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 keenest 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?

Ingenuity > spending

A big part of living ecofrugally is finding ways to solve problems without spending, substituting a combination of work and imagination for money. Appropriately enough, this Labor Day weekend has given us three opportunities to fix problems using our own labor—a bit of physical and, even more important, a good dollop of mental.

Problem #1: The mismatched rain barrel hose

Our new rain barrel didn't come with a hose to drain off excess water. To fill this need, we picked up a cheap garden hose for $7 at Ocean State Job Lot. Brian screwed it on to the overflow valve at the top of the barrel, then stuck it through the garden fence behind the barrel to direct the flow away from the house. 

This was perfectly functional, but it didn't look great. Every time I opened the kitchen door to dump something in the compost bin, it really bugged me to see our nice, new terracotta-colored barrel marred by that incongruous piece of shiny green plastic sticking off the side. (I didn't get a photo of it, but here's a little picture I mocked up with Microsoft Paint to give you the general idea.)

The simple, spendy solution to this problem would have been to go to the home center and buy a new hose in a more unobtrusive black for $15 or so. But in less time than it would have taken us to drive there, I was able to fix the problem with less than a dollar's worth of black duct tape. I just started at the valve end and wrapped it diagonally around the hose until I got to the bottom.

Seen close up, this doesn't look perfect. But we don't spend that much time looking at it close up anyway. It was the view from a distance that bothered me, and that problem is now fixed with minimal cost and effort.

Problem #2: The off-color sandals

No, I don't mean that they were any way suggestive (unless you're into feet, I guess). It was their actual color that was off.

As I've noted many times on this blog, I have a lot of trouble finding shoes that fit my needs. I spent a good portion of this summer looking for a pair of off-white wedge sandals, and several pairs I ordered online either got returned because they didn't fit or, in one case, never arrived at all. So when my latest purchase, a cheap Chinese pair with adjustable hook-and-loop straps, actually felt comfortable the minute I put them on my feet, I knew I was going to keep them, no matter what.

But these shoes had one glaring flaw that hadn't been obvious in the listing. Since my feet are wide, I had to loosen the straps, leaving a portion of the hook-and-loop tape (the generic name for Velcro) visible. And while the uppers were a light beige color, the tape was white. Not off-white, but bright, optical white. The contrast between it and the shoes was very pronounced and very distracting.

A quick Google search led me to this blogger, who said she had successfully painted Velcro using an art tool called a Paintstik. I didn't have any of those, and a quick search suggested that they didn't really come in the off-white color I was looking for anyway, so I started hunting for other alternatives. First I tried tea, which I knew could be used as a fabric dye. (In All-of-a-Kind Family Uptown, one of the girls has to use it on her sister's dress after she spills iced tea on it.) Pressing a damp tea bag repeatedly over one of the hook-and-loop bits turned it a little darker, but it was a big hassle and not all that effective. I thought of trying shoe polish, but the brown shoe polish we had was significantly darker than the shoes, and too-dark tape would look just as bad as too-light.

Searching for a closer color match, I hit on the tube of concealer in my purse. And this turned out to be not only effective, but also extremely easy to apply. I just scrubbed it onto the hook-and-loop tape with an old toothbrush, and it sank right in with just a few seconds of work. The color isn't a perfect match for the sandals, but it's close enough now that you only notice the mismatch if you're staring straight at it. And when is anyone ever going to do that?

Problem #3: Making room for under-sink storage

Lately, we've taken to washing our cleaning rags separately so they don't transfer dirt or oil to the rest of our laundry. At first we put a little mini-hamper for them next to our main clothes hamper, but that system turned out not to be ideal. With the two baskets right next to each other, sometimes we'd absentmindedly toss a rag into the main bin, and occasionally small items like undies and socks accidentally ended up in the rag bin. 

So we decided it would make more sense to keep the rag bin in a separate location. The kitchen seemed like the logical spot, since we could toss rags in immediately after using them. Unfortunately, the only place we could reasonably put the bin was under the sink, and we already had two trash cans there—one for actual trash, and the other holding miscellaneous items like foil, parchment paper, sponges, and zip-top bags. In order to make room for the rag bin, we'd have to find another way to store all that other stuff.

We found some room for the smaller items in a drawer that was only partially filled with dishtowels. For the longer items, we figured the best option would be a cabinet-door organizer like this one. However, we couldn't find anything along those lines at either Target or Home Depot. So, rather than order one online and wait for it to arrive, Brian just measured the cabinet door, made a quick sketch, and disappeared into his workshop. 

When he emerged, he was holding a simple box made of unfinished scrap wood with some little tabs on the back that could be screwed to the cabinet door. We can always finish it later if we want it to look nicer, but for now, it does a perfectly good job of holding the foil, zip-top bags, and parchment paper. In fact, we have much easier access to them now than we did when they were shoved into a trash can with a bunch of other stuff on top. And we now have a spot for dirty rags under the sink, right next to the dispenser that holds our clean rags.

So there you have it: three problems solved with less than a dollar's worth of materials and less than an hour of labor. In every case, the solution is at least as good as something we could have purchased, and in the case of the sandals, it's clearly better. Given how little luck I'd had finding sandals all summer long, this is a problem I probably couldn't have solved at all by throwing money at it.

One new Money Crashers article, plus a podcast mention

Just a quick post here regarding my latest Money Crashers article on emergency room costs. I've already covered the benefits of going to urgent care instead of the ER when that's an option, but when it's not, there are various ways to minimize the expense. Some are things you can do before an emergency occurs, like figuring out ahead of time which local hospitals charge least for different procedures. Some can be done during your visit, like refusing unnecessary drugs and equipment. And some are for afterward, like getting an itemized bill and checking it carefully for errors. Check them all out here: 13 Ways to Save Money at the Emergency Room (ER)

Also, the Faithful on the Clock podcast is making mention of one of my earlier articles, 7 Important Financial Tips from the Bible. Check it out if that's your jam.

Money Crashers: Five pieces

Money Crashers has posted a whole bunch of my articles in the past week, so here's a really quick roundup:

Should You Buy an Electric Car? – 5 Cost Considerations

Here's a topic that's on a lot of ecofrugal people's minds these days: Is it time to switch to an electric car? This piece focuses mostly on the financial side of that question (cost of buying, cost of maintenance, cost of charging at home and on the road), but I also go into the convenience and environmental costs of electric versus gas-powered vehicles.

