Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line.

I bought a giant bag of mini-peppers at Costco, forgetting I’m going out of town for a few days. (Brilliant, I know.)

Can you tell me the best way to freeze them so they don’t turn to mush when I pull them out? Or is the trick to just take them out of the freezer right before using them? I’d hate to waste these cute veggies.

Thanks much,

-Annette

They MIGHT actually be ok while you’re gone…peppers hold up really well.

If you want to freeze them, you’ll need to chop them and put them in a bag or container (I hear sautéing them first improves the end result).

Thawed fruits and veggies will never be crisp like they were originally because when they freeze, the water expands and bursts the cell walls. However, this type of produce works just fine if you’ll be cooking them, and frozen fruits are great for using in smoothies.

Hope that helps!

In your posts on Aldi you mention that you like supporting this company because it gives employees a fair wage, benefits, etc. You’ve also shown clothes from Target and Old Navy whose factories abroad have made the news for sweatshop conditions. How do you reconcile this?

Perhaps you’ve stated before that you prioritize food sustainability over clothing sustainability and I just missed it so I figured I’d just ask! I hope you don’t mind.

Thanks,
Amy

(one of the outfits in question…pant are from Old Navy clearance)

That’s an interesting question!

A few years ago, I shopped the clearances at Old Navy and Target a lot more than I do now, and that’s when I bought most of the clothes that I showed you in that post.  Since I discovered Goodwill, though, most of the clothes I buy for myself come from there.

Of course, some of the clothes I buy from Goodwill may very well come from sweatshops, but once something hits Goodwill, I feel like that’s quite irrelevant.  Shopping at Goodwill in no way supports sweatshops, since their inventory comes from donations.

I do still end up needing to buy some items new, and while I’d love to buy quality clothes that are made in the U.S. by companies that pay their workers fairly, I’ve been a little dumbfounded as to how to go about doing that.  It seems like almost every clothing company imports their products (even L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer stock mostly imported goods) to save on costs.

So, I guess my answer is that I try to depend on secondhand clothing for myself and my family as much as possible (in the form of freecycle, hand-me-downs, and thrift store shopping), and when I’m forced to shop at a regular store, I try to shop the clearance racks (Noble, no. Thrifty, yes.)

I also function on a fairly limited wardrobe and I tend to buy not-so-trendy styles that stay in fashion a fairly long time.    And as those of you who’ve read Reuse, Refresh, Repurpose know, I make my clothes last even longer by modifying or dying them, and when they’re too worn out for that, I make something else out of the fabric.

All of that means that even when I do buy new goods, the frequency and volume of my shopping is less than the average consumer’s.

I think that if all of us didn’t feel the need to have bulging closets stuffed with new fashions every season, we could afford to pay a little more for the clothing we did buy, and sweatshops wouldn’t need to be so prevalent.

If you or any of my other readers have ideas about where to buy U.S. made clothing from companies that treat their employees well, I’d definitely be interested in learning about that!

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Today’s 365 post: Looks like Christmas

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I am new at frugal living and I am trying to cut down on our clothing budget for my growing boys (4 and 2). I mostly buy clothes for my oldest boy, as he outgrows the last size.  Have you been able to find good boys’ clothes at the thrift stores? It seems that at several consignment and thrift stores, the boys’ clothes are not in very good shape. I think boys are harder on clothing than girls are! Also, do you think it is worth getting better quality clothes if they will last longer and be able to be handed down to other children in the family? Can this be done frugally?

-Christy

I’ve noticed the same thing about the difficulty of finding second-hand boys’ clothes.  I think part of the problem is that overall, boys do tend to be pretty hard on their clothes, but I also think it’s because we parents tend to overbuy girl clothes more than we overbuy boy clothes (girl clothes are so much fun, after all!).

My theory is that this excess means that girl clothes don’t get worn as much (there are so many, they can only be cycled through so many times before they’re outgrown), so they’re usually in better shape by the time they get donated.  Plus, there are more of them to be donated, which gives us a better selection.

