There’s no doubt that there’s Yankee in my blood–thanks, Mom!–but it’s taken me awhile to acknowledge and embrace it. Since starting this blog a year and a half ago, the frugal part of me has been coming out more and more. And with it the Yankee is rearing its thrifty head.

One of the Yankee notions that I grew up with was it was verboten to waste anything. My mother always found more uses for things that most people would toss in the trash. Besides Velveeta boxes reborn as drawer organizers or jelly jars transformed into drinking glasses, my mom had a way of figuring out how to use every last crumb (or drop or morsel) of food so that nothing went to waste. Sometimes those crumbs ended up in another meal–literally, I’m sure, when she was making meatloaf–or in a bag that we took to the local pond to feed the ducks.

For the longest time I never gave crumbs another thought. I’m ashamed to think about how many heels of bread I’ve tossed in the compost. No one in my family likes them–even if I try to sneak them into a sandwich, used upside down. It never works, and the heels end up getting tossed anyway. The other night, though, I had an epiphany about leftover bread.

I’d planned to serve hot dogs for dinner, but just before I got everything cooking, I noticed that the hot dogs had little white spots on them and smelled kind of funny. When I glanced at the expiration date, I almost gagged–they’d expired at the end of the summer. Well, they were in the back of the refrigerator where I couldn’t see them, so that’s probably what happened. Anyway, the hot dog buns, it turns out, were pretty much past prime, too.

While I had no problem tossing the hot dogs (I prefer to have my meals without listeria, thank you very much), the buns were haunting me. How could I let perfectly good buns go to waste. Wasn’t there something I could do to use them in something else?

I don’t make meatloaf, so there goes the bread-crumb idea.
I’m not into croutons, so can’t use them that way.
And we’re not planning on feeding the ducks any time soon.

Then, the epiphany hit me–French toast or something such. I wasn’t interested in making French toast at that moment (we ended up having cereal for dinner the night of the failed hot dogs), but I felt confident that I could figure out a recipe that would use up these leftover hot dog buns, and any stray heels of bread I might find in the refrigerator.

After a quick Internet search, I came across a couple of recipes for bread pudding, which didn’t sound very good to me. However, once I read the ingredients closely I realized that these recipes closely resembled French toast. So I decided to experiment.

Here’s how the recipe looked on paper:

stale, leftover bread/buns torn or cut into marshmallow-sized chunks
6 eggs
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup boiling water

Preheat over to 350 degrees.

Take a three-quart baking dish (I used my Pyrex dish), and coat with cooking spray. Line the dish with the pieces of bread until they cover the bottom. Mix eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon and sugar in a separate bowl. Pour egg mixture over the bread. Take the half cup of brown sugar and mix it with boiling water. Once mixed, pour it into the baking dish.

Bake uncovered for 40 to 60 minutes until top starts to brown. (My oven tends to cook hot and fast, so this was done right at 40 minutes. In my old house, I would bet that the gas oven there would have taken the full 60 minutes to cook all the way through.)

I ended up prepping this recipe that night and letting the dish sit overnight in the refrigerator. When I got up in the morning, I popped it in the oven; it was done on that school morning by the time everyone was up, dressed and downstairs for breakfast.

I must say what I ended up with was a breakfast souffle-like casserole that tasted like French toast. It was a little mushier in the middle than I would have liked–my kids have texture issues with food, so anything mushy doesn’t go over well with them. Needless to say, they ate the “outside” of the casserole but left the mushy insides for the dog.

I think if I made this again, I wouldn’t let it sit overnight in the egg mixture, or I might just sprinkle the brown sugar on the top instead of mixing it with the water and adding more liquid to the mix.

I’m so happy to have found a way to use up old bread. And even if the kids don’t like this dish, I would easily make this for my husband and me again in the future.

Do you have creative ways/recipes for using up old bread? If so, I’d love to hear them.

P.S. Happy Halloween!

I’ve had a love-hate affair with stain removers for as long as I can remember. Some did a good job of getting out dirt stains but not so much organic matter (read: overflow from my days when I was dealing with poopy diapers). Other stain removers did great on that same organic matter but were no match for the red-clay stains (thank you Pennsylvania soil) that my kids got on their clothes.

Then last year I did a story for All You magazine, a Time Inc. publication, on greening every room in your house and saving money, too. The folks that represent 20 Mule Team Borax sent me a box to try out for my story. They were claiming that their product was the best laundry booster out there. Plus, it’s affordable and green. OK, whatever, I’ll give it a go.

Soon after that box of borax showed up, my daughter had a soccer game. She’s a goalie so she spends a lot of time on the ground, getting very dirty.

The borax box suggested adding the powder to a load of wash, but I’m pretty particular about pre-treating stains before washing them. After the soccer game, I tried the borax on all of the stains on her uniform. First, I wet the fabric. Then I added a tiny bit of liquid detergent. Next, I sprinkled on some borax. Finally, I rubbed it all together to make a paste. I let it sit on the fabric for about 30 minutes before washing.

The uniform went through the laundry and came out looking brand new. Since then I’ve tried borax on nearly any stain my kids can create these days–my husband, too. Blood, dirt and chocolate don’t stand a chance now that I’m armed with borax. That first box is long gone, and now borax has become a must-buy for keeping my family’s clothes clean.

I’ve even gotten my mom into using borax. She oversees a church-run thrift store and receives a ton of clothes as donations. Previously, a lot of what should have been wearable clothing she had to toss, because of stains. Now she brings those clothes home, uses some borax on them, and then they look practically new–or at least not stained anymore.

All of this is why I’m handing out this week’s Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval to borax, specifically 20 Mule Team Borax because it’s the only brand that I know of these days. If you’d like to get more wearing out of your clothes and don’t want to have to turn something into a rag because of stain, I would recommend that your give borax a try.

