(a third title option: “Why my washing machine agitator is two different colors”)

If you asked my husband which of us is more frugal, he would, without hesitation, name me.

And it is true that I am far more likely to obsess about expenses and savings plans and waste.

But in one way, Mr. FG is exceedingly more financially wise than I am.  When it comes to the small things, I have him beat, but when it comes to larger expenditures, he most definitely has me beat.

For example, I can manage to get cereal for almost nothing, I can feed us three meals a day for a few dollars, and I keep the six of us clothed on way less than $50/month, but I am fairly useless when it comes to things like buying houses or cars or appliances.

For some reason, when the purchase is really large, I can sort of get caught up in the moment and lose some of my financial common sense.  I’ll negotiate the price of a $5 item at Goodwill, but it will not occur to me to argue over a $500 charge when we’re buying a house.  I’ve mended a shirt because I wasn’t willing to pay $8 for a new one, but I was willing to accept a low-ball check from the insurance company when my car got totalled.

My lack of sense with large purchases is pretty deplorable, that’s for sure.  Thankfully, my husband is far more rational when we’re dealing with large amounts of money, and I’m sure that he’s saved us a pretty penny over the years.

Want a recent example?  My older-model washing machine has been having a problem with the agitator.  Basically, the dogs that hold the upper cam in place had broken off, so only the bottom portion of the agitator was actually…agitating.

After a cursory but frustrating search online for the replacement parts, I was ready to throw in the towel and just go buy a new washing machine (I know…that is pathetic.)  I even logged onto Consumer Reports and started researching washing machines.

Fortunately, my husband is a little more persevering than I am when it comes to this kind of stuff, and he managed to find the information we needed.  We ordered a dog kit and cam for about $30 from PartSelect, and much to my surprise, the package showed up the next day (I don’t have any relationship with PartSelect, but based on this experience, I highly recommend them!).

Armed with the package directions (I’m better at reading directions than Mr. FG is, so I usually read the directions and he does the work!), we disassembled the old agitator, cleaned it all out, and installed the new parts.  I think it took maybe half an hour, tops.

Out with the old…

in with the new!

Unfortunately, the new piece is white instead of blue, so now my washing machine agitator is blue on the bottom, white in the middle, and blue on top.

But, I don’t really care.  My washing machine works properly again, and my goodness!  A $30 expenditure for parts is much better than a $500+ expenditure for a new washing machine.

It’s a really, really good thing my husband is around to save me from myself in these sorts of situations because without him, my laundry room would probably be sporting a new washing machine right about now.

And it’s a good thing for him that I’m around, because without me, his money would probably trickle away due to small expenses.

I think we make a good pair. 

What is “it”?  That would be the door on my van, which we fixed by replacing this:

In case you’re wondering, that thing in the picture is a broken door handle.  One day, I went to open Zoe’s door as I usually do, and the handle just snapped.  Unfortunately, it’s made of plastic, and the piece that broke rendered the handle useless.

Thankfully, that particular handle was for the sliding door, which meant that we could easily reach in through the front door and open the sliding door from the inside.  This was especially fortunate because the handle broke right before vacation, and we had to open the sliding door using alternate means the whole time we were away.  It would have been far more aggravating to deal with a broken front door for two weeks.

There’s always a bright side, isn’t there?

Anyways, after the handle broke, I called around to see how much a new handle would cost.  Toyota was willing to sell me a color-matched handle for a mere $160. Yikes. How exactly you can charge $160 for a plastic door handle and keep a straight face is sort of beyond me.

Toyota also graciously offered to install this $160 door handle for just $100 more. Whee! The dealership is just the best place to get parts and service, isn’t it??

Riiight. Instead of scheduling an appointment with the dealership, I hopped onto the internet and found that a primed black door handle could be purchased for $30.  That’s more like it.  Of course, if I owned a white van or a blue van or really, any van that wasn’t black, this wouldn’t have worked too well.  But, joy of joys, mine is black, so the primed handle matches just fine.  My other handles are actually painted, sure, but the paint is peeling off of them. So, I figured a primed handle wouldn’t be any more unsightly than the existing handles, which look like this.

