Homemade Pallet Spice Rack- DIY Makeover

I wrote in a previous post how many spices I use, and how the little bitty spice racks I see them selling all over doesn't hold nearly enough spices for me, and the few I've seen that seem somewhat large enough are extremely over priced. I was overjoyed when my husband made me a homemade spice rack made entirely out of pallet wood. It was beautiful and rustic and perfect and held so many spices....

Our New Upcycled Guest Bed -- Completely Free and Very Easy!

When we were first married we lived in a two bedroom apartment, one room for us and one for guests. Then we had our first child and while he started off in our room, by a certain point he ended up getting the second bedroom, and we lost our guest bedroom.
When we moved to our smaller apartment nearly 6 years ago, we still had two bedrooms, but one was teeny tiny, and it got filled with two children, my two boys, while my daughters slept in our room.
I enjoy having guests, and one of the hardest things for me about our extra small space was our inability to host anyone - at first we didn't even have a couch in our very small living room/dining room/kitchen.
We managed to find a couch that fit our extra small dimensions and bought an Ikea Solsta couch that opened up into a bed! We could have guests at last, even if it meant them sleeping in our living room. Only the bed that opened up was extremely uncomfortable- two thirds of it was padded but the last third was just wood covered in fabric, not something I'd offer to a guest. We had children over (nephew and niece) who were short enough to fit on the soft 2/3 of the couch bed, but no sleep over adult guests.

One of the things that excited me most about our new and much more spacious house was that it had three bedrooms, one which became my office, but also is intended to double as a guest room. However. while I wanted a guest room for so long, with so many expenses involved in moving and setting up a bigger household and all the new furniture we needed, a guest bedroom just wasn't a priority from a financial perspective. And so, despite our larger home, we still didn't have accommodations for guests.
We do have a spare mattress that was fitting under the triple bunk bed in my kids room, for when my daughters want to sleep in separate beds, and when my little sister Lizzy asked to spend the weekend, I set up that mattress in the guest bedroom, which was OK to sleep on, but honestly, wasn't the nicest accommodations so I wouldn't feel comfortable inviting anyone else to sleep over with the room looking like that.

Homemade Pallet Trash Can

My husband loves building out of pallet wood. I've already shown a couple of projects my husband made out of pallet wood (sometimes with my help, but more often than not without). He likes building out of pallet wood because it's free, easy to find, and you end up with a nice rustic look, of which my husband is fond.
Quite a few times in the past I came home and found my husband with a ready made project built from pallets, waiting for me.

The other day, I came home from teaching a foraging class and saw my husband's latest project- a trash can, or as my South African husband would say, rubbish bin, made from pallet wood. I hadn't known this, but for a long time our garbage can was irritating my husband, as he finds the standard plastic one to be quite ugly, and not space efficient at all. The fact that trash cans are generally either round or trapezoidal makes them leave empty space at the sides, so you can fill up the trash bags less and need to take the garbage out more often.
The covers for most garbage cans tend to be swinging ones, which often get dirtied when you throw in the trash, since even once you pick them up they swing back into place. And at least with our previous one, the hole in which you need to place the garage sometimes isn't big enough, which meant that often when trying to empty the dust pan into the trash can, it didn't fit, and some stuff spilled out onto the floor.

And so, this pallet trash can.

No Shame, a Little Guts, and a Lot of Free Food

Today I went to the market to meet with my friend Juli, who was coming with her kids, and she wanted me to show her around the market. My fridge was already full from the last time I was there and got so much food for very little money, but I did need some fruit, because all I had was citrus fruit. So I went with the goal of getting other non citrus fruit, and if I found anything free, then why not...

In the end, in the above picture, I got all that for free. And yes, you've got that right- that isn't just produce.
In fact, I would say today was one of my better hauls of free stuff, lots of "high brow" foods- chicken, beef, and produce that is generally sold very expensively. Specifically I got an extremely large amount of chicken skin and chicken frames, chicken bones (from drumsticks), beef bones, a very large amount of cardoons, en entire box of pink lady apples, and a few clementines, a tomato, a pepper, and an eggplant.

People see/hear that I got all this for free, and I generally get one of a few reactions.

Surviving or Thriving on a Budget... What Is The Difference?

My super frugal grocery shops- for me a pleasure, for others,
 just barely surviving

Today I got into a discussion with someone who is familiar with my blog, and I was mentioning to her about how the focus of my blog is about living as well as one can within their means, however small, and not just doing what you need to survive. The tag line of this blog is and always has been "A Rich Life on a Minimum Wage" and I feel my life and my blog live up to that.