Best Personal Finance Books for Kids

This is a companion to my earlier piece on personal finance books for teens and young adults. While that one included some books aimed at adults, this one focuses on books that help younger readers (ages 5 through 11) learn the basics about money.

What Is a Debt Consolidation Loan and How Does It Work?

Here's a topic ecofrugal people are unlikely to need, but I'll include it here anyway: debt consolidation loans. I explore how these loans work, what kind of debt you can use them for, who can qualify for one, and their costs and benefits.

Should You Buy a Fixer-Upper House? The Pros and Cons to Consider

And we're back firmly on ecofrugal ground with the costs and benefits of buying a fixer-upper. Does it really save you money? Does it save you enough to be worth the cost in time, sweat, and stress? (Should you decide the answer is yes, check out my earlier piece on how to do it.)

The Best Places to Buy Wine Online of 2022

Finally, here's one for frugal wine lovers. During the COVID pandemic, Americans discovered the benefits of buying our booze online, and many of us have stuck with it. In this roundup, I share eight of the best places to find great wine online.

Money Crashers: 3 new articles

A quick update here to tell you about my three latest pieces on Money Crashers. The first is about one of my favorite subjects, books — specifically, books to teach kids about money. I already have a piece on the best personal finance books for adults, and there's an upcoming one about the best books for younger children, but this one focuses on the tween and teen set: ages 11 to 20. 

These days, schools are teaching kids this age the facts of life about sex, but not about money, so it's up to parents to fill in the gap. My folks did this decades ago by giving me a subscription to Penny Power magazine, a version of Consumer Reports for kids. But that magazine is now sadly defunct, so books are the best way to go, and these seven books are the most-recommended of all. Together, they cover every aspect of financial life, from splitting the check at a restaurant from starting a business. With one exception ("Rich Dad, Poor Dad for Kids," which I included because of its popularity but honestly don't think much of), these are all books I wish I'd had the chance to read at this age.

Best Personal Finance Books for Young Adults (Teens and Tweens)

The second is on a topic I've frankly been a little behind the curve on: money transfer apps. The only one I currently use is PayPal, and according to my research, it's a good one overall — but there are lots of other options that can be better for specific uses, from splitting the check with friends to sending money overseas. No matter where and how you want to send money, there's bound to be an app here that works for you.

The Best Money Transfer Apps for Sending and Receiving Cash of 2022

And finally, there's a piece on the boring but highly necessary topic of health insurance. I've written on this subject before, but this piece covers the absolute basics: what health insurance actually does, what terms like "deductible" and "coinsurance" mean, what an insurance policy is required by law to cover, and what kind of limits insurers tend to place on their coverage to keep costs down. It goes into the many different types of health insurance in the higgledy-piggledy U.S. health-care system, from Medicare to HMOs, and answers some basic questions about what health insurance costs and how to get it. It's everything you always wanted to know about health insurance but weren't sure how to ask.

What Is Health Insurance and How Does It Work? 

Money Crashers: secondhand shopping and free e-books

Money Crashers has popped up two new articles of mine, both on topics close to my heart.

The first is about secondhand shopping. Since I always prefer to buy secondhand when I can, I felt particularly well qualified to cover this topic. The article compares the various types of venues that sell secondhand goods, from thrift shops to eBay to yard sales, and offers strategies for getting the most for your money. Much of it will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, but here it's all conveniently organized in one place.

Second-Hand Shopping: How to Save at Thrift Stores and Consignment Shops

And the second is about another favorite subject, books. Specifically, it's about e-books and about how and where you can get them for cheap or free. The article runs through all the best sites for finding digital reading material at little to no cost, from digital libraries to the collection of free Kindle books on Amazon. (Okay, a lot of them aren't very good, but they'll do to pass the time in a waiting room.)

10 Best E-Book Download Sites to Find Free or Cheap Books Online

Money Crashers: 8 Ways to Save Money on Magazine Subscriptions

For the past several years, I haven't subscribed to any magazines. I canceled my subscription to Mother Earth News five years ago, when I came to the conclusion that most of the material in it just wasn't useful for a town dweller like me, and I've never really found a suitable substitute. Which is a shame, because curling up with a magazine is relaxing in a way that sitting at your desk, staring at your computer screen (or hunching over your tiny smartphone screen, peering at the tiny type) just can't compare with.

However, in the event that I do find a magazine I like, I'll have another dilemma to deal with: is it really worth the cost? Because while the cost per issue for a magazine subscriptions is certainly much less than the truly ludicrous prices you pay buying off the newsstand, it's still not exactly cheap.

That's where my latest Money Crashers article can help. It explores all kinds of ways to save money on magazine subscriptions, from shopping on discount sites to sharing your subscription with a friend. With so many strategies to choose from, I can feel fairly confident I'll have no trouble affording the magazine of my dreams, when and if I finally discover it.

8 Ways to Save Money on Magazine Subscriptions

Money Crashers: 9 Best E-Book Download Sites to Find Free or Cheap Books Online

A few years back, I wrote a piece for Money Crashers on how to find cheap books. When I updated that piece last month, my editor decided that rather than including detailed coverage of e-books, we should create a new, separate article on that topic. So this piece covers the digital side of reading on the cheap: how to sort out the various e-book formats, which devices and apps you can use for reading each one, and the best places to pick up some digital reads for bottom dollar. (If you prefer audiobooks, you can learn about the best places to find those on the cheap in my separate article on the topic, published back in April.)

