suddenly Frugal Blog

For the most part when I pick up my produce at the CSA, it’s up to me to bring my own bags and boxes for carrying those fruits, vegetables and herbs home. This really creates a zero-waste scenario, because I reuse those bags and anything I need to throw out once I clean the vegetables, [...]

When I lived in my old house, we had a small vegetable garden along the southern wall of the home, where we grew tomatoes, zucchini and pumpkins. I can still remember how at a certain point in the growing season, ripe-red tomatoes seemed to appear on the vine seemingly overnight. At first I loved this [...]

I’ve written in the past about all of the DIY things I did when my kids were babies, including making their baby food, which I would store in ice-cube trays. Way back then (and we’re only talk 12 or so years) I had neither a Crock-Pot nor an immersible blender wand-thingy (what’s the technical term?). [...]

A few months ago I wrote a post called “The FYI on CFL Recycling.” This post offered a few basic ideas on where and how to recycle compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. You want to recycle them because they contain trace amounts of mercury, which is considered to be hazardous waste. And hazardous waste [...]

One of the first things that I always do soon after we get back from vacation is to grocery shop. If you can plan things right before you leave, you can buy just enough food to get you through the days before you leave, and you leave enough non perishables at home so that you [...]

One of the best parts of our annual summer trip to New England is getting to go outlet shopping in North Conway, New Hampshire, Kittery, Maine and Freeport, Maine. Each of these shopping meccas is within an hour or so drive of my mother’s Maine home, which is home base for us whenever we go [...]

Wondering how you can make an office break room or teacher’s lounge a little less wasteful? Check out this week’s post over at Green Boot Camp for some ideas.
Green Boot Camp: Week 31–Green Your Break Room
P.S. Thanks, Mom, for suggesting I cover this topic!

Though the holiday shopping season doesn’t officially start until the day after Thanksgiving (that would be November 28th of this year), readers of The Lean Green Family seem to be keenly interested in how they can begin stocking their gift closet now. That’s probably because when I wrote a post on that topic back in [...]

Given that the National Retail Federation has reported that back-to-school spending will be relatively flat in 2008, I’m not surprised that some of the other popular posts on The Lean Green Family have had to do with back-to-school shopping. I mean, recession or not, you’ve got to get your kids supplies for when the class [...]

Recently, I’ve written two posts related to the dishwasher. One was on making the greener choice between washing dishes by hand versus putting them in the dishwasher. The other was on paper plates save more energy over using regular plates that you wash in the dishwasher. In both instances, the dishwasher one the eco-friendly contest [...]