As I've mentioned before, my husband is totally disabled. I had to quit working to stay home and take care of him, as he cannot do many things for himself safely that most of us take for granted. Because of this, we have been on a fixed income for over ten years. Until recently, we lived fairly comfortably on that amount and I, admittedly, had gotten lax in my role as the penny pinchin' goddess that that I'm known to be in my household. Buuuut...today's a new day and we are feeling the squeeze, as are many.
This week, in addition to things so ingrained in my being that I don't even have to put thought into them anymore, I did the following to make our pennies beg for mercy, lol:
1) Since groceries are my first line of defense when trying to save money, I started there. During the height of the "vid" I began taking advantage of grocery pickup. I never felt comfortable with it though, knowing that I was missing out on sales and in-store only markdowns that I employed during my usual, pre-vid shopping strategy. I have been back to shopping in stores for some time now and this week I scored a few things on sale:
* five, eight ounce containers of fresh mushrooms. I cleaned, sliced and simmered them in water, divided them into four ounce portions and froze them for future use. (If you haven't concluded by now..yes I am the freezer queen around here. I could and maybe I should do some canning, but it is too dadgummed humid (year round) for my liking, and I'll be doggoned if I'm going to add to that situation!) They were .99 cents each.
* two 10 ounce bags of tortilla chips for .99 cents each. Hubby likes to have them with some of his meals.
* two bags of shredded cheese (one 6 ounce and one 8 ounce) for .99 cents each.
* one ten pound bag of chicken leg quarters for .47 cents a pound.
* Roma tomatoes (a little over half a pound) for .99 cents a pound.
* organic granny smith apples (a little over two pounds) for .99 cents a pound.
* two bags of garden salad for .99 cents each.
* I clipped a "$5 off $50 or more purchase" digital coupon that was applied to my grocery total.
2) I harvested some sweet potatoes. I was growing them mainly for the leaves in order to have an additional source of greens to add to the veggie rotation. The sweet potatoes were a bonus! I still haven't harvested the ones in the container yet.
3) I am focusing on using cloth napkins more often and less paper towels, with a goal to sew at least two new cloth napkins this upcoming week to add to the ones we have. Right now, we don't have enough to completely give up the paper towels.
4) I sowed more seeds in the garden: a variety of carrot seeds, snow peas and mesclun seeds.
5) I began organizing cabinets and drawers in my cleaning zones in order to inventory and refresh my memory on items we have on hand (that can so easily become "out of sight, out of mind") so I don't run out of, and possibly buy, items we already have.
And one of the reasons we must plug those money holes...
this furry fella had to go to the vet for a second time to have a skin issue taken care of (the first round of meds back in August didn't completely take care of the problem). He has turned out to be a bit high maintenance for a cat (in my experience) but he is is sooo worth it!- “Frugality, quite simply, is about choosing the things you love enough to spend extravagantly on – and then cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don’t love.”
- ~ Ramit Sethi
- I hope all your endeavors, no matter what they are, were successful this week!
💋xo,
TJ
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