When I was a kid, each year my Christmas stocking had a large orange in the toe. I always thought of this as a bit strange, so when I was a bit older, I asked my parents about the orange. It turns out that oranges were pretty hard to get ahold of when my father was young, so an orange in the stocking was considered a magnificent treat.

Two years ago, I thought this would be a fun tradition to continue with my own son, so I went out to the store a few days before Christmas. What did I find? Amazingly low prices on oranges. I don’t remember the exact price, but I bought multiple pounds of oranges, took them home, and made fresh orange juice out of them.

It turns out that December really is the cheapest time of the year to buy oranges. That’s because orange crops tend to be heavily harvested just as the winter months begin because oranges are very sensitive to freezing and, although oranges grow in very warm climates, freezing during the winter months is still a concern.

This same phenomenon holds for almost every kind of produce. To put it simply, produce is cheapest during the typical harvest season for that crop. Often, there are secondary products that see a price decline as well: for example, gardening supplies tend to go on sale at the same time that gardens are being harvested in your area.

Knowing this schedule and planning ahead a bit can be a big boon to your food budget. Obviously, seasonal food calendars are never exact because of both the vagaries of your local area as well as the year-to-year variations in food crops and in temperatures, but here are ten rules of thumb I use for my own fresh produce purchases (well, at least as fresh as I can acquire in northern Iowa).

Asparagus – late April and early May
Broccoli – late February and March
Cauliflower – late March and April
Cranberries – October
Oranges (all but Valencia) – December
Raspberries – mid-August
Strawberries – late June through early August
Sweet Corn – early August to early September
Turnips – February
Watermelon – July

These aren’t so much learned from my own garden but learned from when local stores tend to put produce on sale.

How do I take advantage of this?

One, I save recipes and meal ideas. If I have some ideas for asparagus, I save those asparagus ideas until the asparagus appears discounted and very fresh in late April. Out of season, the asparagus isn’t nearly as fresh and it’s also much more expensive. The same holds true for a lot of produce.

Two, I freeze some of the items. Many fruits and vegetables can be frozen and later thawed for meal use – sometimes the texture is a bit altered, but the flavor is always tremendous. If we do this, I just soak the items in water for a bit, then freeze them individually on a tray in the freezer. Once they’re frozen, I’ll put them in a bag or other container together and clearly label them. If you freeze them individually like this, they tend to not stick together (much) in other containers, making them easy to use later on.

This type of planning lets us get our fill of the produce in season, plus often try a few recipes again at the opposite point of the year. So, for example, we’ll often thaw asparagus in October or November for a recipe or two.

Three, it all comes back to using the grocery flyer. If I hang onto asparagus ideas, for example, I don’t even have to think about them until I see that asparagus is on sale. If that sale matches up with my rule of thumb about when those items should be fresh and on sale, I’ll spring at the opportunity to not only get a delicious fresh ingredient on sale, but also to use those ideas I’ve been storing up.

Plan ahead a little with your food and you’ll wind up saving a lot.

Megan writes in:

Congratulations on your third child! My husband and I are expecting our second child in February. I hope you’ll write an article about how to save money when another child comes along.

Your wish is my command, Megan. Here are some of the ways we’re preparing for our third child.

Diapers
As I’ve mentioned before, we cloth diaper our children at home (we occasionally use disposables when traveling or when others are watching our children). Doing this drastically reduces the diapering cost for later children.

To reduce the startup cost, we bought many of our cloth diapers on eBay. Some people might be shocked at this, but the truth is that we’ve never had a bad experience buying them on eBay. Most of the diapers we receive are in really good shape – nearly unused. I think this might be because people tried partial cloth diapering (with just a few) and found that it didn’t work well for them. I’ll say that for us, cloth diapering becomes easier the more we do it. It’s actually easier to have our child wear nothing but cloth for a week than half cloth and half disposable – there’s less clutter, for one, and when you use nothing but cloth, the whole thing becomes utterly routine.

Anyway, after your initial outlay of money, cloth diapering is extremely inexpensive (and really environmentally friendly to boot). The first batch of cloth diapers we purchased are about to be used for the third time, meaning the cost per use of these diapers is already lower than disposables and is about to go substantially lower. We simply won’t have to buy many diapers for this baby.

If you plan on having more than one child, give cloth diapering a shot. It’s not really cost effective for just one, but the savings are huge with the second, third, etc. child.

Clothes
Unless you’re absolutely sure that you’re not having any additional children, don’t throw away, give away, or sell the clothes from your earlier children. Fold them up, put them in a storage tub, and put them somewhere out of the way. Later on, you might make a conscious medical choice to no longer have children, at which point you can sell off the clothes. Otherwise, a big tub or two of infant, toddler, and kid clothes is like a hidden treasure trove.

