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’ve been pondering this for some time and I can’t find an answer so maybe you know…
I produce very little trash. I have once a month garbage collection only $6.00/ month that includes a recycle pick up twice a month. I shred junk mail etc to create browns for my compost. (I don’t have any trees to produce leaves.)Here’s the question….
Is it better to put paper in the recycle bin or recycle it myself by making compost? I know I can’t recycle shredded paper.

-Linda

In your case, I think that shredding is a better option. If you don’t have enough browns, your compost won’t work very well, so if you didn’t shred your paper, you wouldn’t be able to compost.

I know from my own experience that composting keeps an incredible amount of food scraps out of our trash, and I’m sure the same is true for you. So, shred your junk mail and keep on composting!

I do have plenty of leaves to provide browns for my compost bins (we have 7-8 oak trees in our yard alone!), but I do still shred some papers.

I shred paper with personal information on it, but I also shred small pieces of paper that will likely not manage to get recycled (strips of paper left from crafting, small to-do lists, parchment paper scraps from cutting round pizza shapes). Small pieces of paper can cause problems with recycling equipment, so in those cases, it’s much more responsible to shred them and then compost them.

Overall, though, I’m not sure which option is better. To my untrained mind, it seems like composting has to be at least as good as recycling. Recycling does reuse resources, but it also uses resources (the truck has to come pick it up, and the recycling plant uses a significant amount of energy and resources).

Composting, though? That uses no oil or gas, and the end product is used to enrich the soil and in my case, to grow food. So, I really can’t imagine that composting paper is an irresponsible thing to do.

(p.s. most paper receipts are printed on thermal paper, which contains BPA. So, they should not be recycled or composted. My best solution is to refuse the printing of them whenever possible, like at the gas station or at the bank. And I do shred and compost any receipts I receive that are not printed on thermal paper.)

(p.p.s. Composting newbies, you can find all of my past compost posts in the composting category, including instructions about how to make your own super-cheap compost bin.)

I’m sure you have heard how gas prices are expected to increase in the upcoming year. Seems as though it will be quite possible for gas prices to increase to $4 or maybe $5/gallon. As you know if this happens it affects everything… driving, food, utilities, etc. When you read this information do you do and/or change anything in order to plan for the future increased prices on goods and services?

-Brandie

I saw that on the news the other day while I was at the gym.  Very depressing.

But, in the face of news like this, I remember that I have mad frugal skills, and that makes me feel better.

You can’t entirely avoid price increases with frugality, but you can definitely experience less distress than people who are spendthrifts.  Even if everyone’s budget costs go up 25%, the people with lower budgets are in better shape.  A 25% increase in a $200 grocery budget is very different than a 25% increase in a $500 grocery budget.

For example, if you already batch your errands, carpool, and avoid unnecessary driving, your gas budget will not go up as many dollars as the gas budget of someone who drives a gas guzzles like there’s no tomorrow.

And assuming a 20% rise in food prices, if you eat the brown rice that comes in a box for $1-2/pound, you’ll be in better shape than the person that eats boxed rice mixes that cost far more per pound.

Also, if you work at buying local when possible, the rise in gas prices won’t be quite as noticeable. The beef from the farm near my house won’t be affected like the beef that has to travel halfway across the country.

And the stuff at my Goodwill store won’t be affected like the merchandise at traditional stores, which comes from the Phillipines and China and who knows where else.

Anyhow, my advice in the face of $5/gallon gas is the same as my advice under other circumstances…advice like:

• buy second-hand
• fix your possessions instead of buying new ones
• cook with ingredients instead of with prepared foods
• drink water (from the tap, dear readers)
• look for local merchants
• try growing some food (even 1 pot is something!)
• eat the food you buy instead of wasting it (buying less is a good start)
• batch errands and avoid unnecessary driving

Basically, I think that simple, frugal living habits will help to get you through hard economic times with as little financial distress as possible.  Yay frugality!

Today’s 365 post: Hey Elizabeth! This is for you.

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!

How often do you go through your pantry? Do you often have crackers, rice, or pasta that goes bad before you can use it? Sometimes I buy a new product to try and we don’t like it (I currently have a large jar of dried edamame that I can’t bring myself to finish). Do you force these types of things down the gullet or do you just cut your losses and toss them?