9 Best E-Book Download Sites to Find Free or Cheap Books Online

 

Money Crashers: 17 Personal Finance Books to Read

First of all, let me be clear: the rather immodest title of this article, "17 Best Personal Finance Books to Read of All Time," was the editor's idea, not mine. I make no attempt to claim that the books on this list are the absolute best treatises on personal finance ever written, or even the best currently in print. Instead, this list features:

• 15 books selected because they consistently get good marks from reviewers for their ability to present financial topics, from basic budgeting to early retirement, in a way anyone can understand
• One book that I added to the list because it's a personal favorite of mine, and one that I think doesn't get enough recognition for its ability to make financial matters not merely understandable but entertaining
• One book (the last) that I added to the list by request because Money Crashers has "a partnership" with the author. In other words, he's paying us for our recommendation. I originally added a "full disclosure" notice revealing this information at the bottom of the section, but the editor removed it. So please take this as my personal disclaimer: I have not personally read this book, nor have I seen a recommendation for it anywhere. It gets pretty good ratings on Amazon.com, but for all I know, the author paid for those too, so I make no guarantees.

With the exception of this last one, all the books on this list come with solid recommendations. Whatever your financial goals may be — from making your first budget to buying a home to achieving financial independence — there's sure to be a book on this list that can help you achieve them.

Money Crashers: 4 new pieces

Last weekend, Money Crashers published four of my articles all in a row. Most of these had been on hold for months — over a year in some cases — but got pushed to the front right now because they are "COVID-adjacent content," meaning things that people are more likely to want to know about right now during the COVID crisis. But don't worry: They had me recheck all the old pieces and replace any outdated or unusable info before publishing them.

Article #1: How to Eat Well & Healthy on Food Stamps – SNAP Guidelines & Recipes

The COVID crisis has shut down a lot of businesses — most of them, we hope, temporarily — and put a lot of people out of work. As a result, more people than ever are in need of food aid, such as SNAP (the program formerly known as food stamps). I've already written one article on how to apply for SNAP benefits, which Money Crashers had me update in response to the pandemic. However, after looking at my revisions, the editors decided it would be a good idea to pull out the second half of the article, about how to use your SNAP benefits, and turn it into a separate piece. The first part explains how to use SNAP at the grocery store, and what you can and can't buy with it; the second part offers shopping tips to stretch your SNAP dollars; and the third section offers resources (such as cookbooks) and recipes to get you started.

Article #2: How to Keep Entertained at Home Without Cable TV

With COVID keeping most of us at home nearly all the time, people are looking for more ways to entertain themselves without going out. This puts a lot of us in a bind: With our incomes reduced, we can't really afford cable TV anymore, yet canceling it feels like cutting ourselves off from our only source of in-home entertainment. This article offers some alternative ways to keep yourself entertained without cable, including cheaper streaming services, DVDs, books, computer games, and good old-fashioned tabletop games.

Article #3: Where to Find Cheap or Free Audiobooks to Listen to Online

One good alternative to watching more TV is reading more books. But unfortunately, libraries — the best source of cheap reads — are closed during the pandemic. So, to present folks with an alternative, Money Crashers had me update an old article on how to find cheap or free ebooks and audiobooks and split into two pieces: one for ebooks, one for audiobooks. The one on ebooks hasn't been published yet, but you can read this one to learn where to find audiobooks on a budget. Audible is obviously the best-known source, but there are others that are cheaper or even free.

Article #4: Should You Choose an Online Bank? – Considerations, Pros & Cons

Finally, because we're all living so much more of our lives online these days, Money Crashers decided it was time to publish this old article of mine on whether to choose an online-only bank. These banks are able to offer higher interest rates and lower fees because they don't have all the expenses involved in running a branch, but they can't provide face-to-face interaction. This article presents a complete list of the upsides and downsides of virtual banking, along with some tips on how to choose an online bank.

Money Crashers: Two kid-themed articles

The new articles on Money Crashers just keep popping. Today, two articles on gift ideas for kids that didn't quite make it in time for the holiday season hit the site. The first, 15 Best Magazine Subscriptions for Kids of All Ages, names the best magazines for different age groups — preschool, primary school, tweens, and teens — based on recommendations from parents, booksellers, and educators. Getting your kids hooked on one of these magazines (such as Cricket, which I avidly read from ages 6 through 16) is a great way to give them the gift of a lifelong love of reading, which will stand them in good stead in school and throughout their lives.

The second article, 13 Subscription Gift Boxes for Kids That Keep on Giving, is about subscriptions of a different sort: those monthly boxes that give you a new surprise treat every month. Personally, I've never found one of these I considered to be a good value for me as an adult, but I can see how they could make great gifts for kids. Instead of giving a child just one toy, which that may or may not be a hit, you can give them a whole new surprise to open to each month. If one of them turns out to be less than exciting, perhaps the next will be better — plus they get the pleasure of anticipating the next one all month long. These 13 subscription boxes — featuring child-friendly clothing, books, toys, and educational activities — are parents' favorites.

Actual savings: The public library

A while ago, I read an article online—I forget exactly where—about the many benefits of visiting your local public library and all the things it has to offer besides books. (It wasn't this Money Crashers article, but it was along the same lines.) I was entirely in agreement with this, since next to our Twitch subscription (through which we watch our beloved Critical Role), our local library is our primary source of entertainment. We check out books, borrow movies and TV shows on DVD, and attend the occasional free event there. It's probably the nearest thing either of us has to a "third place."

But some readers, it turns out, don't share this view. In the comments at the bottom of the article, one sourpuss groused that the library isn't really "free" entertainment; you have to pay for it with your tax dollars, whether you want to use it or not. Apparently, he did not consider this a good value.

Now, it seems to me that if you have to support your public library whether you use it or not, it makes sense to use it as much as possible and get your money's worth. But perhaps this fellow's beef was that he doesn't think the services the library provides will ever be worth what he spends on it in taxes. Is he right? Just how much does a public library really cost, and how much value does it provide?

For our local library, the first question is easy to answer. A copy of Highland Park's municipal budget, available on the town's website, reveals that 0.97% of our property taxes go to support the library. The budget says this works out to $114 per year for the average resident, but our house must be a little smaller than average; we paid about $7,110 in property taxes over the last fiscal year, which means we only spent about $70 to fund the library.

