What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[Bawkbok]

We compost everything that comes out of the kitchen except for dairy, grease and meat and no coffee grounds anymore since the dirt goes into the chicken run. We add grass clippings and leaves. All this attracts bugs. When the compost pile gets large enough, I put my boots and gloves on and as I use a hand trowel to till it over, I collect any bugs I find and put them in a bucket of compost dirt and take it to the run. The girls go crazy. It only takes a small corner of your yard to create a compost pile. We leave ours open year round but in colder, wetter climates, I would cover it with a tarp so it doesn't become a muddy smelly mess. I've discovered that onion skins never break down so those go in the trash. What dirt doesn't go in the run, we add to the garden. We also add chicken poop and pine shavings to the pile which really attracts the insects but avoid using this on your garden beds for at least a year due to the high nitrogen content with all the poop. Happy composting!

 

[fuzzi]

I organized my small shed today. I have been putting all my chicken and much of my gardening "stuff" in there. It had gotten cluttery.

I love collecting coffee canisters, use them for so many different things. I have one in the chicken coop, full of feed. I use it to top off the feeders without having to go over to the shed. I use another one for rinsing and storing paint brushes.

Today I used them in a different manner:

I rolled up netting and floating row covers, stuffed them in coffee canisters and then placed them in a large tote. All clean, neat, contained, and in one location. Easy to find. Oh, and I slid the canister lids inside as well.

On Wednesday I replaced my two short (10') shade cloths with one longer one that covers the entire coop.

What did I do with the older ones? I folded them neatly and tied up the bundles with straw bale string.

Final look:

Plastic fencing rolled and stored in a box, totes filled with netting and row covers, tarps rolled/folded and placed in paper grocery sacks, hardware cloth sections rolled and zip-tied, stored in a box...all my garden and coop fencing/covers in one space.

It looks better, and it didn't cost me anything to organize.

"A place for everything, and everything in its place" as my dad used to say. SO true.

 

[Bawkbok]

Fuzzi, can you PLEASE come organize my garage?

 

[fuzzi]

Fuzzi, can you PLEASE come organize my garage?

Did I ever share the story about our missions trip to a (troubled) boys' home in Montana?

They had plenty of cooks, and it was too hot for me to help in the gardens, so they had me helping scrape old cement off ceramic tiles, so they could be reused. I needed a better scraper, asked where the tools were stored, and was shown a small room with cardboard boxes, filled with hardware and tools in a haphazard manner. I spent the rest of the day organizing it. The next day I was assigned the kitchen pantry, then a linen closet, then a garage full of stuff.

It was fun.

 

[Bawkbok]

Did I ever share the story about our missions trip to a (troubled) boys' home in Montana?

They had plenty of cooks, and it was too hot for me to help in the gardens, so they had me helping scrape old cement off ceramic tiles, so they could be reused. I needed a better scraper, asked where the tools were stored, and was shown a small room with cardboard boxes, filled with hardware and tools in a haphazard manner. I spent the rest of the day organizing it. The next day I was assigned the kitchen pantry, then a linen closet, then a garage full of stuff.

It was fun.

That's funny. Sounds like you could get paid for your organizational services!!!

 

[fuzzi]

That's funny. Sounds like you could get paid for your organizational services!!!

My full time job is as a coordinator/ administrator in a medical facility. It's the first time in my life when I looked at the interviewers and said "I can do this job!"

I got hired.

 

[Sally PB]

Getting stuff put away and organized is an investment in your future. Spending a lot of time looking for something is very wasteful.

Says she who wasted too much time looking for stuff today...

 

[gtaus]

"A place for everything, and everything in its place" as my dad used to say. SO true.

Nicely done on the reorganization! Looks great!

FYI, I just spent the better part of the last week cleaning up my garage before winter hits so I can get my car into the stall and keep it out of the weather. The bulk of the clutter was pallet wood that I had disassembled and de-nailed. I had to move all that pallet wood outside and stack it up, off the ground, and then put a tarp over it to keep the rain and snow off. I also had to put away my saws; a table saw and a miter saw, both on stands. They just took up too much room.

After that, I had a number of "things" that were on the benchtops that needed to be stored away. My "reorganization" for the past year is to move everything from my various boxes, jars, and storage bins into my new Industrial Black totes that I get at Menards...

I put some cheap brown masking tape on the rim of the lid and use a Sharpie marker to indicate what's inside the tote. It works pretty good. The best thing is that now I have all the same type of totes, they can stack one on top of another, taking up much less room. Before, I had all kinds of different storage bins and boxes, which was OK, but they did not stack and most of them were not nearly as strong as these industrial totes.

BTW, I just noticed that those Menards industrial totes are on sale this week....

I also save most of my clear plastic bags and clear plastic jars (like peanut butter jars) for keeping smaller items together in the larger totes. I like to pick up a bag or jar and just being able to see what is inside. That's how I reuse some of those things we get in the household items we buy.