When the part arrived, my husband and I consulted our handy-dandy Haynes manual (love this thing!) to figure out how to take the door apart.

It turns out that we just had to pop the plastic off the inside of the door, unscrew the old handle, screw in the new one, attach it to the power-lock system, and put the plastic back onto the door. Easy-peasy (especially since my husband did most of the work!). I think it took all of about 15 minutes.

It’s the best looking handle on my van now.

And what makes it even more beautiful to me is that it cost $30 instead of $260. That’s some gorgeous savings right there.

This is yet another recipe borrowed from Cook’s Illustrated.  I found it in the big baking book they published(I got it for my birthday a few years back), and I’m pretty delighted with the recipe. I don’t do it exactly the way they said to(I didn’t want my crust to be shatteringly thin like they did), but the basics of the recipe are theirs.

This pizza is delicious, but my favorite thing about it is that the dough is supposed to be made ahead of time.  When I have to be out and about on Friday afternoons, we can still have pizza for dinner if I use this recipe.  It’s supposed to sit in the fridge overnight, but sometimes I forget to make it the night before…so, I’ve mixed it up in the morning, refrigerated it, and used it that evening with very satisfactory results.  You can keep the dough in the fridge for up to 48 hours, but I’ve never managed to think quite that far ahead. Ahem.

The dough is made in the food processor and then kneaded just briefly by hand, so all you people out there with kneading phobias can probably still handle this recipe.  Incidentally, you will need a pizza stone, pizza peel, and parchment paper to make this recipe(well, I suppose you could do without the pizza peel and the parchment, but the pizza stone is non-negotiable!).

I apologize for the poor quality of some of the photos and for the fact that photos are missing for a few steps. I took the latter half of these pictures last Friday, after I ran home from taking pictures of my nephew and before I had to leave to accompany a string bass player, so I was in a bit of a hurry. I’ll try to take better pictures next time around, and I’ll update this post then.

Thin Crust Pizza

10 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour (about 2 cups), preferably Gold Medal
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon table salt
6.2 ounces water (about 3/4 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons), 100 to 105 degrees
1/4 cup olive oil(I use canola oil)

1. Mix everything but the water and oil in the bowl of the food processor(in case you were wondering, I did mix mine up after I took this picture.  It’s just that it looks sort of boring mixed up, so I thought a pre-mixing picture would be better.  Not that I overthink this type of thing.).

2. Add the water, and process until the ingredients are all combined.

3. With the lid on and the machine running, add the oil in a thin stream, and process until the oil is evenly mixed into the dough.

4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead for a couple of minutes…just until it’s smooth and even.  The food processor will have done most of the kneading for you.

5. Put the whole dough ball into a zipper bag(using one you purchased on clearance after Halloween is totally optional), and refrigerate it overnight.

7. About a half hour before you’re ready to bake the pizzas, put your baking stone into the oven and heat it to 425 degrees. While the oven is heating, take the dough out of the fridge, divide it into two balls, and let them sit on the counter for a few minutes to warm up. Meanwhile, cut two squares of parchment paper about the size of your baking stone.

8. When your dough balls have lost their chill, roll them out on a lightly floured surface to about 12-14 inches in diameter(Cook’s says to do this on the parchment, but I can’t get the hang of that!). Once they’re rolled out, place them onto the pieces of parchment and use a scissors to trim the parchment around the pizza.

9. Top each with about a half cup of tomato sauce,

and sprinkle with cheese(you can add sausage or pepperoni or any other toppings you like at this point).

10. Place the pizza, parchment and all onto your pizza peel, and slide it onto the hot baking stone. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until browned.

Serve promptly, because this pizza doesn’t stay warm for long(unlike deep dish pizza).  While the second pizza is baking, we usually sit down and eat the first.  Usually by the time we polish that one off, the second one is ready to eat.

Every Monday, I answer a question or two from my readers. If you have a question you’d like me to answer(it doesn’t have to be about frugality pe se….if you wonder something about homeschooling, or about me personally, for example, ask away!), leave a comment on this post, or email me(thefrugalgirl {at} gmail {dot} com) with the “Q&A” in the subject, and I’ll answer it in a future Monday post.
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Dana from Groff Stuff left this question for me on last week’s post.