-Cathryn

I go through my pantry less frequently than I probably should! But pantry waste has not ever been a huge problem for me, even back before Food Waste Friday.  Pantry foods have a really long shelf life most of the time, and I can usually manage to use them up before they go bad.

However, I do sometimes have waste of this sort..I recently had to throw out a container of steel cut oats because they’d gotten rancid.  They were still safe to eat, but I am just not desperate enough to each rancid-tasting oatmeal.  So, to answer your question, no, I don’t force myself to eat stuff that I really can’t stand.

If the food is still edible, though, I think it’s a good idea to give it away to a friend who would be interested in eating it.  Maybe you have an edamame-loving acquaintance?

If you frequently have pantry waste, you might need to adopt a regular pantry-cleaning schedule.  I have to do that with my fridge or else I completely lose track of what is in there (knowing what food you have is half the battle!).  A regular perusal of my fridge’s contents is very helpful to me, and maybe it would help you with your pantry as well.

I have a question about composting that I’m hoping you can clarify. I am using your method of the rubbermaid container, and I’ve been filling it up for about 5 months now. This morning I went out to add my weekly bucket of scraps and I was greeted by a swarm of flies. I have livestock so I’m used to flies, but these guys were beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Do you have problems with flies or am I doing something wrong with what I’m adding to the compost pile? I’ve kept my composting to kitchen scraps and yard waste as your instructions indicated but I do have three other capable adults who live here (OK two of them are teenagers but close enough to grown up that I count them that way) who may add things when I’m not looking. Any ideas on what I can do to get rid of the flies? Seriously if I put out those fly paper trap things they’d be filled within minutes. I’m surprised my neighbor hasn’t complained. I’m tempted to dig a hole in my pasture and dump everything into it, bury it and call it a failed experiment. I thought I’d check with you first before I did anything drastic.

-Rockzann

I’m guessing these were fruit flies, which are the main pests that hang around my compost bins. I’ve also had some smallish black flies which are different than the normal house fly…I’m not sure what they’re called!

The best advice I have is to make sure that you are adding enough browns (leaves, shredded paper, shredded cardboard, etc) to your pile. If your kitchen waste/browns ratio is off too much, your compost will be wet, stinky, and full of flies.

When I add compost to my bin, I always cover it with a layer of browns, which is my case is usually leaves or paper shreds. If I don’t do that, I have fly problems galore.

(it would be much better if my leaves were shredded…they’d compost faster that way. But compost doesn’t have to be perfect to work!)

The browns on top of the pile are too dry to compost at first, but they always get covered with another layer of wet compost in a short while, and they they have enough moisture to decompose.

Do you have any tips for first time buyers about what features and characteristics they should focus on when purchasing a dSLR body and lens? Also, I’m thinking about buying used. Do you have any specific tips for what to look out for if buying used? Would you recommend against buying a used (for the body/lens/both)?

-Carla

Hmm. Since I’ve only used Canon digital SLR equipment, I’m probably a little bit biased towards their products. But I’d probably recommend that you buy either a Nikon or Canon SLR camera body. I know some people love other SLR brands, but I’d be a little bit nervous about going with a smaller SLR company.

If your budget is limited, I would suggest skimping a little bit on the camera body so that you have enough money for a nice lens. A body is nice, but the lens is really where it’s at. For the Canon, I cannot recommend the Canon 50mm f1.4 lens highly enough. I love this lens to pieces and it’s on my camera somewhere around 95% of the time (my $1200 24-70 lens doesn’t get nearly as much use as my $350 50mm does!).

Anyways, I’d rather have my Rebel body and my 50mm lens than my 7D with a not-so-great lens.

I have not ever bought a used piece of camera equipment yet, so I’m useless for advice in that arena. I buy other used items all the time, but for some reason, I’m scared to buy used camera equipment from someone I don’t know (I worry that it might have been dropped, or kept in unfriendly temperatures). Then again, there are a fair number of people who buy SLRs and lenses, decide they’re in over their heads, and then want to sell their equipment.  So if you found a deal like that, it’d be worth going for!

Oh, and on my 365 blog, I have a list of all my current camera equipment, since I get asked about that so often.

Today’s 365 post: Zoe, in shadow.
disclosure

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!

A few questions cropped up in the comments on last week’s post about composting, so I though I’d include them in today’s Q&A.

