For instance, you can make your own homemade cleaner with a mix of castile soap, vinegar, baking soda, and water, but you don't have to stop there. You can also make your own castile soap with a mixture of olive and lavendar oils, water, and lye. But again, you don't have to stop there, either. You can also make your own homemade lye.
When you break down the majority of home products, most can be made with a few simple, inexpensive components, easily obtained at the grocery store, or online in bulk. Not only will you know exactly what goes into a product you use to clean your home, but you'll also ensure the products you use are safe for the environment, as well as being very inexpensive.
When you do look at recipes for household products, don't just stop at the top level. Use your search skills and see how many of the ingredients can also be made at home. You might be surprised at what you find.
So I ask again: how self sufficient do you want to be? About the only limit to most do-it-yourself projects is whether you have access to a water barrel.
I've been experimenting with a few simple household items in order to replace more expensive bath and kitchen items. For instance, distilled white vinegar in a shallow dish will dissipate over a couple of days and help eliminate persistent, bad or stale odors in a room. Baking soda sprinkled on a carpet and allowed to sit overnight before vacuuming will do the same for a carpet. Best of all, there's no fake, cloying, floral scent left over.
I've also been experimenting with replacing more complex products, such as dishwasher soap. One popular formula mixes equal parts of baking soda and Borax (such as Twenty Mule Team Borax), though I've been having better luck with a recipe consisting of washing soda, Borax, and sugar free lemonade Koolaid (citric acid helps to prevent white deposits on dishes), based on a recipe found at The New Homemaker. My main modification is that I don't add the essential oils.
The primary advantage to these home mixes is that they're typically cheaper, but a secondary advantage is that most of the alternatives are also much better for the environment. They don't contain bleach and potentially other, harmful chemicals, and though something like Borax is toxic if ingested, most cleaning material is toxic when ingested. What happens to the material when it hits your sewer system and your water supply is what makes the difference.
As I find recipes that work, I'll post them online. In the meantime, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has posted a list of unusual uses for ordinary objects you might find both interesting and helpful. For instance, to remove the chlorine discoloration from hair, dissolve eight aspirin in a glass of water, work into your hair, leave on for ten minutes, and then rinse. Much cheaper than exotic shampoos, and better than turning your silver hair blue.
(Note, the P-D does have a habit of changing URLs over time, so you might want to print the page.)
Once I decided on the Frugal Algorithm as the name of this new site, I checked to see if the domain was still available. It was, and for the trivial amount of $30.00 or so dollars for the domain, private registration, and ICANN fee, it would be mine.
Hold on a sec, though. Thirty dollars is a tank of gas, a donation of food for a family of four for a week, not to mention three albums of digital music, or a couple of DVDs. The money would be worth it, if the domain was worth it, but the question is: is the domain worth it?
At one time, it was important to have an easy to remember domain name for your site. After all, we had to hand type in the domain addresses when we wanted to visit the site. However, that was in the days before most sites were found via link from others, or search engine results. Having one domain is important, because you can't depend on owning the same IP address forever. But you don't need to have a domain for every interest, itch, and thought that crosses your mind. Big companies might need domains, but the small business owner, organization, or individual can get by with one domain. Just one.
It would be a sad commentary on this site if my first act in creating it was to spend money I didn't need to spend. Thirty dollars doesn't seem like much, but it adds up. Not only would I need to obtain the domain for The Frugal Algorithm, but I'd also need to renew my domain for MissouriGreen, Secret of Signals, and the domain, shelleypowers.com for Just Shelley. Yet, I doubt that anyone has ever looked at the domain names for the sites, much less typed the domains into a browser's address bar.
I hestitated on not renewing MissouriGreen, as eventually I'd like to get a jacket with the name of the site embroidered on it, so when I take photos at events, people know where to look to see if their picture appears. But if I display "MissouriGreen" on the back. rather than "MissouriGreen.com", people will just look up "MissouriGreen" in Google and find the site. And though it may seem as if my encouraging the use of Google will melt the polar ice caps and drown baby polar bears, I have a feeling from an environmental perspective, it's all a wash.
Look how much money I'll save buy not buying the new domain, or renewing the old ones. I estimate I'll save about $150.00 a year in domain fees, and that's a conservative estimate. That's enough money to pay half of my annual server fees, sponsor Crackers for a year, or buy 15 books for my Kindle.
Ummm, 15 books for my Kindle...OK, OK, I'll split the difference: Crackers gets half, the server gets paid this month, and I'll get those three history books I've been wanting.
Some say our world faces the worst economic times since the Great Depression. Maybe so, maybe not, I'm not an economic expert. If we are facing the worst economic times since the Great Depression, then perhaps we should look to the lessons from that time in order to help us cope.
People did survive the Great Depression. Not only survive, but developed a physical and cultural heritage that still enriches us to this day. We ride on roads built during the times; our older citizens do no go penniless into retirement, nor lose everything they've saved when some bank fails; electricity spread, from city streets to remote farms, as did the population, from south to north, east to west. The greatest change of all, though, was in our government. The little fiefdoms of state, county, and town merged, under one federal government, which went from being a minor nuisance, to a major, and unifying, power. If you think that such action was wrong, spare a thought for the Civil Rights movement in order to understand why a strong, federal government is important.
The Depression inspired the writer, painter, and musician. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is still required reading in many schools, as is Of Mice and Men. Documentary photography reached its zenith in the 1930s, thanks in large part to grants from the US Farm Security Administration (FSA). The 1930s have also been termed the golden age of Hollywood, with the release of such classics as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Wizard of Oz, monster favorites Frankenstein and King Kong, and dramas, such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Hell's Angels, and Jezebel—not to mention Horse Feathers, from the Marx Brothers.
If people escaped the troubles of the times with movies, they embraced the Depression with the music of the time, including the bitingly satirical, We're in the Money, and the song which became anthem for the times: Brother, Can You Spare a Dime, covered by artists ranging from Bing Crosby to Rudy Vallee, Charlie Palloy to Al Jolson. The reference to soldiers in the song reflects the anger felt by many World War I veterans, who felt betrayed by the country they served during war, and who participated in a protest now known as the Bonus March on DC in 1932, demanding immediate redemption of service certificates. Many of these veterans were now homeless, without jobs, and set up camp in a *Hooverville, a shanty town named for President Hoover, and located not far from the White House.
The lyrics of Brother, Can You Spare a Dime said much about the times.
"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)
They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!
Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Like the literature, and the roads, the music survives to this day, as George Michael will attest. Fortunately, the song will survive the experience.
I created The Frugal Algorithm for the same reason people sang Brother, Can You Spare a Dime in the 1930s—to face today's difficult times head on. Rather than curl up in a fetal ball, waiting for some miracle to make the current economic situation go away, the Frugal Algorithm embraces the economy of today, and celebrates it as a way to redefine who we are.
We are too often seen as consumers in a disposable society, whose primary interest is what new toy to buy, and how much garbage we generate. When faced with difficult times, we buckle down reluctantly, anxiously waiting when the times are better and we can return to a time of "prosperity", prosperity in this context meaning buying more stuff. Our societies are based on the concept that worth is measured in goods, and the ultimate health of the collective is based in gross national product and balance of trade. We work to buy, and we buy to work.
But what if we broke the cycle?
*Here's a bit of trivia: you might know about DC's Hooverville, but are you aware that the largest Hooverville was in St. Louis?
