Sometimes, Grandma knows best! That is certainly with these old fashioned skills that are easy to learn and will save you money!
There are many ways to pinch a penny. Some of the most practical are being phased out over the decades. Many of the economically-minded skills of our ancestors are slowly being forgotten and losing their place in our modern world.
Here are a few practical old-fashioned skills that we can all learn to save money.
🍞 Bread Making
One of the most rewarding skills you can learn is the art of bread making. Sure, a store-bought loaf can be had for as little as $1 if you’re purchasing the lowest quality bread available. But if you’re willing to learn how to DIY, you can create a cheaper and far superior product by making it yourself.
The beauty of bread making is that it can be as simple or complex as you’d like, and require as much or as little time as you can spare. If you’re willing to put in some elbow grease, the only equipment required is basic: your hands and an oven. If you have less time, invest in a Bread Maker
to take most of the work out of bread making.
Homemade Bread Recipes: Homemade Breadsticks, Loaf bread, French Bread
👚 Washing Clothes by Hand
Most of us aren’t going to whip out the wash board at the end of the week and wash our clothes by hand. But, depending on your living situation, washing your clothes by hand can be a lot more practical than it initially sounds. For example, if you’re an apartment dweller without a washer/dryer on site, weekly visits to coin-operated laundromats can become expensive.
Consider using a washing board, plunge clothes washing system or a DIY clothes washing contraption of your own to save money on the cost of laundromat visits. We’ve covered the washing, but what about the drying? Dry your clothes on an indoor drying rack. Or if you have outdoor space, hang a clothes line and let Mother Nature do the work for you.
🧵 Sewing
Sewing is a highly practical skill to have in your money-saving arsenal. A basic understanding of sewing can allow you to mend torn and tattered clothing and make them stretch years beyond their original lifespan.
Someone with a slightly more advanced sewing skill can create home décor items such as curtains, throw pillows or chair covers. Someone with a truly honed skill can create their own clothing (or even their own wedding gown) and more. The sky is the limit in terms of what you can make by sewing-your-own.
Sewing tutorials: Sewing Basics, How to Use a Sewing Machine, How to Hem Jeans
🧑🌾 Gardening
I recently read a quote by Ron Finley that read “growing your own food is like printing your own money.” This couldn’t be more true. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to purchase produce on a budget, and we’re not even talking organics yet.
While there is a learning curve, and cost, involved in maintaining a fruitful garden, once you get the hang of it, you can save hundreds each year on the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables. Better yet, growing your own food removes the cost barrier between your wallet and placing organic food on your table.
A comprehensive guide on “A Complete Beginners Guide to Home Gardening” can be found here! This source will walk you through all the how-to questions and how much it costs to start a garden. If you live in a smaller space, he shows how to make the most of that with different kids of gardens!
If you want a resource to really dig deep into soil composition along with a true step by step guide to start your own garden, try out this one! The detailed instructions can’t be beat whether you are a newbie just starting out or have a few years of soil under your nails.
Gardening Resources: Container Gardening 101, Square Foot Gardening, Planning a Garden
🥒 Canning
Gardening and canning go hand in hand, they’re natural extensions of one another; you need vegetables to preserve before you can preserve your food, and you need a method of food preservation in order to safe-guard your harvest from spoiling. Canning allows you to enjoy your harvest well into the snowy winter months and beyond, allowing you to keep your grocery costs low year-round.
Resources on canning: Canning for Beginners, Canning Potatoes, Canning Zucchini
🍽️ Dehydrating
If canning seems intimidating, learning how to dehydrate food can be the perfect way to preserve nature’s bounty. Dehydrating has less of a learning curve involved and it can be quite inexpensive, as basic low-end dehydrators can be purchased inexpensively
. Dehydrating may be more practical for small-space dwellers as it minimizes the size of dehydrated foods considerably.
Resources on dehydrating foods: Dehydrated Cucumbers, Oven-Dried Strawberries, Dehydrated Bananas
🐄 Yogurt Making
If you consume yogurt regularly, making your own yogurt can save you a considerable amount of money. There are several ways to go about making homemade yogurt. You can use the oven method, the cooler method, the crockpot method, etc. Personally, I use the crockpot method since it’s such an easy, set-it-and-forget-it method of making yogurt.
The savings derived from yogurt making in itself are notable, but there’s no reason to stop there. With a few additional steps, your homemade yogurt could produce Greek yogurt, yogurt cheese (a cream-cheese-like spread), and it can even be used as a healthy base for DIY ranch dressing. I also like to make homemade smoothie packs for under $0.59 using homemade yogurt.
