Tightwad tip: the broom

It might surprise a lot of people, but I rarely ever vacuum the floors. And it's not that my house is dirty- quite the contrary. You see, I suffer from tinnitus and hyperacusis, which means I'm very sensitive to a lot of sounds. The vacuum cleaner happens to be one of those sounds that I really can't stand. I used to use it for my floors but then just decided to do what everyone else is doing around these parts, which is to use a broom. 

Honestly, using a broom is just so much easier! Our vacuum is quite big. It's a Numatic, the "old fashioned" type of vacuum, so no robotic quality involved, nor is it a stick vacuum cleaner type of model that's rechargeable (which, in my opinion, must be quite annoying). In fact, it's that big that it was hard to find a place where it could sit without bothering us and out of sight. We eventually found a place behind our sofa, and the handle is laying under one of our wardrobes. Every so often it's being used to clean the sofa and that's all. Usually my husband does that when I'm not there as to not get overstimulated by the sound. Like all houses here, we have tile floors, which are easy to maintain and easy to sweep. Owning a vacuum cleaner isn't something very common here- most people just do it the old fashioned way by using a broom and mop. And perhaps in addition to that, a manual carpet cleaner. Some people even borrow their neighbours/relatives' vacuum for those few times year you need one. Most car washes offer services to clean/vacuum cars, so that's not really a reason to own one. 

Using a broom regularly instead of a vacuum cleaner saves me money, by paying less for utilities, plus not having to replace the vacuum itself in just a few years. It also keeps me fit, as vacuuming isn't as labour intensive as using the broom is; I'm using more muscles when sweeping. I know, I know, I'll probably get the "what about allergies"- kind of question. The interesting thing is- I used to have dust mite allergy, but it seems like dust doesn't affect me like it used to when I always vacuumed. Also interesting: my mopping water isn't more dirty compared to when I still used the vacuum. 

Our very handy carpet cleaner

A broom definitely takes up less space! 

What if electricity was free?

The temperature is increasing almost per day now, yesterday was the first day above 40° (104° f), 42 degrees to be precisely. Today was around 45°. Yes, that's very hot! Fortunately, we live in a dry semi desert climate, which makes it a lot more bearable. Humidity makes the windchill a lot hotter. 

Despite the hot temperature, we still try to be moderate with the use of air conditioning. It's set on 26° c, and it's not on for the majority of the day. It's not that we cannot afford running the airconditioner all day long, we can, but I really don't see the need to pay that much for utilities.  And not just because of finances, although that certainly plays a role too. My first and foremost reason is the environment, then our health. Yes, I don't think airconditioners are good for our health - especially if there's a huge gap between outdoor and indoor temperature. The other day I read an article written by an pulmonologist about that, and how it can trigger issues for asthma patients. Both my oldest daughter and me happen to have asthma... We're not with a lot of issues during the summer drought, fortunately, but anything we can do for our lung health is a win. 

But something got me thinking: what if electricity was completely free? What would I do in such an instance? I need to be honest with myself (and my readers 😉). I'd probably use it a tad more than I do now. Not necessarily all day long, and I wouldn't mess up with the temperature setting, I still want summer to feel like summer. And I still value protecting the environment, within my limited means anyhow. It doesn't really feel hypocritical to be honest, because I just don't want to spend fortunes just on getting our house cold enough so I can wear sweaters at home (lol). So I would still use it moderately even if electricity were free. 

There's a reason why that came to my mind. Somebody I know is married to a man who works for the electricity and gas company. There's just one such a company here, owned by the government. Their employees get the privilege of having free electricity- and also for one extra house of their choice, for example their parents home or whatever other home they wish. I think that's pretty cool. Without wanting to sound too socialist, it seems like things like these usually stop when those companies are being privatized, sadly. As soon as it's being privatized, company greed changes a lot. My grandfather also worked for the electricity company in the Netherlands, before it was being privatized, and he had exactly the same privilege. I remember my grandmother using only an electric hob, which was a bit rare, and I only ever saw it at her house, not anywhere else. Apparently, now it's getting more common to use an electric hob but at the time it wasn't- she even got hers from Germany as they were better available there. Interestingly enough, my grandmother was one of the most frugal people I've ever known, despite her electricity bill being zero regardless of her use. She didn't have a lot of electric guzzling appliances, such as a dryer or even an electrical lawn mower (despite having a big garden). So basically, electricity being free didn't affect her use at all - she could have taken advantage of that privilege but didn't.

