Almost Frugal- a frugal blog

Frugal, Fleecy, Warmth

A Guest Writer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:00:47 +0000

Hi there, my name’s Sarah Stone and I run Sarah’s Fleeces. We make clothes out of fleece with our star product being the Thermal Tops.

The ingenious idea behind this range is to add a super warm layer underneath your normal clothes in whatever circumstances you need it. I came across the idea last November on a yahoo group that I subscribe to called ‘Frugal Genius’. I was sitting at my PC in the middle of winter wanting to turn the heating up but instead sticking an extra jumper on to save the money on our fuel bill. I made my first sleeveless thermal top for myself and it worked fabulously! I could have the heating set at 16 (61) degrees and other than my thermal top only need a long sleeved t-shirt on top to be perfectly warm. That was it I was hooked, I knew I was on to something big! My children then wanted one and wore them to school. They soon found that they were too hot for at school where they have the heating turned right up. The teachers didn’t seem to want to accept that they were warm enough in a short sleeved t-shirt when it was zero outside!

Once my children’s friends had seen their tops they began to want them too, so I had mums on the school gate coming up to me saying “is it you that’s making these things out of fleece?” and so it took off. By Christmas I’d got about 30 on order!

I soon added many other products to my repertoire – hats, mittens, scarves, jumpers, t-shirts, pyjamas, all in ones and socks.

I still found that my hands would get quite chilly though despite my body being really toasty, so I then had a flash of inspiration which lead to a whole new range of products, my Joint Warmers. I based my idea on the fact that if you’re too hot you can help cool yourself down by running the inside of your wrists under cold water, this works because the blood runs fairly close to the surface of the skin, so effectively you’re cooling your blood as it’s being pumped around your body. So I thought if it works for cooling you down then surely the same thing must work for keeping you warm. I made a pair of Wrist Warmers and bingo they worked like a dream! So these are ideal for people who get cold hands but find fingerless gloves too restrictive. Having realised how warm these kept my wrists I soon came up with Knee and Elbow Warmers. These can help those who suffer with the cold due to arthritis in these joints.

Having got a decent range ready for my new website I add new products less regularly now as I’ve got ideas coming out of my ears nearly. Everyone I talk to, it seems, has another idea of what I could make, who might like them or where I could sell them, so I’m having to learn how to prioritise my time very quickly and how to delegate the production of my products.

I have people all ready to make my fleeces for me when I reach the point where there are too many for me to make on my own. These people are mums who want to work self employed from home so that they can be flexible around their home life. As I’m frugal by nature it feels really good that fleece is partially made from recycled plastic water bottles and hence the whole company ethos reflects this underlying theme, incorporating my moral values, of promoting the local economy, putting good back into the local community, family values and being eco-friendly.

I hope you’ve found this interesting and that it’s inspired you to keep on finding new ways to save money!

~Sarah Stone

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Frugal, Fleecy, Warmth | Permalink | 3 comments

Weekly Round-Up: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like…

Kelly — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:13:02 +0000

I thought that France was immune from the ‘Putting Christmas Decorations Out Insanely Early’ bug, but I guess not. There are already Christmas decorations up in tons of stores- some even started before Halloween! This is the earliest I’ve seen it in the nine years I’ve lived here. Bah humbug.

Meanwhile, here are some of my favorite reads for the week.

I’m starting a new feature on the Weekly Round-Up: My ‘Frugal Tips of the Day’ from my Twitter account. While I do tend to post the same links to my Twitter account and my Good Reads page, the ‘Frugal Tips of the Day’ links only go to Twitter. I’ll start including them here, as well, so that those of you without Twitter accounts (Hi Mom!), can still find them.

Frugal tip of the day: cancel an email membership. If it doesn’t come to you, you’re less tempted to spend.
Frugal tip of the day: Unclogging your drains environmentally can be frugal as well.
Frugal tip of the day: Sell something you own to bring in a bit of cash- but make sure to save the $!
Frugal tip of the day: Dye your old sheets, towels, napkins.. to give them a new lease on life.
Frugal tip of the day: Have an indoor picnic to break the mealtime routine and keep from eating out.
Frugal tip of the day: Design your own wrapping paper!

As always, you can check out the Good Reads page or my Tumblr site Almost Frugal Finds for all my links. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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This Is What Frugal Looks Like: Remodeling This Life

Kelly — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:00:25 +0000

This is What Frugal Looks Like is a series that highlights different ways that people can be frugal in their lives- after all, frugality doesn’t have to be drastic or just about clipping coupons. Frugality can be fun and easy. Each respondent answers the same four questions.

