Cleaning and Decluttering For Baby's Arrival

Anneliese, a few hours old. NOT the new baby
(who hasn't been born yet)! This is just illustrative.

My husband and I have been cleaning the house, and especially our bedroom the past few days. Reason being? Nesting instinct, I guess, because it definitely needs to be done before the baby is born.
Our home is small and has no built in closets or storage spaces whatsoever (other than kitchen cupboards). Because of that, our room has sort of become the "storage room" of our small home, with bags of clothing that we aren't currently using being stored high up, above the shelves that house our clothes, under the bed, in the corners under cupboards, etc... It's crazy, I know, and if we actually had the means of storing clothes somewhere else instead of our bedroom, I'd vastly prefer that, but unfortunately it is what it is, and our room is the de-facto storage facility...

Mike and I spent our entire Sunday finding every bag, going through them, sorting them out, and finding what was in each bag. Silly me, when I put them away, I didn't label them clearly as to what was in them, nor did I put them away in any sort of order, so it was definitely difficult to figure out where the newborn clothes were. But eventually, we did find them. And found lots of clothes that I am going to pass on to my sister for her kids.

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

How was your week? My week was pretty good, pretty frugal. I am proud of myself and my frugal accomplishments this week. Some of them were easy, but some definitely took a lot of self control, and that's where I am most proud of myself.

Sunday-
Acquired some kitchen utensils (soup tureen, a metal tea kettle, a few trays) and a small cupboard for free from a neighbor who moved away and didn't want to take them with her.

I felt really nauseous and the only food that appealed to me, that I was craving, was super expensive- either steak, beef with broccoli, or cashew chicken. Chinese restaurant food, mainly. I nearly sent someone to go buy the stuff for me to make them, expensive as they are... but in the end, scratched that, and made my own "Chinese takeout" style meal with cheap stuff I had in the house already- chicken hearts and broccoli from the reduced rack stall.

Stocking Up At An Incredible Sale

My groceries. I had no energy to lay them out
pretty for a picture- so here are the filled bags!
Anneliese REFUSED to leave the picture's frame..

A few days ago, when I was waiting for the bus, I saw this poster announcing this sale on groceries by a certain local organization that tries to provide cheap food and groceries to the area. In memory of someone that passed away, they said that today they'd be having a sale with even better prices than usual, and I took a photo of the sign, to study and see if it was really worth it to shop there. We're tighter on cash at the moment, so even if its cheap stuff, unless it is incredible pricing, I can't just stock up on things and use up our cash on that.
At the same time, I am due relatively soon, and I'm honest with myself that I need to take it easy after I give birth, that I need to be able to feed myself and my family without too much stress, and reduce the amount of housework I have to do... even if it means spending more money on groceries than I would usually. Since this sale was selling things that would make my life easier after birth, at amazingly low prices compared to their typical prices, even compared to the incredible prices that they usually offer, I decided that I would stock up on certain things, all the while trying to be frugal about it.

I hadn't particularly planned on blogging about my shop, but I bumped into a local blog reader who was also at the sale, and she said she looked forward to reading about what I bought and why. So Ruth, here it is. In your honor! And I hope other people appreciate this post as well.

Carrot Soup with Crunchy Chickpeas and Tahini Recipe

Have you ever had a ton of carrots and wondered what delicious foods you can make with them? Wonder no more. I bought close to 10 pounds of carrots when I saw them at a ridiculously low price, and then I was wondering what to do with them.

This carrot soup recipe was the perfect solution for using up large quantities of carrots, didn't require buying other veggies that I may or may not have had in the house (because it was carrots that were on sale, not other stuff), and didn't require any expensive ingredients.

I have another terrific carrot soup I like to make, but it's chilled, calls for orange juice, etc... and orange juice/oranges isn't something I always have on stock in my house, but all the ingredients for this recipe are things I keep on stock in my house and aren't expensive ingredients. And I wanted a hot soup- I like cold soups in the summer, but in the winter, I like thicker, heartier soups....

This soup was a hit in my house- hope everyone likes it as much as my family did! I based it on this recipe, but made changes to make it perfect for my tastes.

It is perfect for many diets, including grain free, vegan, gluten free, paleo, etc... in addition to being super frugal! And yes, carrots are one of the cheapest veggies you can get in the winter, so hurry up and make some today!
(Yes, it is a few steps to make it- but it's worth it, trust me on that!)

Save and Live

This is a guest post.

Things have changed and frugality is not just a way to live with fewer dollars per month anymore, it also represents a lifestyle in harmony with nature, less invasive and more environmentally friendly. The era of mass consumption has left us with a planet in trouble: climate change, impoverished populations... but more than anything else a dangerous loss of contact with reality, not to mention the immense waste problem we are facing.

Problems With no Solutions?

