Sunday, March 15, 2015

Frugal Accomplishments This Past Week

Ahhhh! I have an insanely crazy busy week ahead of me, including traveling to far away cities two days, and traveling to a nearer city once, etc... and I'm so exhausted already. Trying to find the motivation to get this post up today... was very hard.
I finally figured out what it is that was making feel so out of it- I just picked up my glasses that I'd broken and got fixed and now am wearing them again, after having worn a replacement the last week, with a slightly different prescription. Crazy how something like that can knock you out and make you function at a diminished capacity.
But either way, hopefully the adjustment won't take so long.


So anyhow, this past week wasn't the most frugal one- I ended up doing a few not so frugal things... like forgetting a lot of things in the fridge and spoiled, so I ended up throwing out a heckload of rotten things when I finally got around to cleaning out the fridge, including a bunch of produce and some cooked dishes (mostly cheap foods like rice).
I finally, finally, finally caught up on laundry (first time in about 3-4 weeks that I actually saw the bottom of the laundry basket) but to do that I ended up using the dryer about 3 times instead of line drying. And of course... once that happened, the last load was actually forgotten in the machine so needed to be rewashed...
And I used about 4-5 cloth diapers over the course of the week- maybe now that I'm caught up on laundry I'll get back to using some cloth diapers? Who knows. We'll see.

So here's what I did that actually did save some money this past week:


Free Things
Inherited some organic produce from my step dad.
Got some olive oil from my mom's tree.
Got some fresh herbs from my mom's garden.

Foraging
Mike foraged rosemary and sage to make tea for himself.

Frugal In the Kitchen
Used leftover rice and leftover chicken drippings and peas to make a new dish for lunch.
Made homemade kombucha.
Sprouted then cooked up a bunch of chickpeas. Froze them in can sized portions.
Made chickpea soup for supper.
Made chickpeas with rice and veggies for supper.
Made Burmese chickpea tofu.
Made chickpea blondies.
Made chocolate cake.
Made homemade frosting and frosted a fancy cake.
Made homemade sushi.
Homemade kefir.
Made homemade lacto-fermented hummus.
Turned leftovers (chicken, rice, soup, and chickpeas) into soup.

Frugal Shopping:
Stocked up on corn flakes, chicken, mushrooms, and tomato paste, on sale and reduced rack tomatoes, apples, pears, pomelas, zucchini.
I broke the lens of my glasses (not frugal, I know) so instead of buying new glasses I just replaced the lens from a cheap place nearby, and I got my prescription and Mike's so we could get Zenni backup glasses. I ordered backup glasses cheaply from Zenni for Mike and myself, and prescription sunglasses for myself.
Got my harmonicas that I ordered from ebay in the mail, started giving the kids lessons.
Got my cast iron waffle iron from Lehmans finally in the mail.
Ordered my mom the best smartphone I could find cheaply, on a local deal and price comparison website.

What did you do to save money this past week? Any accomplishments you're particularly proud of? Any areas you'd like to improve?

4 comments:

  1. I have been having fun dumpster diving lately. Within the Last couple months we found at least $1500 in useful items and food. This week we found 50lbs of various chocolate and atleast 20lbs in other candy After splitting with friends we stashed our excess in the freezer. We don't usally keep alot of junk food in the house but I was not going to let perfectly good chocolate get wasted. Also we found a ton of produce a roughly 150 pounds or more within the last couple weeks. Now for the good stuff. We have found 2 bluetooth speaker towers, arolling bike rack for storing my multiple bikes, an awsomeme rolling toolbox my husband is now putting to good use, several flat screen computer monitors and a computer that will be for parts. Everything was in orginal boxes and in almost brand new condition . We just had to buy a few bolts and we saved hundrends of dollars. We have found many other little useful things as well. I would have never imagined myself getting so excited about dumspter diving but now i cant imagine not doing it. Thanks for reading my ramblings, Jackie

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have been having fun dumpster diving lately. Within the Last couple months we found at least $1500 in useful items and food. This week we found 50lbs of various chocolate and atleast 20lbs in other candy After splitting with friends we stashed our excess in the freezer. We don't usally keep alot of junk food in the house but I was not going to let perfectly good chocolate get wasted. Also we found a ton of produce a roughly 150 pounds or more within the last couple weeks. Now for the good stuff. We have found 2 bluetooth speaker towers, arolling bike rack for storing my multiple bikes, an awsomeme rolling toolbox my husband is now putting to good use, several flat screen computer monitors and a computer that will be for parts. Everything was in orginal boxes and in almost brand new condition . We just had to buy a few bolts and we saved hundrends of dollars. We have found many other little useful things as well. I would have never imagined myself getting so excited about dumspter diving but now i cant imagine not doing it. Thanks for listening to my ramblings, JACKIE

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oooh, ouch, sad about the glasses. It's amazing how much energy it takes to see through fog.

    What do you do with pomelos? We get them here too, small fruits for all that big thick skin. At least these are. I feel like we're paying for pomelo skin and then just tossing it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can't remember you mentioning burmese chickpea tofu before. A future blog entry maybe? :)

    ReplyDelete

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