I own four cloth shopping bags. I’m not using them on every trip, but I do manage to take them with me for about half of my errands.
It does add “one more thing to remember” when you are shopping. Grab that shopping list, the coupon box or binder, the grocery or drugstore flier, and then [...]

Monroe on a Budget is a frugal living blog based in Monroe, Michigan. This is my second year participating in Blog Action Day. The 2008 Blog Action Day theme is: Climate change.
What on earth does frugal living have to do with climate change?
If you are already a frugal person or working toward such a lifestyle, [...]

Wal-Mart has an electronics trade-in program with free shipping.
You go to the trade-in page on the Wal-Mart site, look up your unwanted (unloved, unused, sniff!) digital camera, cell phone, whatever, answer a few questions and you’ll get a quote.
You’ll get money if your stuff still has “market value.” The trade-in money you get back is [...]

Energy-saving home improvements can be aggravating for the newly frugal or those new to do-it-yourself projects. Reason: sometimes you end up with the same electric, water or gas bill anyway because the rates went up despite whatever you are doing to keep the usage down.
Unfortunately, those rates are going to go up anyway. Do you [...]

We converted most of our light fixtures to the new CFL light bulbs about a year and a half ago.
The lights that we left on the old-fashioned technology were the applications where the standard CFL bulb just wasn’t going to be the right product: such as ceiling fans, stove fan and bathroom fixtures.
This summer, several [...]

If you’ve got useful stuff you no longer need, but don’t have the time for a garage sale (or you have stuff that didn’t sell at a garage sale), look for ways to donate it rather than dump it.
Whether or not you get a tax break, there are people in southeast Michigan and northwest Ohio [...]

Sarah Noel of Frugal Village explains how to re-use the dish soap bottles.
I like the plant food idea.

I am working this weekend, covering various assignments for The Monroe Evening News. One of the reports I will have for tomorrow’s newspaper was the Monroe County Earth Day Fair held today in downtown Monroe, Mich.
I would have stopped by even if I wasn’t on duty as a reporter today. I picked up a stack [...]

This post is for my readers in Monroe, Mich.:
Dorsch Memorial Branch Library, 18 W. First St., Monroe, has a standing book sale at the front porch as you enter the library. The books are available by donation.
Today, the book selections included romance novels, children’s books, cookbooks and history books. I didn’t find anything I wanted [...]

In honor of Earth Day, Reynolds Wrap foil has a rebate offer for its new recycled aluminum foil.
Here’s the catch: you can only download the rebate form on Earth Day, which is Wednesday April 22. But you can go to the Reynolds Wrap site now and sign up for an e-mail reminder.
Thanks to Kelly for [...]