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Frugality

Cleaning lady layoff day

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mopTrying to work up the courage to call the new cleaning ladies and tell them they won’t be coming back. The “furlough” (read “pay cut”) will excise almost twice what they charge from my paycheck. And paying what they charge was a stretch in the first place.

So, I feel bad about that, because I’m sure they wouldn’t be doing the work if they didn’t need the pay.

On the other hand… The last time they were here, Norma announced she didn’t like the steam cleaner I use on the 1860 square feet of tile that covers my floors…could she use the mop and Simple Green? Sure, said I, thinking each to her own.

I then went on about my business. When I came back in, I thought the house smelled mighty strongly of Simple Green. It didn’t smell of Simple Green: it reeked. And it continued to stink of perfumed detergent for the next three days.

Odd, thought I, since that never happens on the rare occasions that I clean the floors with a mop. Ohhh well.

Well, a couple of days ago I went to grab the big bottle of vinegar out of the the garage cabinets and found the lifetime-supply bottles of Simple Green in front of it. Pick one up to move it out of the way and whoa! It’s almost empty!

Those women used almost an entire gallon of Simple Green on the floor! What the heck did they do? Dump the stuff into the bucket and use it undiluted? For hevvinsake, no wonder the place stank.

A gallon of Simple Green will last me for a good six months, or more. It’s not like the stuff is cheap or easy to find—Costco quit carrying it, and Home Depot only recently picked it up. So now I’ll have to pony up money out of my reduced paycheck to buy some more of that stuff. And come next cleaning day, I’ll have the fun of scrubbing the residue up off the tiles. Wheeee!

Just goes to show, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

The perqs of pinching pennies

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Spent some time this morning updating the Excel and Quicken books and realized things didn’t look nearly as dark as one might expect, given the current brouhaha over the economy.

On the other hand, we do recognize that any time now, the layoff ax, sharpened to a fine edge by a legislature in full Mme. LaFarge mode, may fall. So, I took a little more time to look over the current state of the safety net.

Four things have helped to weave that net:
1. I set up a “pool” account to hold my paychecks, from which I disbursed enough cash into one credit union account to cover my monthly recurring expenses, such as utility bills, insurance premiums, and workmen into one checking account and then, into a different account, enough to cover all my other expenses, which are charged on American Express and paid off at the end of each billing cycle. The disbursements are monthly. But my paychecks are biweekly.

The effect of this has been to turn those so-called “extra” biweekly paychecks into real-life, de jure extra income: the money to cover regular expenses comes out of two checks a month, and so a month with a third paycheck pours two weeks of net income into my “pool” account, where it sits and accrues.
2. I based the amount needed for monthly recurring bills on the maximumamounts those bills reach. My electric bill, for example, has reached $225 in the summer, but in December it was $63.52. Then I pinched pennies: this winter I’ve not run the central heating more than six hours, grand total, pushing each month’s bill well below what they were in 2007. I also cut my “all other expenses” budget by $300, even though I had enough income to cover the old, more generous budget.

Here, too, the net effect was to leave cash sitting in those “piggy-bank” accounts. This money has accrued by dribs and drabs over the past several months.
3. After I’d accrued enough cash to pay off the small 30-year fixed-rate second mortgage I took out to pay for renovations on the Investment House (the house my son and I are coinvesting in, part of whose mortgage is covered by rental income), I continued to put the monthly contribution into savings. I had been saving $200 a month for emergencies and indulgences. Reaching the loan payoff goal meant that I could start saving $404 a month.

Even though that doesn’t sound like much, it’s amazing how fast it adds up. Especially because…
4. My associate editor and I started a small side business, which has created a small but steady second income. All of the after-tax revenues from this activity went directly into savings.

The result: my emergency and indulgence savings quickly jumped from $600 to almost $4,000. Even after I paid $670 to insulate the Investment House and $330 for the Talbot’s clothing frenzy, I still have around $3,000 in that savings account.

When I surveyed my credit union accounts and added up the overage in each account, the total extra amount that has quietly built up over just a few months is $6,797!

That is 2.26 months’ worth of my present take-home pay: over two months of living expenses, and we’re not talkin’ Depression mode there. If I’m not putting $404 a month into savings and not buying booze and not shopping at my favorite gourmet emporium, that amount will stretch a great deal further.

Meanwhile, the amount that I’ve stashed to pay off the loan represents another seven months of take-home pay. Because the payments are so small as to be almost negligible, I’ve kept the money in savings instead of paying it off, figuring that if I need to cut expenses drastically I can use the money to get rid of the monthly payments. Or not: in a real emergency, I’ll have the choice of using some or all of the cash for survival.

