This guide will explore the origins of Freecycle, how to find a group near you, and the etiquette of exchanging items on Freecycle.

What is Freecycle?

Freecycle is a movement whose mission is “to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.” The origin of the word, is, of course, “recycle,” and the verb “Freecycle” is often used itself.

Freecycle.org acts as the hub for the Freecycle movement but - and here’s the confusing part for some people - nothing much happens on the site itself. As stated on the site’s main page, “The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,661 groups with 6,287,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns…. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free.”

So How Do I Find a Local Group?

Do start at Freecycle.org, as it is the central database for Freecycle groups. You can use the search box to search for your town by name, but I recommend “Browse Groups” as a better option. For example, if I search on “Lunenburg, Massachusetts,” I get a series of results for groups that are not very close to me (i.e., Quincy?) - this is what will happen if your town doesn’t have its own group, even if the next town over does.

If I browse groups in Massachusetts, I see all the towns that host a group listed alphabetically. This allows me look for any towns that might be near me. Here, for example, is the Fitchburg North and West CARES group, to which I belong.

Signing Up For a Group

Once you select a group, the page will redirect you to the group’s mailing list. Most mailing lists are run by Yahoo!Groups, Google Groups, or a similar service. If you don’t have a free Yahoo or Google account (or whatever provider the group is using), there should be easy steps to follow to get one. Do this first, as this is key to your interaction with your local group.

With membership in a mailing list like this, you or another member can send a message to everyone in the group just by sending an email to an address like Your_Freecycle_Group@groups.yahoo.com. In this way, no one has to know all the names and email addresses of everyone who belongs to the group.

In signing up, it is very important to follow the rules exactly. My Freecycle group, for example, has the following sign-up rules:

• You must disclose your email ID or you can’t be Approved.
• Please list your ZIP CODE in your request.
• Let us KNOW you read & will comply by our site’s rules.
• You CANNOT choose NO EMAIL in your Profile as Admin MUST be able to reach you, which is minimal.
• Please read our Rules as some are different on this site than others.
• Everything posted must be Free, Legal & Family Appropriate.
• Proper FORMAT in the Subject Line is MANDATORY for ALL Freecycle sites.

In some Freecycle groups, you may be required to submit a short paragraph that describes why you wish to join. This is to rule out people who are joining just to get free stuff to resell, for example.

Okay, I’ve Joined. Now What?

Once you’ve joined, Freecycle emails will start pouring into your inbox - okay, depending on where you’re living, they may dribble rather than pour. If you don’t start seeing emails within a few days, check your settings with the mailing list provider to make sure you have checked the option to receive emails.

The first thing you’ll want to do is acquaint yourself with the rules and etiquette of your particular group. Most often these will be emailed to you as soon as you sign up. This will specify things like what items can be offered for exchange (most Freecycle groups, for example, have a strict “no pets” policy), what the format for email offers/requests should be, how frequently you can request items, etc. Groups can be fussy about these rules, so it’s very important that you pay attention.

Once you’ve read the rules, it’s time to look at the emails you’re receiving. Most Freecycle posts are of one of three types:

• WANTED: Someone is making a request for an item that they want for free
• OFFER: Someone is offering an item for free
• TAKEN: Someone is announcing that something they posted previously has been claimed. Some groups allow the use of “PPU” (pending pick-up) to announce that an item has been claimed but has not been picked up yet, but others do not - again, check the rules of your particular group.

If you are new to this group, it is considered good etiquette to offer an item before you request anything. Some groups also cap the number of “wanted” posts you can make. Once again, refer to the rules.

Offering an Item on Freecycle

If you have an item to offer, simply send an email to the whole group (at Your_Freecycle_Group@groups.yahoo.com, or whatever the address is) with a subject line of “OFFER: [My item]“.

Within a short period of time, if anyone wants that item, they will email you privately to request it. Usually they will tell you when they can pick it up. (Usual Freecycle etiquette dictates that if you’re getting something, you pick it up; if you’re offering something, you let the other person pick it up). At this point you arrange pick up instructions with the person who wants the item, such as “I’m located [here] which is at the end of ABCD Road. I’ll leave the item on the porch for you.”