Anyway!  The fact of the matter is that boy clothes are just harder to find second-hand.  So, here are my suggestions:

• Say yes to any hand-me-down offers you get, and put the word out that you’re looking for hand-me-downs.  Even if some of them aren’t in fabulous shape, you can keep them around for times when your boys are going to get extremely dirty. 
• Buy items that can be mixed and matched easily (I’m a huge fan of neutral pants, like jeans or black sweatpants) so that you can make multiple outfits from a few shirts and a few pairs of pants.
• Don’t overbuy. If you do laundry regularly, you can function with a pretty limited wardrobe.
• Shop clearances off-season. In January/February, buy winter clothes for the coming fall. In July/August, buy clearanced summer items for next summer.  Occasionally you may guess a size wrong, but overall, I think you’ll find that you come out money ahead. I’ve found excellent clearance deals for Joshua at Kohls, Old Navy, and Children’s Place.

As far as quality items go, I’m really not sure what to advise.  It seems like boys wear holes in the knees of cheap jeans just as soon as they wear holes in the knees of more expensive jeans, so paying more for an item doesn’t always save you money in the long run.

Any tips on not wasting food when only cooking for a small family? I feel like I do follow most of your suggestions about not wasting food, but I inevitably waste quite a bit only feeding 3 people. I think this happens because I buy in bulk from Costco, but still, it seems cheaper than buying elswhere. Our local grocery stores (Giant and Safeway) often seem overpriced. I’m guessing one place that could save me money is ALDI, but I *have* to use Costco because we buy the supplies for our church, and going to one more store each week seems burdensome at this stage.

Anyway, one thing I have thought would be a big help is some guidelines about what things can be frozen and what can’t!

-Rebecca

I have definitely found that Aldi’s prices meet or beat most of Costco’s food prices.  However, at Costco you can more easily get brand name foods, so if you’re very brand-loyal, Aldi may not be helpful to you.

I definitely understand not wanting to add more stores to your shopping routine (I started shopping bi-weekly because I don’t even like going shopping once a week!).  To that end, is there any way that you could purchase two week’s worth of church supplies from Costco and then shop at Aldi the next week?  That way you’d only have to go shopping once each week and you’d have the benefits of both stores.

When you shop at Costco, it’s important to keep in mind just how large a quantity you’re buying.  Because your family is small, you may have to sacrifice variety in order to reduce waste.  For instance, you may only be able to get through a block of mozzarella in a week, so you won’t be able to buy Swiss and Cheddar that same week.  And you may only be able to get through a few Costco-sized containers of produce, so you may have to buy only grapes and pears instead of grapes, pears, strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple.

Now, onto the freezing topic! I’m going to assume that most of your Costco waste comes from perishable items like dairy, produce, and meats, since that kind of waste is more common than pantry waste (like crackers or rice).

Meat

Most any type of meat can be frozen, so if you’ve bought more than you can use promptly, definitely consider freezing it.  Even lunch meat can be frozen.  The texture of it isn’t quite the same when it’s thawed, but it’s still good for cooking purposes, like for panini sandwiches.

Dairy

Milk and butter can be frozen, as can shredded cheese.  Block cheese does not freeze well, so if you need to preserve it, just shred it before you freeze it.  Sour cream, yogurt, and cottage cheese do not freeze well, but if you store the unopened containers upside down in your fridge, they’ll stay fresh longer.

Produce

This is not so easy. The quantities at Costco are just so large that a family of 3 would have a really hard time eating it all before it goes bad.  If you absolutely, positively must buy produce at Costco, I’d try to buy a limited number of items, and I’d go for produce that keeps well (grapes vs. strawberries, pears vs. bananas).

Produce can be frozen (though if you’re going to do that, you might as well just buy frozen produce because it’s usually cheaper and fresher) and you can use it in baking (bananas, squash, avocados, and apples are all good for baking), but of course, a family of 3 can only eat so many baked goods!

Do consider Costco’s frozen produce…their bags of frozen fruit are great for smoothies, and if you don’t mind eating frozen veggies, those are a great option as they keep for a while in the freezer.

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Readers, how do you clothe your boys frugally?  And I’d love to hear about food waste/Costco shopping from those of you with small households!

Today’s 365 post: Jellyfish or Bowls of Soup?

Currently, the only non-flip-flop, non-dressy footwear Zoe owns is her fish boots, so she’s in need of some play shoes for the cooler weather that’s arrived in our area.  And Lisey is in a similar situation.