Here's what we get for that:

• Borrowed books. First, and most obviously, we take out books—actual printed books—from the library. My account on the library's website doesn't include a record of what I've borrowed recently, so I'm just going to assume conservatively that Brian and I take out an average of one book per month. If we bought these same books new, in paperback form, they'd probably cost an average of $12 each. So, for borrowed books alone, that's a $144 value.
• Discounted books. In addition to borrowing books, we regularly buy them at the library's annual sale, at which donated books are sold at rock-bottom prices to raise money. Here's our haul from this year's sale: six small paperbacks (which would cost about $10 apiece retail), four larger ones (about $14 retail), and four hardcovers (maybe $20 retail). So this whole stack would have cost us $196 at a bookstore, and we paid only $22 for it—a savings of $174.
• E-books. In addition to physical books, we regularly use our library card to take out e-books from the eLibrary. Here, again, I don't know the exact number we've borrowed between us in the past year, but I'll guess it was at least half a dozen. Kindle books typically cost between from $3 and $10, so figure an average of $6.50. On top of that, our library temporarily gave us a subscription this year to Hoopla Digital, with an allotment of four borrows per month. We didn't get too much use out of it before the library canceled the program, but Brian took out eight graphic novels that would probably have cost him $12 each to buy in a store. So that's another $135 worth of reads.
• DVDs. Our town no longer boasts a video rental place, but we've hardly missed it thanks to the large and eclectic collection at the library. Matter of fact, its selections are probably of more interest to us than what we could have found at Blockbuster back when it was still operating in our area. It has everything from superhero movies to indie and foreign films, plus complete runs of all sorts of interesting TV series—some current, some canceled, and some BBC productions you can't easily get in the USA. We take out at least a couple of selections a month, usually TV series, thereby eliminating the need for a Netflix or Hulu subscription that would cost us $8 a month. So there's another $96 a year saved.
• Live events. Lastly, we attend live events at the library from time to time, such as film screenings and poetry readings. For the most part, these aren't events we'd pay to attend if they weren't available for free, but they make a nice change of pace from staying in and watching TV or playing board games. Most recently, I took an afternoon class that taught how to use a sewing machine, complete with the materials needed to construct a small zippered pouch. Mine didn't quite come out beautifully (I forgot to put the foot down at one point after re-threading), but it's still sturdy enough to hold pens or dice. I checked online to see what a comparable class would cost, and I found a two-hour session at a place in Brooklyn called Make Workshop for $80. So that's another $80 to add to the year's tally.

All told, in the past year our library card has saved us approximately $629 for a mere $70 in taxes. That's such a good deal that we actually feel a bit guilty about it, so we voluntarily pony up an extra $100 each year as a donation and consider it money well spent. If it enables the library to continue providing the kind of value we get from it now, it's an excellent investment.

In fact, if you look at it in terms of cost per hour of entertainment, the library is just about the best deal around. Since I not only read books but also read them aloud to Brian, a single novel can provide anywhere from 2 to 20 hours of entertainment; if you figure 6 hours on average, the 40 books we got from the library this year (borrowed, bought, and downloaded) provided us with about 240 hours' worth. Our DVD borrows, since they're mostly TV series with multiple episodes, add at least another 150 hours or so, and the events we attend add maybe 10 more hours per year. So that's a good 400 hours of entertainment, and even with our additional donation, it costs us only $170—less than 43 cents per hour. That's cheaper than a Redbox rental ($1 for 2 hours), cheaper than a Netflix subscription ($8 a month for about 10 hours), cheaper than most secondhand books (about $4 for maybe 6 hours)—cheaper, in fact, than almost anything you can do for fun.

Now, I realize our public library is probably better than most, especially for a town this small. But then, others that are cheaper probably cost even less in taxes, so the locals are getting what they pay for. In short, I'd say anyone who thinks a public library isn't a worthwhile investment either hasn't done the math or just doesn't know how to have fun.

Recipe of the Month: Veggie Macaroni and Cheese

It's become a yearly tradition for me and Brian, when we go out to visit his folks for Christmas, to make a trip to the local Half Price Books. This is a chain we don't have out here in Jersey, which is a pity, because it carries books on all manner of topics, along with some new and used CDs and DVDs, at prices well below Barnes and Noble's. Sometimes we come home with an armful of new books, other times we just browse, but it's always an enjoyable outing.

On this occasion, we picked up only one new book for ourselves: the Fix-It and Forget-It Vegetarian Cookbook. Unlike most cookbooks in the Fix-It and Forget-It series, this one isn't limited to recipes for the slow cooker; instead, it boasts "565 Delicious Slow-Cooker, Stove-Top, Oven, and Salad Recipes, plus 50 Suggested Menus"—all of them meatless. And since it includes one whole section devoted solely to vegetables and fruits, I thought it would offer a fertile field of possible Recipes of the Month for 2018.

We decided to start off with a simple one: Veggie Macaroni and Cheese, listed in the pasta section. It's pretty much just a basic baked mac-and-cheese recipe, but with lightly cooked broccoli and cauliflower florets and sliced carrots and celery added to the macaroni before baking. There's also a sautéed onion and a spoonful of Dijon mustard added to the cheese sauce, as well as a sprinkling of paprika on top, which I thought would give the dish a bit more interest than the Kraft packaged variety I grew up with. And since we didn't happen to have any macaroni on hand, we decided to make the dish with penne, which we figured would make it a bit more sophisticated.

When the dish came out of the oven, it certainly looked a lot more appealing than basic macaroni and cheese: a mass of pasta swimming in rich, golden cheese sauce, dotted with colorful veggies, and dusted with russet-brown paprika. Unfortunately, its flavor wasn't quite as impressive. I like pasta with veggies, and I like pasta with cheese sauce, but these two great tastes just didn't taste great together. It seemed like the veggies, which would probably have tasted just fine with the pasta in a simple garlic-and-oil sauce, didn't really harmonize with the mustard-laced cheese sauce. It was perfectly edible, but it just wasn't inspiring. And since fresh cauliflower turns out to be quite expensive to buy in January, it wasn't really the most frugal choice to start off the year, either.

However, trying this dish wasn't a complete waste of time. As it happens, we already have a recipe for a healthier version of macaroni and cheese that we quite like: it also contains cauliflower, but pureed and mixed in with the cheese sauce. This doesn't noticeably affect the flavor, but it makes the sauce extra thick and creamy, as well as giving it a nice nutritional boost. The only problem with the dish is that it's a trifle bland. We usually sprinkle it with a little Penzey's Mural of Flavor to kick the flavor up a notch, but after trying this new recipe, I'm inclined to think that maybe what it really needs is a little mustard stirred into the sauce—and perhaps a dash of paprika on top to give it color and zest. So we'll probably add those modifications the next time we make our usual mac-and-cheese dish, and see if they take it from good to great.

