Frugal Things The Past Few Weeks

These are the frugal things that we have been doing the past few weeks:

– The storm door for my morning room finally got installed last week. We are loving it. The draft that has been there since we moved in is now gone. The installer did a great job putting it in and caulking it with clear caulk both inside and outside sealing any tiny areas that you could see a little bit of light through. It will be interesting to see our next heat bill. It was too cold for me to go outside today to take a picture so I just did it from inside. 

– Hubby ordered our filters for our refrigerator online on sale. I think he got 60 or 65% off plus money back from Ebates. Within the next couple of days, they went on sale for 5% more. He called them and nicely asked them to credit us the additional 5%. They did. 

– We have earned enough points from our supermarket to get (5) $50. gift cards for just $40. each. I picked up one the other day and will pick up the other 4 tomorrow. We are getting Lowe’s cards because they always come in handy for house projects.

– Hubby is making me a cookbook in a three ring binder. He is using my large photo box of recipes that I have used over and over again. He is entering them one by one into a program that will print them out the size we want. The cookbook will have indexes just like many cookbooks. I am beyond thrilled with this Christmas present. It is something that I have wanted done for a long time. It will have all of my favorites and many that have been passed down through the family. Perhaps, I see a gift for my sons and their families next year.

– I ended up buying three turkeys and one ham on the Thanksgiving sales. Those will give us many cheap meals over the winter.

– We spent a total of $ 1259. for Christmas gifts for family, my hairdresser, the mailman and UPS man, and the newspaper lady. I also put $20. in the Salvation Army kettle in the supermarket. I also included $20. that I always tip my favorite carry out guy at the supermarket. I included the cost of party mix that we will make for Christmas. I am not buying any other special foods for Christmas.  I mailed 33 Christmas cards so that was $ 16.50 in postage. The cards were bought a long time ago at 90% off and I don’t remember the price so I am not including the cards. We have spent no gasoline to travel to buy Christmas gifts. Most of the of the gifts were purchased online or were cash. So I think we have done well. We certainly didn’t spend $1000. per person like the Today show supposedly said most people do.


– I have closed off the two extra bedrooms in the house to save on heat even though I was told to never do that by a heating guy. Hubby says that is hogwash. So the doors are closed to those rooms, the heat registers are closed, and the snakes are in front of the doors to seal them up better.


– We continue to use our small appliances to cook meals thereby saving energy.


– I saved $ 5.00 off our grocery bills the last two weeks using a coupon Top’s sent me. I also got free bananas and a lot of them. Some have ripened and been frozen for banana bread.

– We are keeping the energy saving shades down now that it is so cold. They let light in so we don’t need lights during the day unless it is dreary or dark out.

– We have been cooking 99% of our meals cooking at home. Hubby made us a bacon, onion, balsamic vinegar chicken dish a few days ago. It was delicious.


That’s all for now. What have you been doing frugally? Please share with us in comments.