Over the past weekend my family and I went to West Virginia to camp with my wife’s parents. We went to Blackwater Falls State Park. The rest of the folks stayed a couple of days longer than I did because it was crunch time at work. Okay, that wasn’t the entire reason. I had to … Read more
Certain appliances can act like dripping faucets on your electric bill because they consume electricity constantly. Two of the big culprits are cordless devices and devices that are activated with a remote control. We have an electric toothbrush. I had thought that the toothbruch loses its charge pretty quickly, but we’ve had the charger unplugged … Read more
With Memorial Day around the corner and gas hovering around $3/gallon, the cost of getting around is on a lot of people’s minds. It’s on mine, for sure. Last time I gassed up I was pleasantly surprised to see that my Oldsmobile Achieva got over 31 MPG — over the past few months it had … Read more
You may have heard of this trick before. You can save energy on the operation of your freezer (or refrigerator) if it’s only partly filled by freezing (or cooling) bottles of water. It takes energy initially to get the water down to temperature, but once it’s down there, it will hold its temperature a lot … Read more
My wife and mother-in-law found a great deal for a toddler bed today. One of the founding members of the Dahlgren Lions Club runs a used-goods store called the Opp Shop. He used to have a large section of an old pickle factory full of used items, and would allow non-profit organizations to come in … Read more
We have a whole bunch of things that I’ve been meaning to sell, but just haven’t gotten to for one reason or another. Now, with others in the household wanting to take action to de-junk, I’m motivated 🙂 There’s a flea market on the first Saturday of each semi-warm month in our town, so this … Read more
No Credit Needed has a post on free software he uses every day. I’m a big proponent of open-source software, since I think it’s every bit as good as commercial software, and often is better. It’s also usually really frugal — there’s great stuff out there! If I need something done with software, two of … Read more
MyMoneyBlog recently posted on how to get cheap toner using eBay and a Staples buyback of empty print cartridges for $3 each. I had thought that Staples must make out like a bandit with this deal — surely the cartridge is a lot more expensive than the toner, so they can recover material worth many … Read more