In the meantime, we've already picked out another recipe to try from our new cookbook: Quinoa with Broccoli and Hoisin Sauce. This one looks a lot lighter and healthier, since it has protein-packed quinoa instead of pasta and isn't loaded with cheese. We picked up the ingredients for this today, and if it turns out well, we'll have a new recipe to add to our repertoire of dishes we can serve to gluten-free guests.

Money Crashers: How to Save Money on Cheap Books

You may have noticed that I haven't posted any links to my Money Crashers articles for the past month or so. That's because the site was between editors for a while, so no new articles of mine were being posted. However, there's now a new editor on the job, and so there's a new story on the site at last.

This one's about books, with which I have a love-hate relationship. I love reading them, but I hate paying for new ones, especially at the prices they charge these days. Indeed, while I often go into Barnes & Noble to browse, I almost always come out empty-handed, simply because I can't find anything that looks worth the price.

Instead, I favor other sources of reading material. The local library is a good one, of course, but I also visit used bookstores whenever I get the chance, trade books with friends, paw through boxes at yard sales, and browse for cheap and free e-books online. This new article goes into detail about all these sources of cheap and free books and how to get the most out of them. (But please ignore the intro, which is not at all as I wrote it. Somehow in the editing process it got a bit garbled.)

How to Save Money on Cheap Books – Read More While Spending Less

Money Crashers: 7 Important Financial Tips From the Bible

This new Money Crashers post is a little bit gimmicky, but it was fun to write. It's about useful financial tips you can glean from an unexpected source: the Bible. Even though it was written many centuries ago, this ancient book has some financial tips that are surprisingly relevant in the modern world.

For example, take the story of Pharaoh's dream from Genesis, chapter 41. In his dream, Pharaoh sees seven fat cattle grazing by the Nile, and seven skinny cattle come up and swallow them whole. He turns to Joseph, who has a reputation for interpreting dream omens, and gets the explanation that the seven fat cattle represent seven years of plenty, and the seven skinny ones are seven years of famine that will swallow up all the gains of the seven good years as if they'd never been. To avert this disaster, Joseph recommends setting aside a portion of the harvest during each good year to see the country through the years of famine.

Now, whether you think Joseph was divinely inspired or not, his advice definitely makes sense. It's always a good idea to save up in good years so you'll have something to get you through the lean years—because even if you haven't had a handy dream to tell you exactly when hard times will hit, it's pretty certain they will at some point. In fact, this piece of financial advice is so standard that modern financial planners have a name for it: they call it keeping an emergency fund. But modern as it sounds, it's essentially the same idea attributed to Joseph thousands of years ago.

That's just one example of how the Bible offers sound advice on money matters. For six more, check out the article: 7 Important Financial Tips From the Bible – Verses About Money

Thrift (Shop) Week 2016

Last month, while researching prices for my Money Crashers article on things that have fallen in price, I started digging into the topic of clothing prices. I found that, while clothing prices have been rising in the short term, over the long term - the past several decades - they have grown dramatically cheaper. Yet according to the 2015 documentary True Cost, as covered here on CNN, that's not a good thing. The cost of clothing today, the film argues, is far too low; it doesn't adequately reflect the true economic and social cost of producing the garments. It dwells on such topics as rising debt (and, relatedly, suicides) among Indian cotton farmers, the appalling conditions in third-world textile mills, and the amount of fabric waste in the US each year.

Not having seen the film, I can't really respond to its argument as a whole. But my attention was grabbed by one particular statistic cited in the CNN piece: "Only 10% of the clothes people donate to thrift stores get sold - the rest end up in landfills or flood markets in developing countries."

I'd never heard this fact before, and I still don't know where the filmmakers got it from. But if it's anywhere near close to true, it shows that even in thrift shops, which I've always considered a classic example of stuff green people like, aren't nearly as green as they could be. Yes, they're keeping some clothes out of landfills - but only about 10 percent of the clothes they receive.

Now, the filmmakers' conclusion about cheap clothing is that American consumers ought to "back off this endless, constant purchasing" and spend their clothing budget on a few high-quality items that will last. But it seems to me, based on the statistic above, that one other thing we could all be doing that would be at least as helpful is to support our local thrift shops. Buying more of our clothing secondhand would reduce textile waste, while also reducing the profitability of the cheap clothes made in third-world factories - an ecofrugal win-win.

Thus, Thrift Week 2016 is going to be Thrift Shop Week 2016. I'm planning to visit a different local thrift shop each day, buying something if I find anything useful, but at the very least familiarizing myself with the stores and what they have to offer - and providing them with a little free publicity here on the blog. I've decided that for purposes of this series, a "thrift shop" is any store that sells all or mostly secondhand goods - not just clothing, but secondhand items of any kind, including furniture and books. I'll focus on clothing stores mainly, since that's what inspired me to tackle the topic, but I won't limit myself to clothing stores, since there probably aren't enough of them in our area to get me through the whole week.


One additional complication is that, as I kick off this year's Thrift Week, I'm not actually at home; I'm visiting some friends down in Falls Church, VA. So my first thrift shop of Thrift Shop Week isn't one of my local thrift shops, but one of theirs: a secondhand bookstore called Hole in the Wall Books. As you can see from the pictures on their website, the place lives up to its name. It's a used bookstore of the old school, a dense, crowded warren of tiny rooms, all lined with shelves overflowing with books of every type: paperbacks, hardcovers, comics, fiction and nonfiction, classics, sci-fi, mysteries, horror, and anything else you care to name.

