Frugal Ideas for Any Homestead

As we get closer and closer to graduation cutting our expenses seems even more important. We've been trying to discover ways to live a more frugal and simple lifestyle. Here are some ideas we've been doing or hope to do soon. These are things that could be implemented on any homestead. If you have any other tips for us, we'd love to here them! Feel free to comment below and link to your own website or article.

Home

Homemade Vanilla Extract

Make your own laundry detergent. We use this simple recipe. We have also been experimenting with our own dish soap.

Dry your laundry on a rack or clothesline. We do this at home and Scott and I do it at school. The expense of drying your clothes can add up quickly. We do laundry about once a week at school and the dryer costs $1.25 a load so using a drying rack saves us around $15 each semester.

Replace your light bulbs with LEDs. We just made the switch ourselves!

Don't buy paper towels or napkins. Purchase re-usable ones or make your own. You can even just cut up old items from the thrift store.

Make food from scratch. I'm not just talking about meals here. I mean really from scratch. We have been trying to start making some of our own pasta, crackers, and extracts and we always make our own bread.

Animals

One of our Red Stars, Pepper

Grow fodder for your livestock/pets.

If you have room in your garden consider growing some of your own animal feed like wheat, corn, or black oil sunflowers. We always grow sunflower seeds for our rabbits and chickens and hope to expand this year.

Use wood pellets instead of litter for litter boxes.

Garden & Orchard

Our garden summer 2014

For starters, grow a garden and plant an orchard. This can save a family a lot of money as food prices continue to rise.

If you plan to move your homestead soon and don't want to invest in fruit and nut trees consider species like raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries that bear in just 1-2 years. If you are moving it's also easy to take shoots and runners off these species to take your orchard to your new home.

Buy fruit trees and perennials in late spring or summer . We've gotten some great deals buying outside the typical planting times.

Purchase re-usable seed starting containers or make some out of recycled material.

Look at our other article for more frugal farming tips!

Personal

Make your own toiletries (shampoo, tooth paste, etc) We use charcoal as free natural teeth whitener. See our method here.

Ladies, I totally recommend getting one of these, they save so much money and they're good for the environment and your health!

Find a form of entertainment or a hobby that creates something useful like knitting, spinning, weaving, wood carving, baking, etc.

Thanks for reading. We wish you a happy spring and hope yours has been less snowy than ours.