And to get back to my acquaintance I was referring to, it happens to be the same with her. I was visiting her recently and noticed that she still hadn't installed her airconditioner. She owns one, but having moved to her current house around a year ago, the airconditioner being installed apparently wasn't a big priority. She said they didn't really miss one and that her fan was enough. I must add that she lives in a house that stays relatively cool during the summer, but still, most people in her situation probably have taken advantage of free electricity. Also, like most people here, she's frugal by nature. She doesn't necessarily call herself frugal but she definitely is. 

And of course, then there's people who have plenty of solar panels to have enough electricity during the summer for all their appliances. That's a bit of a different story. I wish we had solar panels, but unfortunately they're so expensive! That might be a disadvantage of the grid not being privatized... it's still a future goal of ours to have enough renewable/sustainable electricity. Not necessarily going offgrid, but to have our "own" power for the majority of the time and to still be connected to the grid as a backup. I think probably when one has solar panels, that's also a way of being more mindful of your usage of electricity. Because you never know when you run out. 

I guess the moral of this story is that we should always be mindful of what we use, regardless of its abundance, it being free of charge, etc. In the end, even "free" stuff is never totally free- someone or something is paying a price. In this case, that something is the planet. 

Summer savings

I  guess I was on a blogging binge yesterday. It can happen... 😃 

We've had a few weeks of nice autumn weather, in March and April, but especially for the past two weeks it's been very hot around these parts. It might not be "officially" summer yet in the northern hemisphere, but the weather is certainly more summer-like than spring-like here! I'm aware of the fact that summer is not something everyone necessarily enjoys, especially very hot summers. I still prefer summer over winter though. Even though we don't have very cold winters, I quite enjoy the heat. The added benefit of summers is that there's a lot of things you can save on. 

Air conditioning: Our days without putting on the air conditioning are probably numbered, we can only delay it so much... But, every day without having to put it on is yet another one! Yeah, I know living without air conditioning is the ideal, both frugality wise as environmentally wise. There was a time when I didn't want one for these two reasons, but I'm glad we eventually purchased one. It was during a heat wave, when temperatures outside reached nearly 50°c... (which is 122° f). Living in a desert without air conditioning can be like living in Siberia without heating! It didn't feel as a luxury anymore and we were so relieved after ours was installed. Both my husband and me suffer from the heat when it reaches a certain temperature in the home. He sweats a lot, and gets warm easily. I'm quite the opposite, where the heat kind of stays in my body and doesn't come out because I can't sweat. I also have asthma and a lot of muscle contractions during the summer which both decreased immensely since we have an air conditioning. Still, we try to be relatively frugal with it - we put it on when it becomes almost unbearable and it's set on 26° c (78° f), never lower. We only have one unit in the living room- I guess that's one of the benefits of living in a small home. In our bedrooms we have fans, and I actually prefer sleeping with a fan on rather than AC. Also, the air conditioning is not on all day long. That's how we still try to use it minimal but still make it more bearable during the summer heat. Still, I've found that our "minimal air conditioning use" tends to be cheaper than minimal heating during the winter. 

Another way of saving on utilities is by using cold water. Our pipes are outside the house which means the water heats up fast. On very hot summer days that means you can have a warm shower with "cold" water. This applies to the washing machine too- I usually turn the temperature setting completely off, as it's usually still at least 30°c, if not more. Same with doing dishes. We also try not to cook dishes with a long cooking time to avoid heating up the kitchen, and use the oven less. 