Okay, Kristen, I wasn’t going to ask this question, because I didn’t want to be nosey, but you said go ahead and ask…so here it is. Do you have any “people” who help you in your day to day life? You homeschool, work with your piano and photography, bake your own bread, and shop at a couple of markets each week. That’s a lot for one Mommy. Does anyone help you clean your house, babysit your kids, groom your dog (do you have a dog?), or mow your grass?? And one more thing…do you wash your own car? I know that it is “greener” to take it to the carwash, and our State encourages that for water conservation, but it is so expensive…and I like washing my own car. I hope I didn’t ask too many questions…just curious…and kind of feel like I know you by now, since I’ve been reading your blog for such a long time!

For the record(and I said this to Dana), I’m not remotely offended by this kind of question.  I said you could ask questions about stuff other than frugality, and I meant it.    I actually think it’s kind of entertaining to see what sorts of questions pop into my readers’ heads!

I think that if you all saw my typical day(and I do intent to post a typical day for you at some point), you might be not quite so impressed.  I really don’t think I am that amazing in what I get done.

That said, I don’t have any regular help.  My mom does occasionally babysit for me when I need it(she took my kids to the aquarium last Friday so I could go take pictures of my new nephew, and that was wonderful!), and I sometimes hire a babysitter when I need to go play the piano somewhere and my husband isn’t home.    And my husband and I sometimes swap babysitting with other couples so that we can have a date by ourselves.

I don’t have any help with the cleaning except from the members of this household. Every day the kids clean up all their toys, the older two kids sweep at breakfast and lunch, and on Saturdays, the older two have some weekly cleaning chores(like cleaning their bathroom).  And my husband helps with the dinner dishes.

Just so you know, my house is not perfectly clean all the time.  My poor kitchen floor doesn’t get washed nearly as often as I’d like, some weeks my bathroom doesn’t get cleaned, and I continually struggle to keep my office clean.  It’s ok, though…it’s clean enough to be healthy, and I don’t think it’s possible to have a perfectly clean house if you have four kids at home all day every day!  I do anticipate things being easier in this department once all four kids are old enough to do a fair share of cleaning/chores, though.

My husband takes care of the yard entirely without me.  I think the only thing I’ve ever done is help to plant and water grass seed.  He also takes care of all the automotive work and anything technical related to our computers(which I’m really grateful for!).

We don’t have a dog, mostly because I really, really feel like I couldn’t handle it.  Having more doctor appointments, more food to buy, and more mess to clean up would probably put me over the edge.  All we have is one fish and one hermit crab.

I do wash my own car, but since I don’t get around to it all that often, I don’t figure it’s an enormous waste of water.  My kids like helping me wash the van, so it’s kind of a fun event.   The only time we really use car washes is in the wintertime when there’s been snow and the roads(and consequently our cars!) have been salted.

I’m always reluctant to pay someone to do what I could do myself…that’s why I make my own yogurt, bread, and pizza,  it’s why I cook my own meals, it’s why my husband cuts the grass and does oil changes, it’s why we didn’t hire help for very many of our home improvement projects(although we are indebted to our families for helping us out with that too!), and so on.  We sometimes hire help(we had our windows installed, we paid someone to do our gutters, and we pay a trusted mechanic to do big automotive projects), but whenever it’s possible, we really try to do things by ourselves.

I don’t think this is necessarily the right thing for every family...if you’re a mom who works full-time outside of the home, it might be better to hire a housekeeper so that you can have more time with your family.  But for us and our budget, this is what works.

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Secondly, I just wanted to mention that I’ve broken down and joined Twitter.  You can see my Twitter updates over on the right side of my blog.  I don’t know how often I’ll Tweet, but I thought that Twittering might give you a bit of an idea about how I spend my days.

Alternatively, you can see my Twitter page here.

