We’re hobbling out of the high-fat, high-stress holidays and into a new year.  In fact, we get a whole new decade.  Everything is possible now but we need to lose 25 pounds and we’ll do it by signing up at the gym.  Fewer pounds, more work-outs; two resolutions made most frequently and two with the highest failure rate.  In fact, by mid-February, they’re toast.

The reason is because we attempt to change the essential nature of ourselves.  We think we’ll transform from a fat person to a thin person, from someone who spends to someone who saves, from a person who detests exercise to one who loves workout equipment.  Its as if a switch gets turned on at midnight on the 1st and we’ll look in the mirror and see someone new.

Here are some resolutions that are so easy we can all do them and best yet, we can stick with them.

1. Drink bottled water only when you’re on the move.  Otherwise, drink tap.

2. Jump in place 40 times per week.  A study reported in the New York Times says this is the best way to build bone density, better even than lifting free weights.

3.  Resolve that at some point in the next 12 months, if there is someone you love who never hears that from you, you will tell them.

4.  Absorb sunshine whenever you can, even if it’s through a window.  My doctor says “most people” in Upstate New York are vitamin D deficient.  Sunshine takes care of that, you just have to take it in.

5. Replace butter with olive oil whenever you can.  Olive oil was found this year to be one of the five healthiest components of the Mediterranean diet, considered by doctors to be the healthiest diet in the world.  The other four items are: salmon, almonds, beans such as navy, kidney, garbanzo, etc. , and wine.

6. Always approach people with a smile and look them square in the eye; the person at the grocery checkout, bank tellers, clerks.  You’ll be amazed at how friendly everybody seems.  It can change your life.

7. Bend down and reach for your toes.  Every day.  An earlier column on the blog addressed this exercise as a way to ward off a heart attack by increasing the flexibility of your arteries.

8. Clean out one closet or dresser.  Just one.  Over the next twelve months.   Take it to the Goodwill.  Someone might need the stuff more than you do.

9.  Eliminate the $3.00 cup of coffee just one day per week.  Just one day!  You can do that!  You’ll save $156.00 by this time next year.

10.  Take a portion of that savings and anonymously apply it toward the layaway account of a stranger next Christmas.  Altruism heals.  I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

There.  Is this reasonable?  Did I forget some good ones?  Let me know.

Now that we’re deep in the recession and more people are collecting unemployment benefits than ever before, it’s time to turn a frugal existence into one even more frugal.

You see versions of  “Top Ten Ways To Spend Less” lists all over the internet and it amazes me anyone has to be told this.   “Skip the 4.50 Starbucks coffee”.  “Cancel the premium channels on your cable service”.  “Cook dinner at home instead of eating out.”   “Buy energy star appliances”.  I’m sorry, but my german shepherd knew that already.  I want something with teeth, somewhere between reusing coffee grounds which is just weird, and replacing incandescant light bulbs with compact florescents, which is too obvious.  I’ve done that already.  I want something new.

I’ll trade you some of my ideas for some of yours:

1. First of all, skip the gym membership and the cost of home exercise equipment by always parking far from the entrance to any store,  always taking the stairs instead of the elevator,  spreading your own mulch and doing your own vacuuming.  Save on your grocery bill by buying less food.  Nearly all of us need to lose at least ten pounds and leaving more food at the grocery store will help get us there.

My $15. garage sale lamp with a new shade and new colors

2.   Leave your pride at the door of  Thrift Stores.  There is nothing embarrassing about saving money, especially now.   You can find decent kid’s clothes, housewares, toys and furniture which, if you blend in with department store finds, will look just fine.  If the furniture is ugly but the “bones” are good, buy a quart of white gloss paint and cover the whole thing.  Is the dated hardware getting in the way?  Replace it with something from Home Depot, and pick up a two dollar screw driver in the process.  It will still cost much less than new.  The best lamps are old lamps.  They’re more unusual and more detailed than anything sold today, but the lamp shade is always awful and makes the whole thing look bad.  Buy the lamp, wash it well and get a new shade at K Mart.  All your friends will want to know where you got it.

3.   Reduce your use of bottled water by 99.9999 percent.   Plastic bottles are famously bad for the environment and the water is no better than what comes from the tap.  It’s been proven to come from somebody else’s tap and not some magical spring. And for children especially, bottled water is worse than tap because bottled water lacks flouride and dentists are seeing the results.  For portability in the car,  just fill a paper cup with water.  If you’re in a building, most places still have a water fountain in the wall.  Use that, for free.

4.  Use every last drop of shampoo, dish liquid and laundry detergent by adding a generous amount of water to the nearly empty container.  You’ll be surprised to see how much you can still use by simply diluting the product at the end.

5.  Buy staples in bulk, even if you don’t think you’ll use that much.  It can all be divided.  You will never ever stop using toilet paper until you die.  Go ahead and buy that 24-roll pack.  You can probably get through that 12 roll pack of paper towels too.    Same goes for toothpaste and toothbrushes.  Don’t be afraid of the ten pack of those.   Gigantic packages of food can often be stored in something smaller.  Go to the grocery store and spend 6 dollars on a small bottle of Berio olive oil, and then get a gallon of the same brand at the Warehouse store.  When the little bottle is empty, refill it with the big one so you have something near the stove that’s easy to handle.  Chicken breasts can be frozen a few at a time, and so on and so on.

6. New garden plants may not be high on your priority list this year, but if they are and you can’t afford them, wait till late July and buy them on sale at hardware stores and home improvement stores.   Annuals will survive until the first freeze of October and perennials will keep coming up year after year.    Put them all in a corner of your yard and call it your “recession garden”.   Someday it will remind you that you survived the recession just as the flowers did.

7. Got skills?  Items you don’t want?  Trade them on craigslist.org for something you need but can’t afford.   Last summer a wind storm knocked down a 40 foot locust tree in my back yard.  A tree service would have charged me a few hundred dollars to take it away, so I offered it up on craigslist as firewood for anyone who wanted to come and get it.  I had two great guys from Cato arrive with chainsaws.   They ended up removing another tree for me and clearing it out.  Free yard work for me, free firewood for them.  Use your imagination.

8.  Use old things in new ways.  This is a classic.  My dad took my mom’s old flip-top cigarette boxes and used them to organize screws, nails, washers etc. on a shelf in the basement.  It was a rather ridiculous looking display, but it served the purpose.  As for me, I love plastic sherbert containers instead of tupperware, plastic bread bags instead of food storage bags, the back side of junk mail cut up into pieces instead of post it notes, and leftover wallpaper as gift wrap.

9. Finally, organize a swapping party.  Get your friends or neighbors together and host a professional wardrobe swap, baby and kid’s clothes swap, a tool swap, plant swap, book swap, accessories swap, whatever you want.   I think it would be fun for women to host a necktie swap for something new for their husbands. Your party doesn’t have to be fancy, and in fact, it shouldn’t be.  That’s the beauty of a recession.  No more pressure to impress. Offer sliced fruit in season, some popcorn and lemonade from frozen concentrate.   Renowned decorator and entertainer Dorothy Draper did this all through the last century.

OK, maybe your german shepherd thought of these ideas already. If you have some novel ways to save money, please share.  I’m determined to turn frugality into an art form.