Mind you, if you're looking for something in particular, finding it in this maze isn't exactly easy. But the books are at least grouped roughly into categories and sorted approximately alphabetically, so Brian and I were able to determine after a brief search that most of the authors we look for in places like this - Jim Butcher, Ilona Andrews, Rex Stout - weren't represented on the shelves. However, I did manage to locate one volume by Wilkie Collins, a contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens. He was pretty hot stuff in his day, but nowadays, it seems the only works of his you can find anywhere - at our local library, at the bookstores, and even at most online libraries - are The Moonstone and The Woman in White, both of which we've already read. So when I found a collection of three lesser-known Collins novels we'd never seen before, I decided not to balk at the $9 price tag. (Although this place looks like an old-school used bookstore, it definitely doesn't follow the old-school pricing model of half the cover price for most books. If it did, we'd almost certainly have bought more books and spent more money altogether.) Sure, $9 for works that are officially out of copyright may seem a bit steep, but if we can't actually find them anywhere else, it's still a bargain.

So that was my first Thrift Week score, and the first of what I hope will be seven secondhand birthday presents from me to myself.  Stay tuned throughout the week to hear of our further adventures in thrifting.

Visiting the eLibrary

Lately, Brian and I have become fans, or at least casual admirers, of the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris. (This is the series that HBO's "True Blood" is rather loosely based on. Think Twilight for grownups...with a sense of humor, which I've been given to understand is conspicuously absent from Stephanie Meyer's work.) We came across the first one on some freebie table somewhere, and then picked up the second from our local library...but at that point we got stuck, because while the library had several other volumes in the series, it didn't have the third one, and we like to read a series in order whenever possible. And while we enjoy these books, we don't really love them enough to shell out $10 per book for them.

Fortunately, we found a way around this problem. As it turns out, our local library participates in a program called eLibraryNJ, which is like interlibrary loan for e-books. It works like this:

1. You sign up for an account, using your library card number and a PIN you can get from the library reference desk.
2. You search the catalogue for the book you want and check it out. If someone else currently has it checked out, you can put a hold on it, and you'll be notified by e-mail when the book becomes available.
3. You can read the book online or download a copy onto your e-reader or other device. The books are available in various formats; we've been reading them with the Kindle app on our tablet, but we've also seen books in PDF form, a format called OverDrive that you can read in your browser, and an open-source format called ePub that works with most e-readers.
4. When you're done with the book, you can check it back in to make room for a new one. However, if you forget to do this, the book checks itself back in automatically when it expires at the end of three weeks. If you're not done with the book after three weeks, you can renew it, as long as no one else has it on hold.

This program is an elegant way to make e-books lendable without getting snarled up in copyright issues. With its help, we've been able to make our way through the first five Southern Vampire books, and we've just started on the sixth (though we had to wait a few weeks for that one). And since eLibraryNJ appears to have every book in the series in "stock," we should have no trouble making it all the way through.

And when that runs out, there are heaps of other series we can try, all just a click away. The site even offers suggestions for us based on our previous choices, just like Amazon does. Plus, it has a collection of classic works in the public domain that you can check out for as long as you like; they never expire, and they don't count toward your checkout limit. So if we ever want to read something by Wilkie Collins besides The Moonstone and The Woman in White, the only two novels available at our local library, we're in luck.

All in all, this site is a great resource for all book lovers who live in New Jersey and own any kind of electronic device. Most public libraries seem to belong to the site, and even a few non-public ones, like the Carl C. Brigham Library at Educational Testing Service. And if you don't happen to live in New Jersey, try Googling "e-library" plus the name of your state, and there's a good chance you'll find one you can use.

The bathroom library

Today while browsing Apartment Therapy (the home website that I'm hoping to make my new substitute for Young House Love), I came across an article called "How Not to Embarrass People Who Use Your Bathroom." The article itself offers advice for thoughtful hosts about cleaning the bathroom well, having plenty of toilet paper on hand, and providing a means to cover up embarrassing noises or odors. What particularly interested me, however, was the comments below, where one person raised the topic of "reading materials"—and immediately got a host of shrill responses about how "gross" it is to read in the bathroom. "I don't want unwashed hands on my reading materials," protested one reader, following it up with "(shudder)."

This widespread reaction, I'll admit, kind of baffled me. I can see why you might think it's gross for people to pick up and handle books after using the toilet (and before washing their hands), but why is it gross for them to do so while using the toilet? Their hands are, at this point, no dirtier than they were before they went into the bathroom, and presumably you don't hide all your books before every party to make sure that no one touches them with hands that haven't been freshly washed. (I mean, unless you're truly disturbed and in need of psychiatric help.)

Speaking for myself, I like to keep reading material of some sort in every room of the house, and the bathroom is no exception. Of course, I always try to make sure that the material I keep in there is particularly suitable for the, ahem, function of the room, so I try to select books or magazines that are broken up into nice, small nuggets that can easily be consumed in a short visit. My upstairs bathroom has a small basket on top of the toilet tank, containing:

• Living on Less, a collection of pieces from Mother Earth News magazine about "affordable food, fuel, and shelter"—an appropriate assortment for our ecofrugal household;
• Ex Libris, a collection of whimsical essays about books by Anne Fadiman;
• Idiots, Hypocrites, Demagogues, and More Idiots: Not-So-Great Moments in American Politics a collection of amusing gaffes of various sorts from American public figures; and
• Humorous Cryptograms, an assortment of puzzles that I keep in there mainly for my own use, since they're just about long enough for me to solve during a single potty break.

That, I think, makes a fairly nice assortment—a blend of the amusing and the informative, all in handy bite-sized chunks. In the downstairs bath, I have a similar blend of genres on the shelf of our refinished corner cabinet that sits opposite the toilet:

• 6 months' worth of Atlantic magazines that I got from a freebie subscription (why keep them on the coffee table when the bathroom is so much more suitable for reading while visiting a friend?);
• a collection of New Yorker cartoon puzzles (the puzzles have all been solved already, so now it's really just a collection of New Yorker cartoons with writing in it);
• The Utne Reader Alamanac, an assortment of "123 Ideas, Innovations & Insights" on topics such as daily life, work, relationships, the media, and spirituality;
• The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, a collection of advice on how to survive situations you're extremely unlikely ever to find yourself in, from alligator attacks to leaping from a moving car; and
• The Best of Bad Hemingway, a set of winners and runner-ups from the annual Bad Hemingway contest, which challenges writers to come up with "a really good page of really bad Hemingway."

So that's my bathroom library, and frankly, I feel like I'm a much more considerate hostess for providing it (not to mention I always have something to occupy myself in either bathroom). How about you? Do you keep books in the bathroom, or do you think that's gross? And if so, can you explain to me why?