As you’ll recall I wrote last week about recycling and reusing prescription bottles, in response to a reader question about the same topic. Some of the folks that I’d interviewed for that blog posting–and people who commented after the fact–talked about reusing their prescription bottles by literally reusing them for prescriptions. That is, they brought them back to their pharmacy so that the pharmacist could refill a prescription without wasting a brand-new bottle.

I wasn’t sure if this was kosher with all pharmacies, and it turns out I was right. While some of you may be successful in this reusing option, chances are that if you try this at a national pharmacy, you’ll be turned away. In fact, here’s an edited response (I edited it) from Mike DeAngelis, director, public relations for CVS/pharmacy as to why the company prefers to use bottles one time only:

* Chance for cross-contamination
There is a risk of a new medication being placed in a used bottle and then becoming adulterated, “as we have no way of knowing in what conditions the bottle was stored in the customer’s home or what may have been placed in the bottle after the medication was used,” says DeAngelis.

* Chance that child-safety cap become ineffective
The child-resistant capability of the bottle and cap becomes reduced over time through multiple uses. I had no idea that twist and turning this cap on and off on the same bottle would lessen its effectiveness, therefore putting children at risk should they come across your prescription in a reused bottle. (I guess the company could supply a replacement cap instead. I wonder if they would if you asked?)

* Label might not be clear
“Affixing new prescription labels over older ones is not as effective of applying it directly to the bottle,” he says, “and may cause the patient to lose track of the number of available refills.” In addition, if you’ve ever tried to tape something over another thing that’s already been labeled, you know that there is the chance that the secondary (or tertiary or more) label will peel up and fall off.

* Mix ups are possible
Since different manufacturers make generic versions of the same drug, says DeAngelis, “a medication should not be placed in a container that previously held a different product.” To be honest, I’m not sure why this could be a problem unless it’s because the label might not accurately reflect which manufacturer’s drug is inside the bottle.

* The law might not be on your side
DeAngelis says that “several State Boards of Pharmacy expressly prohibit pharmacies from re-using prescription bottles,” though my state, Pennsylvania, does allow for prescriptions to be refilled in original bottles. In researching the State Boards of Pharmacy, I came across this article on the National Conference of State Legislatures website that offers a state-by-state chart about how you can donate and recycle used medications but didn’t find anything about the legality (or illegality) or reusing prescription bottles.

I hope this puts to rest readers’ questions about recycling prescription bottles and options for reusing them. If not, let me know what else is on your mind, and I’ll see if I can’t find answers.

My friend (and super-smart writer) Jen Singer is featured in a CBS News segment about how the economy has affected her, and everything she and her family of four do in their daily lives. From serving her boys water to drink after school (as opposed to pricey soft drinks or juice) to making their own Halloween costumes, she is nervous about the economy.

One change that Jen’s made, like many of us have, is reading the supermarket flier religiously. Most experts will tell you that the best way to eat on the cheap is to plan your meals based on what’s on sale at the supermarket that week. For example, this week my supermarket has taken a page from ShopRite’s can-can deals with its “gicantic” sale on canned goods. That means I’ll be stocking up on anything canned that can add to my meals without costing too much-things like beans, corn and tomatoes. (And like I suggested in yesterday’s post, I’ll be buying a few extra cans to donate to a food bank.) We’ll also be having chicken a couple of times this week, since chicken leg quarters are on sale for $.99/pound.

Meal planning based on what’s on sale at the grocery store is a tip that most people have heard of before and one that’s worth repeating. Here are five more frugal meal-planning tips that should help busy people stay on budget:

1. Meal plan based on what you already own.
Not only should you meal plan based on supermarket sales but also based on what’s already in your pantry, refrigerator and freezer. Here’s another reason this saves you money: it helps to ensure that you use what you own and things don’t go to waste. How many times have you discovered mystery mush in the produce bin, because you’d forgotten that you’d picked up cucumbers at a farm stand, or mold-covered strawberries in the back of the fridge? You need to figure out ways to use things up so that your money doesn’t end up in the trash–or the compost pile. This line of thinking is also green, because it will save you from unnecessary driving to the store.

2. Christen your Crock-Pot by using it regularly.
Another cost- and time-saver: using your Crock-Pot or slow cooker. While this, too, requires some planning, it can help you to avoid that five-o’clock-frenzy of not knowing what to serve for dinner. This is the kind of frenzy that resulted in our spending hundreds of dollars in our pre-frugal days on take out–or rather, take-in. If you haven’t already done so, check out The CrockPot Lady’s blog for family-oriented recipes that you can make in your slow cooker. On days when I’ll be using the Crock-Pot to make dinner, I lay out everything for dinner at the same time in the morning when we’re laying out what the kids are going to pack for lunch. Then, once they’re off to school and I’ve completed my morning exercise, I get dinner cooking–literally.

3. Make takeout-like meals at home.
This past week our bounty from our CSA resembled all of the kinds of things you might see on top of pizza–green peppers, onions and broccoli. Because I was traveling on business, my husband needed to do some of our meal planning, and he knew he wanted to make the kids pizza without actually going out and spending $20 on a pie or two. At the same time, with two left hands in the kitchen, he knew that his trying to make pizza dough from scratch would end up in disaster. So what did he do? He bought two lumps of pizza dough from our local pizzeria ($6) and came home to create DIY pizza. (We had sauce and cheese already.) That dough was so cheap and plentiful that he ended up with two pies (one light on sauce for our daughters), one deep dish loaded with the aforementioned veggies for me when I arrived home, and a homemade calzone for him.

4. Realize that you don’t have to serve dinner foods only at dinner.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever thought about serving your kids a bowl of cereal instead of a “proper” dinner. I know it’s crossed my mind and to be honest, I’ve actually done this on occasion when I hadn’t followed my own advice and planned out that night’s meal. But don’t despair–serving breakfast for dinner is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something that well-known cooks like Rachael Ray promote, and even magazines like Southern Living have approved breakfast for dinner with recipes to help you out. The key is figuring out how to balance nutrition with a cheap-and-easy meal. So if I decide to do breakfast for dinner, I’ll probably make French toast using a loaf of bread that’s about to go stale, and I’ll serve it with a fruit smoothie. This way I’m using up food that I might have tossed the next day (over-ripe bananas are awesome in a smoothie), and I’m ensuring that my family is getting food from at least a couple of the food groups.

