If you ask people to define homesteading one word that is sure to pop up is frugal. So are homesteaders cheap? I don’t think that frugal and cheap are necessarily synonymous when you are talking about homesteading. Being more self-sustainable requires you to think outside the box and make more things, create new ways to get things done, and to focus monetary resources on other areas. We have started doing things to become more frugal in order to shift resources from those areas to others where we are not able to make our own. One thing we have done is to start making our own laundry soap. We use the recipe from our friends over at The Frugal Find as we find it to be the simplest and cheapest while getting the job done better than the store bought versions. We also no longer buy milk. We drink our raw goat milk (frugality being only one of many reasons that I’ll address another day). We are also able to make some of our own butter which reduces the amount we spend on butter at the store. I have also made several pieces of our furniture from freely sourced wood which means less money spent on furnishings. We supplement our home heating with wood fires in the winter and we hope to eventually add a wood stove that will replace our current fireplace. That would give us a twofold advantage in that it would help heat the house more efficiently and it would double as a stove in the event of power outages or some kind of disaster that would disrupt electricity. Cedar Hill Chronicles has a great post on some other frugal tips as well as links to many of our fellow bloggers from Homestead Bloggers Network. Let me know how you are being frugal in your homesteading wherever you are. Have a great day and God bless!