My frugal Valentine

Valentine's Day is the most problematic of all holidays. If you're single, obviously, it feels like a slap in the face to be surrounded everywhere you go by red hearts and roses and teddy bears, a massive consumer binge in celebration of romantic love that you have no part in. But at least you know how to react to it. You can just grumble at how stupid it all is, and then do your best to dismiss it from your mind. That may mean going out and partying with your single friends, or staying in and vegging in front of the TV, but either way, you get to stay above the V-day fray.

Being part of a couple, however, doesn't necessarily mean that you hate all the rigamarole surrounding Valentine's Day any less. It just means that it's harder for you to ignore it. What do you do if you're happily partnered, but you consider red hearts and roses and teddy bears to be corny, trite, or just plain sickening? If you decide to skip the whole thing, your partner may feel ignored and hurt, but it's almost worse to give a mass-market present that you just grabbed off the shelf; unless your partner actually likes red hearts and roses and teddy bears, giving any of these things makes it seem like you were just trying to meet an obligation, rather than actually looking for a way to please your sweetheart. So, as this XKCD cartoon shows, you end up trying desperately to come up with something clever and original, in order to avoid being either "a consumer tool or an inconsiderate jerk."

This is the main reason that, in the 14 years we've been together—marriage, engagement, and long-distance courtship—Brian and I have never really come up with a satisfying way to celebrate Valentine's Day. Sure, we always go to the special Valentine's Day show at the Minstrel concert series, in which individual Folk Project members take turns doing songs or other pieces about love, but that's more a way of supporting the Folk Project than celebrating each other—and since it's always on a Friday night, it usually doesn't fall on Valentine's Day anyway. Over the years, I've offered Brian various little things for Valentine's Day, from poems to baked goods, but he's never seemed very enthusiastic about any of them, or had any ideas about how to reciprocate. So after yet another uneventful Valentine's Day last year, I finally got fed up and said that this year, I wanted to do something to celebrate.

Being an ecofrugal couple, however, we couldn't very well celebrate with any of the conventional gifts that the stores have been pushing since early January. Roses in February, in addition to being ludicrously expensive, are sure to have been either grown in an extravagantly heated greenhouse or shipped up from the southern hemisphere, either of which requires loads of carbon-emitting fossil fuel; according to Scientific American, the 100 million roses given for Valentine's Day each year in the United States are responsible for over 9,000 metric tons of CO2. The heart-shaped boxes of chocolates lining store shelves, though tasty, are mostly neither organic nor Fair Trade—and, as we learned recently, may well be contaminated with dangerous levels of cadmium or lead. And the priciest Valentine goodie of all, jewelry, comes with a host of environmental problems, from the catastrophic pollution caused by gold mining to the habitat destruction of gemstone mines.

Fortunately for me, I had a good idea for a gift fall more or less into my lap. Brian and I had just finished reading the paperback of Gunmetal Magic, an adventure in the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews, and it seemed to me that there must have been some piece of the storyline that we'd missed at some point. So I checked the website and found not one but two novellas in the series, both of them love stories, and both of them available as Kindle books for only three bucks. (Kindle books aren't included in my current boycott of Amazon.com, because they aren't shipped through Amazon's prison-camp warehouses—though if they don't clean up their act soon, I might decide to cut off this source of revenue to Amazon as well.) So I ordered one of them for him as a gift, which means that an e-mail gets sent to him with a claim code to download the book. Then, to make it more interesting, I set up a little treasure hunt to lead him to his gift. The first clue was waiting for him on the breakfast table in the morning:

Oh, I wonder, wonder who, who wrote the book of love?

That planted the idea of a book, which led him to our bookshelves. Fortunately, he didn't have to hunt through our whole collection to figure out which was was "the book of love," because my little Shakespeare doll was sitting between two bookends holding clue #2:

He's working late 'most every night, he doesn't phone, he doesn't write

This clue directed him to the office, where he eventually figured out that the book he was looking for was his homemade book tablet case. Inside that, he found his third clue:

My baby, she wrote me a letter

That told him to check his e-mail, where he found his Kindle book waiting for him with the message, "Come on baby, light my fire! Happy Valentine's Day!" (I think the main reason I went ahead and bought the book for Kindle rather than trying the Nook app was to have a chance to use that line.) Of course, the whole process of downloading the book turned out to be another puzzle in itself (they really could make it simpler), but we eventually got our book, and I read the whole thing to him over the course of that day. So that was our romantic Valentine's Day activity.

Brian, for his part, got me two small presents. The first was a photo he'd taken a few years back of our cat, who has been sick lately, so a picture of her in good health was a nice memento. He just printed it out on plain paper and put it in a little frame he had tucked away in a box, so the whole gift was repurposed and cost nothing except the ink.

Then, knowing that I wouldn't be interested in traditional, environmentally destructive jewelry, he instead picked up a whimsical little pair of earrings from our local Ten Thousand Villages store. Aren't they cute? The tag calls them "a whimsical tribute to eco-friendly transport around the world," made from recycled materials by artisans in Kenya. And even though they were paid a living wage for their work, the cost to us was still under $10 on account of the store's February jewelry sale. What could be more ecofrugal than that?

And finally, to top off our romantic day, he made me chocolate pudding (with organic cocoa and sugar, of course), and we ate it on the couch while watching Mythbusters. The perfect geek date.

So if I had to give a single tip for avoiding the Valentine dilemma, here's what I'd suggest: pay no attention to what the stores are selling. Instead, think about what your sweetie really enjoys, and choose a present that you know they'll appreciate. Because a $3 gift that really shows how well you know and care about each other is way, way more romantic than a $50 gift that you could have given to anyone. Better yet, make your gift an activity that you can do together, and show your love with quality time instead of cash.

And, for all you singles out there who still think the whole thing is annoying: there's no rule that says you can't treat yourself to something special on the 14th of February, or any other day that strikes your fancy.