The only way to save the natural world is to choose a series progressive actions: in other words, we need to find answers that help us preserve our real wealth, and not only the money we have in the bank, and ensure the sustainability of our way of life.

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

You have no idea how frustrated I am! All week long I was tracking my frugal accomplishments this week, and I was in the middle of editing my post when the whole thing got deleted, and no amount of CTRL Zing would get it back... So now I have to rewrite the post, filling it in from memory... So it won't be as good/complete as it would have been. And now it can't be divided by day of the week....

Oh well...

I was a little less frugal this week than last, simply because I was feeling nauseous so much this week and simply didn't have much energy to do too many extras....

Homemade Powdered Laundry Detergent Recipe

Since this seems to be the time of my life when I am doing a lot of "confessing", I guess I have another confession to make- despite posting a recipe for homemade liquid laundry detergent 3 years ago on my blog... I haven't used it in nearly that long.
There's a few reasons, but the main one really is that I don't like liquid laundry detergent, and don't feel like it's working as well as powdered detergent.
However, I've tried making powdered laundry detergent in the past, grating the soap, etc... but I ended up taking the wash out and finding little bits of bar soap stuck onto the clothes, so that made me not want to do it...
On top of that, my husband likes scented laundry detergent. I prefer fragrance free, but he doesn't feel clothes smell "clean" if they don't actually smell like perfume....
But I decided I wanted to try giving homemade powdered laundry detergent another try, especially now that I brought back the Downy Unstoppables- a laundry perfuming thing- from my trip to the US.
The clincher was keeping track of my groceries bill to the last detail, and trying to keep it lower and seeing that we were nearly out of laundry detergent. I didn't want to add the large sum of a big thing of laundry detergent to the monthly total, so decided to experiment with making my own.

A Frugal Birthday Celebration for Mike and Me

Last Tuesday, Mike and I celebrated our birthdays- he turned 28, and I, 26. I have mentioned, probably at every birthday, my philosophy of birthday celebrations- I'm very much a believer in them. I think people deserve to be pampered one day a year, minimum, where they can feel special and don't have to feel guilty about doing nice things for themselves. As a frugal housewife, I especially enjoy celebrating my birthday, because, while I do get nice things for my kids and husband here and there, I do feel guilty spending money on myself on "frivolous things", anything other than what I really need... but on my birthday, I do end up being less uptight, and not feel guilty for spending on myself.

Essentially, what ends up happening is my husband and I go on two official dates each year- one for our anniversary, and one on our birthday. And we spend money. But even spending money, we try not to go overboard, and try to pick a more frugal option. Like for our anniversary this past year, we had a romantic picnic date, with fancy homemade foods- much cheaper than a restaurant. And I think last year I bought steaks and other fancy foods that we loved and had them at home while my kids slept over at my mom's house.

This year, though, I am tired. I don't want to cook. I want to be pampered, to not have to work hard to prepare for our date, and clean up after. So I was looking into what frugal date options would be in my general area. Ideally I wanted something that wasn't food based, because I am so limited in what I can eat because of my gazzilion and one food restrictions...

My Frugal Accomplishments This Week

I recently started reading a great blog that is very up my alley, called "The Prudent Homemaker" who lives extremely frugally, but seems to have the same attitude as myself about it (trying to have the best life on as minimal a budget as possible). One thing she does each week is share a round up of what frugal things she did that week. I thought that I'd try doing that on my blog, and see how it goes (after first polling readers on my Facebook page). If I see it gets to repetitious or boring, I'll stop, but for this past week I had a fun time chronicling all that I did that was frugal. I'll try to get it posted each Sunday, latest Monday, with the week counting from Sunday to the following Saturday.

But since I started this thing Sunday, I first have to share what I did last Saturday night, a few hours before starting my "official chronicling"- I gave myself a cute layered shoulder length haircut.

For most of the week, I wrote down specifics of what I did frugally each day, but there were a few things I did all week long, so I'll post them first.

The Cloth Diaper Closet- A Cloth Diaper Lending Program

Do you have a baby, have a little one on the way, or planning on having a kid in the future? You probably are aware that one of the biggest expenses when it comes to babies is diapering. I cloth diaper my kids to save money, and try to use cheaper cloth diapers, such as Econobum One Size Cloth Diapers... But I know that even though cloth diapering is cheaper in the long run, sometimes it is too large of an investment to be able to lay out, especially if you're really short on cash like many of my readers are.
Therefore, when I was contacted and told about the Cloth Diaper Closet, a cloth diaper lending program for low income families, I thought it was a wonderful resource and was happy for Heather to share a little about why she chose to cloth diaper, and a little more about this program, so that hopefully you, too, would be able to benefit.

Hi! My name is Heather. I blog about natural and affordable ways to raise baby at Frugal Green Baby and also run The Cloth Diaper Closet, a lending program for families in need. I'm here today to show you how you can save money cloth diapering as well as help others in need!