Frugal tips from Eastern Europe

Hey all!

Sorry if I make any mistakes, English is not my native language and I’m doing my best, so please be kind.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for contributing to this amazing community! It’s such a lovely place to find! Happy to meet all of you!

I was quite surprised that I already know like 99% of the advice here and it appears to be this is due to my post-soviet background. Most of the stuff that people like me know about being frugal is not due to frugality in itself, but mostly due to unavailability of many things during soviet times and extreme poverty that lasted for several years after the Soviet Union fall. A lot has changed where I live since the soviet and early post-soviet times, but these pieces of knowledge appear to be quite useful and in demand in these hard times. I was really surprised to get to know that many people in the US live from payday to payday too and absolutely shocked to see your water and electricity bills… So I made a list of frugal know-hows a la failed socialism. It suppose there can be local differences, a little bit of information that was previously mentioned somewhere around, but I hope you can find some useful things for you!

1) Don’t throw away plastic bags that are used for packing in shops. You can use them for throwing away garbage.

2) Put some broken ceramic tiles on the down side of your oven. It has many benefits: if your oven has poor heating it will make it better. Besides in cold times you can open your oven and it will give away more heat if you have a cold kitchen.

3) Don’t throw away kitchen sponges: when they look terrible you can move them to your bath and use for cleaning your toilet and bath/shower cabin/ceramic sinks/whatever.

4) Check electricity tariff where you live: in many places at night it’s much cheaper to use it. Here it’s x4 times cheaper

5) You can put a ceramic brick in the toilet water reservoir. This way you flush less water.

6) Buy seasonal local fruits and vegetables. If you have a farmers market near where you live usually by the end of the trading day they sell remains/not so pretty veggies really cheap

7) If you live in a house with land grow your own vegetables. It’s not really hard and you don’t need much to grow cabbages, squash, beans, pumpkins and greenery. Of course it depends a lot on the climate, but even in harsh continental climate you can grow these plants even without a greenhouse

8) Don’t throw away your old bed sheets: you can make a TON of little napkins and towels for your kitchen and cleaning your floors

9) Keep little plastic yoghurt containers: if you want to plant your own vegetables and fruits you can use it for planting seedlings before moving them to your garden. Just don't forget to make a little hole on the down side of the container for excess water to leave it freely

10) Don’t throw away acidified milk: it’s perfect for pancakes, just add a little baking soda. The milk should be sour, not bitter!! It’s not bad, it just has too much lactic bacteria. It’s not poisonous, it’s the same bacteria that is used to make cottage cheese and fermented milk products like yoghurts, kefir and cottage cheese. Anyway it dies in high temperature. Actually you can make your own cottage cheese from sour milk too.

11) You can make croutons and crumb coating from your dry bread

12) Always check your rooms before leaving: you could have forgotten to switch off the light/ some electric appliances somewhere.

13) You can save a little money while making porridge too: after the water in the pot starts boiling take the pot out and coat it in a blanket and it will cook without electricity waste. Besides, it tastes a lot better this way! Might take a little experimenting with the amount of water you leave because grains take in different amounts of it.

14) Don’t ignore grains when you cook! They are nutritious and cheap, besides you can use it in many ways: as accompaniment for proteins and veggies, as a filler for your soups (I know soup culture in the US is different, but you can try some Eastern European soups like goulash, borsch, pea soup with smoked meat, ukha, mushroom soup etc.) and make sweet porridges with fruit.

15) You can reuse glass jars with caps to keep your grains or when making your conservations (they need to be sterilized before using!).

16) Check your local programs for reprocessing of metals, glass and paper. Here there are many that give you money for bringing in this stuff

17) Baking soda is an all-purpose good. You can use it for washing almost anything. It’s perfect for washing dishes and removing fat blots on clothes. It’s a little abrasive, so take into account the surface that you are cleaning! It is also perfect to wash coffee and tea stains on ceramic mugs and cups.

18) Use a little vinegar or chloride ammonium to clean your oven, sink and windows.

19) Invest in a cast iron frying pan. The new kinds with special surfaces are nice, but you can’t use it for longer than two years. Personally I ruin them in just 1 year, it's a waste of money in most cases. Cast-iron frying pan that I use now is around 70 years old. You can check craiglist or whatever you use over there, a lot of people give them away almost for free.

20) You can use old tights in your garden to tie up your plants or use it to keep your onions inside (wash it before using it, of course!). This way onions won’t make mess with their shell leaves and won’t rot like when you keep them in a plastic bag with no air. It's actually the best way to keep it! As well you can grow your potatoes inside a tight: the roots will grow through it and in the autumn you can just pull the tight up and get it out easily and not damaging any with your shovel. As well they work well as filters (for example while gardening), just don't use them in high temperatures, they will melt

21) You can use your old shaver that is not suitable for shaving to remove pills on clothes. Just be careful not to cut the material, especially if it’s thin

22) You can wash your windows with only water and old newspapers. It really works! Besides you can use old newspapers to fill in the shoes that you are not using when the season change.

23) You can make your own combucha at home for almost free. It’s good for your health and is known for ages here.

24) If you have swollen eyes you can use a room temperature used teabag to make it better

25) If your tomatoes are not feeling well you can put them in your freezer and use it for making sauces later. Just cut out bad spots, that's it. No need to throw away good food just because it doesn't look like an adverisement picture and can't be used for salads

26) If your bananas got a little brown you can use it for making banana bread. Not picture pefect doesn't mean it's not usable. Actually very ripe bananas are the best for baking.

27) It's much cheaper to make tea from loose leaves than tea bags

28) Here it's much cheaper to buy cotton wool in drugstores than buying cotton discs and it works absolutely fine for applying liquid skincare products. You can use cotton to make cotton swabs with matches too. Pull out a small piece of cotton, put on a match and roll it in your hands.

Here are some additional gardening tips:

- Use ash, burnt bones and egg shells for fertilizing your plants. It’s free, organic and good for your plants

- Arrange a compost pile: it takes 2 years for it to make perfect fertilized soil from your organic waste

- You can build a small greenhouse for your cucumbers almost for free: use transparent plastic sheet and iron/plastic arcs

- Make your own preserves, it saves a lot of money in winter when vegetables and fruits are lower in quality and more expensive. You can freeze most of the vegetables too

- You can kill annoying ants with boiling water than remains after cooking