Have you done a post on the ins and outs of composting? I would be very interested in hearing your full process.

Yes, indeed! A while back I wrote a post about easy, cheap composting, which explains how I set up and use my bins. And you can read all my compost-related posts in the composting category.

One question: what about the toxins in the ink on the paper from the shredder? Any info on that? I don’t think the black ink is edible, do you?

I hadn’t considered that before, but because of your question, I did a little bit of poking around and came to the conclusion that the ink is not a big problem. The 13 Common Composting Myths article at Earth 911 says that composting actually dilutes the hydrocarbons and that multiple tests have shown the amount of ink in the finished compost is not at all dangerous.

Of course, if you still felt nervous about the ink, you could only put printed paper into compost you plan to use for inedible plants, like bushes and flowers.

One question about composting shredded paper– Wouldn’t it be better to recycle the paper? It would take MUCH longer to grow a tree using your compost, and then turn it into paper, than just recycling it. Of course both options are better than throwing paper in the trash!

That’s an interesting question. I’m no environmental expert, but I would venture to guess that composting is, at the very least, as green as recycling. Consider that composting requires absolutely no outside energy, whereas recycling requires energy on a lot of levels….someone has to come pick the paper up, drive it to the recycling plant, and then at the plant itself, a lot of energy is used in the recycling process. And as Mrs. Green pointed out to me, paper can only be recycled 5-6 times before the fibers are too weak for reuse.

That said, I recycle WAY more paper than I compost, simply because I don’t have room in my composting bins for all the cardboard and paper that comes into our house. I generally only compost the paper that I shred, and that’s usually made up of papers that have personal information on them.

Another reason I am prone to composting my shredded paper is that the shreds have to be bagged up for recycling.  This seems kind of wasteful to me, and I am not at all sure that a single bag of paper shreds is going to safely make it to the recycling plant, especially if it’s in a paper bag (a plastic bag could be tied shut, but then it’s kind of a waste of a bag). The recycling here all gets chucked into the back of a garbage-like truck, so it’s sort of an indelicate ride to the plant.

A final reason I compost paper is that in order to properly compost all my produce scraps, I need to have some browns to include in my pile…if I don’t, the produce scraps take forever to compost and the pile gets stinky.

If someone else offers to pay for something extravagant (= more than you’d pay), is the purchase still unfrugal?  The thing could be a simple as a nice dinner; my point is that the purchaser is willing to spend more than you would.
-WilliamB

Hmm, I guess it would be frugal for me! I actually don’t tend to worry myself about what other people are spending…I focus more on frugality in my life. Are you maybe wondering if something like that would make me feel uncomfortable? If that’s the question, then no, unless it was a case where I knew for sure that the giver couldn’t afford the extravagant purchase.

The bottom line is that I figure that what other people do with their money is not my worry (which might seem sort of odd, given that I blog about money!). And I’m not one to be offended if someone wants to buy something for me…I just say, “Thank you!”.

I would love to know how you learned so much about photography. I would love to get started but have no idea what I’m doing! Your pictures are so beautiful!

-Erika

Thank you! I appreciate the encouraging words.

I think I first started getting better at taking pictures when I switched to digital. Getting instant feedback on my images helped me to learn how to best use the available light and it helped me to learn much better composition (I used to always shoot from too far away!). I have great respect for people who learned how to take good pictures when film was the only format available…I don’t think I’d do too well that way!

I have not taken any formal photography classes, but I’ve checked out tons of photography books from the library, and I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the internet too (Digital Photography School is a good place to start). In addition to reading how-to kind of stuff on the ‘net, I also like to just browse through photo blogs because they give me good ideas and inspiration.

Probably the best thing I’ve done though, is practice, practice, practice. I take pictures nearly every day, and I think I’ve learned a lot through simple trial and error as I shoot. I take lots and lots of bad pictures (I just don’t show them to anyone!), and I probably learn as much from the duds as I do from the more successful shots.

So, my best advice is to do some reading, look at good pictures taken by other photographers, and practice, practice, practice!

alternately titled, “How I Avoid Carrying Compost Out Into My Cold Backyard Every Day” or, “The Lazy Composter”.