Some other issues that frequently arise with offering items:

• Multiple people request the item. Most people simply take the first person who replies; other people give priority to charities or folks in need. You can come up with your own guidelines for who gets your stuff, but make sure they’re in line with the rules of your group.
• The person who claimed the item doesn’t pick it up. I usually give the person one or two more chances to pick it up, then I offer it to the next person on the list (assuming multiple people claimed it) or relist it. Chronic no-shows should be reported to the administrator of the list.

One major don’t in offering items: don’t just say, “There’s a pile of leftovers from my garage sale on my porch at 1234 ABCD Street; whoever gets there first gets them.” This is frowned upon by many Freecycle groups, and is just plain annoying in others.

Requesting an Item That’s Been Listed

So say that someone is giving away a Nintendo 64 system with the old skool Tetris game you’ve always wanted. (The Nintendo 64 Tetris is the best Tetris, after all!) Email that person off list - i.e., reply to them at their own email address, NOT the entire list - saying simply, “I’m interested in that item and I can pick it up at such-and-such time.” Some people put in a line or two about why they want the item, but frankly, I find that comes off a bit needy.

If the offerer decides that you’re it, they’ll email you back with a confirmation, i.e. “That time works. I’ll leave it on the porch for you. I’m at 1234 ABCD Street.” Don’t be offended if you get no reply back - if the person has a lot of responses, they may not be able to individually reply to everyone who requests it. If you don’t hear back promptly, assume you didn’t get the item.

If you’re requesting an item, the burden is usually on you to pick up an item. Be sure to pick up when you say you will! If you have to miss it for some reason, send a timely update to let the person know what’s up.

Requesting an Item That’s Not Been Listed (i.e. Making a “WANTED” post)

I recommend not posting a “WANTED” post until you’ve been participating for a few weeks to a month, and have offered other items. That said, a “WANTED” post can be very effective for both parties. I have only ever requested two things - an atmosphere oil burner, and a sari - and I got the first and was able to borrow the second. In the first case, the person was very eager to get the item out of their house, as she never used it!

When making a WANTED post, simply post an email to the entire list with the subject line: “WANTED: [your item here].” As outlined above, people will begin to contact you shortly if they have the object you want, and from there, you can arrange pick-up. As always, be courteous and grateful for the item you are getting for free.

Downsides and Alternatives to Freecycle

Asking my young, urban friends why they don’t use Freecycle more, I got a common response: because of transportation. Many of them don’t own cars, and as the burden of pick-up is on the requestor, that makes it difficult to participate.

Some people also dislike the strict rules of Freecycle. It’s true that to deal with a large volume of posts, Freecycle group moderators must sometimes slap people for things that seem trivial, like using headlines that don’t use the words “wanted” or “offer.” As in any human endeavor, too, management issues and bureaucracy creep in, such that some people have left Freecycle to start their own groups with similar interests.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Freecycle - either because it’s burnt you in the past, or you simply don’t have the transportation to participate - I recommend this wikiHow article, How to Find an Alternative to Freecycle.

In Conclusion

There are basically four steps to get involved with Freecycle:

• Find a group near you.
• Follow the rules.
• Give as much as you take.
• Find appropriate alternatives, when necessary.

If I’ve left anything out, I refer you to this wikiHow article How to Freecycle for more details.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

The Complete Beginner’s to Freecycling

Some better-known artists you’ll find free downloads of:

• Bare-Naked Ladies
• Ani diFranco
• Willie Nelson
• Jamiroquai
• Ray Lamontagne
• Ted Nugent

Personally, I downloaded Very Best of Naxos Early Music, a sampler of early ecclesiastical music (yes, even as an atheist I enjoy this… it’s so cleansing).

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

561 Free Songs from Amazon

I will admit that my first exposure to Suze Orman was positive. Those “super simple mantras” that Scurlock mentions do initially point one toward fiscal responsibility. Even Scurlock praises her 2001 book The Road to Wealth as “comprehensive and useful.”

