simple + natural living... one crumb at a time.
If you buy organic ground beef from Costco, you’ve probably noticed that you get 4 pounds but it is divided into 3 packages. Each package is 1.33 or 1.34 pounds, which is annoying because recipes always call for a round number (like 1 pound, 2 pounds, etc.)
So how do you take these three packages of beef and make them into four 1 pound portions? You could open them all up and weigh out 1 pound 4 times. Or you can do it the super quick and easy way. No math, no weighing. [Read more…]
I really wanted to make my own shampoo. It just seemed like such a great way to save money AND control the ingredients in my shampoo. I tried a few different recipes, including a couple from one of my favorite blogs/go-to resources for all-things-DIY-bath-and-beauty. But DIY shampoo just didn’t work for me.
The recipes I tried used basic ingredients. I didn’t want to have to buy anything “weird” or end up with a boat load of an ingredient because a shampoo recipe called for a tiny bit. So maybe I would have had better success if I had been willing to expand my ingredient criteria. But aside from saving money and controlling the ingredients, I also wanted it to be easy.
I don’t like DIY recipes that aren’t easy.
If you follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or like my Facebook page, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve got gardening on the brain! We started our 4×8 square foot garden a couple years ago and I’m super excited to get going on it again. We’ve still got a good 4-6″ of snow on the ground, but it’ll be gone soon and it’ll be time to get our hands in the dirt.
Are you planning a vegetable garden this year? I know we learned LOTS of lessons with our little 4×8 raised bed last year and will be doing many things differently this year. Luckily for all of us, there are some great looking Kindle ebooks on organic gardening that are free* right now. Here are 6 to check out! [Read more…]
It is hard to believe it has already been a month since I last shared a Costco haul with you. Because Costco is a membership wholesaler – meaning you have to purchase an annual membership in order to take advantage of shopping at their stores and enjoying their low prices – people often want to know what products Costco carries before they shell out the membership fee. So I thought I’d let you know what products my family enjoys.
As you may remember, I typically pick one thing to stock up on each month. This month, it was toilet paper. I don’t know why, but I have a weird dislike for buying toiler paper. I think you can probably get TP cheaper using coupons at big box retailers, but this huge pack from Costco is still a good price and it will last my family a long time. Which means I don’t have to take up space in my cart/trunk when I do my regular grocery shopping next week. Other than the TP, I also got some fresh fruit, string cheese, and bread. Here’s the details:
When you are price shopping string cheese, make sure you are looking at the price per ounce, not just the price per piece. Some brands make each stick less than an ounce, so if you just look at the price per stick you aren’t really comparing “apples-to-apples”. Also, I want to say that I do feel guilty whenever I buy individually wrapped cheese. That is a lot of plastic. So I also buy block cheese and just cut it up as needed for snacks. However, it seems to be tough to find organic block cheese and rather easy to find organic individually wrapped string cheese.
I’ll be honest. This will probably be the last time I buy clementines at Costco. They are just sort of bland tasting. I purchased clementines at Costco one other time and had the same experience. I believe in second chances, so I tried it again; but they were not any better this time around. Maybe it is because they are technically out of season (which means I probably shouldn’t be buying them anyway). I have purchased Halos before, which are non-GMO, and they taste great. However, I do wonder about how growing practices effect bee population. But I digress…
I’ve had issues with grapes becoming soft and moldy too quickly. So I started this method for washing them to get them to keep longer:
I put the grapes (still on the vine) in bowls and pour a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and fill the rest of the way with water. I swish it around a bit to get the vinegar and water to mix and turn the grapes over to make sure the entire surface is washed. Then I drain and rinse them. Then I transfer them back to their carton and store them in the refrigerator. If I buy grapes in a bag instead of a carton, I store them in the bowls I used to rinse. They really do keep much longer after doing this.
Again, when you are comparing prices on bread, be sure to compare units fairly. Don’t just look at the price per loaf. Some loaves are bigger than others. You might compare price per ounce or price per slice instead. These loaves from Costco are pretty big. Also, this bread may not be organic (which Costco DOES carry, by the way – more on that in a sec.), but it is made without high fructose corn syrup. Read the ingredients list on the bread you typically buy. You might be surprised to see that HFCS is one of the ingredients. Yuck. Ok, so as far as organic bread goes, my first choice is always organic (my IDEAL choice is organic AND local). But I went non-organic this time just because that is how my budget worked out. If I have to choose, I choose organic dairy and produce over bread and other processed foods. That’s just my preference though.
Toilet paper is a tough one to price compare, in my opinion. You can look at the price per roll, or price per sheet, or price per square foot. But even that doesn’t tell you much if you have to use twice as much of the cheaper option. So I honestly don’t spend a lot of time thinking about price when it comes to TP. I know this is a pretty good price, although probably not the cheapest.
Linked up at Living Well Spending Less.