Of course, yogurt produces whey, which can be used in a multitude of ways. One you may not have known about: whey can be used to make homemade ricotta cheese. How’s that for efficiency? 🙂
Resources on making yogurt: Crockpot Method, Cooler Method, Oven Method
How many of these old-fashioned skills do you have?
Would you like to mention additional frugal skills that I may not have mentioned?
My husband bought me a pressure canner as a surprise so I will try it next year. I hang my clothes outside. I wonder it would save anything to hand wash. We do garden and the veggie taste wonderful! Nice post!
Wow! I’m a little late to the party — thanks for posting on Facebook. 🙂 I receive notifications there — better for me than emails.
Anyhoo I have a few to add:
knitting and/or crochet — scarves, hats, mittens to name a few
home and storage organization
basic auto and/or bicycle repair — patching tires, changing oil, etc. — our high school here offers a class to anyone who wants to
participate
basic pet/vet care
home cleaning
wood chopping and learning which woods will burn this year and which to allow to season
growing and caring for fruit trees
Any skill you learn now can be bartered in the future for other work you may not want or be able to do as well as for goods or cash.
Super post!! Thanks again.
🙂
Yes! These are all amazing. Basic pet/veterinary care is something a lot of people don’t think of. I lucked out and my high school had a small animals/veterinary science class that I took, so I now know how to suture, give injections, and spot common ailments — all things that most people spend a lot of extra money at the clinic for. Thanks for adding all of this!
Great article, Jazmin! These are great skills that are essential to being self-sufficient. Many of these I’ve tried, and I’m looking forward to trying yogurt making and dehydrating.
Thank you, Lizalyn!
I also knit and crochet. I make containers and bags of all kinds, besides sewing clothing. I have crocheted Christmas gifts for the last 5 or more years, and people are grateful for handmade gifts. These are great ideas and I will keep them in mind.
One note on the laundromat… if you’re an apartment dweller without laundry facilities, consider a portable washing machine. For an investment of $200, I was able to do all of our laundry by hooking up the portable washer to the kitchen sink, and line-drying in the living room. I knew from our budget that this saved us $40/month at the laundromat, so the washer “paid for itself” in just 5 months. When we moved out of that apartment, I sold the washer for $150 – we live in an urban area, so demand was high and it was in good shape, even a year and a half later.
My husband’s the baker at our house, so we nearly always have fresh bread (I am a lucky, lucky girl!) and it is so much better than store-bought. Especially if you’re buying the lowest-priced bread, which often has high fructose corn syrup – something we try to avoid.
Sadly, the squirrels ate every last tomato out of our garden, so the savings I was hoping to gain (and the canning I was hoping to do) were a bust this year. I will be studying up on best methods for squirrel defense this winter, in hopes of actually getting to eat our tomatoes next year!
Thanks for all the great tips!
I enjoyed this post, and I completely agree ! I was lucky enough to have been taught these skills when I was growing up , and I taught my boys as well.
A note about canning! You can just start small, and build from there . Buy your jars, lids, etc. in the Fall. Most stores put canning supplies on clearance at this time of year as the big canning push is over. Then you are set for canning season the next summer. I also find jars etc. at yard sales and estate sales really cheap. The initial investment will pay itself off after 3 uses. I also invested in reusable Tattler lids. You can use them over and over again, and they don’t contribute to landfills. The jars are great for storing dry goods, and you can use them for making gifts in a jar such as cookies and soups. Great holiday gifts. I just finished canning 80 lbs. of pears, and the cost came to about 75 cents a quart, and that includes the cost of the jars and lids. The best part is that I can control the sugar content, and I know what is in them! Thanks for your frugal tips!
Ah… I didn’t read down far enough to find an answer similar to mine.
Sorry.
I have gotten boxes of perfectly good canning jars at the DAV and other thrift stores. So many people clean out Grandma’s stash and just take it to Goodwill, etc.
I take advantage of many of these tips. This was my first year canning and plan to have a bigger garden next year so I can do even more!
That’s awesome, Mandy!
Great post! I also do all of these things regularly and plan on writing a similar post soon. I would caution that gardening and canning can become expensive if your not careful. For example, I buy berries to make jam which when you add the cost of buying lids, sugar, fruit, pectin, etc then a $2 jar is probably going to be cheaper. If you can what you grow or get for free though then it’s a great money saver!