But I would venture the guess that the Suze Orman franchise has, like the Fonz, jumped the shark.

When Super Simple Goes Too Far

I think I started to lose faith in Suze right about the time I read Women and Money. Here’s what I wrote in my Livejournal about it, many moons ago:

On the other hand, If you like Suze Orman, and have already read The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, stop right now, because everything she says in the first book is said again in Women and Money, only about eight grade levels lower. I think she makes the mistake of thinking that if women are ignorant about money, this means that they are really sloooow. Take her explanation of IRAs, for example. She never really explains why someone should have a Roth IRA versus a traditional IRA. She basically says that, “You have more flexibility with a Roth! And you pay tax up front! So your $200,000 at retirement doesn’t become $150,000. So fund a Roth! It’s unequivocally the better option!” Uh… While there are good reasons to pay into a Roth versus a traditional IRA, she doesn’t explain that the primary deciding factor in choosing one is what you expect your retirement income to be - which I think is a frightening omission.

Besides the fact that I felt patronized by the entire tone of that book, the discussion of retirement planning took a complex issue and made it unfortunately simple. I suppose, if you’re the kind of person (male OR female) who hesitates too much over any decision, putting money in a Roth IRA on Suze’s blind advice is better than not saving anything for retirement. But, unfortunately, Orman tries to simplify things that have no business being simplified further:

“But it is not Suze’s hypocrisy or even her intellectual laziness that really bothers me;” Scurlock writes, “no, that would be something Suze ‘loves’ called ‘dollar cost averaging,’ which involves buying the same stock over and over again as it falls.”

Okay, now Scurlock is simplifying (or rather, misrepresenting) the definition of dollar-cost averaging. Quoting About.com on on dollar-cost averaging, “Dollar cost averaging is a technique designed to reduce market risk through the systematic purchase of securities at predetermined intervals and set amounts.” DCA is a basic precept of value investing, embraced by financial analysts more respected and reliable than Orman, too - such as Benjamin Graham, the author of the classic The Intelligent Investor, and one of Warren Buffett’s greatest influences.

… with a proviso, that is: that you are never paying more than a particular security is worth. This is something Orman ignores; perhaps because it is very hard for the average person to know if they are paying more for a stock than it is worth. Graham handles this with a 500+ page book on how to value stocks; Suze Orman stops there.

So Scurlock is right that Orman’s techniques are too simple for something which is inherently complex - the stock market - and that it is likely to lead her readers to “buying the same stock over and over again as it falls,” but that’s not a fundamental part of DCA any more than puppy mills are a fundamental part of having a dog.

Blaming the Victim

Scurlock writes of Orman, “She has less patience for statistics. Although study after study has shown that personal bankruptcies are caused primarily by catastrophic events like divorce, job loss and, above all, medical bills, and that most of us are struggling with a gap between our income growth and the soaring cost of necessities like housing, Suze tends toward psychological causes that invariably blame the victim.”

Absolutely true. Telling us to not run up credit card bills is one thing; but it ignores the basic economics conditions that actually cause insolvency. In reviewing The Two-Income Trap I talk about these in greater depth; how rising costs but lagging salaries have created a perfect storm for the middle class. Additionally, a 2005 study by Himmelstein, Warren, Thorne and Woolhandler published in Health Affairs suggests that up to 55% of bankruptcies have a medical cause - over two million Americans annually.

And Downright Duplicity

One thing we all can say about Suze Orman is that she hates leasing cars, right? I remember an episode of Kathy Griffin’s reality show My Life on the D List where she invites Orman to give financial advice to her staff. Orman then proceeds to go off on one of those staffers for leasing a car. (Oh, how I wish I could find this video, but apparently all Youtube wants to show me is Kathy’s crush on Anderson Cooper).

Well, apparently Orman only thinks leasing is bad if she’s not getting a cut of the profits. Scurlock points out one of Suze’s biggest contradictions:

She has also hawked for GM, claiming that leasing a luxury car — you know, the kind that people drive to impress other people — is a terrific financial decision: “If you ask me, that’s smart money!”