If I had to do that and I were really in desperation gear, that 9.26 months’ of my current net income would go much further: it would support me for well over a year. Remember, that’s not counting freelance income and whatever part-time teaching I can scrounge from the community colleges. It doesn’t count Social Security, and it doesn’t count the $17,000 the state owes me for back sick leave, or the month’s worth of accrued vacation time for which the state will owe me.

So. Un-American though it may be, frugality has saved this worker’s little tail. If I’m laid off within the next few weeks or months, a threat that again looks very credible, I have a safety net that will keep me from falling to the ground and breaking into a million little sherds—because I’ve been living within my means. Well within my means: I’ve been spending enough less than I earn to stash a substantial amount of beat-back-the-wolf cash in savings.

Call me unpatriotic and call me naïve. But I still think this is not a bad thing. I still think if most Americans understood what simple frugality means—and that it does not mean living like Scrooge McDuck—we would all be in a lot better shape.

Well…all of us except a few zillionaires who took advantage of our late, great free-spending times.

McDuck portrait(link) by Carl Barks

Cheap, easy spot remover

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The new laundry detergents may be ecofriendly but they’re none too housekeeper-friendly. Though they wash the stale B.O. out, they scarcely touch grease stains. If you use table linens and ecofriendly cloth napkins—or occasionally spill a little food on your clothes or get grease-splatters on you while you’re cooking—you’ll find that Costco’s Kirkland liquid detergent doesn’t get the spots out, even if you soak the spot in undiluted detergent. Nor does the new version of Spray-‘n’-Wash.

After the Christmas feast, my tablecloth came out of the laundry with a big grease spot. Three washings did nothing to remove the stain. As I was about to resign myself to either buying a new tablecloth or just getting used to the spot, I recalled the folk household hint that used to say Windex would work to remove spots from carpets and furniture.

Hmm. In the course of cooking up our own glass cleaner, we discovered that the main ingredients of Windex are varieties of alcohol, a solvent. I still had half a bottle of isopropyl alcohol purchased to make the DIY window and tile cleaner, so…..

I tested it first on a similarly stained napkin. Pouring straight rubbing alcohol on the stain and popping the napkin into the wash took out the grease and did not seem to remove the dye, as straight Kirkland’s laundry detergent has been known to do. So, yesterday evening I slopped some more of the alcohol on the tablecloth’s stain, let it sit for 15 or 20 minutes, and then ran it through the washer.

Hallelujah! The stain is GONE!

Score one for the frugalist: rubbing alcohol works to remove grease stains from fabric.

Remember that the stuff is flammable—don’t wave a cigarette around while you’re using it, and if your washer is right next to a gas water heater (as mine is), you might want to take the item somewhere else for the stand-and-soak step. I don’t think I’d use it on washable silk without first trying it on an old piece that I was about to throw out anyway. But it works fine on cotton.

DIY Window Cleaner: Pro and con

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The budget’s a little low after Christmas. I need glass cleaner, but tours of Costco, Safeway, and Target in search of Windex and its knockoffs yield the same result: the stuff costs a great deal more than it’s worth. With $64 left to last till next Tuesday and gasoline and several key food items remaining to purchase, I can’t afford it.Vinegar works well for most glass-cleaning purposes, but it doesn’t cut grease very well—for that, you need something stronger.

The classic old-time formula for household window cleaner combines ammonia, alcohol, and water in equal quantities. So, to make a little less than a quart, you’d mix 1 cup of ammonia, one cup of rubbing alcohol, and one cup of water. Use the clear, nonsudsing variety of ammonia.

I suspect you don’t need that much ammonia. And in fact, a newer version shows 1 cup rubbing alcohol, 1 cup water, 1 Tbsp nonsudsing ammonia. An ammonia-free variant contains1 cup water, 1 cup rubbing alcohol, and 1 Tbsp vinegar. Having used the mostly alcohol variant, I’d make the formula with a little less alcohol—maybe a half to three-quarters cup to one cup of water—and add a very small amount of ammonia. And be careful not to get it on the woodwork!

So…are these home-made concoctions greener or more user-friendly than the commercial cleansers? Let’s investigate:

Windex contains butoxyethanol, which the State of California lists as a hazardous substance; it has been shown to cause reduced fertility, birth defects, and embryo death in animals. Windex-type cleaners also contain isopropanol, a type of alcohol that, like any alcohol, is flammable; exposure causes flushing, headache, dizziness, central nervous system depression, nausea, vomiting, anaesthesia, and coma; inhaling it or absorbing it through your skin can cause toxic effects. Always use it in a well-ventilated place. And Windex contains ethylene, a solvent that in small quantities is relatively benign.