In the summertime, I don’t really mind taking the compost out every day…I just have to throw a pair of flip-flops on and take a quick trek out to the backyard (well, it’s sort of quick. Our kitchen is on the upper story and our compost bin is on the ground, so I have to carry compost through the house and out the back door. Have I mentioned I am not a fan of the split-foyer house design??)

In the wintertime, especially this winter, because we have actually had snow that’s stuck around for a while, I do mind taking it out every day.

So, I keep an old spackle bucket on my deck.

And I just let it sit there until it’s filled to the brim, at which point I take it downstairs and out to the bin. In the summertime, this would never work, because 5.5 colonies worth of fruit flies would be hanging out in the bin by the time it was full. In the cold of winter, though, fruit flies are NEVER a problem.

Anyways, this simple solution makes me much less tempted to throw compostable material into the trash can while the weather is cold.

______________________

Also, I was thinking that someone who is super worried about information security, and is concerned that even shredding isn’t enough, would feel better if they composted the shreddings.  Because when you turn your shreds into compost…

and use the compost to grow vegetables in your backyard…

it’d be pretty darn difficult for anyone to steal the information on the papers. 

Well, it was exciting to me at least.

Over a year after I started composting, my first bin was finally ready to use! I haven’t been adding any new compost to that bin for a couple of months, and while there were still some egg shells that hadn’t decomposed (I didn’t learn until more recently that it’s good to crush them!), I decided it was close enough to dirt to be useable.

I remembered hearing that straight compost is too dense to use with plants, so I mixed it with some dirt and use it to repot some plants.  And my goodness, the compost certainly does wonders!

Here’s my basil plant that’s just been in potting soil.

And here’s the one that’s been in regular backyard dirt + compost.  It has lovely, large, dark green droopy leaves after just a few weeks in the compost/dirt mixture.

For a better comparison, here they are side by side.

Incidentally, do you not just adore my beautiful pot?    I was out of real pots and didn’t want to fork over $20 for a large plastic pot.  Since we’ve done so much remodeling we have spackle buckets aplenty, and though it’s ugly as sin, it was free and it works just fine.

When I put these tomato plants and the basil plant into the bucket, they were so small that their tops could barely peek over the edge of the pot, and now look at them just a few weeks later!  Compost is amazing.

This poor little neglected hosta, which was in some really bad dirt in my yard, is now living in this pot with a compost/dirt mixture. Hopefully it will recuperate.

Last Saturday, I used the rest of the compost to make a mini garden in my backyard.  Grass really wasn’t growing well behind this concrete pad so I loosened the soil with a shovel and mixed in the rest of my compost.  I have basil, peppers, green onions, and several tomato plants growing there.  I’m anxious to see how much these plants will grow now that their soil is enriched with compost.

I’m especially interested to see how much this little baby basil plant will perk up.

I’ll do another post in a few weeks with some comparison photos, just because I love that sort of thing dearly.

If seeing my happy plants has inspired you to begin composting, check out my post on super easy, super cheap composting. and next year you too can grow luscious basil leaves like these.

While it might not be thrillsville for other people, I’m tickled to death that our food scraps, which would have gone into the landfill otherwise, have been turned into something that’s nourishing the soil, soil which is growing food for us. Happy sigh.

If you already compost, what do you do with yours once it’s ready to use?

This topic has come up several times recently in the comments, and so I thought perhaps devoting a post to it would be a good idea.

Ideologically,  I am 100% on board with the idea of buying local, organic food. I think it’s a wonderful thing for both people and the planet.

Unfortunately, local, organic food is not always so good for the grocery budget.

This bums me out, because it’s one of the places where green, healthy, and frugal don’t overlap.  Line-drying laundry, buying less stuff, driving less, eating less processed food, and buying used are all things that satisfy both my desire to save money and my desire to save the earth.

When I’m forced to choose between the two, though, I have to consider my priorities and make my decisions accordingly.

Serving my family is a very, very high priority on my list.  I cook from scratch in order to serve my family, I try to organize my home so that I can serve my family better, and I try to manage my time so I can serve my family better.  Along these same lines, one of the main reasons I work so hard to save money is that by doing so, I serve my family.  If I spent foolishly and didn’t save, my family would suffer in many ways, and I don’t want that to happen.

At the same time, I do want to be a good steward of the earth God gave to us.  I want to be responsible and live in a way that preserves the planet as much as possible.