In Closing

“Her previous book promised us that we would never be financial victims again,” Scurlock writes. You know who else says that? Abusive boyfriends.

In the immortal words of Dan Savage, DTMFA.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Should You Break Up With Suze Orman?

How do we keep warm without turning up the heat - especially at night? We use a heated mattress pad!

What is a Heated Mattress Pad?

A heated mattress pad looks much like a regular mattress pad and is meant to fit directly over your mattress and under your fitted sheet. The only difference is that it has conductive coils threaded through the middle of it, and there’s a plug at the head or the foot of it to connect it to a power source. There will usually be a control dial (or two) to adjust the temperature settings.

What Makes it Better than an Electric Blanket?

One thing I learned from my childhood spent wistfully browsing Boy Scout manuals (the Girl Scouts were never as much fun!) is that a heat source or insulation underneath your body is often more valuable than one above your body. With my own camping experiences, I remember placing my damp clothes underneath my sleeping bag to dry them while I slept. A heated mattress pad takes advantage of this, warming your body from below and keeping heat from dissipating into the mattress.

Is It Really a Frugal Option?

If the other option is turning your thermostat up five degrees, then undeniably so! Consider the following math:

My own heated mattress pad (a Biddeford queen size) is a 340 watt appliance when both sides are on (80 per side + 180 for the control). That’s .34 kilowatts. The national average cost of a kilowatt-hour is 12 cents (16 cents where I live!), so it costs about 4 to 5 cents an hour to run the heated mattress pad.

Assuming it takes an hour to raise the temperature of your whole house by 5 degrees, how much would that hour cost you? Here are some estimates (thanks to Mr. Electricity for the wattage estimates of heating devices):

• Electric furnace heating a 2,000 sq ft home in a cold climate: 26.5kW = $3.18 (!!!)
• Electric furnace heating a 1,000 sq ft home in a warm climate: 7.9W = 95 cents
• Electric space heater, high: 1.4kW = 17 cents
• Electric space heater, medium: 0.9 kW = 11 cents
• Electric space heater, low: 0.6 kW = 7 cents
• Gas furnace, for the blower: 0.8 kW = 9 cents

Now, obviously if you heat with gas or oil, this is much more difficult to calculate. You have to know exactly how much gas or oil it takes to raise the temperature of your house by 5 degrees, which brings in a score of difficult-to-calculate factors. But I have a hard time believing it would be cheaper than 4 cents per hour.

Even with this math, it may be hard to see the reasons why you should outlay $60-$250 on a heated mattress pad. Consider this: over any of the alternatives listed above, a heated mattress will pay for itself in the first year of usage.

How Do I Choose a Heated Mattress Pad?

Like any purchase, you need to consider durability and how well each model will meet your needs when purchasing a heated mattress pad. Some issues to consider:

• Reviews. The model I have actually has some fairly negative reviews on Amazon in terms of durability. It was given to me as a gift, and if I were buying one for myself, I would probably opt for a different brand, based on that. I have had some problems with it turning on - the dial will not light up and the pad will not warm up on occasion - but I have always been able to fix it by tapping the control dial against my bedside table. (See, hitting things really does fix them!)

• One control or two. Obviously, if there are two people sleeping in your bed, you’ll want two controls. As a caveat, most full-sized beds have only one control, so if you’re a couple that uses a full-sized bed, this is something to consider.

• Where does it connect to a power supply? Most heated mattress pads are designed to plug in at the foot of the mattress. If that’s not convenient for you, you can fit the pad the opposite direction. I don’t have a power source near the foot of my bed, so I flipped mine around. The disadvantage of this is that the plug sits right at the edge of my pillow, and if I’m sitting up in bed, it can be uncomfortable.

• Comfort. Some people are bothered by feeling the coils beneath them when they sleep. As I mentioned above, the plug can also fall in an uncomfortable spot, depending on how you position the pad. Most manufacturers do not recommend putting another mattress pad above the heated one, but I have seen several Amazon reviews suggest doing just that.

• Automatic shut-off. This is an important safety feature that I would suggest a heated mattress pad MUST have. For most it’s an 8- or 10-hour shutoff.

