Five Frugal Things | in which I load wood and rip my jeans
I know I skipped Five Frugal Things last week; I just had nothing to share!
A bout of Covid is not conducive to frugal activities, unless you consider that staying home and doing nothing is fairly frugal.
But, financially responsible as that may be, it is extremely boring to write about so I figured I'd skip Five Frugal Things for a week.
I still am working on getting back into the swing of life, so I don't know if I'll come up with five this week either.
I'll just do my best, and you guys can feel free to outshine me in the comments this week. 😉
Let's see what I've got...
1. I got a free Starbucks coffee
I had to wait 2.5 hours for Zoe while she was at a class a half hour from home and I decided it made no sense to drive home and back (such a waste of gas and time!)
So, I redeemed some of my Erie YourTurn rewards and got a free Starbucks latte.
I brought my laptop and my schoolbooks and got some work done while I waited.
Even if I had to pay for my drink out of pocket, it still would have been cheaper than using gas to go back and forth and back and forth!
And since the drink was free, it definitely made sense for me to hang at Starbucks.
In other news, Starbucks finally has cinnamon dolce lattes again (they were out of stock for a long time last year). Lisey introduced me to this treat, and she said I should recommend it to all of you too. 😉
2. I borrowed a copy of The Screwtape Letters for Zoe
She needed this for her Brit-Lit class, and my mom happened to have a copy in her rather extensive personal library. Yay!
Now I don't have to buy a copy.
3. I mended my back jeans pocket
If you follow me on Instagram, you know I was helping my dad load firewood into his crawlspace.
Anyway, while I was helping him, I had my phone in my back pocket, and when I stood up, it got caught on the side of the house and made a small tear around the corner of the pocket.
We all know what happens to small tears if we let them be (especially in a spot that gets so much stress), so I made a quick little inside patch to reinforce the spot.
I just sewed over existing seams to attach the interior patch, so from the outside, you can't see the mending at all.
Behold:
4. I mended a side seam on a pair of jeans
This is actually a pretty new pair of jeans, but for some reason, the threads on one of the side seams came apart.
Guys, I swear I don't do anything weird to my laundry. I really do not understand why my clothing/linen seams keep dissolving!
Anyways, this was a very easy fix since I had the sewing machine out already, and now I don't have to worry that this hole will spread.
I do, however, have to worry about more of my laundry seams coming apart in the future. It seems to be my lot in life. 😉
5. Ummm...
I'm gonna have to go with the boring, "I mostly stayed at home, so I spent almost no money." bit.
I went to class, I went for walks in the neighborhood to build my strength back up, and other than that, I was home.
Creative? No.
Reliably frugal? Yes.
1. I've definitely gotten back to menu planning which saves a ton of money!
2. I got a new stack of books at the library, since the library is free it's definitely cheaper than getting new books!
3. I returned a table runner that I didn't really need and used the credit to buy new black bow ties for my kids' band uniforms that they really did need.
4. We are on our annual "no spend quarter" in which we do our best to buy nothing but things that are truly necessary. (Groceries, toiletries etc)
5. Cleaned out 2/3 of my kids' rooms with them and have a large stack of stuff to list on our local FB resale page. Not only have we cleaned out a ton of unnecessary items hopefully we'll make a little money in the process! (The last kid gets his tackled this weekend.)
Bonus Item: I've been looking for an antique china cabinet for our dining room for something like 7 years. I finally found one that was perfect listed for $250, I bought it and was able to sell our old one to come close to breaking even!
@AEW, I like the idea of a "no spend quarter."
@Beth B., thank you! We started doing it years ago, we picked January to March since it is just after Christmas there aren't usually that many things going on so it's a great time to do it!
My Five:
I planned meals for the entire week
I went outdoor swimming
I did solar-powered laundry on Saturday and was able to dry the laundry on the line too (first time this year!) as it was a very windy day
I put some library books on hold
Related to the above: rather than buy a crock pot, as I am tempted to do, I am first investigating the added value by checking out some crockpoy cook books. I already have a pressure cooker and also a hay chest.
We are still not going places much, because of our regular visits to my mother in law. So that is involuntarily frugal behaviour too- MIL is too fragile to go out at all.
@J NL, Please forgive my ignorance...but what is a hay chest??! I've never heard of that. As for the crockpot? I vote YES! Definitely! I love my crockpot and it has saved me time (which translates to money because my time (and yours!) is valuable!) My one piece of advice would be to make sure (if you decide to get one) to get the type that has the removable crock. Clean up is MUCH easier! I'm curious to know what you decide. Okay. I'm just nosey. LOL
@J NL, I have a Wonderbag. While I don't use it as often as my slow cooker, it is great for transporting and keeping food hot for pot locks and camping.
@Condo Blues and @sfeather, years ago I mentioned a hay chest and got a response from a US lady who taught history of cooking (I'd love to take that class!).
Google "hooikist" pictures and have a close look at the oldest looking ones. They are the original ones used in WWII when there was no fuel to be had.
I myself have a fabric one and I would expect a Wonderbag to be exactly what I have. I mainly use for keeping foods warm.
My mother used to cook rice, wrap the pan in a towel and then put the pan in my bed. Quickly to bed after dinner, warm toes. Happy memories!
@Condo Blues, I love our Wonderbag. It makes yogurt making easier, too.
I don't have any big wins, I don' think...but I do try to keep in mind that old saying "watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves". Lately:
*I usually treat my self to no cooking on the weekends and eat a couple of meals out, but this time I only ordered takeout once and made it work for two meals
*I stayed home most of the day on Sunday, getting things done around the house, because I grouped my errands on Saturday.
*one of errands on Saturday was getting three new long sleeve shirts from Goodwill. As much as I love ordering on-line and from places like LL Bean and Land's End, I almost always find quality things like those from thrift stores.
*I've been mooching off my daughter's Netflix account and letting her mooch of my Hulu. Two for one!
*got my tires rotated as a free service for buying tires for my car last year = worth it
I'm on a greatly reduced income now, so I'm going to be reading all of these frugal wins more closely to see what I can adopt!
@Gina, that's what I ' m doing too ! Hard earned Money is hard to come by , so why spend it foolishness ! Enjoy your Week !
Kristen, I’m constantly impressed with your stunning photography! To be able to capture the beauty of nature the way you do is truly a gift. I know this isn’t a frugal comment but just want to encourage you!
Oh, you are such an encourager, Marty. Thank you for your kind words!
Have you ever had your water checked? If you're on a well, there may be chemicals in it that are dissolving the material fibers. An entire load of my cloth diapers turned orange from the hard water at my parent's house when my mom did her first load of laundry, 47 years ago.
Interestingly, we have public water. So it doesn't seem like that is the likeliest culprit.
Can we (soon) talk about the skyrocketing meat costs? Yowsa, I had major sticker shock this weekend at the grocery! So some of my FFT will be how I worked around the craziness at the store. $11.59 per lb for short ribs? $9.99 per lb for stew beef? Whole cut up chickens between $15 and $17 each? $2.59 for 1 avocado? Wow.
1. I did find a couple of whole chickens that were $7 and $8, so I bought 2 and my husband butchered them himself. So we got 2 chickens for the price of 1 already cut up one. And we got 2 carcasses! Usually around here whole chickens and cut up chickens are typically around the same price so I would opt for the convenience. Not now tho.