PS I’ve made yogurt before, but can never seem to get it thick enough even after straining. Was yours runny too?
The cost of canning is one of the reasons I personally haven’t done it yet. I only have one good source of consistently inexpensive produce in my area: the U-pick farms. And they don’t always have u-pick available.
I’ve only had one or two instances where my yogurt was too runny. The trick to getting it really thick (if you’re doing the crockpot method) is to let it sit in the crockpot for at least twelve hours. And then transfer it to a lined colander (I use coffee filters) over a large bowl to strain out the whey. Let it sit in the fridge for about four hours and most of the whey will be drained out, resulting in a thicker yogurt. If it isn’t thick enough yet, let it sit in the fridge for a few more hours.
I should probably update my crockpot yogurt post soon. I did it as a frugal experiment and linked to the recipe I tried, but that website is now down.
I thought that canning initially was not very cost effective either.. But, with continuing my craze for canning…I found the jars were paid for within the first 3 years. And, the lids (if you use the Tattlers) will be free within two years.
Fall is a great time for stocking up more cheaply on jars and such. The summer rush of canning is over. And don’t forget Kijiji and Freecycle. I went out there and asked and asked for free jars. You’d be amazed how many people will just give the jars away.
wow, didn’t mean to write a book, sorry!
Keep on writing. 🙂 I always love hearing what you have to say, Gwen!
I am too nervous to try making my own yogurt and won’t buy a bread machine because of the small size of our kitchen, but I just made bread for the first time with my own sourdough starter and it didn’t kill us:) The only canning I have really done is jams/jellies, again the fear of doing the more challenging ones wrong holds me back. My roomie and I both sew like the dickens and the gardens are the pride of the neighborhood. We both enjoy being old school as much as we can.
Wish I had the guts to barter like Rebeca mentioned. I trade fruits and veggies with neighbors and that is it.
Phyllis asks a really good question! I grew up doing this stuff even though I came from a upper middle class family in the LA area. For me, it was part hanging out with great and regular grandparents, home ec,, only child so needed stuff to do that didn’t involve others, and a serious case of the fidgets so I needed stuff to do with my hands. My mom can’t even cook to this day and other than sewing my Halloween costumes, never did anything crafty, so it I surely didn’t get it from her!
Can’t imagine what I would do without knowing most of these things. It always shocks me when younger people can’t sew on a button, boil water, etc. My roommate’s son, 13 years old, can sew so well that he made his stepmom a small quilt for Christmas last year. He is one of a kind and so far doesn’t see that as too girly.
It’s always great when homemade bread doesn’t kill you. 😉 Homemade yogurt in the crockpot is so, so easy. I was nervous to try it too. But even my worst batch was still edible and tasted like yogurt… it was just a little thin.
Like you, my grandmother is the reason I have such a passion for frugality.
And your roommate’s son sounds quite talented!
I will have to pull out the crockpot and try a small amount And yes, I wish I could take credit for Zac, but I am just the one that makes him a bookworm, the rest is up to his momma. . We are a crazy family right now, but the most consistently supportive one that most of us have ever had. Wonderbar!
This is for Gwenn – I too was a nervous wreck when I started canning. The water bath was bad enough at first. I also live in the mountains, so I had to adjust for elevation. But I got started doing the jellies and relishes and I got comfortable with that. But pressure canning? YIKES!!! I did buy a pressure canner and kept it safe and sound in its box for 2 years – never used it because I was scared of doing it wrong (I wasn’t afraid it would explode – although everyone thought that’s what I was afraid of).
My husband runs the garden and I run the kitchen – last year he planted lots of bush beans and they all come at once – 1st pick was 6 1/2 lbs! I didn’t want to freeze them, so I dug out the pressure canner and got started. Well, after 1 false start (nerves) I ate dinner then had a little sip of courage (Wild Turkey American Honey) – just a small sip and went for it. It was not as scary as I thought. I eventually did a few more batches and ended up the summer with 19 quarts of stringbeans that will last us through the winter.
So the moral of this long, long story, is don’t be afraid, Gwenn! You can do it! And you will love it! I hope I hear from you that I was right!
Fellow Fearful Canner (Former)
Kate
Really a no-brainer. So who doesn’t do all of the above and take it as a part of life?
Ther is really no other way to raisse a family.
I agree… very basic skills. But so often forgotten. It is a great way to raise a family!