Speaking of laundry: since line drying is something we do all year round, it's not necessarily a saving, but it is much easier now than it is during the winter. Also, since the house isn't cold like it is during the winter, we wear less layers of clothes. Less clothes = less laundry. 

Gas: our car is mostly used to drive and pick up the children from school. Since they have a three month long break during the summer, we're defenitely saving on gas. We still use the car during the summer break, but much less than our average use. 

Fun things: since it's so hot here, it's not adviced to go outside during most part of the day, so we really need to find ways to entertain ourselves at home. This usually happens to be a lot cheaper too! We do enjoy going outside at night for a stroll and an ice cream every so often. Vacations are not something we do a lot, last year was the first time in 4 years that we went on a small vacation. To be honest I'd rather stay home, but I did enjoy the children having a great time. I'm not sure whether we'll go on a vacation this year or not, but if we go, it'll be as frugal as possible. We don't go abroad but stay in our country. Since we live in a small country, it's just a few hours drive to get to the coastal region. 

Food: we generally eat less during the summer, and prefer lighter meals with more veggies. In season produce is quite cheap here, fortunately, so that's a big saving right there. I've also noticed that some foods that can spoil quickly (like eggs) tend to be cheaper during the summer months. 

Reheating foods without a microwave

Apparently it's surprising to some people that we don't own a microwave. People have become so accustomed to using appliances for about everything that we kind of forgot how to do things in a more simple/old fashioned way and even think it's impossible unless you have a device doing it for you. We did have a microwave in the past, but haven't owned one in over 14 years. When my sister's oven died, we gave our oven to her, which was a small microwave/oven combo (we had a stove with bigger oven, so never really used the oven part of the microwave). That's when I realized that a microwave wasn't a necessity for us. Apparently, this is quite a controversial topic. Probably because the reason why some people refuse to use a microwave isn't exactly evidence based and people tend to link that to conspiracy theories. I can understand that, which is why I firstly wanted to make clear the reason behind not owning one. And I don't judge people for being into "conspiracy theories" or believe certain things that aren't considered evidence based; I just wanted to make clear our reasons behind this. Which is quite simply just not seeing the need to own one. 

Isn't it interesting that one day you're convinced that you actually need a certain thing, only to find out you can easily do without after it's gone- the opposite way would be a lot easier. What's also interesting is that people here generally don't have microwaves either. They do sell them obviously, although there aren't quite a lot of different types. The combo things like we once had aren't even being sold as far as I know, so it's just individual microwaves. I actually know only one person that owns a microwave and she doesn't really use it a lot. People generally were just brought up reheating foods the old fashioned way and probably don't feel the need to buy something that does it for them. Which also plays a role is that they don't sell foods here that need to be microwaved- there's not a lot of convenience foods, and certainly no "TV dinners" kind of foods. So what do you do with a microwave then, after all. 

Anyway, here are some tips on reheating foods without a microwave. It seems like people would like to live without one, but aren't sure how, so I'll share some practical experience that I've gained throughout the years. 

• Soups, stews and other liquid foods are a no brainer to me, but I'm including them anyway. All you need is a saucepan of some sort. I'll be honest, I sometimes use an old frying pan, to make reheating quicker (the narrower the pan, the longer it takes to heat). 

• Pasta dishes: I reheat this in a frying pan on very low heat, stirring occasionally. I do this too with rice, although with rice I prefer to add a few spoons of liquid. Then just heat until the liquid has evaporated. With mashed potatoes this works as well. 

• Couscous: just the same way as it's being prepared- by steaming. This doesn't necessarily have to be a steaming pan, you can also use a meat sieve or colander. I'm not sure how it will turn out when using instant couscous as I've never used that. This will work for plain rice too. 

• All kids of foods that have been fried up previously, such as baked potatoes, fish, eggs, chicken, vegetables etc. Eggs are probably not the first food you think about when it comes to leftovers but I thought I'd include it anyway, 'cause you never know. These you can all re-fry again, on a low temperature and flipping regularly. 