The following is a reprint of the very first post I ever made on The Frugal Girl. For some reason, when I moved my posts to my current server, the pictures for this post went missing, and I’ve been meaning to fix that. A small handful of you may have seen this post before, but it will probably be new to the vast majority of you, seeing as I only had about 40 hits a day back then(and I thought 40 was a lot! lol)
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My daughter and I both had a pair of khaki pants that had some pretty darn near irreparable damage done to the knees…more than I was willing to mend, at least!  A while back, I found a link to a site with a how-to on turning jeans into a skirt, and I figured that it could be done with khakis too.  And, it can! Yay!  I didn’t follow the directions exactly…I modified them so that my front seam is just straight.  I hemmed my daughter’s skirt, and on mine, I’m trying a frayed hem.  This picture was taken right after I made the skirt, and since then, the hem has frayed nicely.

I’m pretty pleased with the results.  It wasn’t terribly hard or time-consuming to do, and it cost almost nothing.  All I had to buy was a spool of khaki-colored thread, which will come in handy over time for sewing buttons(or maybe modifying more khaki pants!).

Oh, and my grandma(like many grandmas, I assume!) was a very frugal lady, having lived through the Depression.  She’s now gone, but I often think that she’d be thrilled to see the frugal things that I do, and that’s the reason for the title of this post. 

I’m finally finished painting the two nightstands that I bought at Goodwill recently, so I thought I’d share pictures.

First, here’s what our old Ikea nightstands looked like. We had two, and this one was in the best shape. The other one came from an antique store(I know…what kind of antique store sells Ikea furniture??) and it was in far worse condition than this one.

Here’s what the Goodwill nightstands looked like when I got them.

And here’s one prepped for priming.

Ta-dah! No more Ikea nightstands! In fact, there’s no more Ikea furniture in my bedroom. I feel very grown-up now.

Ahhh, much better.

You can see a picture of the grain on the top in this post(it’s the last picture).

In case you’re interested, the two Ikea nightstands now reside in my son’s room, where they hold toys. The toys used to be held by a flimsier plastic three-drawer contraption, so this is a definite improvement. The Ikea nightstands are sturdy, and I couldn’t care less if the kids abuse them(which they will, of course).

The three drawer plastic unit is now in my crawlspace, where it’s being used to organize all my gift wrapping supplies. They used to all be mixed together in a cardboard box, and it was nigh onto impossible to find anything. Now everything is neat and accessible.

Thanks to all of this rearranging, nothing was thrown away except for a cardboard box(which was recycled, of course). However, I do still have the old hardware from the nightstands that I need to deal with…I’m going to offer them on Freecycle, and hopefully someone will want them so that I don’t have to throw them away.

So, I currently have no painting projects waiting for me, which is a nice feeling. Actually, scratch that…I do plan to paint my son’s bed at some point. It’s wooden and I painted it white when he was small. Now that he’s going on ten, however, I think a black bed would be more appropriate. Plus a black bed would match his black dresser and his (new to him) black nightstands better. I’m sort of burnt out on painting for the moment, though, so I think that project will wait until late spring or early summer.

Last week the weather was indeed warm enough for me to spray the primer onto the nightstand, and  I also got a couple of coats of paint done before it got dark.    Although it got colder the next day, I was able to finish up the rest of the painting indoors(since I brush on the actual paint, I can do it indoors in a pinch).

I think the new nightstand matches Zoe’s dresser a lot better, and I think it fits the scale of her room better too(for those of you that are new, here’s the original post about this nightstand).

As a reminder, here’s what it looked like before.

After sanding, priming, and painting(and also a bit of caulking), here’s what it looks like now:

Here’s what the old nightstand looked like in her room:

And here’s what the new one looks like:

Just to show how surprisingly well they match…

You want to know something super fabulous?  I didn’t end up having to buy any hardware!  I poked around in the toolbox and lo and behold, there were two silver knobs that matched the two silver knobs on the larger dresser.  This means that I didn’t lay out any extra cash for the nightstand at all, since I already had sandpaper, primer, paint, and hardware.

I did remember to take pictures while I did this project, and once I edit and organize them, I’ll do a painting tutorial.  I had to do this post first, though, because I was just too anxious to show you all the nightstand!

I’ve gotten a couple of questions lately via email and the comments section, so I thought I would just answer them all in one post!

Do you ever use margarine in your baking? I’m sometimes tempted by the margarine prices.