This person, however, said that she felt my blog was more surviving, not thriving, since I talk about family cloth, dumpster diving, and getting free chicken frames and such.

Hence this post.

Because I need to explain something that, I feel, is the essence of my approach to life and finances and frugality. 

Frugality is not one size fits all. In any way, shape or form.

Not only does everyone have a different financial situation, you can have two people with the exact same income, and frugality for each of them would look different.

Why is that?

Upcycling, Reupholstering, and Plastic Covering Our Chairs- A Tutorial

All our newly reupholstered and upcycled chairs

Chairs have been the bane of my existence since we've been married practically...

When we were furnishing our home from scratch ten years ago, our budget was really tight. We ended up buying a set of 4 matching chairs second hand, and another chair from a second hand shop and dumpster dove 1 chair, so we started out with 6 chairs, only 4 of them matching. After about 5 years, the four matching chairs got really yucky looking, so I reupholstered them very easily.
As our family grew we dumpster dove a few more chairs (and tossed one of the original four that ended up breaking entirely), and then bought some second hand Ikea chairs as well (that I ended up hating because they aren't stable...).
By the time we moved into our new home, we had 10 regular chairs and a few folding chairs (plus some stackable outside chairs) which were functional, but they were not only mismatched, but they had really gross seats. It was embarassing. We'd have guests over, and we'd offer them a seat and they'd avoid sitting down since the seats were gross (and make comments about how they heard its healthier to stand). We really wanted to buy new chairs, because in our house with a new, polished, and put together look, these chairs were a big eyesore. And it didn't help that people kept telling us to throw out our chairs.
I looked into pricing for chairs, and each set I saw being sold second hand only had 4 or 6 chairs, so it still wasn't enough chairs to be a matching set to give the place a uniform look, and they weren't in the colors I wanted. I looked into pricing of new chairs, and the cheapest half decent chair (not even in a color that I wanted) was $75 each. I really struggled with this, because my chairs bothered me immensely, but I didn't want to spend a fortune on replacing them. The thought originally crossed my mind to reupholster them, but I didn't take that idea seriously because the chairs were all different colors- some light wood, some dark wood (veneer), some black, some white, not to mention most with different shapes and designs. However, I spoke with a friend who suggested painting them as well as reupholstering them, and I was sold.

Our New DIY Pallet Shoe Rack and Tiny Useful Mudroom

We have a lot of shoes in our family. Six people, each at least with a few pairs of shoes... It adds up quite quickly.
Before we moved to our current home I tried to declutter as much as possible, and in doing so, got rid of all the pairs of shoes that people refused to wear or no longer fit, because we had so many shoes in the old house that we needed a huge amount of space to store them all. And when space is at a premium, it is silly to allot so much of your limited space to shoes.
But even after going through the shoes and getting rid of what no one wore, we still needed a place to store our shoes. We don't have an official mudroom or similar in our current place, but right next to our front door there is a narrow area that is dead space, because it is too small to put any regular furniture there, but it seemed too big to not be used.
Pinterest showed me many ideas of compact and useful mudrooms and I decided to use that as inspiration to design our entrance as a good storage space for shoes, coats, gloves and hats and umbrellas and all other seasonal weather gear that we'd need right near the front door.

I love how this came out so far.
It is still a work in progress, but thus far it is loads better than how it was before.

Making a Potty Seat Out of Pallets

I mentioned in a previous post that I suspect that my littlest one, Rose, has high functioning autism like her big brother Ike. Part of what makes me suspect that is her dedication to certain routines, and her refusal to change them.

Rose has been potty trained for at least a year, if not more, but she has this way that she insists on doing things. She usually refuses to use the toilet and insists on using the potty, with a whole routine to go along with it.

She's had her potty for a long time, a pink Hello Kitty one with an insert.

And then she cracked the leg of it, but since I had no interest in buying a new one when she's already potty trained and there's no little ones after her who will be using it in the next little while... so Mike repaired it by adding a wooden leg to it out of scrap wood. But then it broke all the way- another leg completely came off of it, and I figured- why keep on repairing something that is so broken, lets just make her a new one.

Out of pallet wood.

Homemade Wooden Pallet Spice Rack DIY

I grew up in a home that used a large variety of spices. I get surprised when I am in people's homes, and go to cook something and realize that they're missing what I consider to be basic spices. I have to remind myself, though, that everyone's cooking style is different, and I use so many more spices than the average person, so even my "basics" are not something most people have.