I’ve hardly ever had to shop for shoes for my kids because we’ve so often been the recipients of nearly new hand-me-down shoes and because I’ve also scored quite a few pairs at fabulous clearance prices.  So, I’m having a hard time deciding where to shop.

The two options I’m currently considering are Target (we’ve gotten some new boy’s shoes there for Joshua and the prices seemed good) or Kohl’s (I have a 30% off coupon to use there and they do usually have good sales).  What do you think?  Where would you go to buy two pairs of girl play shoes?

Today’s 365 post: Aftermath (yup!  more messy house photos!)

This project has been a long time coming. Last fall sometime I spied a dress at Goodwill and it caught my eye because of the fish print (in case you’re new around here and aren’t aware of this, Zoe is completely and utterly obsessed with fish and really, with any animal that lives in the water).

It wasn’t in particularly good shape (some of the seams were coming loose, the elastic at the collar wasn’t very stretchy, and the elastic casing was coming apart.). So, I exercised my new haggling skills and managed to pay $1 for the dress.

The dress was way too big for Zoe (really, it was a little too big even for Lisey), but I figured that I could modify it and make something that would work for Zoe.

But you know how good intentions are.

The dress sat in my office closet all winter long, taunting me.

Happily, summer is here, formal homeschooling is over for the year now, and I have some free time (or at least something close to that), so I dragged my sewing machine out of the closet and gave this a go.

I didn’t use a pattern for this and kind of figured it out by trial and error (mostly error, it seems! If I ever do this again, it’ll be a lot easier.)

Using a dress of Zoe’s, I traced out the basic shape of the dress and cut it out.  I sewed two new side seams, a new neckline seam, and then I ironed over the edges of the armholes and sewed those.

Using some of the extra material I’d cut off the dress, I made some casing (I think that’s what it’s called!) to use for the straps of the dress.

After I finished with that, I was still kind of unhappy with how the dress looked.  Dresses without a waistband are super easy to make, but I don’t really like the way they just hang shapelessly.  Plus, my topstitching on the necklines wasn’t super-duper straight.

So, I rummaged in my scrapbooking drawer and found this.

This ribbon came with a fleece sheet set we gave Sonia at Christmastime, and I’d saved it in hopes that I’d be able to use it for scrapbooking purposes.

Obviously, I wasn’t hoping to emblazon my scrapbooks with the Berkshire Bedding logo…no, what tempted me to keep this ribbon was the plain underside.   It kind of reminded me of grosgrain ribbon, and I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

First, I sewed a strip at the neckline, but the dress was still looking a little too shapeless, and the one strip of blue ribbon looked kind of random.  So, I scrounged up another piece and much to my delight, I found it was long enough to make a sort of faux waistline for the dress.

Ahh, much better!

As you can see in one of the previous pictures, I also used a piece to trim the back of the dress.

My final problem was that the dress ended up being a little shorter than I wanted it to be.  Fortunately, I had not hacked up the strip of fabric I cut off of the bottom of the dress, so I simply reattached it (I tried gathering it, but I didn’t have enough fabric).

I actually kind of like it this way because it gives the bottom of the dress more interest.

So, what does Zoe think?

She’s very pleased.

Since the armholes on this dress are pretty big and the straps are infinitely adjustable, I think Zoe will get several summers of wear out of this dress, much like she has with her white dress.

Who knows?  It might even be a shirt for her someday.

This dress is all sorts of imperfect (my top-stitching wouldn’t win any awards, some parts of it aren’t exactly symmetrical), but I think that it’s going to bring Zoe a lot of joy.

And me? I’m happy that she’s happy. And I would be lying if I didn’t also mention that I am ridiculously tickled by the fact that this project only cost me $1 and that it re-used two things that were previously pretty unusable (the packaging ribbon and the falling-apart dress).

What can I say? I’m easily pleased.

If you own a pair of tall boots like I do (you’ve seen mine in this photo and also on my About Me page), then you know that left to themselves, they tend to do this in your closet.

(this is not my closet. It’s my deck. That’s because my closet is dark and not at all suitable for picture-taking. And you may remember that I am a big fan of moving objects for photography purposes).