• Food that's already on a plate is a little bit more complicated to reheat. Just a little bit. I have two methods: either to heat it up with the water bath kind of method, when you have a plate on a hot saucepan and let it simmer for as long as needed, usually not longer than 10 minutes and then letting it sit there for another 10 minutes or so (be careful when you take off the plate!). This works best with soup plates. My other method is to use my cast iron pan which I use to bake bread on the stove. I heat up this pan until it's very hot and then put the plate of food on it. If the plate isn't too big, I put another pan on top of it and cover that with something hot. I nearly always have hot pans on my stove, so when I just made something that needs to rest I'll use that. Sometimes I put a small saucepan on the lid of a bigger pan (they're metal lids, for safety reasons I wouldn't try this with glass lids). Another wat of water Bart heating is to put glass jars in a pot with water and let it reheat slowly. It's important to use cold water and let it heat up slowly as it could break the jars otherwise. This is especially handy when you have multiple small leftovers and you don't want to use so many pans. I use my glass jars a lot to store leftovers anyway, so this way I am saving a lot of extra dishes to wash. 

• Pancakes, breads, waffles etc. can be heated (and thereby, revived) easily in a frying pan, but I use my cast iron pan that is specially designed for making bread. We usually have either homemade flatbreads (north African style, which is kind of similar to pita bread), or baguettes that we buy at the local bakery. Especially the baguettes become stale quite quickly, and by reheating them they taste almost freshly baked again. It's also a way to defrost bread- just make sure the flame is set very low and that the bread is being flipped regularly. 

• Another kind of using residue heat is to use the oven. I have a toaster oven (albeit bigger, but it's an individual oven not attached to the hob), and especially when baking something that has a long baking time it can get quite hot on top. So I might use that every now and then to reheat foods on, by simply putting the plate there. Or just to keep foods warm. I also like to use it to dehydrate certain foods, but that's for another time. Another way to keep foods warm is to put pans on top of each other. This works well when pans can fit on top of each other, which isn't always the case, but when they do it's quite a handy way to keep foods warm until it's time to eat. This was done a lot in the 1950s, and apparently it was even propagated to do by the Dutch government, to encourage people to use less cooking fuel. 

• Steaming can be used not only for couscous but for so many other foods. I know my father in law sometimes steams his bread when it has become stale. And my grandmother reheated poffertjes (tiny Dutch pancakes) this way- she didn't have a "real" steaming pan but just used the metal colander which I mentioned earlier. This, she called "the poor man's microwave". 

• This is where I cheat a bit: I sometimes use my air fryer. I especially do this with small things as ours isn't that big. I reheat my baked oatmeal for example, although it's not limited to that. Other foods I can think about that I use my air fryer for are donuts, muffins (either savory or sweet), etc. To be honest, if it were me I wouldn't have purchased the air fryer, but we were gifted one. I do find them convenient at times though. If I wouldn't have an air fryer, I would probably have reheated the baked oatmeal/donuts by steaming. 

• Of course, you can also use an oven to reheat foods. I don't really do that, as it's very energy inefficient in my opinion. Even though our oven isn't as big as most other ovens, it still takes a lot of energy to heat up. With casseroles, this is probably the best and only solution (although, if using a round oven dish, I'm sure my previously mentioned method of the cast iron pan, will work just as fine). We don't eat a lot of casseroles and if we do, we usually don't have a lot of leftovers. But all in all the oven is the last option for me. This reminds me of when we had blackout of our gas and my mother in law wanted to reheat her tea. She ended up using our oven! She couldn't use hers, as she has a gas oven.i found it a bit weird honestly, but it did work. 

•The sun: since we live in a generally warm country, with plenty of sun, using sun warmth is obviously the most sustainable option of all! I might forget to take out a baguette from the freezer or something and just lay it outside in the sun. This works very good. I can't put everything there because of the cats in our garden, but defrosting bread isn't something that you can't do with the cats. When the heat is very intense during the summer, this should be possible with any food, although I must admit I haven't tried it a lot. 