Since I've been running my own household, I've never been satisfied with where I've been keeping my spices. In our first apartment, they were on two small shelves in an upper cupboard, and it was hard to see what I needed and hard to access it. Since we moved to our current home, my spices have been stored in a deep drawer, and there isn't enough room for all my spices. its hard to tell what is where, and it's just one royal mess. Some spices came in plastic containers- when they finished, I refilled them, and sometimes filled them with different spices or homemade mixes, and it is all a jumble, with no way to really tell what spice is what, other than by taste and smell...
I decided that in our new apartment, I didn't want to use up a drawer for my spices, nor did I want them in a cabinet. And I definitely didn't want to be using recycled plastic spice bottles.
Growing up, all my mom's spices were kept easily accessible in glass screw top jars on a wooden spice rack on our counter, and I've wanted something like that for a long time, and figured our new house would be the perfect place to switch my spice storage to that system.

An Insane Amount of Food... For Insanely Little

My arms hurt. My whole body is tired... I think a big part of that is because of how much food I carried home from the market today in my cart...
I'm doing the math to figure out just how much the entire thing weighed... 156.5 lbs of food- 145 lbs of it produce, and 11.5 lbs animal products.
Just thinking about how much that would generally cost in a grocery store or even a cheap one would definitely not even remotely give a clue as to how much my shop cost me...
You see, for my 156.5 lbs of food I paid... get this- $20!!! Ok, and 70 cents.

Just part of today's shop. Not counting all the things I got free.

I hadn't planned on going shopping for produce this week, since we still had a decent amount. Though we were nearly out of fruit, so could use with a topping off over there. But I would need some produce next week, and I wouldn't have a chance to go to the market next week, so I figured that I might as well go this week. A few people had been asking me when I'd be teaching a class on frugal shopping at the market, and today worked out for the most people. So I went, intending to top off my produce as needed, and instead came home with 145 lbs of produce!

How did that happen?

My New (To Me) Computer Desk

You can imagine, that, as a writer, I am at the computer a lot. However, since we moved to our current apartment, I have not had a computer desk. I've been using a dresser as my work station, which, to be quite frank, was not comfortable for me, as I couldn't pull my chair up under it, and it was too high for my hands, making typing at the computer annoying.

In this picture from my post about our super frugal home makeover, you can sort of see that dresser in the corner, near the door.

Even more so annoying was when two important keys on my laptop keyboard broke off (the E and the Space bar) I had to start using a separate keyboard, which was even harder to use on my makeshift computer desk, and my hands hurt when I typed a lot.

I wanted a computer desk, and had told Mike that when we move to our new place (hopefully in December) I really want a computer desk in my office. I had seen a computer desk being sold at a moving sale recently, but that would have involved spending money, and it wasn't exactly what I wanted (it didn't have a pull out for a keyboard), and on top of that, I had no idea where I'd even put the computer desk, as the dresser we had was packed, and in our small house I didn't know where else we could put that dresser (and I had no intention to toss it, since I plan on using it in our bedroom in the new place as part of my wardrobe).

Got An Insane Amount of Food for Pennies!

I love when I am able to feed my family for incredibly little amounts of money. Actually, I think that is pretty obvious from this blog- though its called Penniless Parenting, Penniless Cooking would probably a more apt name, from the percentage of this site that is dedicated to frugal cooking.

Anyhow, there are just some times that as a very frugal person make you go "Wow! This is amazing, even for me!"

This is one of them.

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

Howdy! I know, a little belated- I was out yesterday, so didn't have the change to get this up... Here's where I share frugality in action.

So, here's what we did to save money in our household this past week:

Frugal Accomplishments This Past Week

Hello there and welcome to another episode of "What frugal things does Penny actually do in real life?"
This week was one of the hottest I can remember here in a long time. When explaining to my kids what the temperature meant, I said that the air outside was about as hot if not hotter than someone's body when they have a high fever.
Yea, that hot- over 100 degrees.
I felt like I was walking in an oven when I tried going outside.
When it's really hot, my productivity level goes way down, to the extent that even the thought of lounging around and wasting time seems like too much work. While we have air conditioning- it is in one room only- the bedroom- and being in the bedroom makes me not productive, so I actually rarely put on the AC, just a big fan. So that was another frugal thing, I guess.
And so, understandably, my list of what I actually got done this past week frugality-wise is pretty small.
I taught a class on foraging wild plants at a rehabilitation center for people post stroke- for the first time I taught about foraging in the local language instead of in English, and that was a big deal for me and exciting- and the day before that I gave a private foraging walk to a few friends to first practice teaching in the local language- so I ended up going foraging twice, for a lot of things, in the absolutely crazy heat.