5. Overcook to create leftovers.
Just as there’s nothing wrong with serving your family breakfast for dinner, I say you shouldn’t be ashamed to serve up leftovers either. The best way to ensure you’ll have at least one night’s worth of leftovers for a full meal one night is to overcook a few nights in a row. That way on a night when you know you’ll be arriving home late from sports or other commitments, you’ll have what you need for reheating in the fridge. This should prevent you from stopping on the way home for McFood. (Another benefit of overcooking: you have staples for an entirely separate meal you might cook one night. Case in point: whenever I grill chicken, I cook a few extra breasts. Then the next night, I’ll cut up those breasts and use them in chicken quesadillas.)

Do you have additional ideas for frugal meal planning? If so, I’d love to hear them.

Yesterday, my daughter and I walked a 10k (6.2 miles) as part of a fundraiser for hunger. In addition to collecting monetary donations for this good cause, we were also asked to bring a non-perishable food as part of our entrance fee. That food would be donated to a local food bank. This got me thinking about a story I’d heard on NPR recently.

In this day and age when many Americans are feeling the economic pinch, food banks are suffering even more. Not only are more “regular” people turning to food banks and food pantries to supplement their grocery shopping, but the folks that would normally donate to these good causes just aren’t giving as much these days. This really is a double whammy for organizations whose sole purpose is to help feed those that are hurting financially and hungry.

In the spirit of frugal shopping, here’s what I’d like to suggest that you do the next time that you find something non-perishable on sale at the supermarket: stock up on it not only for your family but for families that could really use your help as well.

You know how I wrote a few days ago about how, in being a frugal shopper, I like to stock up on cereal when it’s on sale and I have a coupon? Well, with food banks top of my mind now, I’ll still stock up on Cheerios for my family but I’ll probably buy a few boxes that I can donate to a food pantry, too. Beans on sale? Buy a few cans for your pantry and a food pantry, too. Got a coupon on two-for-one boxes of rice? Keep one box for yourself and donate the other to a food bank. See where I’m going with this?

Let’s move ahead a bit and think towards the holidays: I’m sure we’re all considering our budgets and wondering: how am I going to get all of my holiday shopping done? Also, with green on my mind, I’d like to make holiday gift selections that don’t create a lot of waste.

Well, in addition to food pantries hurting these days, charitable organizations and other non profits are worried about how donations will start falling like the Dow–especially as we go into the holidays. Historically, when America is in a recession, charitable donations dry up.

That’s why I’m going to make this additional suggestion for this year: if you’re stumped about what to give someone for a gift, forgo the stuff. Instead, figure out what good cause that special person supports and make a donation in his or her name.

As far as the etiquette of making a donation in a person’s name, you never have to specify how much you spent. Just write in a card that you made the donation, that you chose this organization because you know it is important to that person, and that you felt that supporting this cause on this person’s behalf was the best present you could give to him or her.

I’ll bet that if you decide to make charitable donations on behalf of some of the people on your gift list, you’ll spend less overall. In addition, you’ll have given a personal gift, and you’ll have supported a good cause which might otherwise have seen its financial support decrease during these turbulent economic times.

Oh and one more thing: I’m pretty sure that charitable donations are tax deductible. However, I’m not an accountant. Check with yours to see about this. If it turns out that you can deduct part of what you gave as a holiday gift, well that’s a win-win for all involved.

[Edited] There are easy ways for all of us to be a frugal shoppers. Here are five tips to consider:

1. Shop with a purpose so you don’t overspend or overbuy
If you want to be a frugal shopper, you’ve got to figure out ahead of time what you need an item for, how much use you will get out of it and why you think it’s worth it to spend money on it.

2. Try clothes on to avoid unnecessary returns
When my children were younger, needed naps and hated shopping, I would often shop for them knowing that I would be bringing clothing home for them to try on–and then returning them if something didn’t fit or didn’t feel right (they hate tags around the collars). I would keep the tags on the clothing and receipt at the ready–but not send the kids to school in those clothes–so that if something didn’t work, I could make a return without any trouble with getting my money back. I realize that driving back and forth to the store probably wasn’t the greenest thing to do, but it worked for my life back then. These days, though, I insist that they kids try everything on before they buy something. Now, that’s great in theory but even I slip up sometimes and buy something that I end up wanting to return. The dressing room really can be your budget’s best friend, though I think we’d all agree that those awful mirrors are for sure our worst enemy!

3. Frequent stores where you can find real bargains
If I am thinking about places to find bargains, my mind immediately goes to stores like Target and TJ Maxx. For my kids they get their best bargains at the teen-oriented consignment franchise Plato’s Closet.

4. Never pay full price
This notion of buying when things are on sale can apply to clothing purchases though we often think more about using this tip when buying groceries. Case in point: I’ll only buy cereal if it’s on sale and I have a coupon for money off. If I can get cereal down to about a buck a box, then I feel like I’ve accomplished something. With clothing I use this approach for stocking up on essentials, like socks and underwear. If I find them on an end cap in a store (where you can often find tons of great bargains on clearance, as this MommySavers.com website points out) marked at around $.99, I scoop them up. In fact, today I am wearing a pair of argyle socks that I purchased at the Gap, oh, 10 years ago for about $.99.

5. Don’t buy, swap
I know a ton of women who host clothing swaps in their home. This way they can spread the wealth around as far as clothing goes. Maybe they’ve lost weight (or gained weight) but don’t want to lose the investment they made in an outfit. So they invite their friends over and ask that they bring clothing they no longer want or no longer fit into, and then everyone tries stuff on. This would be the ultimate in frugal because you’re getting new (to you) clothing for free. Swaps also work great with children’s clothing. (Check out an earlier blog posting on getting something for almost nothing, which provides a guide to switching and swapping stuff online.)