• Heaters: I grew up in a home with a wood heater. There was a flat surface on top of the heater which was very useful to heat up foods, which my parents sometimes did. It will also work with most radiators. The heater we use right now isn't suitable to put things on, unfortunately, but when we did have radiators we used that to heat up foods. Just make sure you don't put that heater on for the sole purpose of reheating foods- in that case, you can even better use an oven. 😉

• Apparently, you can even use the dishwasher to reheat (or even cook!) foods. Since I don't own a dishwasher (and am not planning on getting one) I'm not sure how, and if, this works. I just read that others do this. If it does work and you're running a load of dishes anyway, why not? Probably most people find it gross, but with all the water inside the machine, I'm assuming that the food is covered properly anyway, so I don't see a problem there. But again, I can't attest to the correctness of this. 

So these were a few of the things I do. Kindly note that I'm not claiming these are the most healthy or safest ways- I'm simply sharing what works for us. What I'm sharing probably goes somewhat against most official guidelines. But then again, I personally don't really care about most rules and I guess I have my own kinds of guidelines. I mean, some things are obviously common sense, but I personally don't agree with the caution against reheating rice, just to give an example. That's going overboard with food safety concerns and I just think it leads to so much wasted foods. But, if it's a concern to you, just know that this is not necessarily meant as an encouragement to go against official guidelines. My intention is simply to share some of the things that works for us. 

Doing laundry frugally

Laundry... Another chore that most of us are not particularly bothered to do, myself included. But still, your clothes need to get clean. Fortunately, there a quite a few tricks you can put into practice to make doing laundry somewhat easier, more frugal and greener. Here's a few ways of how I try to conserve our precious resources while cleaning our wash. 

Make your clothes last longer

This is probably the #1 tip one could get. Especially when it comes to the environment- as clothes aren't necessarily that expensive, especially if you're like me and shop at thrift stores. Anyway, here's a few things to make our clothes last longer. 

First of all, what we do is we wear our clothes multiple days. I know that most people are grossed out by this but if you think about it: even if you'd wear freshly laundered clothes every day, even after 15 minutes they'd be "dirty" already. Your bacteria are there from the moment you put the fabric onto your skin. Of course, there are items that need to be changed every day, like underwear. But not every item needs to be changed that often. Especially during the winter when you're wearing multiple layers of clothing (to avoid heating up the house too much), the outer layers won't need a wash that often. Too much washing will do no good for your laundry. I do own some items for years already, which is most likely due to the fact that they won't get washed that quickly. 

If you're wearing synthetics, this is especially important because everytime synthetics are being washed they'll release microplastics. Less washing simply means less microplastics! Taking care of your clothes means washing your delicates by hand too. 

Using a dryer is detrimental for most fabrics, too. Line drying is the optimal way of drying laundry! While some people live in a climate that doesn't allow them to line dry year round, for a lot of people it is doable. Did you know that even if it's freezing outside, you can even "freeze dry" your laundry? Fortunately, I live in a country with a dry climate where it's warm for most part. We do have a short winter but usually it's not freezing. Since it's a dry climate we have little rain. During the winter we do have to hang the laundry somewhat earlier so that at the end of the day it's dry, making it less convenient than line drying during the summer... But still, doable. To make drying outside during the winter season easier, I sometimes use an extra spinning cycle. This really works well. 

Instead of line drying outside, using a clothes drying rack is an alternative to a dryer. This is somewhat tricky because you don't want your house to get humid. Providing you have the room and you don't have multiple loads of laundry every day, this is an option if the weather doesn't allow line drying outside. 

If this all isn't an option for you and the dryer needs to be used, be sure to put a dry towel with your wet laundry. Apparently, this makes drying much quicker! (Or so I've heard at least- don't hold me accountable ;))

To prevent your clothes from fading while drying in the sun is important too. This will keep your clothes in a good condition longer! So get them inside when they're dried- no reason to keep them in the sun longer than necessary. And dry the clothes inside out, if possible. 

