Sunday, February 15, 2015

Frugal Accomplishments This Week and Accountability For My Struggles

Welcome to the weekly post where you get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly... and what "real life frugality" actually looks like in my case.


This week wasn't the best week in terms of frugality, but it certainly wasn't the worst either. Part of the "non frugality" was actually a conscious effort on my part, not something that "just happened."

We knew in advance that it would be a very cold, rainy week. And I already had a backlog of laundry. So I decided that I wouldn't be using cloth diapers because I knew it would be hard enough to keep up with laundry; I didn't want any more laundry created than necessary. And so, even though it was freezing cold, I still did a few loads of laundry that I hung outside.... And only rewashed one load of laundry that sat too long before... it went in the dryer, since it was still too wet outside.

And unfortunately, quite a bit of produce did get thrown out... I haven't been shopping all week so some of the produce was getting a bit too old. Or maybe just that I cleaned out my fridge for the first time in too long. (So does last week's "not too much got thrown out" count if it was hiding in my fridge until this time?)
Speaking of not going shopping- the one big thing that saved money that I didn't do this week was not buy any groceries! My month in which I tally my groceries ended yesterday, and I was happy what my monthly total was at the beginning of the week, and decided to see if I could challenge myself to keep it at that! So, I didn't step foot in the grocery store all week! When I needed something, I sent my husband and he picked up a few things, but that's it! So I managed to keep it down- gonna post my monthly grocery tally hopefully sometime this next week.

So, here's what we did to save money in our house this past week:


Frugal in the Kitchen
Made split pea soup with leftover rice for lunch.'
Made vegan "meat pizza" with lentils.
Made porridge for breakfast.
Cooked up wild beet greens, sow thistle, free collard greens for lunch with leftover rice.
Made rice and free kale patties with leftover batter from batter fried fish.
Made rice with chickpeas with past prime veggies
Made salad with past prime avocado and past prime tomatoes, onion greens, and foraged lemon juice
Made pasta with free kale, chickpeas, foraged capers, etc...
Cooked up lentils and rice and mushy tomatoes and cabbage for supper.
Rice pudding for breakfast instead of cereal and milk.
Made soup from leftover lentils, rice, tomatoes and cabbage, plus peas, plus chicken drippings from the freezer, and leftover rice pudding (unsweetened).
Made chickweed based salad, twice.

Made From Scratch
Made gluten free flatbread.
Made Persian vinegar based drink.
Made pasta sauce from mushy tomatoes.
Made gluten free apple muffins.
Made homemade coconut milk.
Made homemade French dressing.
Made tahini cookies.
Made chocolate cake.
Made homemade grain free noodles.

Foraging
Foraged sow thistle and carob.
Foraged chamomile, dehydrated it, and made chamomile tea, twice.
Foraged chickweed and sow thistle.
Foraged olive leaves for tea.

Frugal Shopping
Bought grade B tomatoes and cucumbers.
Got some stuff from the thrift store.
Ordered myself and the kids musical instruments cheaply from ebay.
Ordered bulk green buckwheat and bulk coconut sugar.

Frugal Crafts
Made some costumes for the kids from the thrift store stuff.

Free Stuff
Inherited a bunch of gorgeous hand me down clothes from my husband's co-worker's wife

Frugal Medicine
Made a chickweed poultice for a skin issue.

Frugal Fun
Got a discount on a restaurant meal on my girl's night out because they flubbed up one of the dishes.

What did you do to save money this past week? Anything you're particularly proud of?

2 comments:

  1. wow i think it is great how you make so many things out of scratch it is truly inspiring :) I need to add a little more frugality to my life because I happen to be a big spender.
    www.batelmiller.wordpress.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. We're finally managing to limit our trash to one big 35L bag a week, rather than using 2 25L ones. We actually don't make 50 L of trash a week--it's just that, to avoid a big stinking mess, we empty kidlet's diapers twice a week, but now that he's in underwear most of the time the diapers are decreasing.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for leaving a comment on your blog. Comments are moderated- please be patient to allow time for them to go through. Opposing opinions are permitted, discussion and disagreements are encouraged, but nasty comments for the sole purpose of being nasty without constructive criticisms will be deleted.
Just a note- I take my privacy seriously, and comments giving away my location or religion are automatically deleted too.