It wasn’t until I moved to a “real” neighborhood almost 10 years ago that I began to experience direct-selling parties. Growing up I knew that my mom went to Tupperware parties, but now that I was the mom, I was going to parties for all kinds of companies I’d never heard about before–Southern Living at Home, PartyLite candles, Silpada Jewelry and more. The very first shop-at-home party I attended, though, was a Pampered Chef party.

In case you’re not familiar with it, Pampered Chef is a company that, like most direct-selling companies, relies on its legions of consultants to set up a “party” in someone’s house. The party host invites a bunch of her friends over, and then the consultant does a demonstration in her kitchen in hopes that the guests will buy lots of products. The person who hosts the party usually gets a certain number of free products or discounts based on how much her guests have spent. And, of course, the consultant makes a commission on sales.

My hat’s off to people who make their living doing direct sales. While I might be outgoing and talkative, I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes to be a successful direct-selling consultant.

So back to that first Pampered Chef party. I had no idea what I was getting myself in for and how much stuff I would end up buying. I think I spent way too much that night and ended up with a ton of items that seemed practical and useful when the consultant was demoing them but which I’ve still yet to take out of the box.

That party wasn’t a complete financial disaster for me, though. That night I picked up a pair of Pampered Chef Cutting Edge Kitchen Shears. The consultant had demonstrated how they were versatile in trimming everything from chicken breasts to cut flowers. I was sold. I spend $15 on them.

Those kitchen shears turned out to not only be such an invaluable part of my kitchen, but the rest of my home, too. Soon those shears were trimming wire when I made jewelry with my kids, pinch hitting for a regular pair of scissors when I needed to cut coupons out of the Sunday paper and cutting ribbon when I was wrapping presents. However, I was kind of grossed out that the shears I’d used to trim the fat off a chicken breast showed up in the playroom two hours later (after going through the dishwasher) to be used when we were making crafts. I needed a second pair around the house, so the next time I got invited to a Pampered Chef party, I got another pair.

So given the multiple uses for these shears and that fact that I still have those two pair nearly 10 years later, it would seem obvious why I’m giving them a Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval–they’re versatile and durable and money well spent. All true. But what really sold me was a light bulb moment I had at the grocery store the other day.

I was in the butcher department, and chicken tenderloins where on “sale.” I put that in quotes because while tenderloins might be on sale, they’re never cheap. I glanced briefly at the on-sale price–the per-pound price, actually–and realized that even on sale, they’re twice as much as regular old chicken breasts.

And then it dawned on me that I never have to buy anything but the cheapest chicken breasts. That’s because these kitchen shears allow me to trim chicken breasts however I see pleased. So one night I might just have to trim off a little fat and toss them on the grill. Another night, if we’re having fajitas, I’ll use the shears to cut the chicken breast into strips. On a night when we’re having stir-fry, I’ll get out the shears again and cut the chicken breast into chunks. Then, when I’m done, into the dishwasher they go to be sanitized. Because the shears are made from stainless steel, they do not rust and that makes clean up a snap.

Given that these shears have allowed me flexibility in my kitchen and the ability to keep my cost for chicken breast as low as possible, that’s why I’m giving the Pampered Chef Cutting Edge Kitchen Shears the Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval.

Note: The shears I bought years ago are the white kind pictured above. Pampered Chef no longer makes them. The new kind, which have black handles, are supposed to be just as great.

In my house when you finish a bottle of ibuprofen or cough syrup, or a box of allergy medicine, everything goes in the recycling bin. We rinse out the bottles and flatten the boxes, and then put these containers out with the rest of the recyclables on trash/recycling day.

I figured it was standard operating procedure just to recycle all of the containers from my medicine cabinet just as I recycle the shampoo containers from the shower or the milk jugs and salad dressing bottles from the refrigerator. Turns out I was just assuming that this was all possible–something I hadn’t even considered until I received this reader question:

Q: Do you know if you can recycle the bottles that prescription medicine comes in? I’ve always done this but someone recently told me that I should be throwing them in the trash instead. What should I do?

A: My initial reaction is that, of course, you can recycle these bottles. If you look on the bottom of the typical prescription bottle, you see a “chasing arrows” symbol with “5″ inside. I mean, chasing-arrows anything equals anything recyclable, right?

Actually, no.

Though I knew this deep down, I’ve just discovered that not all chasing-arrows numbers are created equally. Here’s a quick refresher, via Earth 911 and Ecomii.com, on what each of the numbers mean:

#1 PET or PETE (Most soda bottles and water bottles come in this kind of plastic)

#2 HDPE (HDPE is the common plastic for milk containers and liquid laundry detergent jugs. Cereal box liners also fall into the HDPE category. Did you know you could even recycle those?)

#3 PVC (I think of PVC as the white pipes that you use in plumbing. Turns out vegetable oil bottles are made from it, too.)

#4 LDPE (This is the kind of plastic that is used to make plastic bags–and which you can recycle via those bins outside supermarkets)

#5 PP (PP stands for polypropylene. Hey, isn’t that what wet suits are made from? Anyway, it’s the plastic used in ketchup bottles, yogurt cups and, based on this post’s theme, prescription bottles.)

#6 PS (This is polystyrene, which is the material used to make non-cardboard egg cartons.)

#7 Other (Some polycarbonate bottles, such as reusable drinking bottles, have a #7 inside the chasing arrows and then the letters “PC” underneath.)

OK, so now that you know what each of the symbols stands for, here’s the deal: not all curbside recycling programs take all kinds of plastic. I must admit that I have no idea which numbers my trash hauler takes and which ones it doesn’t. I just toss everything I think is recyclable into our single-stream bin and figure the recycler will work things out on his end. Perhaps not the right attitude to have but there you go.