2. I made 2 batches of chicken stock from some carcasses I'd already had in the freezer. I think I got 18 cups of stocks to put back in my freezer. I also froze the 2 carcasses from the whole chickens I bought to make stock later.
3. I bought ground turkey instead of ground beef as it was about $3 lb cheaper. I have some ground beef in my freezer and I will add the turkey with the beef to bulk up my dishes. I don't mind eating ground turkey (Egg Roll in a Bowl? Yum!) but the rest of the fam doesn't really like it but if I mix it with the ground beef, they don't know any different.
4. I went through my produce drawer and found a big bunch broccoli that was starting to look a little sad. So I cut made a big pot of Broccoli and Cheddar Soup and I am bringing it to work this week for lunch. I also had an already grilled ear of corn in there, so I cut it off the cob and threw it in there and it added a nice little bit of crunch and sweetness.
5. I bought a book I'd been wanting to read off of Thriftbooks. Do y'all know about Thriftbooks? I have bought so many books from there and have never been disappointed with their condition. Love that site!
I did alert the family that frugal dinners are in our near future until these costs get under control. I am now at the point in my career that I am making good money and we have paid off so much debt this past year that we are finally comfortable. But I told my husband standing in the market the other day, "Just because I'm making the money, doesn't mean I want to spend it all at the grocery store!" He heartily agreed. Last nights dinner was The Pioneer Woman's Beef Noodle Skillet Recipe with the last of the broccoli that I saved, the last of some salad from Sat. night dinner and 3 leftover rolls from Sun. nights dinner. As one of my favorite instagramer's says "It filled hungry bellies" 🙂
@kris, I have been stunned by the cost of food and shortages at the grocery store. I’m trying to carefully meal plan and not waste a single thing. I never thought that I had an exceptionally tight food budget, but I’m starting to feel the pinch.
If your family does not like ground Turkey, you may want to try ground chicken. I think the flavor is slightly milder and it seems to absorb flavors better. I use it in the place of ground beef regularly.
@kris, we are older and don't eat much meat, but lately I have dealt with the rising costs by setting a budget within the grocery budget for fresh meat purchases. It's a tight budget, so I look for fresh meat on manager's special and turn it into stews and chilis, or a component in a dish that features a lot of vegetables, rather than making meat the main feature of the meal.
Rather than buying pre-cut stew meat, see if you can find any kind of beef on sale and cube it up yourself. Stew meat is really just the trimmings of tough cuts that benefits from the long, slow cooking of stewing. Beef chuck roast or steaks make exceptional beef stew: the meat will melt in your mouth. So if you happen to find a large beef chuck roast marked down because the original price was heart-stopping, you can trim enough off it to make up a pack of stew beef and still have a nice roast for another occasion.
@Bee - I'll try that! If I can find it, lol.
@Ruby - I didn't buy that expensive stew beef, lol. I just couldn't believe how high it was knowing it really is just the trimmings! 🙂
@kris, I have not heard of Thriftbooks! I will check it out. Thanks for the tip!
@Beth B., thrift books is great for
Older books . I seem to find books that r part of a series &buying the rest is expensive. The library does not always carry the 1s I want. I also check &often the thrift books 1 is cheaper than an ebook.
@kris, I was all set last week for this post, but now I'm sick and only have the energy to type one thing-- and it involves the chicken. We bought chicken leg quarters (160 lbs. of them!) at a bulk food sale. They were 10 cents per pound cheaper than the already cut up legs and 20 cents per pound cheaper than the already cut up thighs. The leg quarters have been the cheapest for quite some time, and I'm tired of them-- but--we got them, and I cut them apart so I have thighs frozen by themselves, legs frozen by themselves, and some backbones that I cut off and froze separately for broth. I also froze some together. That means I have a little more versatility for a cheaper price.
Oh, I am so sorry you are sick. I hope you feel better soon!
@Colleen Gold, openlibrary.com. I love it.
@Rose, I think that is openlibrary.org.
@kris, sometimes adding a beef bouillon cube to the recipe using ground turkey helps with the flavor.
This frugal five is an overcoming laziness edition haha
1. There’s a dairy brand here that sells its products in glass bottles that you return to get your deposit back. I don’t buy it regularly but I do buy their egg nog sometimes and bought their heavy cream once. So I had a few bottles just sitting in my pantry (for a couple years at this point!) I finally remembered to return them so got $6 back.
2. My favorite coffee place quickly setup mobile ordering when the pandemic started but their gift cards could not be used on their mobile app. It’s well known I love this coffee place so I had 6 gift cards people gifted me that I couldn’t use at all at first (they were only accepting mobile orders for awhile at the start of the pandemic) and then I became so used to the convenience of mobile ordering, I would never go inside to order at the counter and use my gift cards. I finally went inside last week and used some of the gift cards to buy a cup of coffee and get some bags of coffee beans for home.
3. My SIL works at a grocery store and often gets to take food home that can’t be sold. If we lived closer, I’d get to take more advantage! We did see her over the weekend for her birthday though and she gave us a bag of apple sauce pouches from her store, which my kids love.
4. I finally started using rags for paper towels and tissues. I cut a bunch up and put them in easily accessible places. I told my family what I was doing, but we still have paper towels and tissues in the house as we adjust.
5. I have refocused my efforts to avoid buying new and trying to make do with what I have before buying anything. This last week I purchased a couple things used on fb marketplace rather than buying new.
Your #1: I love doing things like that! Clutter out of the house, money in my wallet. Such a good combo.
I did a lot of "using what we already have" this week.
1. I'm almost through using a lonesome bag of frozen butternut squash in place of canned pumpkin in my bread.
2. I actually finished the wool baby blanket I've been crocheting for six months. It was not a particularly frugal venture, but every time I felt like abandoning the project, I reminded myself that the materials had cost quite a bit, and there's no buying more til it's done!
3. I had prepared root vegetables to roast last week, but ran out of energy. They were looking a little sad, so I roasted them up last night.
4. I'm off to Costco today to buy diapers (and lots of other things that are so much cheaper there.) I'm also picking up loads of stuff for my parents, to spare them a trip.
5. This is my fourth or fifth week of making our bread, and the loaves are getting better each week (last night's loaf was, "like a toothsome cloud.") Due to supply-chain issues, we bought brand-name bread flour and yeast at an expensive grocery store and each loaf is still less than a quarter of the cost at the bakery.
Fail of the week: Last week my mom gave me a huge bag of fresh green beans (my favourite!) but I forgot that I had them, and they have not survived my neglect 🙁
@Meira@meirathebear, "Toothsome" is such a descriptive word!
1. It was my great niece’s birthday, so a trip to Target was necessary to find a birthday gift. I used a $10 gift card that I previously received for purchasing 2 bottles of laundry detergent to defer the cost. While there, I also bought 2 jars of my moisturizer and received another $10 gift card. I tucked it away for future use.
2. I sold a designer belt on eBay for $100. I had picked up at my favorite thrift store for $10. This made me very happy! I reused packing materials given to me by a friend to mail it to the buyer.
3. We had a hard freeze in North Florida this past weekend. I picked the remaining lemons on my tree ahead of the inclement weather. I juiced and zested them for future use. I also wrapped all my delicate plants with landscape blankets to protect them from the cold.
4. I did all the usual things planned our meals, brewed my own coffee, drank primarily filtered water, read library books, walked rescue pup, and scanned my receipts to Fetch and Ibotta.