Today’s interview is with Emily, from Remodeling This Life.

What does frugality mean to you?

Since becoming more frugal in my life, frugality has taken on different meanings. First, it was out of necessity and it felt hard to even spend less without feeling like we didn’t have enough to be comfortable. It got easier and now frugality really means to me an entire lifestyle of being conscious of what I do, whether it’s spending, creating, reusing, consuming, eating, growing. Just like a food diet, at first cutting back felt really hard. But once you get over that and make your diet choices a lifestyle instead of a crash diet, everything changes. You start exercising more, drinking more water, going to bed earlier.

And what was once a goal to lose 5 pounds has turned into an entire healthy lifestyle. For me, frugality is like that. It’s not just about spending less money. It’s about thinking about each and every little thing, being conscious of resources, and not just spending less money at the grocery store, but saving money at the bank. It’s also about making choices, deciding what priorities are and sticking to those to reach goals. There are things that are important to me not to skimp on. I think frugality should mean getting quality for what you pay for. It’s not just about dollar signs but how good it is for you, how long it will last, and how much it will add to your life.

What is something that you do that is ‘typically’ frugally?

There are some things that I won’t do to be more frugal. I don’t like coupons. I don’t make my own clothes. We drive older cars, we don’t upgrade everything, we don’t have lots of stuff, etc…but more importantly, we are healthy. I don’t truly think a person can be frugal and not be. We hardly ever eat out, we cook from scratch most of the time, we grow some of our own food but not a whole lot. Hubby changes the oil in our cars, I give him haircuts at home, we spend a lot of time outside instead of paying to do things when we go out as a family. It’s hard for me to come up with the frugal things I do because it’s our entire lifestyle.

What is something frugal that you do that is unusual?

In the blog world, frugal habits can seem really common. So this is tough. I think the most unusual thing we do is that when we bought our house we put a lot down on it. We bought an older, smaller home instead of something bigger and more expensive in every single way. This made what our home costs us each month so low that we’ve been freed up to do a lot of things that are much more important to us than money. Instead of having to be slaves to jobs and a mortgage, I can stay home with our kids, my hubby doesn’t have to work as much and we can all spend these years while our kids are young together doing valuable things together during a time we can’t ever get back. So, it may not be typically frugal to drop a chunk of change on a home, but it’s allowed us to have so much less to pay for each month that we can save for other things that matter later on and have time together now.

What are some of your long term goals that being frugal will help you to accomplish?

I have big dreams. I want to spend the time that my kids are little right here at home in a comfortable place, giving them what they need and offering a nurturing place for them to grow. I think family is so important and I want to be able to help them become the people they want to be. I don’t want them to have to take care of me financially later. I want to be able to travel when we retire. Family and experiences are at the top of my list when I think about saving for tomorrow.

About Emily:

Emily is a 30 year old stay at home to two kids, 5 and 2 years old. She loves blogging, running, writing, photography, her friends and her family. Her blog, Remodeling This Life, documents her family’s adventures in remodeling their 60s ranch, living by the ocean, and her search for a simpler life.

Here are a few of her favorite posts:

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Making Room for Others

Kelly — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:01:23 +0000

One of the things that I’m enjoying most about my new apartment is the extra space that it gives me for entertaining. Our living room can now hold more than 1 extra person at a time… it’s very exciting!

Last Sunday, we had friends over for dinner. Including small children, of whom there were many, there were 12 people in my house at the same time. It’s still amazing to me that I can host a gathering of that size. We didn’t have a fancy dinner, just pizza which the adults ate sitting on the couches and the kids ate at the kitchen table. But it was so nice to be able to host friends and share a nice evening together.

I think this is one of the most important ways that living in a bigger space, even though we pay more in rent, will actually end up saving us money. We won’t need to go out to eat to entertain. We won’t have to hold birthday parties at special venues (unless we want to avoid the mess in our house). We’ll be able to throw a party or two. I also feel a lot less stress living here, which lead in the old house to eating out because I couldn’t be bothered cooking, or getting fast food for the same reasons.

Along with the practical aspect of living in a bigger space comes the way that we can open our house and home to others. I feel more comfortable inviting my kids’ friends over for play dates, which is so nice for them. I am able to host meetings for the associations to which I belong, meaning that we can meet in a more central location. We will be able to put up friends who come to France on vacation, and my brother might be able to stay with us for a year while he goes to school. My husband can even start to invite his friends over as well, although with his friends come electric guitars- I don’t know how happy the neighbors will be!