This tendency to flop isn’t that great for the boots and it makes my closet kind of messy.  Boot shapers would take care of the problem, but my boots cost a whole $10 on clearance a number of years ago, and that makes me loathe to pay another $10-$20 to make them stand up.

So, I take a pair of clean flip-flops (really, these ARE clean. I scrubbed them with Fantastic and a toothbrush. It’s just impossible to get white flip-flops completely clean.)…

and put them down inside my boots (this might be a good use for flip-flops that are completely past their useful life as footwear. )

While this doesn’t fill them out as nicely as real boot shapers would, it does keep my boots standing tall.

And, it saves a bit of shoe space in my closet, which is always a happy thing.

If you are desperate to have your boots firmly filled out but don’t want to buy boot shapers, you can always go the route of stuffing old t-shirts down inside your boots.  I cut up my old t-shirts to use as rags, though, so I don’t know if I have enough to give that trick a try.  And besides, I’m not worried enough about boot wrinkles to deal with stuffing and unstuffing my boots every time I want to wear them.  Sticking a flip-flop down inside of them is much easier.

And I was trying to take pictures of it for you.

The bathroom mirror wasn’t working out too well.

So Joshua helped me out. He is famous for taking pictures when I’m not ready.

Then Sonia decided to join me.

So, this is the best we could do.  It’s a little blurry, and it doesn’t even really show my jeans.

I am reminded once again that I am much, much better at being on this side of the camera…

than I am at being on this side.

Anyways…my Aeropostale sweater and my Tilt jeans were both completely free.  I got them from an event at our sister church which is called the “Free Flea”.  It’s kind of like a flea market except that everything is completely free, and that, I think, is completely wonderful.

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I have a baking question: How do you know when something is “doubled”? I don’t have one of those super nice buckets that a lot of bakers use so I’m having a hard time knowing when things look doubled.  Especially once I’ve rolled it out and put it on (or in) the pan and have waited the length of time, I can’t tell if it’s doubled or not. Any advice or suggestions on how you tell?

-Elizabeth

This is a very not-exact science, if it makes you feel better! I don’t think my loaves and rolls are precisely doubled in size when I put them into the oven…I just kind of eyeball it, honestly.

I think that as with many other aspects of yeast baking, practice makes perfect. If you make some rolls and discover the end product wasn’t quite as risen as you’d prefer, you’ll know that you should let them get a little puffier next time. And if you let some loaves rise until they’re very puffy and they spill over the top of the pans while they bake, you’ll know you shouldn’t let bread dough get that high in your pan.

Just keep at it…as you gain more baking experience, you’ll have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll be better able to spot a perfectly risen loaf of bread.

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How do you save on your children’s clothing? Hand-me-downs worked great for a while but daughter is developing some curves :O) and is harder to fit now. Unfortunately I never learned to sew. How do you do it with 4?

-Tracy

First, let me assure you that sewing your own clothes is often not a money-saving proposition. By the time you buy fabric and notions, it’s easy to spend just as much as you would in a store, so don’t fret about that, ok? There are plenty of ways to save on clothes without sewing them yourself. I don’t think I have sewn a single item of clothing for my children, even though I do know how to sew!

My oldest kiddo is 10.5, so I haven’t had any personal experience with clothing a teenager. However, I do manage to clothe myself pretty cheaply, and the strategies that work for me will probably work for your daughter as well. Here are my best suggestions:

• Buy second hand clothes. You can see a few of my Goodwill finds in previous posts…my Charlotte Russe dress, my polka-dotted dress, my $.75 Old Navy skirt, my Mossimo jeans and t-shirt, and you can also see a Mossimo skirt and camisole in the picture on my About Me page. Buying second hand clothes does take patience (often I stop at Goodwill and find nothing), but there’s some good stuff to be had, especially in the juniors section, which is probably where your daughter’s sizes will be anyways.

• Shop clearances. Doing this does usually mean shopping a bit off-season, but since stores offer the next season’s clothing ridiculously early, it’s not as off-season as you might expect. For instance, you can usually get great deals on winter clothing in January and February, and summer clothes are deeply discounted in August. I’ve found my best clothing clearance deals at Target, Kohl’s, and Old Navy, though those are certainly not your only options.

• Keep an eye out on Freecycle. Though I’m not really in the market for teenage girl clothes, I’ve noticed several offers for bags full of junior size girl clothes.

