Last Week's Frugal Happenings

Last week’s frugal accomplishments included:

1. Baking two coffee cakes from scratch.  Coffee cake is great because it has a little less sugar, uses ingredients I keep on hand, and my family feels like it is a treat.  Win, win, and win!  Far less expensive than buying treats and coffee out.
2. I took advantage of sale prices to add some more canned items to our food pantry.
3. I hung clothes to dry and only ran full loads.
4. I requested that my doctor do a 3 month prescription to reduce the  amount of times I have to run to the pharmacy. (He did.)
5. I know we will need a new printer soon…mine sounds like it is at death’s door…given that it is 10 years old I have gotten my money’s worth.  It has survived multiple high school and college courses, plus all my household printing and some of hubby’s work printing.  I have researched and know what I want.  My goal now is to combine either sales or coupons to reduce the cost.
6. I combined all shopping trips on the day I had the doctor’s appointment to reduce gas consumption.
7. We had guests over for dinner and I utilized the crockpot to make chili, the pressure cooker to make brown rice, and added a simple salad for sides.  It used less energy, pantry staples, and simplicity – but we all had a good time.
8. I batch cooked brown rice twice for use over the week.
9. I put small amounts of things I cooked into the freezer for my husband to take with him for the next week.
10. We combined a trip to the library with a few errands my husband needed us to run.
11. We used the library resources to checkout some books to help my daughter with her physics and calculus classes.
12. I created a “use up list” rather than a menu and this seems to work better in helping me make sure we avoid food waste.
13. I spent about 15 to 20 minutes re-organizing the pantry and updated my master list.  Saw a few items we really need to incorporate into our meals more often so that is on my to do list for this week.
14.  We took advantage of beautiful weather and went for a walk along the river front in a town near us.  We stopped and picked up an apple and a bottle of tea because my blood sugar had dropped.  (Failure to plan on my part.) However, we were able to keep our "date" cost down to less than $2.