Frugal Living in
January
Here's hoping that everyone survived the past fall and holidays and
is still having a blessed New Year!
I for one though am ready for February to be here! January has been
rough financially, between the shrinking size of the paychecks this
month to unexpected doctor and car repair bills, we are definitely
feeling "the pinch" around here. Just as the one country
song sings, we "had too much month at the end of the money."
Since my blog is suppose to also be about frugal living, I thought I
would post some of the things that we have done this month to try to
help the budget. None of them are rocket science-you probably
already do some of them yourself, but I know that I receive
inspiration from several blogs that regularly post about frugality
so I list these to help anyone who may need encouragement today!
1)
Meal Planning, Shopping List, Leftover List, Snack List and Frozen
Meal List
We even use scrap paper to write the lists on!:) Since the front of
our fridge is not magnetic we use scotch tape to attach them. I have
done a weekly meal and shopping list for over13 years now (and like
many of us I pay the "extra" price for any weeks that we
fall off the bandwagon.) New to our lifestyle starting this fall
though is that we now post a "leftover/snack" list and a
frozen meal list. We were blessed with so many meals when I was on
bedrest again last fall that we had to freeze some of them (or at
least half of a meal when we didn't finish them.) We used up quite a
bit over November and December when I was working full time at the
store. We will definitely try to freeze extra meals next fall to
help prepare us for our busy holiday time at our store! It's nice to
be able to see what leftovers/ready made meals/sides we still have on
hand each week so that when the schedule goes haywire I know what I
can prepare quickly for the family without stopping for fast food.
(For instance: we forgot to prepare our crock pot meal for Tuesday
night, so Jason bought frozen pizzas on his way home with the kids
and supplemented with other sides/fruit.) We also started listing
snacks for the kids as well because I got so tired of the kids asking
me what they could eat. Some weeks I even list breakfast ideas since
we stopped buying boxed cereal last summer. Boxed cereal has now
become a birthday/holiday treat. It was just killing the food budget
since each kid would eat 2-3 bowls and still be hungry again within 2
hours. Since we are Byzantine we eat meatless every Wednesday and
Friday. We also try to do one to two leftover supper nights per week
(unless the kids and I have finished the leftovers for lunches. Then
I have to improvise of course.)
#2:
Curtain door/Not heating every room in the house
Back
in August 2011 we moved our bedroom into what used to be the
office/library room and the adjoining music room. It was our way of
making a "bedroom suite" where one hadn't existed before in
the old part of our 1860's built farmhouse. The bonus: the office
room has an adjoining bathroom. (Jason had this "epiphany"
idea after listening to me complain/"dream" for the six
months of my first bedrest for the wall to be knocked down so I
wouldn't have to walk so far to the bathroom. Plus, Jason literally
only had 4 inches of space to be able to walk around the bed to get
to his side of the bed from the doorway. When we made the new suite,
we moved the door that had been between the formal dining room and
the kitchen to be used as our new bedroom door. Since our house is
so old you can't just buy a "standard" size door to replace
an item. All the doors to the house have to be specially made since
they are all smaller/bigger than today's standard size....which means
it's a small fortune to replace a door. Last winter we put up with
the cold draft from the formal dining room, but this year is colder,
so we bought this gorgeous kitchen and curtain rod while Christmas
shopping back in November and finally hung it up this month. (Budget
Item: bought them at Wal-Mart.) The kitchen is warm again! Jason
did manage to hang up two curtains we already owned as a doorway
blocker between the two rooms of the master suite back in November.
That helps in two ways: when he gets up between 4:30-5:00 in the
morning, he can turn on the light in the other room without
disturbing me or the babies. It also helps with heat right now
because we are not heating that part of the suite. So, what rooms
are we heating? Kitchen, living room and the 3 bedrooms. The master
bath heater gets turned on periodically when the bathroom is being
used for showers and extended use. Our second bathroom doesn't
actually have a heater, so we usually just try to leave the door open
during the day for the living room wood stove to heat it up. That
means we are not heating the following spaces: front entryway,
office, formal dining room, previously mentioned bathrooms and second
room of the master suite, and the guest room/homeschool room (unless
someone is staying there overnight or the kids need privacy. Lately
though they have just been homeschooling in front of the kitchen
heater, the living room or their bedrooms.)