But just because you’re making your own doesn’t mean it’s green or safe. Ordinary household chemicals such as ammonia and rubbing alcohol also have dangerous characteristics. By comparison, your home-made glass cleaner isn’t a big improvement, in the green department, over the expensive blue stuff.

In the U.S., rubbing alcohol is usually isopropyl alcohol but it may also be a mix of ethanol and water. It is toxic and can be fatal if ingested. Do not drink or breathe it, and keep it away from any products containing chlorine. Keep it way out of reach of children and alcoholics.

Ammonia functions as a solvent. It is irritating to the eyes, mucous membranes, and skin. Limit your exposure to it, and use rubber gloves when using it as a cleaning compound. Do not mix it with chlorine in any form: this means household products such as scouring powder and toilet cleaners that contain chlorine. The resulting gas is extremely poisonous.

Making your own glass cleaner is cheaper than buying a commercial product, but unless all you’re using is vinegar and water, don’t imagine it’s safer or greener than Windex-y products.

Frugal Household Hack: Conserve dish soap

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Dish detergent comes in a soft-sided bottle with a squirt nozzle for a reason: so you’ll use plenty of it and soon have to go out and buy a new bottle. When you tip the bottle into the sink and give it a squeeze (and maybe another and another for good measure), you use several times more of the stuff than necessary. Truth to tell, a little liquid dish detergent goes a very long way. So, it behooves you to conserve dish soap by transferring it into a container that dispenses it more frugally.

For quite a while, I used a cheap glass cruet (a vinegar or oil cruet) purchased at World Market (Cost Plus). This worked fine, except that I was always concerned that I might drop the thing in the sink, breaking it and creating a nice mess to clean up. And also, for reasons unknown in the realm of common sense, dish detergent is laced with wax, the better to clog up your drain and any container that collects a residue around the lid. This is why you’ll often find a gummy layer around the top of a detergent bottle: that goop is built-up wax. This kept collecting inside the cruet’s stopper, so I’d have to take the it apart and wash it out in running hot water every few days.

One day it occurred to me that I could put the stuff in a squirt bottle. The pressure of the squirter would force the liquid through firmly enough to push the wax on through, or so I hoped. And a single squirt should be all that’s needed to clean a frying pan.

Ta DAA! Turns out both of those are so!

dcp_2284I poured a bunch of clear detergent (I favor Ivory but couldn’t get it at the Safeway at the time I first tried this experiment, so used Clorox’s “green” variety) into a heavy-duty spray bottle. Yes, the viscous liquid will move through the squirter. And yes, just one or two squirts is all you need to clean a frying pan or greasy dish. And no! so far, after a couple of months the squirt nozzle has not clogged!

Only drawback is it’s not very pretty. But then neither is a detergent bottle. Keep it under the sink.
🙂

Two DIY mesh bag hacks

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You know those plastic mesh bags used to package some kinds of produce? Around here, lemons often come in this stuff. Potatoes come in a softer nylon-like mesh bag. Here are two handy things to make with the cast-off bags.

dcp_2280The relatively stiff plastic-like mesh makes a fine scrub pad. Some time back, I came across a household hint (forget where—sorry!) to the effect that you can fold or wad the stuff up and use it to scrub pans, including Teflon. This does work, but the pad tends to spring apart unless you take time to sew it together. One day, though, it occurred to me to drop a sponge inside the tube-like bag and tie a knot on either end. Voilà! A DYI scrub sponge!

Sponge-in-bag

The scrubber is a fairly gentle number—nowhere near as ferocious as a sponge with a green nylon scrubber attached. It doesn’t seem to scratch and isn’t great for heavy burned-on gunk, but it works fine for everyday clean-up. I cut off the label end of the nylon bag, shoved the sponge inside, tied knots on both ends, and trimmed off the extra mesh.

My washer drains into a utility sink, instead of straight into a drainpipe. This poses a potential nuisance: dog hair and lint could easily clog the little drain in the sink. You can buy sock-like strainer gadgets that you secure on the hose, but a) they’re kind of expensive given that b) they clog fast and can’t easily be cleaned and re-used.

Well. You know, those strainer things aren’t significantly finer than the mesh on a nylon or plastic produce bag. That’s r-i-i-g-h-t! All you need is a metal twist tie and a throw-away mesh bag to make a laundry hose strainer…for free.

dcp_2283Knot one end (or leave the sewn-on label in place), and thread the metal tie through the mesh near the other end. Pull the mesh “sock” over the end of the hose and secure it firmly with the twist tie.

I find this works well to catch dog hair, lint, and shredded forgotten shopping lists.

Do not, however, even think of putting this lashup on the end of a hose that fits directly inside the drainpipe. No. Only your plumber will thank you if you try that trick.

But if your hose drains into a sink—no problem!