Back to the question of prescription bottles, though. According to my research, most brown prescription bottles are not recyclable with most trash haulers. I say most.

There are some that do take this kind of plastic, and it’s up to you to ask your trash hauler/recycling company if, in fact, they do take this kind of plastic. A quick search using Earth 911 uncovered that there are municipalities near me that recycle ALL plastics–#1 through #7. However, the nearest one was 23 miles away.

If you happen to live near Vancouver, British Columbia, a company called Pharm-Ecological Services might be able to take some of these prescription bottles off of your hands.

Finally, if your area is having one of those household hazardous waste (HHW) recycling events in the near future, find out if the prescription bottles qualify as HHW, and then make time to drop them off at the event. Madison, Wisconsin just had this kind of event, but it was medicine-specific and called “MedDrop.”

OK, so now that we’ve established that most #5 bottles are not easily recyclable, it’s important to point out that not all prescription bottles are made from #5 plastic. Some prescriptions come in an opaque white bottle, which has #2 HDPE on the bottom. That means that if your recycler takes milk jugs and laundry detergent bottles, you can feel comfortable that these little white prescription bottles will get recycled with this stuff, too. At the same time, those nifty red Target Clear RX prescription bottles are made from #1 PETE plastic. It, along with #2 HDPE, are the two most commonly accepted plastics for recycling.

By the way, this recycling-of-prescription-bottles quandary even stumps folks across the pond. Check out this lively discussion at the “How Can I Recycle This UK” website.

If it turns out that you can’t recycle your prescription bottles easily, don’t just dump them in the trash–and please don’t flush your extra meds down the toilet. Bring them back to the pharmacy for proper disposal.

Or you can think about ways that you can reuse the bottles. First, though, run them through the dishwasher. This is the best way to get them clean so that you don’t have to worry about any residual medicine tainting whatever it is that you put in the bottles. (I checked with an emergency room doctor about this. Here’s what he had to say: “Heck, we wash instruments from the lab in the dishwasher. Why wouldn’t this be good enough for prescription bottles?”) Nonetheless, I don’t recommend storing any kind of food stuff in the bottles, just to be on the safe side. And be sure to remove all of your personal identification from the bottle.

Now how can you reuse prescription bottles?

* Donate them to schools, shelters or charitable organizations that use them to create “trial sized” bottles of shampoo, lotion, and toothpaste that they can give out to the homeless and poor.

* Use them as mini-storage containers. A guy I know uses them for small electronic parts and hardware. His wife keeps needles, pins, spare buttons, craft supplies and more in them.

* Bring them to a local vet or animal shelter, which might be able to reuse the bottles when filling prescriptions for its animal patients.”I’ve never had a client offer this to me, but, yes it could be done. There is nothing illegal about it,” says Shawn Messonnier, DVM, a veterinarian in Plano, Texas, and host of the Sirius Satellite Radio show “Dr Shawn–The Natural Vet.” Not surprisingly, Dr. Messonnier says that the most important thing you should do before donating these bottles to a vet is making sure they are thoroughly cleaned.

Have I missed anything? Do you have other ideas for recycling or reusing prescription bottles? If so, post a comment. I look forward to heari
ng/reading your ideas.

***UPDATE***
OK, so I took my own advice–and the advice of the many people who commented and emailed me to wag their finger at me, ME, the Lean Green Mom, for not knowing what plastics I could recycle–and I called Allied Waste my new/old trash hauler and recycler. Turns out that they take plastics #1 through #7 so I’m in the clear. And how cool that I can recycle my prescription bottles along with the rest of my recyclables. I’m sorry for taking the lazy way out in the past.

A few days ago, a financial blogger named Mike Shedlock wrote a post based on the Business Week story on new frugality that featured my family and me. In response to that, tons of people commented on his blog, and many found there way over to this blog–giving my traffic another nice spike. (Thanks, Mish!)

One kind readers shared her DIY recipe for chicken broth and gave me permission to post it here. It sounds delicious, and I’m sure it will save me so much money from buying the canned stuff. I thought you guys would find it helpful, too. So, here is Linda Dahl’s way of making DIY chicken broth:

“I read a number of your posts and found myself reading about frugal dinner plans. You mentioned having bought chicken broth on sale and I wanted to share with you how I’ve been making my own chicken broth for many years now. The recipe/plan I use is not unique to me. I heard a cook book author (cannot remember her name) discussing how to make homemade chicken broth on the radio at least 15 years ago. I followed her ideas and have been making my own chicken broth ever since. My children LOVE it and sometimes ask me to just heat some up in a cup so they can drink it.

“Basically this is it…I save the bones, skin, fat, drippings and even scrapings from the pan that I roasted a whole chicken in. (I usually bake whole chickens, breasts, or leg quarters instead of boneless pieces although not exclusively.) Once I’ve removed the chicken from the pan I add a little boiling water to soften the crunchy bits stuck on the pan. After dinner I collect eveyone’s chicken bones, skin, and/or chicken left-overs on their plates, the scrapings and water from the pan, and put them in a freezer bag. I’m sure you know that once everything is cooked again it’s sterilized. If someone is sick though I usually dispose of what’s left on their plate.

“When I have 2 bags of chicken bones I put them in my 2 quart pressure cooker along with a carrot or two, 1-2 celery stalks, an onion (sometimes I leave the skin on the onion), pepper, garlic powder, and a little salt. I chop the vegetables into small pieces. I add only enough water to just barely cover the contents, put the lid on, and cook for about 1 hour at medium pressure. When the pressure drops on its own, I remove the bones and other solids and strain the liquid through a cheese cloth lined colander. The broth goes into the frig for at least 24 hours, all the fat floats to the top, it gets skimmed off and you are left with rich, tasty chicken broth. It is so full of minerals that it gels like jello and has to be scooped out instead of poured.

