August 26, 2016
Frugal Hosting Ideas For Hanging Out With Friends
My fabulous, and fairly frugal, parents visited us here on the homestead last month and, while they were here, I put them to work brainstorming ideas to share on Frugalwoods. A few topics that did not make the cut: Why you should/should not water down your hand-soap. Very polarizing. Possibly marriage-ending. People have wildly divergent views about whether…
August 19, 2016
Frugality Is Not Deferred Spending
Frugality is not a hardship. It also doesn’t take a ton of time. And actually? It makes life easier. Frugality Is Not Deferred Spending I’ve had quite a few readers ask me lately how they should stay motivated to stick with frugality until they reach their longterm goals, which might be decades away. And my answer…
August 12, 2016
This Month On The Homestead: Of Berries and People
If you’re just tuning in, this is a new series in which I plan to document each month of our lives out here on our 66-acre Vermont homestead. After leaving urban Cambridge, MA to chart this wholly different life, we’re experiencing a constant learning curve of exploration! Check out last month’s iteration of the series here. We reveled…
August 8, 2016
Airfare! And Other July 2016 Expenditures
It was a relief to see our expenses dip back down into the territory of normal this month. I find there’s invariably an expense burst surrounding a move–and especially a move to a completely different way of life! Our sojourn from urban to rural continues to unfold, but it seems our relocation spending has started…
August 1, 2016
What Does A Frugal Person Eat?
Food, glorious food! By far the most hotly requested topic for me to cover (via my query to our Frugalwoods Facebook group) was: food! I had no idea you all were so interested in what we eat! But the more I got to thinking about food (not hard for me to do), I realized that…
July 27, 2016
A Day In The Life Of The Frugalwoods: Homestead Edition
You all are a smart bunch so I decided over the weekend that I should ask what you’d like to read here on Frugalwoods. I put the query on our Facebook page and, lo and behold, you responded with gusto! Large thanks to all who shared an idea–if you haven’t yet, feel free to add to…
July 22, 2016
How I Make My Own Baby Food and Other Frugal Parenting Tales
We’re almost eight months into this whole parenting gig and we continue to find Babywoods a rather inexpensive–and amazing–addition to our frugal lives. The overwhelming assumption and declaration is that babies are ridiculously pricey little beings. But there’s a frugal way to do just about everything in life and baby-rearing is absolutely no exception. As…
July 13, 2016
How To Build Confidence In Your Frugality
Frugality is not trendy. Nor is it particularly popular. Many folks, in fact, decry frugality as deprivation, as miserliness. The media certainly doesn’t do frugality any favors since no one stands to make money from it (except, of course, those of us who are practitioners). But as we frugal weirdos know, there are immense and…
July 5, 2016
A Wheelbarrow And Other June 2016 Expenditures
Ahhh, summer on the homestead! June was an unusual month for us expense-wise as we continue to hammer out the transition from urban to rural. Sundry expenses keep popping up as we finalize our new residence along with an array of homestead start-up costs. In a fit of productivity and gritty determination, we made a mega sojourn to…
June 30, 2016
This Month On The Homestead: Flowers, Wood, and Gender Roles
Welcome to the first ever installment of “This Month On The Homestead,” a brand-new monthly Frugalwoods series about, uh, this month on the homestead. As you can see, the title is quite descriptive. Our transition from urban city-slickers to rural homesteaders is filled with daily mistakes learning experiences, new friends, us doing stupid things with…
June 27, 2016
Frugality Is A Compounding Game
But it only costs $20! Or $10. Or even just 5 measly bucks. So what’s the big deal? It’s remarkably easy to lull myself into thinking that a couple dollars spent here or there won’t amount to a hill of beans (oh but there are so many things one can cook with a hill of beans… )….
June 24, 2016
Smoothing Out The Happiness Curve
In June, Mr. Frugalwoods and I celebrated 8 years of marriage, Frugal Hound turned 7, we marked Mr. FW’s first father’s day, Babywoods hit 7 months old, and we passed the one month anniversary of moving to Vermont! All wonderful things, all reasons to celebrate… and the subtext would typically be: reasons to spend money….