Okay, I’m Convinced! Where Do I Go Now?

Finally, here are some suggestions for heated mattress pads that might work for you. (In the interest of full disclosure, I do receive a percent of the profit should you decide to purchase from any of these links).

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Keep Warm On the Cheap: How to Choose a Heated Mattress Pad

This video was recommended to me by a friend when TARP was passed as a way of understanding the crisis. I just got around to watching it, and I’m not sure what to make of it.

The basic thesis of the 47-minute video (divided into five parts on Youtube) is that in today’s world, money = debt, and bankers can basically “conjure into existence” money based (loosely) on loans they’ve made. With that understanding, Grignon explores what this means: an exponentially-increasing economy based purely on debt, where only bankers profit, which will eventually become unsustainable. He also discusses some alternative systems: he rejects returning to a gold or silver standard, but favors more nationalized banking.

I’m understandably incredulous (appropriately enough: the video features a quote, near the end, about big secrets being kept from the public by incredulity) but I don’t think I know enough about economics to judge the truth or accuracy of this video.

Anyone have any insight to share?

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Money As Debt: An Unsustainable Future?

My two articles concerned using Flickr as a personal marketing tool:

• How to Use Flickr to Find Pictures For Your Ads
• How to Deliver Tagged Flickr Photos to Your Desktop With the Google Photos Gadget

I am also serving as frugality expert on Dear Brain, TBYB!’s advice column. If you have a burning question about incorporating frugality into your life, ask it there!

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Guest posts at Take Back Your Brain!

These were two of my favorite articles from the carnival. I totally did not pick them because of the blog names - but I probably should have:

• Learn How To Get Rich From a Video Game @ Monevator. Despite the title, this is not about selling gold in World of Warcraft! In this article, we explore how one becomes a fantasy business mogul in Fable II, and its similarities to real life. Hint: passive income rules in a medieval fantasy world, too.

• Five Things To Do If You Get Laid Off @ Monogamoney. Kyle at Amateur Asset Allocator wrote a similar post several weeks ago, but I have to admit, I like this one a little better, if only because it also deals with the emotional side of getting laid off.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Carnival Wrap-Up: Punny About Money Edition

“What does this mean for me?” you might say, as a parent of a college-bound student, or as a prospective college student yourself.

In times like this, many students decide to attend public schools over private schools due to the apparent price difference. But a little-known fact is this: at the end of the day, private colleges are still affordable - maybe even more affordable than publics.

My Background in College Affordability

I’m a graduate of a private college - Vassar College, one of the Seven Sisters. At the time I applied (1999), the “sticker price” of tuition, room, and board was $28,000 a year. At the same time, my mother brought in around $14,000 a year from her tax business - that, combined with child support from my father, was all the money I had to put towards college (hey, it was Plattsburgh, NY in 1999 - you could live cheaply).

You would think, looking at the sticker price, that there was no way I could afford to attend Vassar. And yet here I am, 10 years later, not only a Vassar graduate - but paying off a grand total of only $12,000 worth of federal student aid.

The secret: there’s a huge gap - that most people don’t recognize - between the sticker price of a school and what one actually pays. Furthermore, in the case of private schools, many are committed to reducing economic inequalities and providing amazing education to people who wouldn’t otherwise afford it. It isn’t even via loans, but by grant aid - money which will never need to be paid back.

To give you an idea, I received over $10,000 worth of grant aid in my first year at Vassar. The rest was paid by New York’s Tuition Assistance Program, Perkins and Stafford loans, a New York state merit scholarship, my work study dollars, and, of course, my long-suffering parents.

Vassar President Talks About College Affordability

And this is why I love Catharine Bond Hill, the current president of Vassar. She wasn’t my president - mine was Fran Ferguson for my entire tenure at Vassar - but everything Bond Hill has done in her time at the College has impressed me.

Her first order of business? She returned Vassar to need-blind admissions status. This surprised a lot of people - not necessarily because it was innovative, but because most people never knew that the need-blind policy had been quietly repealed.

