Green/sustainable living ideas that also save money...

[Startingagainandagain]

I finally managed to buy a small own house with a garden & I am trying to both save money, be as sustainable as I can and make the best use of the space I have.

So far I:

• started a vegetable and fruits garden to grow my own food
• started an herb garden
• collect rain water to use in the garden
• furnished the house with second furniture I up-cycled and my own art & craft
• joined my local 'freegle' group to keep an eye on free stuff that is offered
• am saving to buy a bike so I don't have to rely on public transport as much
• dry clothing outside as much as possible too
• thinking of selling stuff I don't need (clothes) on Facebook Marketplace.

Are there any other tricks I am missing that you could suggest?

I don't have the money to do big things like install solar panels but I am looking for ideas that I might have overlooked :)

Thank you everyone for the additional tips!

Definitely going to use bar soap/shampoo from now on and get myself a reusable bottle I can take to work/on the train.

With regard to gardening, it shouldn't cost you money. I try to regard garden centres as museums and spending money in them as an act of terrific failure. Try taking cuttings of things already growing in your garden. Even if only 1 in 3 cuttings take, it is a free plant which you can plant somewhere or swap with someone else. I'm not very scientific about it, but you don't need to be when cuttings are free. Just cut a bit off and stick it in a pot of soil. Water it and see what happens. Free pots are everywhere - freecycle, stacked up near the bins of anywhere that sells plants (ask first, but they always let me have as many as I want), use containers you have knocking about or are about to throw out. Collect coffee grounds from coffee shops - they often stack bags of them on a table for people to take. Grow plants from food seeds and old potatoes. Swap with people. Share packs of seeds (they often have more than you would want in them), learn to seed save. Find your tribe and swap stuff.

Buying anything is never green. Death to the GDP!

Air fryer and slow cooker. I hardly ever use the oven now. Decent size chest freezer (chest so cold air doesn’t fall out) fill with empty ice cream tubs with water if not full for efficiency. Growing your own sounds great but you get 10 weeks worth of runner beans in a single week. Means you can also buy offers and freeze short dated. Herbs freeze well.

I wash everything in cold water except towels and sheets, dog bedding and I up the temperature if there is a bug in the house.

And I mean cold. Not 30 or 20 degrees, COLD.

Take up a craft such as knitting, crochet or sewing so that you can make gifts for people instead of having to buy, as well as having the enjoyment of the craft itself.

Agree with fixing and altering clothes, visible mending and invisible mending are both brilliant to learn to avoid having to replace things.

Lots of tips on growing by using food waste here. I am trying the strawberry one. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C43ZiAPKfeu/?igsh=MWQ4Y3E3M24wZGhpdQ==

I planted 3 raspberry canes years ago, cheap ones from a supermarket like £2.99, I now have 2 metres square of them as they send out runners and new ones appear every year. I freeze them and they usually last til xmas. I make jam and cakes with them. I found those more cost effective than strawberries which just got eaten by the slugs. Lettuce is also easy to grow and you can just pick a few leaves as and when you want them rather than buying a whole one then wasting some.

Look out for cut and come again crops like kale, cavel nero they're pretty hardy but you just have to protect from hungry slugs and cabbage white butterflies who like to lay eggs on them as the caterpillars will scoff the lot. Rhubarb is a great fruit to plant as well.

I use an Ecoegg for washing. It saves loads of money because I don’t need to buy washing liquid / powder, cuts down massively on packaging & also means I don’t get the gunk in my washing machine drawer.

https://www.ecoegg.com

Thank you everyone! this thread has been great.

So far based on advice I:

• started my own composting bin outside

-stopped buying hand-soap in plastic containers and used bars of soap instead. Will do the same with shampoo/conditioners when the ones I have in bottles run out

-I also made my own hair and skin masks this weekend with things like honey, coconut and banana. Lovely smell and texture!

-I am also cutting down on the kitchen towel rolls but using the washable ones that were suggested

-my veggies are starting to grow :). It guess it will be an experiment this year as to what grows well and what doesn't. But I also take the point about freezing things.

I am still saving to get myself a sewing machine and second hand bikes as the next steps.

Also I wonder what everyone uses in term of cat litter? I have had a rescue cat for a few months and still trying to work out what is best to use.

Cat litter - buy bales of horse bedding. Very cheap, and I just put the old litter onto the flowerbeds where it mulches weeds and breaks down pretty fast into soil. (I have 15 cats, so this is my speciality ;) )

Living a more sustainable life is something I’ve been doing for the past year now.

My partner and I don’t drive because we don’t need to. We live in a city and walk to most places, but if we need to go further afield, then we use public transport.