“I freeze the broth in 4-6 cup containers, use in place of canned chicken broth, and in place of water when making rice. It’s great as the base for chicken soup. You can also refreeze whatever broth you didn’t need for your recipe as long as you bring it to a boil before putting it back in the freezer.”

My only question for Linda–and maybe others might know the answer, too: I don’t have a pressure cooker. Is there another piece of equipment that I can use in my kitchen in lieu of a pressure cooker?

Thanks so much to Linda for sharing this awesome information. I can’t wait to go make broth!

Last week I posted about our ability to become accidental pumpkin gardeners at our old house. In response to that post “Jen on the Edge” made a comment about lasagna gardening. Of course, my mind went immediately to that gooey Italian dish. But this isn’t what Jen meant.

“Instead of digging a garden, you build one by layer leaves, grass clippings, compost, dirt, etc. on top of layers of newspaper or cardboard. If you do it now, you’ll have a great garden and amazing dirt next spring,” Jen wrote.

I was intrigued, because this sounded relatively easy. Also, I have been making compost for over a year but haven’t been able to do anything with it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Just to be sure I didn’t end up making a mess of my yard, first I did some additional research on the lasagna garden.

This article from Mother Earth News, though nearly 10 years old, offered a great primer on the lasagna garden.

Basically, you’re building up your own garden by using things you already own, in a spot that gets a decent amount of sun. Here’s what you’ll need:

* newspapers or flattened sheets of cardboard
* leaves or grass clippings
* compost material, like coffee grounds

First, you lay down a layer of newspaper to choke out any grass or weeds below it. The Mother Earth News article recommends a couple of things–putting at least three layers of newspaper down, and then wetting the sheets. The wet newspaper won’t be as likely to blow away (good if you’re doing some lasagna gardening on a breezy day like I was), and it helps to start the “break down” process of the newspaper on the stuff underneath.

Next, you put down a layer of leaves on top of the newspaper. If you compost, you know that in order to get your organic matter to break down, you need to layer it brown, green, brown, green, etc. The lasagna garden, which is really a composting garden, is no different. So the first layer of leaves is your first layer of brown. (In the picture, right, I hadn’t fully covered the newspaper with leaves so you could see things a bit better. I did put on a pretty thick layer before moving on to the next step.)

So the next step is layering your “green”–weird, because it isn’t really the green part at all. It’s the compost, which is brown. I must admit that it was a bit challenging spreading moist compost around on leaves, since the leaves tended to move with the compost. But I gutted it out, and got the job done.

After that I did another layer of leaves for my “brown.” Thankfully, I’ve got a ton of trees on my property and many of them had dropped their leaves. So I wasn’t wanting for any leaves for this project. If you have a yard without a lot of trees, you can dump the clippings from your lawn mower as your brown layer–again, weird since the clippings are actually green. FYI, you’re supposed to make your brown layer about twice as thick as the green layer. Oh and at this point? I was completely out of compost. I’ve got something like an 80-gallon compost bin, so this used up a lot of compost.

Because I was now out of compost, this layer of leaves had to be my last. This lasagna garden is supposed to be close to two-feet high when you’re done. Mine didn’t get quite that big. I stuck a yard stick in the pile to see that it got to about 16 inches. Not perfect but not bad for a couple of hours of work.

Now to get some pumpkins to carve in time for Halloween, so I can dump their guts in my lasagna garden. I’m also wondering what other kinds of seeds I could dump there. Any ideas?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I’d found myself among the millions of U.S. bank customers who discovered that the bank they’d come to know would no longer exist in the near future. Why? Mega bank merger. For me, it was Wachovia–then going over to Citibank, now becoming a part of Wells Fargo. For others it was Washington Mutual (Wamu) become Chase.

What does all of this have to do with frugal living? Well, I want to make sure that you make smart choices with your banking so that you can get the most for your money.

There’s still a pretty big subset of American banking customers who are plodding ahead, immune to these bank mergers and the chaos they cause. That’s because they choose to do their banking with small, local banks (probably not even on the radar of the Citigroup-like banks of the world). In fact, a recent Advertising Age article cites a Gallup study on consumer confidence in banks, and it didn’t look so good for the big guys:

Gallup’s findings show that while fewer than 25% of consumers trust U.S. banks, a much healthier 66% said they had confidence in the local banks where they do business. Both numbers are down from mid-July, but while national bank confidence dropped from 40%, local bank confidence dropped from 80%.

Other banks that consistently rank high in consumers’ minds–the credit union. Growing up my mother was a teacher, so I recall our getting information from a teachers’ credit union where she must have had an account. But union members like teachers aren’t the only folks that can take advantage of a credit union.

Some credit unions are affiliated with a house of worship or a geographic location. Others are university-run. Just this past week, I got an email from my alma mater, New York University, about the benefits of moving my banking to the New York University Federal Credit Union. As an alum I would be eligible to “join” as are faculty, staff and students.

According to a Boston Globe article, these are some of the things that you should look for in a credit union:

* Insured deposits
While deposit in regular banks are covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), deposits made in credit unions are covered by a different governing body: The National Credit Union Administration. Like other deposits these are insured for up to $250,000. However, according to the Globe article, there is a small percentage of credit unions that do not back their deposits via NCUA. Be sure to ask before moving your money.

* Interest rates
Some credit unions can offer more attractive interest rates on savings and checking accounts, and CDs. A good way to compare what’s out there is to log onto Bankrate.com.

* Reduced or zero ATM fees
A number of credit unions are members of something called the Credit Union National Association. Through this affiliations its customers can use ATMs at other member credit unions without being subjected to usages fees that people have come to expect when they withdraw money from an ATM that their bank doesn’t own.

The NCUA can provide more information on credit unions worth checking out.

Now, I like the idea of being able to walk to my bank and deal with someone in person, as I’ve been doing for years with Wachoiva. But, like many habits, I’m willing to change what I’m used to doing if it makes sense for my well-being–in this case, my financial well being. In fact, I’m in the market right now to put some money in a CD; perhaps I should check out the credit unions nearby and through NYU.