Most families do not do these tings. This is a great post. My husband grew up on canned spinach and boxed macaroni and cheese, so no, it is not basic skills. For our present life these are wonderful amazing skills. Thanks for the delightful post. Glad you are frugal. 🙂
Thanks, Sonia!
I want to have a little garden next year. I’ve said this for 2 years now but I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m going to do some planning and in the spring I will plant my cucumbers, tomatoes and what nots. Wish me luck! I think it’s cool you can – can too. I should think about doing that as well. I remember as a kid my grandma would always be canning.
I had a little container garden about two years ago. It wasn’t in the best condition (since I bought my plants on a whim at Home Depot!) but the few tomatoes I did get to taste off of my growing veggies were pretty awesome!
Just wanted to let you know this is a perfect time to start planning your garden. If you don’t have too much snow on the ground, try this…plan where your garden will be (6 hours of sunlight), then put down cardboard or several layers (not the glossy ads) on the area. By spring, most of the growth under the cardboard will be gone. There are many useful sights to help you plan. Only plant a few things that are easy the first time…maybe tomatoes (Heirloom seeds, please, for all plants), cucumbers, peppers are all easy to start with. You will love going out and picking things for your dinner! I can’t keep peas in the garden or to save because my grandkids eat them right from the patch!!
I too do all of these. I can’t believe the number of people who don’t have these basic skills in their tool boxes.
Is it an age thing?
Is it related to how you grew up?
Was it because home economics was still a req’d class when I was in school?
I am glad I can do these. It saves me a great deal of money in these rough economic times.
PS Love your blog.
Honestly, I think ALL of what you just mentioned plays a huge part in it! It wasn’t until a few years ago that I developed an interest in any of these things because they simply weren’t on my radar (grew up in a big city, still young and didn’t take home ec.).
And thank you so much, Phyllis!
I think it comes down to
1) children being raised with the benefit of learning these and other BASIC life skills (most Moms work and don’t have time
and 2) that darmnable “instant gratification” thing this world esp. the USA, is plagued with.
Um, sorry – children being raised withOUT the benefit.
I think age is part of it for many people, and I don’t know about home ec, but the biggest part is definitely how you grew up/were raised. I mean, i took home ec (and learned absolutely nothing, mind you) and was born in the nineties, but I had all of these skills by the age of fifteen. My mom is stay-at-home, has taught all of us five kids at home for at least a few years each, and is a very sustainably-minded woman. Sewing I learned more from my grandmothers, one of whom grew up dirt-poor and the other of whom is a professional seamstress, so I fully plan to make my own wedding dress (so far I’ve done homecoming and senior prom dresses). So, yeah, I think mostly it’s how you’re raised and what you value. My fiance wasn’t raised this way, and doesn’t have a lot of these skills (although his mom is a theater major with lots of costuming skill, so the sewing is there at least), but he’s on-board to learn them. I don’t really know where I was going with all of that, but I guess just all of those factors can help but mostly it’s how you’re raised and what you value.
Necessity IS the Mother of invention……..but there is one caveat today, time vs cost. I don’t think it’s worth raising tomatoes for one person, but learning to cut your own hair, wax your lip/eyebrows, give yourself a pedicure…save tons. Learning Electrical, Woodworking, Plumbing 101 even if you hired out, at least your less likely to get ripped off. Knowledge is king. I’ve taught myself a lot of skills, but I find people are lazy today and expect me to do for them……so the best skill I’ve learned is…….NO!
Another one is bartering. Whether it is negotiating for a better price, or trading goods and services. This used to be such a common part of life, and today is very rarely used.
Very, very true!
I do all of these regularly (and, yes, I did make my own wedding dress). The only one I haven’t tried is yogurt making (although I have made my own soft cheese before with great success).
What these all have in common is that they are self-sufficiency skills. We’ve got such great technology now that does so much for us, and it’s so easy to just go to a store and “buy a new one” when something breaks that we almost don’t feel the need to learn how to do things for ourselves – like sew on a button or grow our own tomatoes.
But seriously, I almost choked when I saw my friend throw away a barely work, $60 blouse just because a button popped off. Seriously???
Love that you made your own wedding dress. How cool! I think it’s important to have at least a few self-sufficiency tricks up your sleeve not only for the cost-savings aspect, but also for peace of mind.
I would’ve been shocked too. That would’ve been an easy fix!
I do all of these things too. The sewing is my favorite tho and I too cannot believe how few women can sew..there is soooo much you can do with sooooo little. Whenever I can I will try and teach a young woman to sew, knit or crochet.. it’s becoming a lost art.