5. Frugal Fail — When my husband works from home, I plan 3 meals a day and usually cook breakfast and dinner. I often clean up after lunch too. Most of the time I don’t really mind this, but on Friday night I could not stand the thought of spending another moment in my kitchen. So we went to eat sushi. It was enjoyable and so good! Sometimes you just need a break.
Staying home and not spending money is frugal in itself. A lot of people have no-spend days or no-spend weeks as part of frugal practice. Yours just happened to be involuntary. 🙂
For our FFT:
1. Meat prices being what they are, I bought $6 worth of pork Boston butt pieces and trimmed off the fat and silver skin to make a slow cooker full of herbed pork and veggies for my husband's main meal this week. The trimmings were rendered down, producing about 6 ounces of lovely clean pork fat (excellent for frying eggs), and a nice handful of hard, chewy cracklings that my dogs are enjoying as a very special treat.
2. Sewed a loose button on a pair of thrifted office pants before it could escape.
3. Gave our dogs a much-needed mid-winter trimming of their long coats. (Short legs, long hair: they bring in a lot of grass and mud with them this time of year.) We have always had dogs with long coats and have probably kept a small fortune in our pockets by doing at-home trims for them.
4. Made for breakfast this week a pan of baked apple-raisin oatmeal that used up the last two eggs in the opened carton, two big apples rescued from work, and the last of a bag of ground flaxseed. This freezes well in individual containers.
5. The biggie frugal thing belongs to my husband: After spending two and half hours are the Nissan dealership discussing getting the headlights of his sedan replaced under the terms of the suit against Nissan, he learned that the dealership would charge at least $1,100 to replace the lights and would pro-rate a refund, which they would not state how much that would be but it would be based on the age of the car. His car is a 2013 model, a point frequently brought up by the dealer rep in the discussion, and he decided the whole thing was legal wriggling that would not benefit him.
He went online, ordered a new set of headlights for $246, took them to our favorite honest non-dealership mechanic and had them installed for $176. Automatic savings over the dealer offer of $678. This experience made him decide to have all work done now with Honest Non-Dealership Mechanic. So there was an upside to this after all.
@Ruby,
You reminded me that I made lard from pork butt fat trimmings this weekend! I love making a usable item from waste fat.
@Ruby, your DH gets major kudos from me on the headlights deal. I'm currently working on keeping a 2010 Honda Element running till it falls apart, and I avoid the local Honda dealerships if at all possible.
@A. Marie, I have a 2010 Fit and am counting on that legendary Honda longevity. We have not had problems with the local Honda dealership, thank goodness. They seem to understand the value of keeping customers.
@Ruby, good for your husband on trusting his mechanic! One of the reasons I favor older cars (we currently have an ‘89 and a ‘96) is that I can skip the dealership game and go straight to my mechanic. He can always find “new” pieces for cheap via parts yards.
@Ruby, I'm impressed they would put the parts in. A lot of places will not install customer-supplied part because their insurance doesn't allow them to. After all, think about it: if i buy brakes for my car from a junk yard, and my mechanics install them, and they fail, they're liable for them.
This I have learned because my son bought a rare and weird classic car and finding new brakes for it has been a tiresome ordeal.
@Rose, this mechanic directs customers where to buy new parts online. It saves him the time and trouble of doing it. My husband showed up with the correct parts from an approved source, and all was good.
It’s SO frugal to have a trusted mechanic! But sometimes one only finds a trusted mechanic by weeding through some non-trustworthy mechanics! Recommendations from trusted friends helps a lot, especially if the mechanic knows who recommended him/her, and why. Networking like this for “service providers” helps both parties- free advertising and great references are not to be sneezed at! We have a construction business and paid hundreds of dollars a month to advertise until we figured out that we didn’t need to do that, because we were reliable, skilled, and trust-worthy, our customers sent their friends and neighbors, who sent theirs, and so on!
We had mostly the basics this week:
-Sold an outgrown jacket on eBay
-Used up a bunch of stuff from the freezer, in my attempts to meal plan. Mostly because the freezer is absolutely stuffed, and nothing can go into it. We made some progress over the past few weeks, but then I took a 6.5 lb container of ground beef, and turned it into taco meat & spaghetti sauce, most of which went back to the freezer. So, we are back to stuffed again.
-Used up two containers of forgotten lemon curd (freezer) to make lemon muffins. It was nice to get the lemon curd out of the freezer, but I froze most of the muffins, again making freezer space tight 😉
-Used the last of a grocery store gift card to pick up a few things we needed
-Received a substantial & very unexpected bonus at work, for a project that has been, shall we say, unfulfilling. It was such a wonderful surprise. I've earmarked it to treat my sister to a trip to Las Vegas in March (#*COVIDmaybe, as with all travel plans)
@Hawaii Planner, lemon muffins.... Yum. Thanks for the idea!
First, Kristen, I'm glad Zoe is reading Screwtape. I too have my mother's copy, and it's great fun.
Now, FFT, Frugal Substitutions Edition:
(1) The shade on the old lamp in the guest room disintegrated. Rather than buy a new shade, I moved DH's former reading lamp from the living room to the guest room, and donated the old lamp to the SA. I never much liked the old one anyway, and now guests will have better light for reading.
(2) I knocked over and broke the oversized coffee mug in which I keep pencils, pens, and scissors in the kitchen. I substituted another oversized mug from our overly large collection. I'm not quite to the point where I'm actually glad when I break a mug, but I'm getting there.
(3) This is the first day of No- or Low-Spend February over at Donna Freedman's Surviving and Thriving, another good frugality blog. I'm taking the challenge and, as a good first-day dinner, plan to cobble together a "miscellany" stew: I'll start with an oddball package of pork stew in the freezer (purchased as RFQS some time ago) and an aging head of cauliflower, and go on from there.
(4) I confess to having done a thrift shop run yesterday--partly as a last toot before the February challenge, partly because I had a $5 off $15 or more coupon, and partly as treatment for cabin fever. (We didn't get any of the snow that hit the East Coast last weekend, but it was bitter cold instead, and a big snow dump is predicted for later this week.) But I did find an Ann Taylor top for $3.50 in exactly a color I was looking for.
(5) And by Thursday, I'll be rejoining those of you who are saving money by staying home. "For what we are about to receive..."
@A. Marie, I am doing Donna's frugal February challenge too. I just love her blog.
I deeply miss thrifting, but living in a place where 45% of the population is not vaccinated makes me stay home. A couple of weeks ago we went very quickly to an estate sale in our neighborhood and it felt like a vacation for the 15 minutes we were there: such a change of scenery! 😀
@A. Marie,
Thanks for the heads up on this month's no or low-spend challenge. I'll just move right into that from my January challenge. I read Donna's blog on occasion, so I'll head on over there.
And thanks, too, because I also forgot to mention that "The Screwtape Letters" is one of my favorite books. I own a copy and re-read it every now and then.
@A. Marie, oh the over proliferation of coffee mugs in this world. If factories stopped all manufacturing of mugs TODAY, the world would never run out. My sweet daughter-in-law manages to give me at least one per year. I thank her, appreciate her generosity, then in the next few days usually slip it into the charity bag.
C.S. Lewis uses such clever phrases! Some parts of the book made Zoe and me laugh.
@Anne, there was a call out about a year ago from one of the soup kitchens/ house less centres for additional mugs. They were inundated. The wonderful thing about it was that the previous ones had been a generic model. The new assortment of donated mugs gave the patrons a wonderful choice at their meal of which mug they would prefer:)
@Anne, This is so true!!!! There are 4 -500 at any one time at our local Goodwill. They are available at estate sales, garage sales and given away as freebies. It amazes me that they are everywhere!