Saving precious resources while doing laundry

With all the conveniences and luxuries these days, one can quickly forget that washing a load of clothes actually uses quite a lot water. If you own a "standard" washer, all this water will be washed away, into the sewage. Where I live, there are still many people who don't own a regular washer. Instead they have a semi automatic machine, which basically means that the washer and spinner are separated from each other. The rinsing needs to be done by hand, using a large bucket or a washing tub. The water also won't be washed away automatically, so most people will use that water for flushing the toilet, and the rinsing water for mopping the floor. That alone saves a lot of water! 

I do own a "regular" washer and not a semi automatic washer, because I have quite a few health issues and it seems to be more work to me. But I'll acknowledge that owning of a washer that does EVERYTHING for me is quite a luxury. I know that many people in the west take these things for granted, and it's totally fine to own these luxurious things. But at least I will acknowledge the fact that these still are luxuries. Anyway, back to the topic. You can actually do quite a lot of things to save water, even if you have a fully automatic washer. 

I've read that by using your towel after showering twice instead of once, you'll already save thousands of litres of water! Which brings me back to my nr. 1 tip of wearing clothes more often, because the same thing is true for clothes. So this is a way we're saving thousands of litres water: by using most items multiple times. Saving water doesn't seem to bother most people. After all, water is free or nearly free. But is it? Where we live, water is quite expensive. We live in a drought stricken country so the government tries hard to make people use less water- and by increasing the price, that surely works. But even if water is free where you live, it's still better to be frugal with your water use for environmental reasons. Water is a precious resource and only so much of the water we have on this earth is actually suitable for human consumption, so it's a shame that so much of that actually will be poured into the sewage! 

If you have an eco setting on your machine, this could save water too. I say *could*, because in some cases,  this will only save you somewhat on electricity. I personally don't use the eco setting. It lasts quite long and I don't feel like waiting for almost three hours just so I can go and hang my laundry, with the risk of having a blackout in between, which happens a lot where we live. Instead, I use the short 45 minutes cycle if it's just clothes. 

Another way we save water is that I quit doing an "extra rinse". It was something I was just used to do I guess, but why? I'm not sure. In most cases, that extra rinse is totally unnecessary. Most people use the extra rinse because they follow the "recommended" amount of laundry detergent, which is, in my opinion, overdosing big time. An easy way to avoid the extra rinse is by decreasing the amount of detergent you use! 

When it comes to electricity, there's also a lot you can save. If you follow my advice on laundering less often, you're already saving quite a lot electricity. 

What uses the most electric, though, is the temperature of the water. Be sure to wash your clothes as cold as possible. Not only is this better for your clothes, it saves a lot of money too! We still do wash on 60° c (a hot cycle), but only things like sheets, towels, cleaning rags and the likes. Washing on a hot cycle sometimes is necessary for your washer too, especially when you use liquid detergent. We use powdered detergent though, as it's much cheaper here, and has no heavy fragrance (I can't stand most of those smells). 

Other things you can do 

I think we've all heard about making your own detergent. Most of these recipes contain either borax or washing soda or both. Unfortunately, these are not available where I live. But when I still lived in Europe and money was very tight for us, I sometimes made my own detergent. It's quite easy and VERY cheap; about a few cents per use! So if you have a lot of laundry, making your own detergent is a wise thing to do. 

Swapping laundry softener for vinegar is another great way to save money and the environment. And no, your clothes won't smell vinegar-y, I promise! 

Last but not least is the maintenance of your machine. Be sure you do an empty load on a very hot cycle once every few months. It might sound like a huge waste for the ultimate frugal person. But this really can avoid a lot of damage being done to your washer, which would avoid a lot of extra money for a repairman, thus being something frugal in the end. I usually add one tablet of dishwasher detergent. I don't own a dishwasher, but I purchased a box of these tabs especially for my washing machine. 

Also, and this is for the front load folks: I never ever use the drawer, other than for the vinegar. My drawer looks like brand new! I always put my powdered detergent directly into the machine, which works great. With my old washer, I remember that it was such a hassle to get out that drawer, let alone cleaning it.