Again, we have a ton of these things packed away for the next child. Since many of the baby-sized clothes are only worn a few times per child, many of the items look practically new, yet they’ll be on their third use. All the way along, it’s worthwhile to save clothes that can still afford some wear, because many children’s clothes (like t-shirts, jeans, and so on) work well for both genders. (We tend to buy lots of greens and yellows.)

Beds
What about a bed? Our solution is simple – we’re just going to upgrade the bed of the oldest child by looking for youth beds at yard sales and the like. Then, his younger sister will move into his old bed and her younger sibling will take her crib.

Just like clothes, beds work well as “hand me down” type items. That doesn’t mean that the oldest child always gets the new items and the others get the used ones – quite often, his items are used as well.

Toys
We try to consistently buy our children small numbers of very open-ended toys for their birthdays and for Christmases – building blocks and the like. By buying small numbers of items, we don’t clutter up our home (well… not too much). By buying sturdy items, they can take a beating and can easily be passed down. By buying open-ended items – like building blocks and art supplies – we have items that all of the children can use, often together. Our two children now have big art days where we cover the kitchen table or the living room table with paper and allow them to draw to their heart’s content, for example, and it will be easy for the next child to join in.

When Joe draws elaborate landscapes and Katie draws pictures of cars and houses, the youngest child can scribble. When Joe builds castles out of blocks and Katie builds towers, the youngest child can stack them. These are the kinds of toys they can all enjoy – and, to be honest, I quite often enjoy them, too.

Here’s the real key of all of this: if you’re thinking of having future children, keep the stuff you actually used. Put it in some storage boxes and stick it somewhere out of sight, clearly labeled. Similarly, focus your child-related purchases on sturdy things that will last through multiple children – plastic toys that easily break aren’t a good buy, but sturdy blocks are. Doing this alone will save you a lot of cash on future children without reducing their quality of life one bit.

Right now, I’m deeply involved with the editing process for my upcoming second book.

My first book was fairly easy to edit. Since it was mostly a list of ways to live cheap, the edits were either “does this way to live cheap fit in the book?” or grammatical choices.

This time around, though, the editing is much more intense – and more challenging. So far, the prologue has become the first chapter and the original first chapter has been splintered into bits and moved throughout the book. And we’re through two chapters so far.

The whole process has been fascinating. Mostly, it’s just a matter of taking the ideas and points (and much of the writing) I had earlier and streamlining them a bit. It’s really useful to have lots of sets of eyes looking at the book, as it improves the content.

Anyway, here are some interesting links from the past week.

Focus On What You can Control, Let Go Of What You Don’t I think this is a fundamental tenet of personal finance. We can control our own behavior, but we can’t control what others do. We can’t predict the future or avoid some of the things that might come our way, but we can create security against those situations. (@ dumb little man)

5 Tips for Easy college Savings With two young ones at home and a third one on the way, these are the exact kind of tips I’m looking for. (@ wise bread)

2009 Gift Giving Guide: Gifts to people you don’t know This is something I struggle with – gifts for people I don’t know well but am obligated to give a gift to (because of a gift exchange or the like). This is perhaps the best set of advice I’ve read for such a situation. (@ unclutterer)

How to Want Very Little I think that excessive wanting is something that gets all of us into personal finance trouble – and in personal trouble. The advice here is thoughtful and well-considered. (@ zen habits)

One Example of Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck The specifics of this story read like the life I had just a few years ago. I am so glad I chose to go in a different direction. (@ free money finance)

Lately, my wife and I have been studying ways to reduce our weekly grocery bill. We’ve been using several tactics to do this, which I will discuss one at a time over a series of articles.

Salads before dinner are a common staple at our house. For a long time, we would buy lots of different dressings and other items to complement the salad. While planning for a grocery trip a few weeks ago, we realized that we were about to spend fifteen dollars or so on salad accompaniments (because several of our items were depleted). We decided to try some different tactics to drastically reduce our spending on salad.

Avoid Prepackaged Greens
Many people buy prepackaged bags of salad greens – they’re convenient and provide a variety of greens. We did the same until we started running the numbers and realized we could buy enough greens for a week’s worth of salads from the fresh area, mix them ourselves, and not only eat fresher, but save some money, too. All you have to do is select two or three fresh greens that seem interesting – lettuce, arugula, spinach, etc. – and take them home. Wash them up, put all of them in a lidded bowl, and mix it thoroughly. Then pop that bowl in the fridge. It’ll last for several days and, if you eat salad every day, you’ll blow right through it.