@Kristen, and others who may be interested in learning more about C.S. Lewis: Check out the various video versions of "Shadowlands," the play about his late-life marriage to the American writer Joy Davidman Gresham. (My personal favorite is the early BBC version with Joss Ackland as Lewis and Claire Bloom as Joy.) And Joy's son (Lewis's stepson) Douglas Gresham has written a memoir called Lenten Lands, also worth exploring.
1. We are eating from our freezer and pantry as we prepare to move. This has been very yummy but just requires a bit of meal planning. We have enjoyed a turkey breast, ham & scalloped potatoes, okra & tomatoes, chili, chicken noodle soup, split pea soup, spaghetti, peach cobbler, pumpkin muffins....and many more dishes over the last several weeks.
2. Two friends have given us their boxes to move which cuts our costs and keeps waste down. Once we have moved we will list all the boxes so that someone else can use them in the same way.
3. Colder temps mean we are using our stockpile of wood to burn fires in our fireplace and keep our thermostat set lower - this saves on our electric bill.
4. I gassed up at Kroger using $0.70/gallon in fuel points that I had accumulated.
5. This last one is not really frugal for us but for others. We are purging a lot of things in our home as we prepare to move. Going through closets, drawers, the garage...you name it and getting rid of things that we don't use. There have been many trips to Goodwill so that someone else can make use of things that we no longer need. This reduces our moving costs and clears clutter & I LOVE that!
Happy Tuesday!
We had a firewood transportation system when I was growing up - my brother and me!!!!
Kristen, it seems we are all hurting from rising grocery prices, so if ever need an easy reader-led day, how about a best frugal recipe post? It will give us all new and inexpensive ideas on how to eat cheaper, but still eat. I have one that the ingredients are few - 4 required or 5 to kick it up a notch and 2 of them are salt and pepper!! Just a thought. Glad you're feeling better.
That is a good idea! Maybe we will do that tomorrow.
I should add; when my three siblings and I lived at home, we were the firewood transport system as well! But now my parents are empty-nesters, and doing this themselves would be rather back-breaking.
Enter: the paint can conveyor belt. 😉
@Kristen, I'm really impressed by your dad's ingenuity (good genes to get)!
: )
I know, right? He is so smart with so many hands-on types of tasks.
I have caught my phone so many times when it's in a back pocket! It's a wonder I haven't ripped my pockets yet.
Let's see, frugal things...
1. I've been using less (homemade) soap in my laundry, as my clothes are usually not really dirty and I rarely bring my husband's laundry home to wash these days - they seem to be keeping up with it better at his ALF. My five gallon bucket of soap is lasting longer now.
2. I earned two gift cards to Amazon from doing surveys.
3. I finished my no-spend month doing well except for the emergencies. My heat pump repair and the vet bill were an unexpected $340, but otherwise, I didn't spend for anything I didn't need. I need to keep this up!
4. In the "never hurts to ask" department, I asked a local farmer if I could buy a cutting for transplant from her herb garden instead of buying a bag of cut fresh herbs, for which she charges $2. She dug up a whole good-sized plant and let me have that for $2.
5. Hello, my name is JD and I'm a chocoholic. 🙂 But I remain steadfast in walking past the numerous Valentine's Day displays of luscious chocolates, and that includes the Peterbrooke Chocolatier Store situated cunningly by the grocery store. Avoidance is good for the waistline as well as the pocketbook.
@JD, Peterbrooke was first established in Northeast Florida where I live. There is one around the corner. It is very good chocolate indeed! However, this year I made my own batch of chocolate covered popcorn, and I must say it was just as good. Regardless, you are showing enormous fortitude.
I feel like we have been leaking money like a sieve recently. We bought a house in November and realized that there's a LOT more deferred maintenance than we thought (and we knew about a lot of it). It's a never-ending parade of people coming for quotes for work and us figuring out what parts we can do on our own to save money...
However, we are enjoying figuring out new skills with these projects and have stayed within budget on other categories!
Some things we did/we're working on:
1) Finishing a show series so that we can cancel the subscription to the service before we get charged again.
2) Working on using items from our freezer
3) Making progress painting our materials for our new entryway cubbies
I realize that my five frugal things are a lot about other people helping us out on a chemo week here! So very grateful for this.
1. My lovely Dad picked up our laundry and my lovely Mum washed and dried everything for us and then they delivered it back (they are mid 80s and going strong!).
2. We continue to have 3 meals a week delivered from Hello Fresh (from an anonymous donor) and my 15 year old has become a master chef, lol! This saves us grocery money which gives us a bit more wiggle room in the budget.
3. Frigid temperatures (-30C) and electing to have my daughter finish out her quadmester at home have kept us home a lot, so gas budget is definitely under. Home heating will be high though so I guess this balances out.
4. I have been paying my daughter to do some of the neglected chores around here, yes, I'm spending money. However, it would cost me a lot more to hire a professional and I'm just not up to the deeper cleaning jobs. I've been sick since last May so things are getting a little out of hand. It's clean and tidy to a degree but don't look too closely, lol. It's also teaching her a little about home maintenance, which is great.
5. It's been really hard to get cat food here (empty shelves), so I researched recipes and made a batch and froze in portions. Realized that it's much cheaper and probably healthier for our two cats too. Our old dog (14.5 yo lab cross) died last May and I made all his food for his last 2 years in the instant pot so it's something I'm pretty comfortable with.
Okay, that's it for me, no crazy good frugal saves but it all adds up.
@Leann, May I ask for your cat food recipes? I'd love to have a backup in place in the event that our trio's usual food becomes difficult to find. At the moment, I'm just taking care to buy a new bag to store whenever we open the previous one.
Oh, I love that your parents are helping you out. That is so wonderful...one never outgrows wanting/needing parents in times of trouble.
@Leann, wishing you love and strength during this difficult time. Your kids - and parents- sound amazing!
@Leann,
Thinking of you with love and support for your health issues to be successfully resolved soonest. And major admiration and props to your family for pulling together at this time!
I know the feeling about boring and mundane and unfortunately that's how life is here and I admit that the winter blues have hit me something hard lately. Strangely life doesn't feel very frugal around here though.
1.) Made bread again for the first time in a while (been eating loaves out of the freezer.) I also made homemade granola which I've been enjoying with some homemade yogurt.
2.) My nephew has a birthday coming up and since he's one of those spoiled kids who has everything, I got him some books from the thrift store. They are all in like-new condition and it's a lot better than paying retail.
3.) Using slow shipping to get free digital credit on Amazon.
4.) Found a deal where I could prepay for Hulu and get a sizable discount on it. I personally loathe the content on Hulu (and if Master Chef could just go away forever and never come back I'd be a happy man) but my wife enjoys it so at least it's cheaper now.
5.) Got my meds at Costco and saved quite a bit.
@Battra92, I have five grandchildren from 8 to 21. I have given them used books all their lives for every occasion or for no occasion at all. I would be crazy to buy new. Thrift store, Amazon and Thrift Books have been my go to places.
I choose the slow shipping from Amazon most of the time too! Nice to get a free movie here and there that way.
@Battra92, I find January difficult. It just goes on and on. Hang in there spring is on the way!
