Ecofrugal episodes, July 2025

Time for another exciting installment of ecofrugal episodes, in which I fill you in on all the little things that have been going well and not so well in our ecofrugal life. This past week or two has had a mix of both, so I'm doing the post in "hits and misses" style.

Hit: Our first trip to Savers

Last weekend, Brian and I went to visit my sister and her family in Boston. One of the things we did there was visit Savers, a for-profit thrift store chain we don't have in our area. (There's a store in the same family, called Thrift Superstore, in Union, but that's a good 40 minutes away.) The store has a good selection and decent prices, but no dressing rooms, so we had to either try things on as best we could in the aisles or take our best guess about the size. Brian got one pair of jeans and a new pair of Ren Faire shoes, since his current set (also thrifted) has proven insufficiently supportive for a long day of walking. I got one fairly cute top and a pair of warm tights for winter. (It's not clear how big a hit that purchase is, since I still don't know if they fit. I couldn't try them on in the store, and after we got them home it was too hot. But for only a couple of bucks, they seemed worth the risk.) 

Since my sister's family also brought along four bags' worth of used clothes to donate, they got four coupons good for 40% off on up to $100 worth of purchases and gave one to us. With that discount, our total cost was $26.87 for the four items. That's not breathtakingly cheap, but it's clearly cheaper than buying new, which isn't always the case at thrift shops nowadays.

Miss: A sustainable-living guide that doesn't

On our way back from Savers, we stopped by a farmers' market. One of the booths there was a used-book stall run by the local public library. I can't pass by a table full of books (especially cheap ones) without at least taking a look, and I always like to support libraries when I can, so I spent $2 on a paperback copy of The Self-Sufficiency Bible, by a Brit named Simon Dawson. The cover promised "100s of Ways to Live More Sustainably - Wherever You Are," so I was hoping there might be at least a handful I didn't already know about.

Unfortunately, like many books on this topic, this one proved to be a mix of things I already do and things that aren't relevant to me. The three chapters on "The Home Dairy," "Livestock," and "Meat Preparation and Basic Butchery" were of no use to us at all. The chapter "Curing and Preserving" wasn't completely irrelevant, because the instructions for preserving meat were interspersed with pointers on pickles, chutneys, sauces, jam, and dried mushrooms and herbs. But most of this was already familiar to us, as was everything in the chapter "The Home Baker." And parts of the chapter "The Kitchen Garden" were clearly aimed at a British audience and didn't apply to us, like the advice that tomatoes and peppers are "likely to disappoint you" if you try to grow them outdoors. 

There were also a few tips that didn't seem to fit the "self-sufficiency" brief. The chapter on "Natural Solutions: Health, Beauty, and the Home" contained numerous recipes for natural cleaners and beauty products made from ingredients that you clearly can't produce yourself and aren't cheap to buy, such as cocoa butter, sandalwood oil, and avocado. His homemade hair conditioner recipe ("beat an egg either with an avocado or a banana") would cost a minimum of $1.16 per application, while my Suave conditioner costs around 9 cents. 

Also, the few chapters that looked like they'd be most useful, like "Arty Crafty Bits," largely glossed over the details of the things I was most keen to learn about. The section on knitting lists all kinds of things you can make this way, but never actually talks about how to do it; the section on making your own clothes advises you to "buy a good, lightweight machine...and get sewing," as if setting the machine up and threading it and using it required no explanation. And on top of this, the book is peppered with errors, both mechanical ("it's" for "its," "forraging") and factual (saying that rhubarb leaves are unsafe to compost, describing wood as a green energy source).

Despite these drawbacks, I did manage to glean a few useful tidbits from this book. I learned (and confirmed from reliable sources) that it's best to water seedlings before transplanting them so you lose less soil; that you can make an alcoholic "turbo cider" from store-bought juice in a couple of weeks; that you can knit with strips of fabric rather than yarn; that the comfrey plant growing next to our recycling bin can be eaten (in moderation); and that you can preserve mushrooms at home by air-drying or freezing. But having filed away those facts, I don't see any need to keep the book on my shelf for future reference. I'll either donate it to our library book sale or drop it into one of our town's many Little Free Libraries so it can go to someone who may get more use out of it.