Make Your Own Croutons
This is stupendously easy and quite tasty. Just take about half a loaf of bread and cut each slice into cubes. In another bowl, put some olive oil (about three tablespoons or so – you can put in more if you want) and add whatever spices you want – grated Parmesan cheese, garlic powder, dried oregano. Mix the spices and oil, then dredge the cubes through the oil. Toss them on a baking sheet, turn the oven to about 300 F (140 C), and bake them for about twenty minutes. These croutons will keep practically forever in the cupboard in a sealed container.

Make Your Own Dressing
Most dressing recipes are really simple, too, and you can make quite a lot of it for pennies. AllRecipes has a huge list of dressing recipes, but my favorite is cucumber dressing. Just take a cup of buttermil and add a tablespoon of brown mustard and a teaspoon of lemon juice. Then take a cucumber and grate it, adding about half a cup of the grated cucumber to the mix. Sprinkle on some black pepper, mix it, and keep it in a jar in the refrigerator – it’ll last a long while. That’s how I like it, but other people add things like minced green onions, minced parsley, dried dill, and minced celery.

Make Salad a Routine
Salad can be a very healthy addition to any meal, since it’s primarily just greens. I like to just eat a big pile of lettuce with about two tablespoons of dressing and a few croutons to start off a meal.

Of course, the real kicker is that, with these changes, salad is actually really inexpensive compared to the cost of the entree. So make a simple change to your diet – start each meal with a salad. This way, you can prepare less of the entree. Not only does this save you money in the short term at the grocery store, it can be the foundation of a much healthier diet.

I Hate Salad!
I used to hate salads, but I found that when I started trying lots of salad variations, I found greens that I like. Today, I love nothing more than a mix of spinach and arugula – I don’t really like lettuce at all, which was a big reason I didn’t like salads as a kid. Similarly, I kept trying different dressings until I found some that I really like (like the cucumber one above). You might like something different – there’s an almost infinite variety of dressings.

Keep trying and you’ll likely find some combination that you like. When you find that combination (or find several, hopefully), remember them and use them as ways to open your meals. It’s one of those things that’s a win from almost any perspective.

Over the past week, I’ve been conducting a quiet poll among friends and family concerning whether or not they shop at thrift stores. I received a few “yes” answers, but a surprisingly large number of “no” answers. Without arguing about the reasons, I also asked them why they didn’t shop at thrift stores and I found that there were six common answers. Here are those six reasons … and now I’ll argue why they’re completely false.

Thrift store stuff is dirty. I wash most things I buy no matter where I buy it. If I buy a new article of clothing, a towel, flatware, toys, or so on, I wash it in order to remove germs from others handling the item in the store and plastic and chemical residue. I do the same thing with thrift store stuff. Even if it is a bit dirty, so what? I’m thoroughly cleaning it anyway.

Wash thrift store items, just as you would wash many items purchased elsewhere.

Thrift store stuff is used. Yes, thrift store items are used. Do you throw out every item you have just because you used it once or twice? Probably not – unless you discover the shirt doesn’t fit you or the item doesn’t work for you. Then you just might be taking it to the thrift store.

Thrift store stuff is used, but a surprising amount of it is “barely used,” virtually indistinguishable from new.

Thrift store stuff doesn’t have the name brands my children (or I) must have. Let your children make that judgment. Take them to the thrift store and let them go crazy digging through the racks. Offer to buy them pretty much anything they find. You might just be shocked at what they find.

If you’re the one with the brand phobias, just go there and look around. I constantly find things I’m very happy to wear.

Buy what you like, not what the labels tell you to like.

Thrift store stuff is out of date. Most items simply go out of date – what exactly is an out-of-date knife? For items that do go out of date, they often have a “retro” cache (like an Atari 2600 console) or, like some clothes, they go in and out of style all the time.

Define for yourself what’s out of date and what isn’t – look at the items available and choose what you like.

Thrift store stuff is ugly. Yes, we’ve all seen the horribly tacky items that people proudly proclaim that they picked up at a thrift store. Guess what? You can’t blame a lack of taste on the retailer. If someone buys an ugly item, it’s the person’s lack of taste that is the problem, not the retailer.

Choose stuff you like and leave behind the stuff you don’t, just like at any retailer.

I don’t know where to start. Some people avoid thrift stores simply because they’ve never gone to one. If that’s you, it’s time to try something new, because thrift stores are often excellent places to find the very things you need.

Find a local store and make it a point to visit.

There’s really no reason not to give thrifting a shot – it’s a great way to find inexpensive things you need, you’re reusing items instead of throwing them in the landfills, and it’s a lot of fun to boot.