Green Gift Roundup 2014

This year's annual Green Gift Roundup has been slightly delayed, since we've been sort of celebrating the holiday in stages this year. His brother and sister-in-law, a firefighter and an EMT, both had to work on Christmas Day, so we went over the day before and exchanged gifts with them and his brother's three kids. On Christmas Day itself, we just hung out at home with his parents (I offered to take them out for a traditional Jewish Christmas of Chinese food and a movie, but his mom had a nice free-range turkey, so we ate a second Thanksgiving meal instead). Then, yesterday, we exchanged gifts with his sister and brother-in-law, who had just flown back from visiting his relatives out in California. We're actually still waiting to open stockings on Tuesday, which is the one day we'll be able to get all the cousins together in one place, but since I happened to have a little free time today while the rest of the family is out shopping, I decided I'd better blog now while I had the chance.

First, the raw numbers: I am pleased to report that I met my goal of increasing the percentage of gifts we gave that qualified as green. I started keeping track of this back in 2005, counting as green any gift that:

• was secondhand;
• was made from organic or recycled materials (including home-grown);
• was Fair Trade-certified;
• came from a local business; or
• would help the recipients reduce waste, save energy, or conserve natural resources.

The percentage of our gifts that fit into these categories has fluctuated over the years, from a high of 71 percent in 2006 to a low of 33 percent in 2007. Over the past few years, however, the numbers have been heading upward—from 37 percent in 2011 to 52 percent in 2012 to 61 percent last year—and I was determined to keep the trend going. And I made it, with a record 72 percent of all our gifts meeting my green standards. Some of the more successful ones were:

• A party dress, chocolate-brown satin with pink polka dots, for our oldest niece. Though we picked it up for 7 bucks at a local yard sale, it was in excellent condition, and nice enough to qualify for an "Oo!" from our niece when she opened it.
• A Madeline Around the World Adventure Set for another niece. This is like a paper doll book, but sturdier: a travel trunk with a felt Madeline figure and lots of different felt outfits and accessories from around the world. It's no longer made new, but copies in used condition are selling for anywhere from $10 to $45 on eBay. We found this one, new in the box, for $3 at that same yard sale, and our niece declared she "really liked it." Score!
• For my youngest nephew, a reversible jigsaw puzzle. Each piece is a different color and is labeled on one side with a letter and on the other side with a number from 1 to 26. So when the whole thing is put together, it not only makes the shape of a rabbit, but also spells out the alphabet or the first 26 numbers (depending on which way the rabbit is facing). This one came form a yard sale in Hopewell for $1. We actually thought we were getting two complete jigsaw puzzles, one rabbit and one giraffe, each with the same reversible letters and numbers on them, but the giraffe turned out to be missing two pieces. (We toyed with the idea of trying to reconstruct the missing ones, but we didn't manage to get it done in time for Christmas.) But although only one puzzle was complete, my sister reported that he really liked it, and backed it up with a picture of him playing with it at 5 in the morning.
  
• Two Mushroom Mini Farms. I'm counting these as green because they're a form of organic gardening you can do at home, even in the wintertime. We found this kit at Home Depot and decided it would be perfect for my dad and Brian's brother, two of the toughest people on our list to shop for. Both of them are into gardening, but mushrooms are one crop you can't normally grow outdoors, so we figured this would give them a chance to try something new. It was a hit with both of them.
• Last but not least, a homemade gift that requires no packaging at all: an MP3 file of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, recorded by yours truly on the same primitive sound setup I use for my podcasts. I shared it with all my relatives via Google Drive and also presented a copy to my mom on her new MP3 player (which was actually our old MP3 player, since we couldn't think of anyplace to shop for a new one that wasn't on my naughty list). This was my first ever attempt at recording an audiobook, so I was learning as I went, and the last two "staves" of the book definitely sound better than the first three. Nonetheless, Mom was really pleased with both the book and the player. (If there's enough interest from readers, I might look for a way make it available here on the blog as well.)

In addition to the gifts we gave to others, we also picked up a few green items for ourselves during our trip. Before all the relatives arrived, Brian and I made our annual jaunt out to two green businesses: the local Goodwill store, which has a better selection and much better organization than the one in our area, and Half Price Books, which sells "new and used books, music, movies and games starting at just 50 cents each." I got myself a new book, two used CDs, and a bargain-bin copy of four hidden object mystery games, all for about ten bucks. At Goodwill, I didn't find pants, which were what I really needed, but I picked up a couple of turtleneck sweaters for about $4 each, and Brian got a pair of jeans in his new, slimmer size for $7.

I also accepted my brother-in-law's invitation to scavenge his shelves of gardening reference books that he never uses. I picked up a copy of one volume called The Practical Gardener, which is all about how to adapt your growing methods to real-world conditions, and another called The Natural Garden Book, about the "Gaian gardening" method of working as much as possible with nature rather than trying to manipulate it. So those are doubly green: secondhand books that will also improve my organic gardening technique. And we continued our newly established (last year) tradition of exchanging books from our own collection with Brian's friend Jon, who gave us a sci-fi novel by Charles Stross and got a collection of Dave Barry humor columns (one of our Half-Price finds). So we are well stocked with reading material to carry us through a good chunk of the year 2015.

A merry and green Christmas to all, and to all, good night.


POSTSCRIPT: As it turns out, there were a few presents left that hadn't been exchanged by Monday. When the whole family got together on Tuesday, my sister-in-law presented me with a large fabric gift bag, containing...a whole lot more fabric gift bags, in a wide variety of sizes and patterns.  I guess she'd been watching me salvage wrapping paper each year and seeing the following year's presents appear in it, and she decided I could use something more permanent. I've hesitated to use fabric gift bags for Christmas presents in the past, for fear that the recipients might just discard them rather than actually reusing them. But now that Becky has apparently latched onto the idea as well, I think we might actually be able to get it to catch on. She says she raided her fabric bin to make these; there are several green bags made from what appears to be a set of curtains, plus some colorful cottons and one in a sort of silky fabric, and a variety of different ribbons used for ties. So this is actually the ultimate ecofrugal gift. It cost nothing to make, and it reduces waste twice: once by turning scrap fabric into something useful, and once by eliminating the need for single-use wrapping paper. And if, as I hope, the fabric gift bags remain in circulation, they may actually continue to reduce paper waste through Christmas after Christmas. The ecofrugal gift that keeps on giving.