Hit: DIY shower indicator buttons

When Brian and I bought new shower control knobs nine years back, they came with little plastic "indicator buttons" to identify the hot, cold, and direction knobs. These weren't truly necessary, since most people know which is which, but they served to cover up the mounting screws. Unfortunately, within a year, these buttons started to fall apart. They wouldn't stay in place because the little teeth that held them in the knobs had come loose and begun to fall out. This looked like an easy fix; we just bought a new set of indicator buttons for about $5 and swapped them out. But within another year or so, these buttons also began to fall apart in exactly the same way. I looked for metal indicator buttons that I thought might be more sturdy than the plastic ones, but I couldn't find any to fit our faucets.

So, with two of our faucet knobs now sitting there naked and the third button hanging on by a thread, I started brainstorming ways to rig up a DIY version of these buttons. I considered metal bottle caps, but we don't tend to buy drinks in glass bottles, and I wasn't sure how I'd get them to fit into the faucets. I also thought about gluing some decorative beads in place, but that would make it impossible to get at the screws. Finally, I concluded that the best fix would be a couple of large metal washers tucked under the screws. This would leave the heads exposed, but it would hide the dingy, mineral-stained surface underneath. And if the washers themselves got dirty, I could easily remove, clean, and replace them.

I found two washers in our collection that were just the right size and painted them with nail polish: red, which I already had, for the hot-water tap and blue, which cost me $4 at the local discount store, for the cold. It was the work of a couple of minutes to remove the screws, thread the washers on, and screw them back in. With these in place, the damaged knobs look much more presentable. And whenever that last button gives up the ghost, I can give the middle knob the same treatment.

Miss: Shaky sunglasses repair 

On sunny days, I wear special sunglasses designed to fit over my regular glasses. They're much cheaper than a pair of prescription shades, and they're easier to put on and take off because I don't need to stash my other glasses. Their weak point, it turns out, is durability. This month, the frames cracked right across the top. Brian thought maybe he could mend them with epoxy, but the difficulty would be figuring out how to clamp them while the glue dried. I decided instead to shell out $2 for some fast-drying superglue from the discount store and try to fix them that way. I laid them out on a sheet of newspaper, put on gloves so I wouldn't glue my fingers together, dabbed on a little glue, and held the joined area in place for about a minute to let it set.

At first, this simple repair seemed to be holding. Then the crack opened back up, but only partway. I glued it again, but after a week, it popped open completely. I got out my tools and glued it one more time, but this time there was a slight mishap; I got a bit of glue on my glove, which then got stuck to the inside of the nose piece. I was able to pull most of the nitrile off, but there's still a little scrap of blue there that will have to be scraped off with a utility knife. And it remains unclear whether this second repair will hold any better than the first. If it doesn't, I'll have to move on to more complicated methods: either adding a splint along with the glue, as suggested at Eyeglass Repair USA, or plastic welding.

Miss: High quotes for heat pumps 

Last month, in the wake of a brutal heat wave and the passage of a bill that will kill home electrification credits at the end of this year, Brian and I took another stab at getting quotes for a home heat pump. Three weeks ago, after talking to two contractors and getting one quote back, I was feeling doubtful. Now, after five consultations and four quotes (the fifth one never got back to me, even after a follow-up call), I'm even more pessimistic. 

The bottom line seems to be that a system that can completely replace our gas boiler will cost well over 30 grand. That doesn't include the $10,000 decarbonization credit that the first contractor mentioned, but that's because none of the other contractors I spoke to believed that this credit actually exists. More than one of them said that PSE&G has been talking about such a program for years, but nothing has ever happened, and there's no evidence that this year will be any different.

Now, if we were willing to settle for a hybrid system—one that would supplement rather than replace the boiler, reducing our gas usage—we could probably do that for between 20 and 25 grand, including the upgrades to our electrical panel. But that's still a lot of money, and the new system would probably cost as much to run as our current one, if not more. So the costs would continue to pile up every year.

What I'm starting to wonder is, if we're only going to reduce, not eliminate, our use of fossil fuel for heating, do we even need to install a whole-house system? Maybe we could just replace our old through-the-wall air conditioning unit with a heat pump that could provide supplemental heating as well as cooling. It looks like we could buy one for around $1,000, and since it would be replacing an existing unit, the installation cost shouldn't be more than another grand; we might even be able to install it ourselves. We'd still need to use the gas boiler, but the heat pump could probably cut our gas use by half, and for less than one-tenth the price of a complete system. It would be like the heating equivalent of our little induction burner: not a full replacement for a gas appliance, but one that can take over most of its duties for a fraction of the price. Am I crazy, or is this the ecofrugal way?