In the meantime, I wanted to offer anyone who has an account with a bank that has just merged or been bought out: be hyper vigilant when communicating with your “new” bank.

Criminals are using these transition times to take advantage of customers’ uncertainty. Here’s what to look out for and remember:

* Emails supposedly that are from your new/old bank.
There’s been a rise in aggressive phishing emails to try to pry your personal information from you, so says a recent Wall Street Journal story. These messages seem to be your new bank reaching out to you to make sure that you can log into its new website. This can allow customers to let their guard down, because it seems logical.

* Banks never email their customers.
If your bank needs to reach you, someone will call you at home or send you something in the mail.

* Never click on a link in an email.
This is a sure way to find yourself on a fake site that looks like a real site. Go to log in and, bam, you’ve just given away your information. Instead, open your web browser on your own (not via that link) and type the company’s name followed by dot come to get to its real website.

* If a phone call seems fishy, hang up.
Even if you receive what seems to be a legitimate call, don’t give out any personal information if any situation feels at all suspicious. Hang up and dial the number that you know reaches your bank, even if your bank no longer exists. I’ll bet there will be legitimate forwarding information for you to use.

I know that some of you are not thrilled with the notion of taking the Brita FilterforGood Pledge, because you’re not thrilled with the fact that you can’t recycle Brita filters. I know this because you’ve posted comments and sent me private emails. I hear you.

So I took the question to the Brita folks. Here’s what they told me:

“Brita is exploring recycling options and hopes to announce a solution for the filters very soon. While we know this is not an ideal situation, one Brita filter effectively replaces more than 300 plastic water bottles from ending up in landfills and I think we can all agree that is a better thing. We agree that recycling of the filters is a vital step – it’s just that these things sometimes move slowly and are sometimes out of our immediate control. Brita is committed to a solution in the near term. Once we get the details worked out, we’d love to work with you to help us spread the word.”

I’m hoping I’ll have news in the near future about a recycling program for the filters. In the meantime, I think the point about the filters effectively replacing more than 300 single water bottles is worth noting.

I realize not everyone will agree with me on this, but I just wanted to post this additional information.

As you know, I recently gave Brita filters my Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval. Well, the Brita folks got wind of it and reached out to me, to see if The Lean Green Family’s readers might want to take part in the FilterforGood Pledge.

Basically, you’re pledging not to drink bottled water (commercially bottled water that is). Instead, you’ll bring your own in a refillable bottle. Of course, there is a benefit for a company like Brita to promote this pledge–Brita just happens to make water filters to encourage people to drink more water from home. Truthfully, though, drinking tap water is one of the easiest things you can do to minimize your carbon footprint and your expenses, too.

I mean, before we made the switch to “making our own water,” we probably went through at least four bottles of water a day–those 16.9 ounce bottles. I had one, my husband took one to work, and I packed one in each of my daughters’ lunches. If someone had sports after school, we could easily go through another two or more bottles that day. So at our maximum consumption, we were tossing 2,190 bottles each year into our recycling bin.

As you may well know, only 20 percent or two out of 10 plastic water bottles make it to a recycling the plant. The other 80 percent? Yeah, they get added to landfills.

I know that we’re not the only people who made the switch from bottled water. If you watch “The Biggest Loser” on NBC, you’ve probably seen the contestants walking around with their refillable water bottles. Not surprisingly, Brita is one of the show’s sponsors. According to its press material, when Brita partnered with “The Biggest Loser” last season, “[it] led to the show saving more than 32,000 disposable water bottles from being used on the campus.”

During this season of “The Biggest Loser,” Brita wants to reach more people than just those vying to become the biggest loser, which is where the contest on this blog comes in. They’ve issued a blogger challenge to encourage readers to take the FilterForGood pledge.

The three bloggers who can get the most readers to take the pledge at the filterforgood.com website by the end of Season 6 (December 16, 2008) will be rewarded with a “The Biggest Loser” and FilterForGood gift pack with exclusive prizes from the show.

Here’s what you have to do to take the pledge and enter this blog. (Sorry but it requires filling out two forms. They go fast. Promise. I just did them myself.)

1. Log onto filterforgood.com (see the box below to click over to the website)

2. Click on the tab at the top of the page that says “Pledge” or scroll down on the home page to the section that says “Go Green, Save Green” and click on the “pledge/coupon” link.

3. Fill in the pledge form

4. In the comments section, please plug in this blog’s URL. It is http://suddenlyfrugal.blogspot.com Remember: even though it’s called The Lean Green Family, originally it was Suddenly Frugal; I never transferred the URL.

At some point the website might ask you to register. If you do take this extra step, there will be a question on the registration page about where you found out about the FilterforGood Pledge. Click “blog” and then type in the URL http://suddenlyfrugal.blogspot.com again.

After the final episode of the show, Brita will count all the pledges and announce the winners. Before then, though, they promised to send me some prize packs to give out to some of my readers. (I don’t know what’s in the prize packs; as soon as I find out, I’ll post information.)

So if you make the pledge, be sure to post a comment right here, too with your email address in case you win. (Spell it out–jane dot doe at gmail dot com or something such so spam bots can’t harvest it.)

My writer friend Laura Vanderkam writes more on the country’s new frugality–and mentions me! She calls it the Craigslist economy. It’s a good read so go check it out.

Leah

If you haven’t already gone out to buy pumpkins for fall decorations or making jack-o-lanterns, I’m guessing that pretty soon you will be. What would you say if I told you that after this year, you’d never have to buy pumpkins again.

Of course, what I’m talking about is growing your own but don’t freak out. This is a simple thing that any person with a small patch of land can accomplish. I mean, a couple of years ago, my husband and I found ourselves as accidental gardeners with a full-blown pumpkin patch taking over our backyard. Here’s how we accomplished that.