So specifics- here's what I did to save money this past week:

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

Sometimes life seems to be so jam packed with everything, lots of things going on, lots of frugal happenings, so much to share, so much to write about... And then other times it feels like life is just flying by, and just trying to keep up is already a challenge, let alone doing anything extra.
I dunno how it is, but these past few weeks have really felt like that, when I look at the calendar and say "Oh my gosh- how is it Thursday already?"- I have no idea where the week went...

Weeks like that, I glance backwards over what I accomplished, and literally wonder "What did I manage to do this week? Nothing!" and then I remember that every single day that I am home with my kids, homeschooling my older ones and keeping up with my 13 month old's crazy antics- that really is more than enough. I don't need to have a long list of accomplishments every week- a small list of things that made me smile, of things that I am proud of doing, and happy kids and a general feeling of contentedness- that is totally fine.

From now on, I will stop apologizing if my list of frugal accomplishments isn't so long.
I don't need to be Wonderwoman. I can just be me, Penny, mother, wife, housewife, teacher, friend. And if I do some decidedly unfrugal things to keep my sanity, like using disposables all week long, I'm not going to sweat it.


Here's what frugal things we did this week in our house:

Spring Cleaning is Awesome

I have to admit that organization is really, really, really not my strong point. (My stockpile is my one significant exception to the rule.) The problem with living in a small house and not being organized is that I lose things, because any things that I have end up being stashed away in whatever place I can find.... only when I need these things I can't really find them again. You have no idea how many things I ended up buying double (or more) of because I couldn't find the ones I already had at home... And then, of course, since I end up buying too many things because I lose the things I have, my tiny home becomes even more cramped...

So once a year, spring cleaning, at the very least, I find what I was missing. I find what was hidden away and forgotten about for the last year.

And I declutter.

My Latest Super Frugal Grocery Shopping Trip!

I had a post already partially written up, that I'd planned on posting today, but I just came back from my shopping trip and it was such a successful and frugal trip that it made me really excited, and I felt I just had to share it with you instead of what I'd originally planned.

The original plan was for me to go pick up my bulk order of coconut sugar- 44 lbs- that I'm splitting with friends- 17.6 lbs of which I am keeping for myself.

However, when I went to cook up supper for the family to be eating while I was gone, I realized that I had no vegetables left in the house, pretty much (the frozen corn, peas, and okra don't count in my book)... The only fresh produce I had were some oranges, clementines, and lemons. I needed to go shopping pronto, so I decided that after I picked up the coconut sugar, if I felt it was manageable, I'd go to the farmer's market.

(In case you were wondering what I did for food since I had no veggies- I foraged a bunch of mallow, and used up my last three carrots, and sauted the carrots with the mallow, and served them as the veggie for supper, along with the rest of the meal.)

But Mike didn't get home from work so early, so by the time I got to the store that had my bulk order, it was already late, and even later once I got to the farmer's market- almost everything was closed.

This had benefits and drawbacks.

The variety of stalls I had to choose from was very, very minimal- just finding a stand that was open was hard enough, let alone enough to do some price comparing and shopping around.

However, since it was the end of the day, some of the stalls were in a rush to get rid of what they had, so were selling things for dirt cheap!

And I also got free produce left behind from stalls that were closing up and didn't bother keeping those past prime products, etc...

So, here's what I got:

Upcycled Fancy Little Girl's Dress Tutorial

My little daughter, Anneliese, 2 3/4 years old, is such a girly girl, is in love with pretty things and princesses, and has very specific tastes in clothing and what she'll agree to wear. She absolutely adores "princess dresses" and wears them as often as she could.

When I was in the US last January, I brought her back a barbie doll with a "princess dress" with a matching dress for Anneliese and she is obsessed with that dress- while she routinely changes her clothes 5-10 times a day, that dress usually is worn at least for one or two of those changes (if she can find it. I've been known to hide it, deep under dirty laundry, if it needs cleaning, because if it's at the top of the laundry basket, she'll just take it out), but I would like her to wear a "princess dress" that is more obviously her size, style, and provides a little more coverage than the skimpy dress she has.

When I found a bag of clothing near the dumpster the other day, I brought it in, since some of the clothes were great for me as is, and other clothes would be great for upcycling.

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

Hi y'all! I hope you have had a great and frugal week this past week! This week in our hours involved lots of cooking and making messes in the kitchen... but all for good things, as we had a few birthday related get togethers...
And another plus- its been cool enough that we didn't use the AC even one time, and we barely used the fans either. So that's cool.

Here's what we did to save money this past week:

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

Since people liked this format last time I did it, and since I didn't manage to keep track of what we did each day to save money, here's what we did this last week to be frugal, broken down by categories.