• Watch for sales. This won’t save you as much as the tips above, but if you have to buy something in a retail store, looking for sales when you shop will help to stretch your dollars.

• Give your daughter a budget. I currently bear the responsibility for buying clothes for my kids, but as they get older, my husband and I intend to give them a monthly clothing budget to spend as they wish. Hopefully this will inspire them to shop clearances, sales, and thrift stores so that they can get more for their money. If your daughter is resistant to these shopping techniques, giving her a personal clothing budget just might help to motivate her (as long as you don’t bail her out if she makes a unwise choice like spending all the money on a single pair of shoes).

• Don’t buy too many clothes. I’d offer up that we often think we need more clothes than we really do. All six of us here at Chez Frugal Girl get by with smaller wardrobes than the average American (except for maybe Sonia, whose drawer is bursting with hand-me-downs!), and we are all surviving and thriving. And people in generations past managed with a very minimal wardrobe. So, don’t feel as though you must buy your child tons of dress clothes, school clothes, and play clothes. If you could put off laundry for two weeks before your children start running out of clothes, you might have too many.

As I said at the outset, I’m not speaking from personal experience here, so if any of you readers who do have teenagers would like to chime in, feel free!

When I put the picture of me in my black $5 Goodwill dress up on Facebook, Katy left me a compliment, and I responded by telling her that of course, I always look like that when I hang laundry and bake bread.

Then it occurred to me that, without meaning to, I’ve only really posted pictures of myself dressed up. And so, lest you think I float through life wearing spaghetti strap dresses, I’m posting two real-life pictures today (props to Joshua for being my staff photographer).

I usually only wear stuff like this on Sundays.

This is much more normal for me.

And so is this.

No knee-high boots in sight. Just socks and slippers.

So, there you go. Now you can stop imagining me kneading bread dough in a dress and hose.

(I am feeling slightly self-concious at having so many pictures of myself in one post. But, I love it when other bloggers get brave enough to show themselves, so I’m going to hit “publish”, despite feeling a little hesitant!)

I don’t think there’s a little black dress that could give this white dress a run for its money when it comes to usefulness.

I bought it way back in 2002 at a Gap outlet store for Lisey, who was then a year old, to wear. I think I paid about $15 for it, which is more than I usually pay for my kids’ clothes. Lisey didn’t actually need this dress, but I just fell in love with it (white dresses make me weak in the knees!) and bought it on the spur of the moment.

Lisey wore it for a summer or two, but unfortunately, I have no pictures on the computer of her wearing it. That was before the days of the digital camera, at least at my house!

I kept the dress for Sonia to wear, of course, and she did in the summer of 2005.

The next summer, a chubby baby Zoe wore it.

A toddler Zoe wore it the next summer.

2-year-old Zoe was still wearing it at the end of the following summer, when we went to Myrtle Beach.

I thought that might be the end of the little white dress, but amazingly enough, it fit Zoe again this summer.

Even if Zoe is too tall to wear it next summer (maybe it could be used as an empire waist top?), I’m quite sure that this dress has brought us more than $15 worth of usefulness and joy. I love it when that happens.

My readers who have been with me for a while (since last October, to be specific) will remember the pants I posted about last fall. If you’re the sort that won’t click on links, the Cliff’s notes version is that I got a pair of mildewed khaki pants for free, bleached them, Sonia wore them for 3 seasons in varying ways, and I predicted that Zoe would also get 3 seasons out of them, which would make me ridiculously happy. Now you’re all caught up.

As I predicted, Zoe did indeed wear them all winter, and by this spring, she was tall enough to wear them as capris, with a few cuffs at the bottom.

She’s been sporting them this way all summer.

But the other day, something bad happened to them.

The fabric had just gotten so soft and worn, it split apart at both knees.

And that’s not all. The fabric around the corners of the pockets has started to sprout holes as well.

It’s possible that I might find time to turn these into a skirt the way I did with a pair of my pants and a pair of Lisey’s pants (I could cut the knees off and I know how to mend the holes by the pockets), but I’m thinking it’s fairly doubtful that I will get around to it.

So, I think these pants have met the end of their useful life.

Goodbye, faithful pants. You have served us well, especially considering that you cost $0.00.