We had a small, raised “bed” next to our house, and this was where we dumped our grass clippings after a couple of pass-throughs with the mower. It’s also where one year we dumped the seeds and “guts” of the pumpkins that we’d carved for Halloween–and then after Halloween, where we tossed the pumpkins themselves. Keep in mind this was no fancy garden. We’d just outlined a rectangular area with pavers, in a sunny spot in our yard, and just kept filling it with grass clippings.

A year after we’d filled it with grass clippings and pumpkin guts, we had pumpkin vines taking over our yard. Without doing anything at all, we’d grown ourselves enough pumpkins to decorate for that Halloween. As long as we did the dump-and-run with seeds and guts that fall, we’d always have enough pumpkins for our Halloween the next year. Not surprisingly, this would save us the time and money of having to buy our own.

I’ve yet to try accidental gardening in our new house, but that’s about to change. This week I’m going to invest in a couple of pumpkins, and then outline a sunny spot in our new yard for our accidental garden. I’ll probably use the patch of land where we’d kept the passive solar heating panels that we used for our pool, because it got sun for at least six hours a day. Since we have no grass–and therefore no grass clippings–I’ll probably pile all of the raked leaves in this area, along with the pumpkin guts, and pray that everything takes. (I may plant a real vegetable garden there next year, too.)

Do you have a spot in your yard where you can build yourself an accidental garden and grow your own? If you’ve done this in the past with success, post a comment to let us know what worked for you and what did not. I hope that a year from now I can upload a picture of my own locally grown pumpkins from our accidental garden.

I’ve got three large bags of shredded paper sitting here, waiting to be dropped off at the nearest Abitibi Paper Retriever dumpster. Since that dumpster is located on the far side of the campus that holds our high school, middle school and upper elementary school–and I try to pick up my middle school-aged daughters up on foot–I usually only get the chance to make the shredded paper dumpster run occasionally in the car. (I don’t mind making the walk to the dumpsters but having to lug the bags of shredded paper can be a drag–literally.) I’m all for bringing my recyclable paper to the dumpster, since it helps the school with its fundraising, but since I don’t anticipate driving over towards the school any time soon, I got to thinking about ways that I could reuse the shredded paper.

For starters I know that I can use it in my compost to cover up any dumped organic matter. As you probably well know, the key to composting is doing a green-brown layer–that is, organic matter (green) that is covered by leaves, grass clippings or, in this case, shredded paper (brown). Covering up the “green” with “brown” helps it to decompose faster.

Some gardeners swear by sprinkling shredded paper into already dug holes in which they are going to do some planting. I guess if the paper breaks down with organic matter in the compost, then logically it would offer the same benefit in your garden. Even better–take your rich, newly created soil from your compost, and use that, along with shredded paper, to fill in the holes when you garden. This way you never have to spend money on a bag of dirt!

When I was doing a lot of selling on eBay, I would take the cross-cut paper out of my shredder and use it as cushioning in the shipping boxes. I’ve done the same when putting away Christmas ornaments or other breakables I would normally wrap in bubble wrap. In fact, come Christmas time, I’ll shred wrapping paper that isn’t reusable along with the remnants of holiday cards, and use all of that in place of bubble wrap. I mean, why pay for bubble wrap when I’ve got free packing materials right here in my shredder?

Your kitty would approve (I hope) of this next suggestion: I’ve heard that you can use shredded paper as replacement litter if you find yourself in a litter-pan pinch. I guess it makes sense–the paper is absorbent, and it moves in a way that litter does, so your cat can cover up her business once she’s done. Only drawback? I doubt that paper is odor absorbent.

Speaking of animals you can also use shredded paper in a hamster or guinea pig’s cage, or your can donate it to your local animal shelter. I hadn’t thought of this, but I’m definitely going to call my local SPCA and see if they can use it–and then find out how they use it.

Another idea is to use shredded paper in place of that icky plastic grass in Easter baskets. Of course, it would be prettier if you happened to be shredding a bunch of colorful paper at the time, but I’m guessing that as long as there’s candy sitting on top of them thar shredded paper, the kids really aren’t going to care what color it is.

I’m no sewing queen, but I’ll bet that you could use shredded paper as stuffing in pillows and other decorating ideas. Some people use the shredded paper as stuffing in dog and cat beds. Hey, maybe I’ll take out the old sewing machine and give that a try.

Can you think of other ways to reuse shredded paper beyond just recycling it? If so, post a comment to share your idea.

More than 2,000 news folks stopped by this blog on Friday, most likely in response to the Business Week story on new frugality in which we are featured. Welcome!

I hope the new visitors will stick around and maybe subscribe (see the box at right) so that I can keep them posted on our green and frugal ideas on a regular basis.

Just so you know I post Monday through Friday, with Thursday being the day for me to announce the latest winner of the Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval. Do you have any products or services you think I should check out for this award? Then post a comment and I’ll look into it.

In the meantime look around using the Blog Archive at right to catch up on what I’ve been covering. I hope you’ll take a look at the Reader Q&A and Random Reusable posts, some of the most popular to date, and let me know if you have any questions or topics you’d like to have me cover in the future.

Thanks again for stopping by!

A lovely writer named Diane Porter interviewed me for a piece she was writing called Make Frugality Your Green Reality, which appears on the website of WFAA, Channel 8 in Dallas/Forth Worth. She quotes me pretty extensively, and her piece –which runs for four web pages–is an excellent roundup and reminder of how green and frugal can add up to more dough in your pocket.

Additionally, Business Week features us in their cover story “The New Frugality,” including a video segment. There’s also a podcast that you can listen to, with the reporter who wrote the story.

Enjoy!

The post below talks about how you can use your Crock Pot to cook frugally. Here’s a chance to enter a contest to win a brand-new Crock Pot for your kitchen. Good luck!

A Year of CrockPotting: Happy Crocktober! Brand new eLume Give Away.

PLEASE NOTE: You have to post your comment on the website above–not the one here–to enter the contest. Sorry for any confusion.