Our new apartment isn’t huge, certainly not by American standards. It’s about 1100 square feet, which is for us, just big enough. But more importantly than the added floor space it gives us is the added ability to make room in our home for others.

How do you make room in your family and home for others?

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Showing Your Face to the World

Kelly — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:11:26 +0000

How do you think of yourself? How do you want others to think of you? How do you think others really think of you? And what kind of behavior would it take on your part to make the three coherent?

For example, there is still a flaky 17 year old somewhere inside of me. I have a hard time feeling (almost) thirty-five sometimes because to me, being thirty-five denotes responsibility and grown-upness. But others think of me as grown-up and responsible, a ‘Get Things Done’ kind of person, because in fact, I am in part a boring, ‘Get Things Done’ kind of person.

Another example: I feel like I’m bad with money. That should come as no surprise to you- it’s why I started writing Almost Frugal! But on the other hand, people think of me as being frugal, again, because of Almost Frugal. So what kind of behavior would it take to bring the two ideas together? Well, a bit more saving and a bit less spending, a whole lot more budgeting and maybe a bit of the envelope system tossed in for good measure. You know- the oldies but goodies.

The other day, I did a presentation for a local association of job seekers on how to effectively control your online presence. In other words, when a potential employer does a Google search for your name, what do they find? One of the things I mentioned as helping people to control their message, and thus how others think of or perceive them, was to use the same photo everywhere. Then I showed this picture:

Yeah, that’s me all right. It’s what you’ll find on my Twitter page, my personal Facebook page, my website, my LinkedIn profile and so on and so forth. Basically, every place that I am online, you’ll find that picture.

But what does it say about me? Certainly not the image that I want to project: that I am an interesting, smart, confident qualified person, who’s full of life and good stories. No, this picture is more the flaky seventeen year-old who needed a picture for her resume.

So when I had the opportunity to have some professional pictures taken at a fabulous price (€20) as part of my networking organization, I jumped at the chance. And got this one, to boot:

Better, non?*

Now as to the last question at the beginning of the post: “what kind of behavior would it take on your part to make the three coherent?“, well, I don’t think a picture is worth a thousand words. But I do think it is worth trying to figure out (best done with friends and a nice bottle of wine), how well the way you feel inside matches the image you project to others. And once you’ve figured that out, try and figure out what you need to do to make the two match up better.

That’s a story for another post, however!

* There is another, more traditional version of a head shot, on my About page.

Your turn:

How do you think of yourself?
How do you want others to think of you?
How do you think others really think of you?
And what kind of behavior would it take on your part to make the three coherent?

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Showing Your Face to the World | Permalink | 4 comments

How Disposable is Your Money?

Kelly — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:23:32 +0000

I was scrapping the food left on the dinner plates into the trash the other night when I started to think about all the money I was throwing away.

Not that there was a lot of food left (I use measuring cups to measure out the food, so I know approximately how much to give my kids so that they eat it all), but there was enough left that we weren’t able to stick the plates into the dishwasher as is. And of course there’s always water or milk left unfinished in the cups, or maybe only half a serving left in the pot.

Then I started to think about all the other ways that I throw money away. There are, of course, all the disposable items I buy… which aren’t actually that many, in fact, as I use cloth for everything but things that touch bottoms. The leftovers left unfinished. The McDonalds bought instead of a home-cooked meal… The clothes tossed because of a stain. You can take things even further. There is the light left on in an empty room, the water left running while teeth are being brushed or the extra long shower, and the windows left open for fresh air while the heat is on.

I think that each time I’m tempted to throw something away, I’m going to ask myself how much it cost me. Then I’ll see if there isn’t a way to make it work as something else. Because, while I certainly don’t mind disposable diapers, I don’t want to have disposable money.

How disposable is your money? How do you reuse it?

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How Disposable is Your Money? | Permalink | 11 comments

Weekly Round-Up: On Loose Teeth & Cat Litter

Kelly — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:41:18 +0000

My oldest son lost his second tooth yesterday evening- I didn’t even know it was loose! Then, carrying it around the house in his tooth fairy bag, he lost it. Again.

I’d never before realized how much baby teeth look like pieces of cat litter! Maybe I need to vacuum again…

Here are some of my favorite reads for the week.

As always, you can check out the Good Reads page or my Tumblr site Almost Frugal Finds for all my links. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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Weekly Round-Up: On Loose Teeth & Cat Litter | Permalink | One comment