#3:
Pigs have been made into bacon
We had purchased 3 pigs this past August.
Miss Priss (weighing in at 400 plus pounds) was purchased when we
bought some other livestock. We had been told that she was expecting
piglets, but unfortunately the breeding didn't take. She was too old
to get bacon or ham, but we got tons of bratwurst, sausage and ground
pork from her. We had friends that offered us their open spot for
butchering since they had unfortunately lost two piglets, so we go
her butchered in December. Jason had quite the adventure to get her
loaded and keep her on the trailer when they tried to load our
friend's piglet.
Even though our two piglets were only at about 230 pounds (you
usually want them to be closer to 250 pounds) we took them to market
this past week so we wouldn't have to purchase anymore corn. We had
subzero weather and since pigs don't have any fur they have to
consumer A TON of food to keep their body temperature up. We cut our
losses and look forward to having Easter ham and bacon. We also
began selling off some of the extra meat from Miss Priss to help make
room in the freezer and for some extra moolah.
#4
We didn't place a food co-op order and we are canceling another
automatic shipment order.
We belong to a food co-op and since we had to pay for the extra
doctor and car repair bills somehow, we dipped into the food shopping
expenses. We are eating out of our freezer and pantry this month. I
have resisted all those "sale signs" and have only bought
fresh milk, eggs, orange juice, bread/bagels/english muffins, lunch
meat/cheese, fruit/veggies and cat litter/cat and dog food. Some of
the meals are starting to be very creative, but that's how it works
when shopping from one's pantry. We have also decided to cancel our
automatic monthly shipments from another company. We will use up
what we have stored from them and then decide how to proceed: do we
restart monthly shipments or buy from somewhere else? Decisions, decisions, decisions....
#5:
Potty Training
Since
we will be mostly at home for the next 10 days, I have decided to
"bite the bullet" and get serious about potty training
Anna. She showed all the signs of being ready to potty train at the
end of the summer/during my bedrest and my friend Barbara did start
trying while she was here. It was just too much to continue after
she left, so we restarted this week. Of course, I didn't realize
that the water line had frozen to my washing machine out in the
garage before I started, so I am already behind in
washing...sigh....Lowe's was all sold out of the heat tape from other
people having this same problem with the subzero temperatures.
Thankfully Jason remembered that he had bought some tape after we had
this same problem four years ago during the last deep freeze. He
managed to find it so hopefully I'll have water soon. If not, I'll
be digging out one of our extra space heaters to blow on the pipes as
well. I'm praying that Anna catches on soon and that I will have
more patience than I had on the first day. (Though the lack of
patience probably had more to do with not feeling the best and the
kids all acting crazy.) It will be nice to have that extra $20-40
back in the food budget rather than spending it on disposable
pull-ups. I already had the cloth training pants from Katie, though
I may need to order more plastic covers to have on hand. Thankfully
I also have Libby still to potty train so it's an investment that I
will still get my money out of in the long run.
#6:
Food as Presents/Souvenirs
I don't know how this rates on the frugal list, but I wanted to throw this idea out there for other parents. Jason and I had non-refundable reservations for our annual night away from the kids earlier this month. Even though Jason was really sick we still went. We had already been blessed with a Christmas present gift certificate to a winery in the Ohio Amish area we were visiting that day, so we got to restock our wine selections. (Thank you Aunt Donna!) Since it was Epiphany weekend we decided to stash the presents we had already purchased to give the kids for Epiphany and save them for birthdays/other events. Rather than bring home even more toys as souvenirs we came home with the flavored Amish cheese they love (chocolate, peanut butter, sherbert, and mint.) The kids were so excited and we weren't bringing anymore toys into the house after they had been extra blessed at Christmas time. I was actually surprised because NONE of the kids asked for their Epiphany toys/presents. (I had been internally preparing myself for the question.) Jason and I have both started requesting food presents for our birthdays over the past few years. Date nights via restaurant gift cards and unexpected sweets are always greatly appreciated!:)
Feel free to leave a comment about what different ways you have been
saving money this month! It's always great to hear from you!
If you want more frugal inspirations (with way more beautiful
pictures than mine) please visit the following blogs that I regularly
get inspiration from:
Wishing you the satisfaction of a penny saved being a penny earned,
from the Sweetness of our home to yours-May you stay warm this
winter!
Always,
Stephanie