@Battra92,
Most Little Free Libraries contain children's books! I’ve given our granddaughter many from there along with only special ones (keepers) new.
She adores all books and once she outgrows some -like she’s past board books now- I donate them back to one of the Little Free Libraries.
--My husband forgot to replace his gas cap after filling the tank and didn’t notice for a few days. Thankfully someone had turned in the cap at the station!
--I mended a cloth cat toy that had been torn open. No need to have them eat the stuffing!
--I used our lint roller to clean up our car's seats. Between three cats (their fur travels regardless of whether they do) and my long hair, the seats needed it!
--We have a “new” kitchen! I repainted the walls a pretty, deep green (“Basil Leaf”) and repainted the 10’ ceiling white while I was at it. I staggered my paint purchases to make full use of Ace $5 off coupons; used an old shower curtain for a drop cloth; used the weekly circular for masking over items; and found new window curtains at Goodwill. I only wish I’d tackled this project sooner, as the kitchen looks and feels SO much better now! The previously white walls always looked dirty/icky despite frequent cleaning.
--Bonus frugality: The repaint prompted the moving of a favorite framed print to the kitchen wall that’s visible throughout most of the house. The print is of a vintage ad that shows Peter Cushing—famous for playing such formidable characters as Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Van Helsing, and Grand Moff Tarkin—smiling cheesily over a cup of Nescafé instant coffee. I love being able to enjoy this particular silliness more often, especially now that it’s by the supplies for morning coffee. Free smiles! 😛
@N, your kitchen sounds wonderful!
@N, I read once that gas stations often have a good assortment of lost-and-found gas caps. So if it hadn't been at the station he used, he might have found it elsewhere.
I enjoyed imagining your kitchen!
@Ruby, Thank you! I love our 10’ ceilings but loathe being on a ladder, so it was a nervous adventure, but so worth it! 🙂
@Heidi Louise, indeed! Thee gas station I worked at in college had a box full of forgotten gas caps—easily 10-15 at any given time. Anyone who needed one was just handed the box and invited to take whichever cap worked. Thankfully, it seems we recovered my husband’s original gas cap, so double yay! 😛
Well...I scored a FREE month of Walmart+ and thought that would be super frugal and getting groceries delivered? YAY! I'm quickly realizing how much more I'm spending though...I think I've gotten over the initial "yay free grocery delivery" and am now back to, "Eh. I'll cancel this before the free trial runs out" feeling.
Otherwise, we've eaten all our meals at home, done free things for exercise (or used our exercise bike and yoga mats), had friends over for dinner and football instead of going out somewhere, ate our own apres-ski snacks, etc. Nothing super earth-shattering, just lots of little things. I saved myself $60 by renewing my website for a year instead of month-by-month!
1. Updated our Important Info binder to include a section on our dog for when we become incapacitated or dead. We identified a loving caregiver within our family, wrote instructions on our dog's routine and other pertinent info about her, and instructed our representatives to set aside a certain amount of money for her future without us. Peace of mind is priceless!
2. Rescued some cooked pasta that was about to go bad by tossing it with some homemade Szechuan sauce, peas and peanuts. Good either hot or cold.
3. Added too much oil when roasting portabello mushrooms so I added chopped onions to use up the oil. Couple days later I used too much oil again with something else and that time I added cubed bread to make croutons.
4. Replaced the broken outdoor panel on our washer door BY OURSELVES. I'm shouting in all caps because it's a bit of a miracle that we: 1) didn't break something else in the process, 2) didn't need to call in professional reinforcements, and 3) used only kind words with each other.
5. The door panel came wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap. Brought that to my local independent bookstore for their use when mailing books.
@MB in MN, I’m SO glad you created a plan for your dog! So many dogs (and cats) end up in shelters after their owners are no longer able to care for them and no one in the family will take them. We’ve done the same as you for our dog: asking a family member who loves our dog if they would take him in if the worst was to happen, and made sure funds from our estate would be allocated to his care.
I love Screwtape Letters! Hope Zoe enjoys it.
I always feel like I'm boring with 5 Frugal Things. My biggest saves have been with food--I made venison stew last week with venison from our freezer, and to go with that, I made soda bread--I had buttermilk lingering in my fridge and needed to use it up. Yesterday I bought ground beef for $2.99/pound, which is amazingly inexpensive these days. We don't eat a lot of red meat but sometimes I like a hearty meal. Meatloaf was on the menu last night and we'll have burgers later this week. I may go back and get some more while the sale is still on and freeze it for later.
I had to buy gym clothes for my 16 year old daughter. While that isn't cheap, per se, I did find some decent prices at TJ Maxx. She doesn't want to wear anything skin tight so I was pleased to find joggers that would suit her needs--now if only she liked gym .... sigh .... it's gonna be a LONG semester.
1. We got a 3 month free Apple+ trial that came with my Christmas present. I have the date it ends marked on the calendar so I cancel it before we have to pay for it. There are a few things we liked to watch but not enough to buy it.
2. I'm listening to free with ads history podcasts while I tile, grout, and seal my bathroom floor.
3. I've been "visiting" museums on line exhibits to combat cabin fever. Very fun!
4. Bought makeup tools and organizers for my historical entertainer side hustle at Dollar Tree yesterday before the prices go up to $1.25. The makeup I have to use can stain/ruin my regular everyday tools (not that I use them much with staying home now) so it makes sense to have a dedicated set I'm not going to cry if I lose on the go. It also makes it tax deductible business expense if I choose.
5. I made 6 months worth of powdered laundry detergent and stored it in a repurposed protein powder container.
@Condo Blues -- thanks for the tip on virtual museum visits. My cabin-fever cure has been YouTube videos of people touring Amish grocery and variety stores (for those familiar with Amish practices, the people who post these videos are diligent to keep Amish people off camera while they record). My mom and I usually make an annual day trip to an Amish area in our state, but our next trip is on hold while we wait out the omicron surge.
1. I received 2 Cascade samples in the mail.
2. I sold a bunch of CDs and DVDs for my sister on a site called Decluttr. She gave me $20 of the $82 they sent.
3. I used a very sad apple and some blueberries that have been in my freezer for years to make baked oatmeal. So good! I used 99 cent clearance zucchini and peppers to make pasta with veggies, fried rice and stuffed peppers. I made zucchini muffins with the last zucchini.
4. My only out-of-pocket spending for groceries in January was $10.81. I bought gas in January and redeemed points for 40 cents off per gallon. Other than that, I had a no-spend month.
5. Today I redeemed coupons for free Betty Crocker cake mix at Kroger ($1.99) and free Snuggle at Walmart ($4.47). I found 13 cents in the Coin Star machines.
@BarbG,
Almost forgot - today is the day to download the freebies on the Sprouts app. I downloaded the ones for a free Wicked Kitchen product and a Keto bar.
I feel like my frugal things are only moderately frugal but here goes:
1/ My husband’s home office desk that he works from ~2 hours a day is a hollow core slab door propped up on a filing cabinet and a wire shelf (shockingly, he didn't love working full time from home during the lockdowns!). It worked as an occasional craft desk at our old house, but has been his desk since we moved in 2014. I was shopping for desks online and not only are they expensive, but they aren't quite the right dimensions for the space. Using Ikea butcherblock counters, I have materials to build us each a new custom desk for less than what one not-quite-right desk would have cost.
