Little Daily Actions - Frugal and Creation-Friendly Tips

I'm going to recommend two simple things I think large families with small children can do that really are workable.  I know this from experience.  I grew up in a large family of 12 where my mother was extremely frugal of necessity and she managed to do these things.  I try to incorporate them into our lifestyle as well with a family of seven.

1) Switch to cloth napkins and nix the paper towels.

Cloth napkins, dish towels, dish cloths, aprons, etc can be purchased inexpensively and even second hand.  If you are a large family, you are already doing lots of laundry.  Napkins, dish towels, rags, etc can be thrown in with other towels, sheets, garments that you are already washing.  Old t-shirts and other old clothing articles make perfect rags for cleaning and dusting.  You don't need to buy sponges and microfiber clothes to clean your house.

You might want to keep one roll of paper towel hidden away just in case.  I keep one under my utility sink in the mud room, I forget it's there most of the time.  Occasionally, when there is something super gross to clean up, I'll use it,  but for regular daily use, we have dish towels for drying dishes and hands.  And we have cloth napkins.  Assign a napkin to each person for a day or maybe a couple of days.  Keep it at your table with a napkin ring designated for that person.  I recently made napkin 'rings' from wooden clothespins that I labelled with each person's name.  Give them their clean napkin, at the end of each meal they clip their clothespin to the napkin and keep at their place at the table.  Now if you have young children who are going to play with the clothespins, napkin rings, or whatever you might think of to use, perhaps it would be better to simply keep the napkin at the child's regular place at the table.  We always used our table for homeschooling though, so things got shoved to the center of the table and rather jumbled. 

*** Important point!  You may wonder, well what do I drain my bacon or sausage on if I don't have paper towel???  You can use paper bags for this or any kind of brown paper of that sort.  I buy my coffee in bulk in paper bags and I use these for draining purposes (and other purposes as well!).

Photo from The Spruce article 17 Things You Should Never Put in a Dishwasher

2) Strategy for Only Having to Run the Dishwasher Once a Day.  Do the following:

Assign a cup or drinking glass to each person each day.  They keep this cup by their napkin!

Now you might have a couple of extra cups used somehow throughout the day, but when it comes time to pack and run the dishwasher 7 to 10 or even 12 cups or glasses will not fill the top of the dishwasher up.  Instead you can put some smaller plates and bowls in the top rack of the dishwasher and fill the lower rack with dinner plates and the other smaller plates or bowls that didn't fit in the top.

You need enough sandwich plates for everyone, enough bowls for everyone and enough dinner plates for everyone.  And then a couple more, for guests or for unexpected uses.

Breakfast:  you can use your bowls here for oatmeal or yogurt.  Or your sandwich plates for eggs and toast.

Lunch:  whatever you didn't use at breakfast you use now!  So if you used bowls at breakfast, lunch should be something that doesn't require a bowl (like soup!), but rather sandwiches, mac & cheese (though that can served in bowls, if you used the smaller plates for breakfast).

Dinner:  use your dinner plates unless you need bowls for chili or stew you happen to be serving for dinner.  Then you have two options, you can have something for lunch that doesn't need a plate at all, like sandwiches which you can serve right on the table or you can use your bigger dinner plates at lunch and your bowls at dinner.  I also like to use saucers as smaller supplemental plates where I can stick side dishes or muffins or what have you.

The point is if you plan it right and have enough dishes (buy extra second hand), you can get away with running your dishwasher once a day right before you go to bed.  And it really isn't very inconvenient at all.  Like, hardly a blip on the screen once you get into the rhythm.

For silverware, only use what you need at each meal.  You don't need to formally set the table for every meal.  For instance, if I am serving vegetarian chili, corn muffins and carrot sticks for dinner, I only need to put out soup spoons for the chili and knives for buttering the corn muffins.  Carrot sticks are finger food.

 Also, buy extra silverware, second hand, so that you have enough to get you through three meals.  I remember struggling with not having enough silverware early in my mothering career and my lovely mother in law noticed it and gave us an extra set of flatware for Chanukah/Christmas.  It made all the difference!  What a help it was.  And all that silverware can be washed in your dishwasher at night.

Given this scenario, be prepared to hand scrub your pots and pans and serving dishes, platters, colanders, slow cooker, chopping knives, etc.  Also you'll have to scrub your mixing bowls, casserole dishes and chopping boards by hand too.  But clean these as you go and learn to cook mostly simple dishes that only require one, two or three pots/bowls to make.  Things that are more elaborate are saved for special occasions.  And if on special occasions you do have to run your dishwasher twice, well at least you know you don't usually do that.

NB:  Remember, plastic containers, etc really shouldn't be washed in the dishwasher anyway.  At least if you really need to, put it up on top only.  Hot, melt-y plastic and food don't go together well!