If I had a lot of disposable income or if we had fewer people in our family, these two priorities would probably not be in conflict.  With more money, I’d likely have no problem covering a higher grocery bill, and with fewer people, organic local food wouldn’t cost as much as it does for six people.

As it is, though, buying nothing but organic and local food would cause me to spend far more than I can afford on groceries.   This would be delightful for the planet, and probably quite good for our bodies, but it would be very bad news for our financial state.

So, here’s what I do.

• Whenever green and frugal intersect, I’m all there. Among other things, I line-dry, I save electricity, I drive minimally, I buy used, I freecycle, I mend clothes, I don’t buy a lot of meat, I compost,  I try not to waste food, I don’t buy a lot of consumer goods, I grow some foods, and I bring cloth bags when I shop.

• When green is sort of close to frugal, I’m usually there. I buy produce from the farmer’s markets in the summertime, even though it’s a little more expensive than loss-leader produce.  I get milk in glass jars from a very local farm, even though it’s $4/gallon instead of $2/gallon.  Just today, I bought some all-natural chicken from Pennsylvania, which is fairly close to where I live.  I paid $2.30/pound, which is more than I pay for regular chicken, but is not outrageous.

• When green is not even close to frugal, I usually pass. I’d love to have geo-thermal heating and cooling, but I’d have to go into massive debt to procure that, and that would certainly not serve my family.  I’d love to buy the chicken breasts from the little store up the road (they don’t even come in a package, which is fabulous!), but spending that much on a pound of meat would be bad for our finances, and thus would not serve my family.

My frugal vs. green strategy will probably change over time.  Someday, we won’t need to buy as many groceries (although that’s going to get worse before it gets better, seeing as our kids are all sort of young right now!), and when that happens, I’ll be happy to spend more on local and organic food.  And if something wonderful happens with my husband’s career, and we have more money to put into the food budget, I’ll certainly use it to buy local and organic food.

If your situation is different than mine, you may need to operate differently.  But this is what works for me and my family in this phase of our lives.

Since I’ve mentioned composting here and there in my posts, I thought I should maybe share exactly how I compost. I don’t have any special equipment, and my total monetary outlay for my bin was about $6.

Back in April, around the time I started working on reducing my food waste, I got inspired to try composting. I heard great things about worm bins, but they seemed a bit complicated, and I didn’t want to have to buy a bunch of worms! Happily, one of my commenters pointed me to some very simple instructions for a plain old wormless compost bin, so I decided to give it a try.

Following the instructions on You Grow Girl, I made my own bin from a Rubbermaid container. Basically, you just need to cut a bunch of air holes in the lid of the bin, and several drainage holes in the bottom. The site said to use a knife, but I’m not nearly patient enough for that! I got out the drill and made quick work of that….a few minutes, and I was done.

I started it off with some leaves and some fruit and vegetable scraps, which I soaked with water, and I’ve been adding produce scraps, tea bags, egg shells, hair clippings, and sometimes some paper ever since. Aside from adding organic material to the bin, all I have to do is turn the compost with a shovel every couple of weeks(although I sometimes forget about it and leave it longer than that!).

I’ve been using the bin since April, and it’s only just now getting full(and I even put a whole pumpkin in there). I’ll probably buy one more bin to use and I’ll just let this one rest until spring. Hopefully at that point I can empty it out and use the compost to fertilize the beds in the front of my house.

The bin is out in our backyard, which isn’t the most convenient place in the world. To make things easier, I keep a small plastic bin on my deck, which is right outside of my kitchen, and whenever I have some compostable kitchen waste, I just open the door and throw it into the little bin. And when the bin gets full, Joshua, a.k.a. Compost Boy, comes and empties it into the big bin in our backyard.

Composting has greatly reduced the amount of trash that comes out of our house, and it make our trash less stinky. Before I started composting, I often had to take out a bag of trash that was only half full simply because it smelled so bad. Now the only smelly things in the trash are meat-related items, which I usually just put into a small bag and take out right away.

Of course, cutting back on our food waste has certainly contributed to the reduction in trash, but composting has played a very large part. Even the most faithful leftover eater is going to have some food scraps(no one is going to eat tea bags and banana peels), and it’s nice to have an environmentally friendly way of disposing of these inedible items.