I take a reusable water bottle with me everywhere I go, I haven’t bought a bottle of water in years - must have saved me a fortune!

I’ve been a vegetarian for a number of years, but I rely on lentils to add to my pasta dishes etc.

I don’t buy cosmetics or clothes unless it genuinely needs replacing and I have no other alternative.

We have a number of water-saving devices fitted to help us reduce water waste. We have a regulated shower head, an aerated kitchen stream and a four minute timer for the shower. These were completely free of charge from our water board and we’re very happy with it all. Look into it, if interested!

We bought a draught excluder a few months ago, which was £3 in the Dunelm sale. It must have paid for itself by now! It seems easy to make your own out of materials you have laying around the home, though!

We’re looking at upgrading our loft insulation as ours doesn’t meet current standards. We can’t afford it yet though, ironically!

I’d be interested in further tips, if anyone has anymore?

We have Oodies too, they must have saved us a fortune on our heating bills!

Thank you @NameChange101113.

I am a bit further down my sustainable/low cost journey now and manage to get a lot out of my small garden in term of Fruits, vegs and cooking herbs.

All my cleaning products and home fragrances/potpourri are homemade now and so are most of my beauty products.

I got a free bike from Freegle and many more bits and pieces for the house and garden (free garden tools for example) that way.

I even made plant pots out of ceramic tiles that someone gave away for free.

The one thing I am missing is a sewing machine but I am saving to get that next :).

Sounds like you are doing really well op 🙂 well done! Would you mind sharing the recipes for your homemade beauty products?

Put a brick in your toilet cistern. Reduces the water used in each flush.

Buy a hot drinks flask, cold water bottle and plastic boxes for bulk cooking. Every time you go out, take your own drink and snack. When cooking, make in bulk and freeze portions for future dinners. Adding kidney beans, lentils, chickpeas etc to sauces is a cheap and filling way if stretching your food budget.

Borrow from the library or friends- cuts down clutter, too.

It’s a fair bit of expenditure to start with but fitting programmable valves on radiators has saved us heating parts of the house unnecessarily. We have Hive but there are other systems available. People will say that you can just turn the valve up or down as you need it but working from home with a number of radiators to remember to turn on and off at varying times of the day just wasn’t going to happen.

Smart plugs have also been a good investment for us - the TV/dvd/soundbar sockets are pretty inaccessible so the smart plug lets us switch them on for the time we are using them rather than having them on standby 24 hours a day. I bought a power consumption monitor and worked out a plug controlling those devices would pay for itself in a year.

If you do go down this route, wait for Amazon Prime/Black Friday deals to save money buying them in the first place.

Google bike reuse charity for links to possible second hand bikes that will have been checked and refurbished.

Use reusable containers for packed lunches, leftovers etc or put them in a bowl covered with a plate. We do buy cling film and foil but a roll of each lasts for a couple of years I'd guess as we hardly use it and often reuse foil 2-3 times if it's not contaminated or can be cleaned.

Use old plastic bags for rubbish bags - eg those charity bags, mailing sacks etc. Any bag that comes your way, think of a way to reuse it rather than recycling it.

For cat litter, we use this one:

https://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/cats/cat_litter/greenwoods_cat_litter/greenwoods_clumping_wood_litter/475317?ref=reorder&activeVariant=475317.3

It lasts forever as it clumps really well and you can scoop it and can genuinely go for weeks without being changed. We foster rescue cats and have had dozens of them (which as an aside has taught me that it's not very sustainable to have pet cats - they eat a lot of meat and produce a lot of waste, plus kill wildlife) and have tried every sort of litter available and I think this is the most cost effective one - the very cheap clay ones need changing far more often so aren't cheap over time I don't think.

Unless your cars are house cats and never go out then why do they even need a litter tray? Start by leaving it outside for a week or so and then just remove it entirely.

Reducing food waste and the olio app have saved me a fortune. I have been using olio since March and in 6 months the app says I have saved £1250. In reality I wouldn't have bought some of the items and certainly not full price however we have knocked our grocery bill down to around £60 a week for a family of 4 largely due to my olio collecting. In order to make olio work you must have a freezer, you must be willing to go out after 9pm to collect and you must be polite to the fwh's who put themselves out to help the community. Most items get uploaded around 9pm and go pretty quick so if you look during the day it looks as though you can only get bread. That is not the case.

Soon/now is the time to start collecting conkers for making washing detergent. I did it last year and it worked brilliantly. I froze excess conkers to make more throughout the year.

Leeks and kale last right through the winter in the garden (also nothing seems to eat leeks, even deer) so I can make a pan of soup without going to the supermarket. I’m sure there are other veg -cabbages, Brussels sprouts …