I learned that lesson from my mother - in the opposite way. She would bag up everything in opaque plastic shopping bags that you could not see into, then she would put them in storage, and never know what was inside the bags. When she needed something, she never knew where to look in those bags so she just bought more. Anyways, it taught me the lesson that if you intend to keep something in storage, you need to have a system that makes it easy to find and retrieve those items when you need them. That's why now I label all my totes and only use clear bags and jars for my storage inside.

My current system is not perfect, but using labels on all the totes and only using clear plastic bags and jars has helped a lot.

 

[fuzzi]

Nicely done on the reorganization! Looks great!

FYI, I just spent the better part of the last week cleaning up my garage before winter hits so I can get my car into the stall and keep it out of the weather. The bulk of the clutter was pallet wood that I had disassembled and de-nailed. I had to move all that pallet wood outside and stack it up, off the ground, and then put a tarp over it to keep the rain and snow off. I also had to put away my saws; a table saw and a miter saw, both on stands. They just took up too much room.

After that, I had a number of "things" that were on the benchtops that needed to be stored away. My "reorganization" for the past year is to move everything from my various boxes, jars, and storage bins into my new Industrial Black totes that I get at Menards...

View attachment 3983402
I put some cheap brown masking tape on the rim of the lid and use a Sharpie marker to indicate what's inside the tote. It works pretty good. The best thing is that now I have all the same type of totes, they can stack one on top of another, taking up much less room. Before, I had all kinds of different storage bins and boxes, which was OK, but they did not stack and most of them were not nearly as strong as these industrial totes.

BTW, I just noticed that those Menards industrial totes are on sale this week....

View attachment 3983410

I also save most of my clear plastic bags and clear plastic jars (like peanut butter jars) for keeping smaller items together in the larger totes. I like to pick up a bag or jar and just being able to see what is inside. That's how I reuse some of those things we get in the household items we buy.

I learned that lesson from my mother - in the opposite way. She would bag up everything in opaque plastic shopping bags that you could not see into, then she would put them in storage, and never know what was inside the bags. When she needed something, she never knew where to look in those bags so she just bought more. Anyways, it taught me the lesson that if you intend to keep something in storage, you need to have a system that makes it easy to find and retrieve those items when you need them. That's why now I label all my totes and only use clear bags and jars for my storage inside.

My current system is not perfect, but using labels on all the totes and only using clear plastic bags and jars has helped a lot.

I hate not being able to find things.

I like to label, too, but the most important thing I want to do is place similar items together.

When I organized the linen closet at the boys' home I placed a large sheet on the floor, then climbed up a ladder (tall closet!) and tossed all the sheets down onto the floor. After sorting due to type (twin, fitted, flat) I folded, placed them on the shelves, and added labels on the edge of the shelves identifying what type of sheets were placed there.

The sad part about organizing is knowing that someone won't care, but shove items where they don't belong. Argh.

I couldn't work in a library, TOO frustrating.

 

[gtaus]

I've discovered that onion skins never break down so those go in the trash.

We put all our onion skins into the chicken bucket and feed them to the chickens. I think they must eat them because I never see any remaining in the run at the end of the day. It could be that some of them get turned into the run litter and become compost. In any event, we always toss our onion skins into the run and I never see them again.

Just about anything and everything organic gets tossed into my chicken run composting system. What the chickens don't eat gets mixed into the run litter and composts in place. That includes things like chicken bones from our meals. The chickens will pick the bones clean, the bones get mixed into the run litter, and by the time I sift out the run litter for finished compost, I rarely find any bones left.

We also add chicken poop and pine shavings to the pile which really attracts the insects but avoid using this on your garden beds for at least a year due to the high nitrogen content with all the poop.

I know lots of people use those poop boards in the coop. When they clean off the boards, the chicken poo goes into a bucket and maybe out to a compost pile to age. That is some highly concentrate poo and certainly not ready for using on your garden.

In my setup, the chickens poo directly on top of the coop deep bedding litter where the poo automagically gets mixed in with the coop litter. I clean out my coop litter twice a year and dump the used litter into the chicken run. I let it sit there for about 6 months to age. But it's mostly coop litter with a much smaller bit of chicken poo in the mix. I don't think it would be wise to put on a garden right away, but I think that after 3 months sitting outside in the run would be long enough if I really had to push it.

Happy composting!

As it turns out, I converted my entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. I have so much finished compost, ready to use, in my run that I only use less than 10% of what is ready every year. So, no worries about using compost too fresh and hot for my gardens.

I used to spend a lot of money every year buying bags of compost at our local big box stores. Since I got my chickens and converted my chicken run into a chicken run composting system, I have saved hundreds and hundreds of dollars on NOT buying bagged compost. Furthermore, I think my homemade chicken run compost is better than what I was buying at the stores.

I would never have believed that composting would become one of my favorite topics, but I know how much money I have saved making my own compost instead of buying it.

Additionally, because I don't have to spend big money on bags of compost for my gardening, I have more than doubled my garden beds in the past 5 years. That's a lot more home grown food for the family and less dependence on the grocery stores for all our food items.