I really wish I liked margarine and I wish I thought it was as healthy as butter. The Aldi’s ad this week has margarine on sale for $.67 a pound! Sixty-seven cents, people! The best I can do on butter as of late is $1.99 a pound, so butter is costing me a lot more than margarine would.

Alas, I despise the taste of margarine…I really hate eating it on bread, and I also am not a fan of it when it’s used in baking(cookies made with butter rock!).

If I thought it was as healthy or healthier than butter, or if I had a dairy allergy, I’d probably find some way of getting used to the taste, but as it is, I’m probably going to remain a butter snob.

How did you learn to cut hair? I have never cut hair before & am pretty nervous about doing it.

Mostly I learned by trial and error. I started when my son was only one year old, so it didn’t matter a whole lot if I made a mistake here or there. Basically I use a clippers with a 1/2 inch attachment to do the sides and back of his hair. I then use a scissors to cut the top of his hair. I hold small sections of hair up in between my fingers and cut the hair with the scissors. A WikiHow on it is here. And here’s a blog post on a scissors-only method.

If you’re lucky and your son doesn’t mind having really short hair, you can just use the clippers all over his head…nice and easy!

To learn how to cut girls’ hair, I took my daughter to a cheap salon and watched how they did it. The main thing I learned there was to pin up the top layer of hair and cut only the bottom layer first. I used to try to cut it all at once, and then my scissors would hop and skip and make an uneven line.

Can you use apple juice to make apple jelly?

Yes, although I’ve not done it myself. The recipe insert from the pectin box says the proportions should be 4 cups apple juice and 5 cups of sugar to one box of pectin. The instructions for cooking and processing are the same, though(the recipe for grape jelly is here).

Do you and your family ever eat out?

Very rarely. We used to budget $40 a month for this, but when we started to work harder on tightening our belts we decided to cut that out almost entirely. My husband and I have date nights every now and then, and we usually go out to dinner then. If we have gift cards to a certain restaurant, we go there, or we go somewhere inexpensive, like Five Guys. We also sometimes get a $5 pizza from Little Caesar’s if I’m unable to cook(like if I’m sick or am away from home at dinnertime). Other than that, we just eat at home. It’s more work, of course, but it saves us SO much money. Plus, I think the food I make at home is generally healthier than what we’d eat if we went out.

Thanks for the questions…keep ‘em coming!

Photo by margaret

I have to say, I’m not really a big fan of doing this.  There are frugal things I don’t mind(making yogurt, baking bread, watching sales, shopping clearances), and then there are things I do only because it saves me money.  Haircuts definitely fall into the latter category.  But, save me money they do, and so I soldier on with my razor and scissors.

I don’t cut my own hair(I’m just not that skilled!), and I don’t cut my older daughter’s hair(it’s too thick, and it was sort of a disaster the last time I tried).  So, we go to a friend who cuts hair at her home.  She does a fabulous job, and it only costs $25 for both me and my daughter to get a cut.  This is 25 well spent dollars in my opinion, and since my daughter and I both have longish hair, we only have to go twice a year or so.

I’ve been cutting Joshua’s hair since he was a baby, and I’ve been doing the same with Sonia and Zoe.  Sonia has very thin hair, so it’s pretty easy to cut, and Zoe’s hair is wonderfully curly, which means that any mistakes I made are very difficult to see!  More recently I’ve started cutting my husband’s hair too.

He used to pay $25 a month to get it his hair cut, and I figure I’d have to spend another $10 a month on haircuts for Joshua.  So, even without counting the money I save by cutting Sonia and Zoe’s hair, I’m saving us $35 a month, or $420 a year.

I just use a basic razor and scissors kit, which cost me about $25 at Target.  That’s the price of one haircut for my husband, so the kit paid for itself almost immediately.

Even if you aren’t brave enough to foray in the world of home haircuts, consider buying a pair of hair-cutting scissors to do some trimming in between haircuts.  Girls’ bangs are fairly easy to trim, and boys’ haircuts can be stretched out farther if you do a bit of trimming around the ears and neck.  I do this with Joshua when I don’t have time to give him a full-blown haircut and it buys me another couple of weeks.