2/ Home office part 2, my husband has a bunch of papers thumbtacked to the drywall. It looks about as nice as it sounds, so as an office upgrade, I wanted to find a solution for that. I found magnetic glass bulletin boards, cork boards, magnetic white boards … but the things I liked aesthetically and were big enough were $$. Finally found a nice clean-lined bulletin board tutorial, supplies were under $35 for a 2’x4’ fabric wrapped bulletin board.
3/ While cleaning out the office, I found a bunch of stuff to donate, and posted some outdoor fabric and cork board tiles for free on Fb Marketplace … no, that didn’t save me any money, but it brought me a lot of joy to find new homes for good items I know can be used by others.
4/ I finally took a big bin of kid clothes to my favorite kids’ consignment store. They only took about half of it, but that was $35 of in-store credit for me, and again, knowing my stuff be much more likely to get new homes than taking it to Goodwill.
5/ We sleepover-swap with family friends for date nights. This weekend was our turn to host, and I ordered pizza for the kids - I did a carry out special, used a coupon for a free pizza, and then tacked on an order of garlic bread bites as a little treat … between the 5 kids ages 11, 10, 9, 8, and 6, they demolished a large pizza, medium pizza, and 16 garlic bread bites, holy smokes! $16 after tip, but I was glad for an easy dinner win.
I don't feel particularly frugal this week. We'll see what I can think up.
1. I cancelled my Kindle Unlimited subscription. My library has really amped up their libby app offerings, so I found myself not using the subscription much.
2. We traveled for a college visit this weekend. On our drive-home day, we had an early snack in the car and then stopped for lunch mid way so we only had one meal on the road that day. Our meals out are never cheap because we have to eat gluten free and those restaurants are always expensive I've found.
3. My daughter is continuing to apply for scholarships beyond what the colleges are offering her. We don't know if any will come to fruition, but they definitely wouldn't if she didn't apply. I'm counting this as a win for me becuase I am the chief proof reader. 🙂
4. I got an unexpectedly high performance rating at work. This will translate into a better merit increase and bonus in a few months. I knew I'd done good work, but my company forces a distribution on the ratings, so I wasn't expecting it.
5. Rabbit was boarded at the vet while we were gone and got a great bill of health for a "geriatric" rabbit. Honestly, I am not an animal person and this is my older daughter's pet. She's gone at college so we are the care takers. The vet was impressed with what good shape the bunny is in, so no extra money spent on vet bills. I'll count that as a win.
Lisey has been consistently applying for scholarships in her field, and she's gotten a fair amount of money from her efforts. She thinks it is definitely worth the time, especially if you apply for the ones that have a few more requirements (the more requirements, the fewer people will apply!)
@Susan, a motivational tip I read about the scholarship application slog: have your daughter track the number of hours she spends on each application, then calculate her "hourly wage" for each scholarship she earns. So, five hours spent to win a $1000 scholarship would be a yield of $200/hour (!).
Best wishes to both of you on the college search and scholarship application process. We went through the same last year with my elder child, and it felt like a part-time job with how much time it all consumed.
1. I redeemed a free pizza coupon for Saturday’s dinner. This single pizza successfully fed the entire family for two reasons - my husband was gone all weekend and not there for dinner and my six year-old son was blessedly “not super hungry.” I don’t look forward to the food budget when his teen years hit!
2. After redeeming credit card points to get a Lowe’s gift card, I used it to get supplies to continue moving forward with my next two home projects. I purchased more paint and rollers to finish painting the kitchen/breakfast room and cabinet pulls for my daughters’ bathroom refresh.
3. We reached 100 days of school this week here in Ohio. Traditionally, the kindergarteners have a celebration where they wear a shirt/hat with 100 items attached. This is my third kindergartener, so we there was a very frugal (a little bit phoned in!) solution…100 buttons glued to a hat. The buttons are from my laundry room collection and the hat was gifted to us from a neighbor last year. Done and done.
4. I hate to call it a resolution because I would like to become a lifestyle choice, but I decided (for environmental and expense reasons) I was going to try and go a year without buying any clothes for myself. It is February…I have made it one month.
5. And the standard frugal stuff…I ate soup from the freezer for lunch, got a few books from the library, prepared four vegetarian dinners this week, used coupons, and wrote my to-do lists on paper from the scrap paper drawer…there is a drawer because elementary age kids bring home A LOT of papers!
@CRW, I hope the year without buying clothes goes well for you! I find that I tend to wear the same things over and over because they really are my favorites. And sometimes when I find something in the back of the closet I'll either realize that a) I really missed it and am glad to have "found" it again, or b) it was buried because I didn't ever wear it. Anyway, just wanted to cheer you on!
Ooh, the no clothes experiment sounds interesting! Do keep us posted.
1. We did not eat out in January! (And we made excellent tacos at home.)
2. We are collecting a lot of free boxes for our move.
3. I shopped around a little and saved money on office supplies.
4. Checked out a picture from the library. (free art)
5. I bought cheese and grated it rather than buying grated cheddar cheese.
Let's see if I can get five this week.
1. Spent no money on alcohol this month. Having covid made it pretty easy to do a dry January, but I think I'll keep it going until spring while I build back health.
2. Ate mostly vegetarian. Meat is just too expensive.
3. Cooked most meals at home and packed lunch to work. Ate leftovers!
4. Restricted my phone to use the WiFi only so that I don't pay for data. I switched my ting to the unlimited minutes and texts and it has been so much cheaper! Thanks for the heads-up on this, Kristen!
5. Not frugal short term, but I'm telling myself it is frugal long term because good health is priceless: spent lots of money on vitamins and probiotics to build up our family's health after covid. I normally don't supplement with much other than vitamin D, but I'm thinking of the next few months as like doing a course of meds that are actually vitamins. Fingers crossed it helps with some of the lingering covid effects.
Nice fixes on the jeans!!
1. We sold our old washing machine! We recently purchased a new one (on clearance) to get a larger capacity and do fewer loads (it's been such a gift!!), so now our old one is being used, we didn't have to pay to get rid of it, and we made some money. Yay!
2. I mended a hole in my son's pajamas. Thankfully it was on a seam.
3. We cleaned out our rag bin and I took a bunch of old t-shirts and cut them up into more usable rags.
4. Gave my husband and son haircuts at home.
5. I went to Hobby Lobby and JoAnn Fabrics to get supplies for crafts at my daughter's upcoming birthday party and cringed when I saw that the elastic I needed was going to cost $16 (or more if the quantity wasn't quite enough). I decided to wait and when I got home I found some on Amazon with much better colors and it's 3x as much for half the price. While I'd rather buy in-person from a store, this is a time where I was thankful for Amazon.
I haven't commented in a while so there are some cool frugally things to chat about today. They are:
1) Our company went on strike and I did not spend a penny the entire time, due to a lack of a check coming in. Ten days of no spending. Nope. Nada. We used our food stockpile but that's ok as it came in handy. Savings- $350
2) I found free sandwiches at a new bbq place that were posted online. So we stopped in for free dinner and had a nice time. Savings- $20
3) Cereal has gone up in price quite a bit and Kellogg's carries some of my favorites. Even the store generic brands have been sold out. But one night, I found store generics for $1.35/box. Savings- $22
4) Our property tax went down by $25.
5) A dozen eggs on sale for 97 cents and milk was 79 cents a half gallon.
@lisa, Sometimes I stretch my favorite spendy cereals by mixing them with less expensive generics. That way I still get the flavors of my favorites, but at lower cost. My latest mix is Special K cinnamon brown sugar crunch with generic Cheerios. We also mix frosted mini-wheats with plain shredded wheats, which has the added bonus of cutting down the total amount of sugar.