Now that challenging economic times are upon us, Bond Hill has strengthened her commitment to college affordability. This year, she committed $1 million more to financial aid at Vassar - currently Vassar provides $35 million in aid annually, which is 25% of its total operating budget.

Bond Hill’s also been in the news, using her expertise as a higher education economist to inform people about their college options. She was quoted in the NY Times article I linked above; and she’s appeared on NPR to talk about how colleges are responding to the conomic decline.

She even wrote a piece for Business Week: “Look Beyond College ‘Sticker Prices’”

What Bond Hill urges parents and college-bound students to realize is that one’s final costs may look very different than the sticker price. Most private colleges base their financial aid packages on a simple model:

Need = total cost of the school - parent/student contribution.

With the “need” figure calculated, the college will then try to match that need with financial aid. Many need-blind schools are committed to filling 100% of financial need, as Vassar did for me.

This quote from the Business Week article illustrates the concept nicely (emphasis mine):

With Harvard’s new pricing structure, a family making $100,000 will pay about $10,000 for total charges (tuition, room and board, and fees). This compares to the average charges at public four-year colleges and universities in 2008-09 of $14,333, as reported in the College Board’s newly released Trends in College Pricing, 2008 (BusinessWeek.com, 10/29/08). Not every student can or wants to go to Harvard, of course, but prices at the other privates can be competitive as well.

At a set of selective private colleges and universities that I’ve researched, the actual price paid by U.S. families with incomes at the national median, $62,355 in 2007, was about a third of the full sticker price, very close to the average of total cost at the four-year publics. Many privates also offer merit aid, further reducing the net price for deserving candidates, independent of their financial need.

This article does not even mention that Harvard currently offers a full ride to anyone whose annual household income is $68,000 or below. It also does not mention that even schools that are not 100% need-blind are often need sensitive, and this fulfills much of the same purpose. An article in Vassar’s Miscellany News shows that even schools that call themselves “need sensitive” - such as Hamilton College - end up awarding about the same amount of financial aid as need-blind schools.

Of course, Bond Hill’s got business in mind - she of course wants to encourage higher enrollment at Vassar. Preferably among the subset of people who read Business Week and can afford to pay full price!

But still: someone is telling Americans that sticker prices don’t mean much. This is information that so many people I know never got. I know many, many smart people who “settled” for a public school education for financial reasons, who ended up paying MORE in loans at the end of their four years than I did.

But What If I Can’t Get Into An Ivy League School?

I can hear you now: “But I’m not Harvard material! I’m just a hardworking B student!”

It may seem like all the schools that offer need-blind or need-sensitive admissions are highly prestigious, selective institutions. While there is a correlation between selectivity and need-blind admissions, I would argue it’s not a causative relationship. The schools that are most likely to offer need-blind admissions are those with the money to give out: i.e., those with large endowments - like Harvard or Vassar. Many of these also happen to be very competitive schools.

But consider some of the less competitive schools on Wikipedia’s list of need-blind or need-sensitive institutions:

• Beloit College - 50% of freshmen have ACT scores between 25 and 29; admits 60% of students who apply
• Smith College (all women) - 50% of freshmen have ACT scores between 26 and 32; admits 52% of students who apply
• University of Richmond - 50% of freshmen have ACT scores between 27 and 31; admits 40% of students who apply

Compare this to a school like Harvard, where only 9% of those who apply are admitted, and where half of incoming freshmen have ACT scores between 31 and 35.

Statistics are courtesy of the National Center for Education Statistics’ College Navigator.

In short: you don’t have to be a genius to get into a need-blind school, but you do need a strong, consistent academic record.

