Frugal Friday
Apr. 11th, 2025 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
Welcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.Rule #1: this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc. I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.
Rule #2: this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.
Rule #3: please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about. Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.
Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.
With that said, have at it!
Re: Buy in Bulk
Date: 2025-04-12 06:32 pm (UTC)Yep. A friend of mine in her 70's or 80's has told me how her grandmother bought all the basic ingredients (that store well) in large, 50 to 100 lb, quantities. Her grandmother even mixed up her own brown sugar from molasses and plain sugar instead of buying it premixed.
My own parents built a huge pantry and a cold room in the basement. My mother, in charge of the groceries, always purchased in bulk and waited for sales before she really stocked up. She had a large garden and did a great deal of home canning.
We had 2 or 3 very large freezers as well. There used to be an independent butcher shop in the nearby city where you could buy beef and pork by the side. She would get enough to last our large family a year. Then there was the home-raised chickens and turkeys that went into the freezers as well.
We were doing this in the 1980s, as a large single-income family, but the lessons were learned from family that had survived the Great Depression and/or proudly lived a subsistence lifestyle (now called simplified living).
Caldathras