Most of my frugal stuff is staying home.
1. My husband was looking for a healthy GF cereal to eat for snacks. I made him a batch of granola, using all buckwheat groats instead of oats (another grain he avoids). He was happy with it. It's healthier and cheaper than what you can buy in the stores.
2. I had a friend over for lunch. It's safer, cheaper, and healthier than going out. It also forces you to make sure the house is free of clutter and dust.
3. In a few minutes I'll walk to the grocery to buy a few bananas then stop at Walgreens to see if they still have rapid Covid tests (which may qualify for the senior discount and should be eligible for insurance reimbursement). They had them last week but I only went there to put old meds in the disposal box, I had no money or credit card with me.
4. I have old bananas I'll use to make muffins. They'll be just the right amount of ripeness tomorrow.
5. My husband is building a jigsaw puzzle we received from someone that picked up one we were giving away, using Freecycle. That's the second time we've "swapped" puzzles within the Freecycle community.
I'm glad you are feeling better! We, too, have been dealing with COVID long distance with our college student. My daughter and her four roommates - all nursing students doing clinicals at a local hospital - got sick to varying degrees. Luckily my daughter's case was fairly mild. Two of the girls were not so fortunate. It does sideline so many things when you are sick.
Although I look forward to reading everything you post, I have to admit, the Five Frugal Things is my favorite. It is so fun to see what you and everyone who comments does. It pushes me to make my five every week! Here's what we have:
1. Nearly finished with knitting a cardigan sweater for myself using gifted yarn.
2. Pantry and freezer eating to rotate stock. Other than fresh items and a few cleaning products, we haven't had to do a major grocery haul since Thanksgiving (when I also bought the menu for Christmas).
3. Made a list of UFO's (unfinished objects). If I stay focused and organized, I will be able to make the bulk of this year's gift giving with what I have on hand. I believe in giving handmade gifts over cheap things made overseas. Mine are made with quality supplies and love.
4. In recognition of 10 years at my current job, I received a gift catalog to choose something from. I chose Bluetooth headphones. I love them!
5. I became a member of a local quilt guild. At the last meeting, a member came in with boxes of upholstery fabric samples that I am going to make lots of fun stuff out of.
I continue to sew up rips in the one pair of pants my husband wears almost constantly. It's a losing game, and he will eventually have to get another pair, but for now, I just try to stay ahead of the barbed wire.
We spent a few hours this morning cutting, splitting, and stacking wood from three dead trees down the road (by "we" I mostly mean "my husband," athough my daughter and I were there for moral support and to pick up kindling). The owner of the property gave us permission to take them. It's a lot of work, but free wood.
Kind of a draw in terms of actual price, I think, but I bought a shampoo bar and was very pleased with how well it worked. I got it on Etsy, which meant my $10 went to an actual person. Also, it was fragrance-free (I'm getting more sensitive to fragrance as I get older), and, of course, was not in a big plastic bottle. I got a conditioner bar, too, though I haven't tried that one yet. I suspect these two bars will last for a very long time, given that I only wash my hair every few days.
I continue to resist buying packaged snacks for my three sons to have at school. They mostly have nuts or dried fruit, sometimes muffins or popcorn or whatever if I make something over the weekend and have extra. I don't care if they're not all that excited by their snacks, because I really want them to eat most of their food at their actual meals. So as long as they have something like nuts on hand for when they're really hungry and not just looking for a treat, I figure they're fine.
@kristin @ going country,
I hear you on the snacks. I keep trying to get my daughter to understand that a snack is a little something that you eat because you can't make it to the next meal, not an hourly opportunity to "treat yourself." This is a common exchange at our house:
D: I'm hungry.
Me: Here's a pear.
D: I don't want a pear.
Me: Then you're not hungry.
FFT: Unexpected House Edition (this week)
1. DH and I bought a house. We hadn’t been specifically looking, but one came up that was perfect and we jumped on it. In the long run this will qualify as frugal in terms of building equity, diversifying our assets, and at least buying now we are “getting more house for our dollar” with a lower interest rate than is projected later this year. Also, we really love the house and the location, and we realized we are really picky so this is good!
2. DH shopped around with independent agents for house insurance (always cheapest that way!) as well as shopped around for our mortgage company.
3. After pumping a lot of money into our HSA, we are finally taking it back out to cover expenses from our last round of IVF. The HSA is pre-tax, so this is a significant tax savings.
4. Ha, smaller things still add up but aren’t so dramatic! I found a dime in the parking lot… and I’m making chicken broth out of a frozen carcass and veggie scraps. And trying to eat down the pantry now that we will move in about a month.
5. Used a gift card earned from doing surveys to treat myself to coffee and lunch while working on a manuscript for journal submission.
FFT: Expected Baby Edition (previous week)
1. A sweet & generous person on Buy Nothing gave me a huge cloth diaper stash worth several hundred dollars at least.
2. A friend came to visit and brought a jar of her father’s homemade maple syrup. Oh wow, so good.
3. Worked an 8-hr work shift providing telehealth for a clinic on the other side of the state (I’ve previously traveled there, but can’t due to the stage of my pregnancy). I’ve been blessed with so many extra shifts and hours this month.
4. New year = new insurance incentives for healthy behaviors and online wellness workshops. Working on the workshops for both DH and myself- we can earn up to $100 each for workshops alone!
5. I was surprised by my coworkers today with a pile of baby gifts- this will be my only “baby shower” since we have generally requested no gifts from others. However it was super kind of them, especially since I am per diem (on-call/vacation coverage only). A huge box of diapers and another one of wipes (even with cloth diapering I am sure we can use some disposables!), several outfits, and a few odds and ends. So kind and thoughtful.
I had some leftover meatballs and Aldi burnt ends (by the way they are not great) I put it all in a pot of chili.
Got our free Covid tests and our free KN95s.
Looked at nutritional apps to track my sodium intake. Found a free one that offers sodium tracking.
Found some push carts for the grand baby at Goodwill for 1.99.
I made all our meals at home.
I mended my son's stuffed animal.
I mended a hole in my daughter's leggings.
I waited to make an online purchase until I had a long enough list of needed items before purchasing to avoid extra on shipping. For months we had been making do and it's nice to have the proper items again.
I made some banana muffins using bananas that had been languishing in the freezer.
I placed an order with Office Depot on Black Friday, and one of the items never came: 128oz Tide. Every time I checked online, it said it was out for delivery, but the tracking number said there was no information available. I chatted online a couple times and got nowhere, so I finally called. The man first told me to keep waiting, and I politely told him I'd already waited 2 months and something was obviously wrong. So, then he said he would give me a refund and I could reorder, and I told him if he did that, I would have to pay full price rather than the half price I had paid and I asked if he would ship another instead. It took him awhile, and he didn't sound super happy about it, but he did it, and I got my detergent yesterday! Yeah for perserverance!
I wanted to spend $100 on groceries for the 2 of us in Jan & Feb and eat up what we had. In January, I ended up spending $118, so not too far over. I think I can do better in Feb.
I got a free sample of Cascade in the mail after filling out a form on the P&G site.
I visited with a friend I hadn't seen in a couple of years last week, and she gave me a book I have been wanting to read because somehow she ended up with 2 copies. Nice. I stayed with my niece the next night, and she gave me a free haircut, so it was a nice freebie weekend getaway.