My Advice to Prospective College Students and Their Parents

• Be open-minded about college costs.
• Be honest about what you want in a college, even if you don’t think you can afford it.
• If possible, try to stay within your state. Many states and individual colleges offer financial incentives for students to stay in-state.
• Don’t rule out any colleges until you have a financial aid package in hand. (This comes with your acceptance letter).
• If you feel really ambitious, you could even try to negotiate your financial aid package with a financial aid counselor - colleges are businesses, too, and nobody says dickering isn’t allowed.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

College Costs in Challenging Economic Times: Why Sticker Price Means Nothing

My post Visualizing $10,000 Extra in Your Life was entered in the 180th Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Living Almost Large. Here are some articles I particularly liked:

• Note to Family and Friends: I Prefer Cash. Mengmeng of Just Thrive argues that gift certificates, rather than being gifts, are the equivalent of “reaching into my wallet and taking forty bucks.” To me, the only thing better than receiving cash is not having to exchange gifts at all!
• Studenomics talks about the Adversity Quotient, or how likely one is to bounce back from failure, and asks us to consider how that affects our financial life.
• I like Ron @ The Wisdom Journal’s thoughts on 7 Ways to Make a Quick $500 in 30 Days. There are tons of these articles floating around the blogosphere, but I feel Ron’s are genuinely creative. His resources for freelance writing are ones I might try out myself.

Eco Joe presented the Festival of Frugality this week, picking his choice of 18 articles out of hundreds and hundreds. A couple I liked were:

• A Real Christmas Tree vs. An Artificial Christmas Tree @ SavingAdvice.com. This is something I’ve struggled with myself, especially since I may have an allergic reaction to evergreen sap. In the end, my husband and I decided we would get a real tree this year, for many of the reasons the commentators listed: it supports local business, it’s sustainable, and, frankly, it really does add to the holiday experience.
• Fowl Visions teaches us to how to make a fall wreath for the birds in Decorating for Fall and Feeding the Wild Birds. It’s already winter here, but this is something to consider next year!

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Carnival Wrap-Up: Turkey Day Edition

Jalapenos: They grow like weeds. They’re integral to nachos. They spice up chilis and soups. They even make great holiday presents!

… yeah, you weren’t expecting that last one, were you?

This year my husband and I were burdened with a surfeit of jalapenos. From 10 plants, we harvested 10-15 lbs of jalapenos. There’s only so much fresh salsa and nachos you can live on, so we decided to preserve them in some way.

One of the easiest ways to preserve jalapenos is pickling. Start today, and you could be seeing red and green - peppers, that is - under the Christmas tree.

1. Find a reliable recipe - and stick to it. Preservation of food is tricky business. Unlike other sorts of cooking, it’s a precise science, not an art. In pickling, the quantities of vinegar and pickling salt in the brine determine whether or not the food will grow nasties like botulism or listeria. For that reason, it’s good to stick with a well-tested recipe and stick to it. Here is one from the National Center for Home Food Preparation:

• Pickled Jalapeno Rings

2. Compile the “software.” The three basics of pickling are: vinegar, pickling salt, and whatever you plan to pickle (in this case, jalapenos).

Vinegar should be at least 5% acidity. You can also buy special pickling vinegar, which weighs in as a 7% solution.

Pickling or canning salt is used in place of table salt because it does not contain iodine, which may make the brine cloudy.

Jalapenos. You’ll need a fair amount of them - 3 lbs for the recipe I linked above. You can still find them at some farmer’s markets in my area.

If you are picking them yourself from your garden (in which case I assume you live somewhere warmer than New England), you want to pick the peppers when then start to “cork,” or develop brown lines, etched into the flesh, that run from top to bottom of the fruit.

Some recipes also call for pickling lime, which increases the firmness of pickled products. This is helpful but may not be necessary - check the guidelines surrounding your recipe.

3. Compile the hardware.

You will a large pot (like a lobster pot) in which to process the jarred jalapenos.

Most importantly, you will need jars. The recommended type of jar is one with a self-sealing lid that comes in two parts - a flat lid held in place by a metal band that screws to the top of the jar. You can find these in some supermarkets and most box stores like Target. My husband and I used something like these wide-mouthed platinum jars.

4. Follow the recipe. Have I stressed how important it is to follow the recipe yet? Good.

5. Gift! I’ve even put together a series of labels you can use for these pickles: in Word 2007 (154KB) or PDF (185KB) format. Just fill in your own name under “made with love by” and it’s ready to go.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

DIY Holiday Gift: Pinkled Pink with Jalapenos