I shoveled out the entire drive after a snow storm (we have a very large drive!) and saved the $40 plow bill. Bonus: free cardio workout!
The free food edition:
1. My husband stopped to get six bagels at a small local bakery. I can make bagels but lately I am sick of cooking and baking and at the end of the day any leftovers are half price. It was the end of the day and as he was leaving with the bagels the owner asked him if he wanted (for free!!) the last of that day's salmon schmear. He came home with two pint containers of the stuff. I saved some for two breakfasts and used the rest to make a salmon sauce for pasta that fed us for two days.
2. Got a case of ramen from the free FB page. I doctor it up and use it in egg drop soup when I want something quick so it will eventually get used up.
3. Husband tended to a friend's cat every day she was on vacation, going over to visit and feed her. (I am wildly allergic to cats, as in my eyes start swelling shut very quickly if I am near them or in a house with a lot of cat hair.) We refused payment so she brought over a large pan of lasagna in thanks. We are on the third day of eating it and have another day to go.
4. Won a local contest and got a $20 gift certificate to a food hut. I have no idea how the people inside stay warm when it is 37 below, which is what it was this morning. Husband used the prize to get a fancy coffee and really liked the flavor so they sold him two packs of the beans they use. $20 spent, plus he left a $5 tip so that was out of pocket.
5. Fred Meyer sent us a coupon for a free cake mix. I used it to make a cake for a guy in my husband's singing group. He lives alone and has no family and I was worried no one would remember his birthday.
My husband and I (not handy at all) installed an “installs in 20 minutes”bathroom fan in less than 8 hours. (Not a typo). We are beyond pleased with ourselves. We plan on doing the other bathroom fan this weekend and will save $600 vs the quote we received from an electrician. I FINALLY sold something on eBay-thanks for your how to posts. I cooked 5 at home dinners (normally I give up by Thursday) and brown bagged lunch 4 times.
1. I picked up 2 shirts, for my son for the summer, off Buy Nothing. I also picked up a brand new Lego set off Buy Nothing. The Lego set will be a great gift for my kids at some point.
2. My daughter's daycare was giving away a loaf of whole wheat bread and 10 bananas. I used the bananas to make banana muffins for my son's school snack. The bananas also made two loaves of banana bread for my kid's breakfast next week.
3. We are making tortellini chicken soup this week for dinner, but Aldi didn't have tortellini. I had some ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella leftover from making lasagna last week, so I decided to make homemade three-cheese ravioli. The recipe made 50 ravioli for the cost of some flour and eggs.
4. I made 2 baked french toasts, using bread odds-and-ends I had frozen, for my kid's breakfast this week.
5. We took our kids to Build-a-Bear using gift cards they had received as gifts. I signed up for a $10 off coupon before we went. Now they have enough money on their gift cards to go again. They had fun!
Cinnamon dolce latte!! My favorite! I’ve been subbing brown sugar syrup, but it’s just not the same.
How is school going??
My frugal wins :
* School : parking in the streets, 20 min walk from Uni, saves 180$ for the trimester. Borrowed textbook from school library, saving 60$. Got a laptop bag in Goodwill for 8$. Bought a good quality laptop on sale (200$ off), hoping it will last me for the next 6 years of schooling ahead of me (no upgrading for me unless it dies). Packing lunchs and water bottle.
* Home/food : bringing thermostats down and using the wood stove saved us 100$ in electricity fees in January. Did freezers and pantry inventory to minimize food waste. Eating more beans, less meat. Always on the look out for sales/loss leaders, reduce racks, etc. Doing price matches at the grocery store. Doing online surveys in exchange for grocery gift cards. Going to Costco twice a year with friends instead of paying for a 70$ membership.
* Entertainment : Board games, DVDs and (lots of!) books from public library. Walks outdoor. Youtube videos/at-home exercice routine. Basic Netflix subscription (1 screen) for our family of 4 : forces sharing and compromizing, minimizes screen time and saves us 90$/year at the moment compared to the ''standard plan''. No other streaming services, no cable, no gadget. Covid put a dent in everything ''entertainment'' for the past 2 years (places keep closing/opening/closing in our areas) so I'm kind of done with it all, thus not missing it and saving us money. Same for travels.
* Personnal : I'm very low maintenance : no haircuts and hair dye/fancy products (long hairs/poney tails), very minimal makeup (I used to love lipsticks, but with all the masking...), no aesthetic routine apart from shower/deodorant/cream. Clothes are bought at thrift stores or on sale, and I keep a small wardrobe. Where I splurge is on good quality shoes, always.
1). We were looking for a way for our girls to get pool time while their swim team was on a break. Originally we planned to join the YMCA, but then decided to take advantage of open swim at a local high school. We now pay $4 for them to swim vs almost $90 for a monthly Y membership.
2). My middle schooler took the bus during midterms week. He goes to school 30 min from our house and I could have picked him up after his exam. However, he had fun waiting with his friends and I saved time, gas, and miles on my car.
3). Took advantage of our local nature preserve and went snowshoeing. We already had snowshoes, so it was a free activity.
4). Used up odds and ends from the freezer to make a quiche for dinner last night.
5). Checking out both physical books and ebooks from the library.
Finally used up the last two cans of coconut milk I got from a Dollar General clearance haul about two years ago, when I snagged 13 cans for $1 each. These last two cans went into a big pan of baked oatmeal on the weekend, which made lots of leftovers for weekday mornings.
Some instant powdered milk that had been languishing in my kitchen pantry got turned into creamer to fancy up my morning coffee. I used the Tightwad Gazette formula for making evaporated milk substitute: 2/3 cup of milk powder per 1 cup of water. I added vanilla-flavored liquid stevia drops to give it a flavor boost.
I bought a big jar of Knorr chicken bouillon powder at Sam's Club: 40 ounces for $4.68. Our local grocery store charges $3.39 for 8 ounces of the same bouillon (!).
We have a few boxes of basket-type coffee filters that turned out to be the wrong size for our coffee maker. Last night I experimented with using one of these filters to brew homegrown mint tea. I trimmed, folded, and stapled the filter + mint leaves into something that was more "misshapen bundle" than "tidy tea bag," but it worked great.
The zipper slider had come off the cover of our rectangular dog bed. I watched a YouTube video on zipper repair and spent 30 minutes wrestling with the zipper to get the slider back on -- then I gave up. Instead, I took a needle and thread and make three or four big stitches in four different spots along the zipper path, enough to close the gap and keep the cover on. The stitches will be easy enough to snip off and re-sew when I need to wash the cover.
Made croutons with old dry bread
Used the juice from a can of mandarin oranges to make orange waffles
Made muffins with frozen berries from the yard.
Have been eating out of the freezer for the base of our meals all month.
Went to the library, county park, and free winter festival for free family entertainment this month.
Don't know how frugal but:
1. Finally after years & years, I got a rather large back child support check for over $6k...he still owes me $20k
2. The check allowed me to pay from stepfather's cremation. He passed on 1/18. My dad told me to go direct to the crematorium. They take care of everything & it was a fraction of the cost of a funeral/burial. My mom opted to not do any of that due to financial restraints.
3. Her sister in law, my stepfather's twin, held a celebration of life party at her house. Cost was : $0 for us.
4. I have been giving stuff away on our Facebook Buy Nothing group. Not frugal but no longer in my home.
I didn't get 5 but 4 is better than none.