Month: May 2019

Categories
Every Day

When Can We Turn Off The Heat?

It is May 16, 2019 and we still have our heat on. It is 42 degrees outside. As I sit here writing this, I am listening to it running full force in the basement. Oh that reminds me, I will be right back! I went down and changed the air filter in it. It can’t run efficiently with a clogged filter.

But seriously, will we still be running this monster in June? I sure hope not. By now, we usually have the heat turned off. My electric and gas company just prompted me to read the meter and submit the reading. I will do that today. I am sure that this monthly bill will be much more than the same bill last year. I can’t remember such a cold spring!  I was hoping to have a break with a low utility bill at least one month before we have to turn on the A/C. But it doesn’t look like that will happen. It looks like we will go from winter to summer this year.

But now that we have put in a full length storm door on the back door, I will have Hubby change the window glass out for the screen as soon as we are able to turn the heat off. This will not only give us more light in the breakfast room but it will give us good air flow for there, the kitchen, and the great room. 

So the plan is to “air condition” the indoors using that and our screens. I am hoping not to turn on the A/C for as long as we can do it this way. We like fresh air! As long as it doesn’t turn humid, I think we can go without A/C for a while. Fingers crossed!

So to make up for the extra heat, we need to save on the bill other ways. One of them is making good use of our gas oven which we try not to use too often. If I can use the toaster oven to bake, our air fryer, pressure cooker or some other smaller appliance I will. They take a whole lot less energy. Plus we love our outside gas grill. 

But when I have to use the oven I will make really good use of it. So when I baked the cranberry orange bread for the hostess gift, I also baked a second loaf for when my family comes one day this weekend.

Before I get going with my day, I will hang the laundry that I washed late last night. Not using the dryer saves quite a bit each load.

When I take my navy shower today, I will use a bucket in the shower to catch the water while it is warming up. That water will be used to wash both bathroom floors. What a waste to just let it go down the drain! If I do that I pay twice; once for the water and once on my sewer bill. When I am done with it, I will water some bushes outside. I use no chemicals when I wash floors, just natural products.

It has been a busy week here in AD’s home. Today is going to be no different. I have a follow up appt. from my last hospitalization late afternoon in another town with my doctor.  Afterwards I have an errand to run. Then we have to have dinner and I have a party to go to at 7PM. It’s a Thirty One party which I hate but I need something and I enjoy the socialization.

Hubby knows how rushed I am going to be so he told me to call him when I am done with the errand and on my way home. He will have dinner waiting when I get there. He has to cook a vegetable and some salmon which should be easy for him. The salmon will be cooked fast on the stove top or baked in the toaster oven. The veggies will be done in the microwave.

So Thursdays will be saving on utilities day. Whether that be natural gas, electricity, water or sewer, you will read about it here.

As usual feel free to leave a comment or ask any questions. 

Categories
Every Day

Frugal Things The Past Week

Frugal Things will now be my Wednesday posts. So this is what we have done the past week to save some dollars:

– My bathroom faucet handle became loose. I didn’t know why. I let Hubby know. He checked it out and fixed it. It had become unscrewed. He screwed it back together and it works fine. I am glad we didn’t call a plumber.

– Having cleaned out the expired OTC meds from our supply, I needed to replace some things. I researched prices and shopped where the prices were the best. Some I ordered through Amazon which earned me reward points. Some I purchased at Walmart using a $10.00 Fetch Rewards gift card. It was generic at Walmart because the ingredients were exactly the same as the name brands.

– My dentist has come up with a prepaid plan which he says will save us money. They mailed all of the details to us. Doing some research looking at past prices, I am not so sure that it will. So there was only one way to really find out. I called and requested a current price list for procedures. They are mailing it to me. When I get it, I can take a better look and make a decision as to whether it will or not.

– All meals have been cooked at home. We have not been out to a restaurant since mid February.  

– Hubby sharpened the blades on our John Deere riding lawn mower. Rather than have the John Deere place do the maintenance, Hubby does what he can which saves us money. 

– Since my surgery I have been able to get off of three maintenance drugs. That is saving us $ 440. in co-pays a year. 


– Our landscaping company who takes care of our property for us wanted $750. for enough mulch to redo our gardens. That included the labor. We have decided that price is excessive since we can order a truckload of mulch for less than $200. Now that I have been cleared to lift things again, I can shovel mulch. So Hubby and I will be doing this work ourselves. 

– Today I will be baking a homemade loaf of Cranberry Orange bread to take to a party tomorrow night as a hostess gift. This bread is easy, tasty, and frugal. The hostess has a large family so it will be a nice breakfast treat.

– My son and West came for lunch rather than breakfast last weekend. Many times I have sent him out to Sandwiches and Ales to pick lunch up. However, this time I planned ahead and made our lunch. We had sandwiches, cut up strawberries, chips, cookies, and ice cream(West). I had a lettuce wrap and some strawberries. This saved us about $40.

– Hubby has been making me sugar free jello which is a treat that I can have on my diet. It gives me a little something sweet once in a while without breaking the budget. 

– I have gone down two sizes in clothes. It was time to buy a couple of items to get me through to the next two sizes down. I ended up buying some jeans and tops at J.C. Penney’s. Of course the ones I picked were 40% off. Kohl’s had nothing in my size that I liked. 

– Wow! Gas prices have really gone up. I filled up the tank while I was out using the $.10 a gallon that I had left on my Top’s card. I still paid $ 2.86 a gallon.


– Hubby is outside mowing our lawn so that we don’t have to pay someone to do it.


– Hubby and I went to the Running’s grand opening this afternoon. I had a $ 10.00 off coupon. There was nothing we really needed so I used it to purchase some Adirondack maple syrup. We are on our last bottle.


That is all for this past week. Please feel free to leave a comment and share with all of us what you have done frugally this past week.

Categories
Every Day

Are You Feeding Your Freezers or Feeding Your Families?

I know we all love to stockpile especially our freezers. I am very guilty of this habit. But I had to ask myself this week, when is enough enough? Am I feeding my freezers or feeding us economically?

Am I buying deals every week on meat and not eating much of what I already have in the freezers? Do I incorporate enough from the freezers into each meal? Or is the food just languishing there until it gets freezer burned and has to be thrown away?

Many of us salivate over a great deal like chicken breasts for $1.69 a pound. So we go and stock on 25 lbs. Then we see a great deal on ground beef at $ 1.99 a lb. and stock on that too. Before you know it, your freezer is overflowing and you can’t even find what you are looking for when it is time to cook dinner. Or you have to pull half of the items out of your freezer to find the piece of meat you want to cook or the vegetable to go with that meal.  

All of this really hit home this past week when I inventoried my freezers again. I now have 95 lbs. of chicken in my freezer. I had to ask myself, is that really necessary? Honestly it is not! 

I also asked myself am I really saving money or just spending week after week on these great deals and not using them up? Am I really saving money by doing this or is the “thrill of the hunt” what it is all about?

We all love a great deal but if we are not using up our stockpiles and continually buying week after week, how are we saving? When you get to the point that you are repackaging food items to make more room in the freezer so that you can squeeze another great deal in there, it is time to STOP buying! The $500. a month that I spend on food could be better used by investing it.

Sure I am on the South Beach diet so I do need to buy fresh produce for salads, some berries, and some dairy every week but not much else. Hubby is eating what I am eating but he likes his snacks, bread, ice cream, and other carbs that I don’t eat. So I can buy a few of those things for him and still not spend all of the $500. a month. 

We still have a lot of carbohydrate items in our pantries too that Hubby is trying to eat through. But I rarely replace many of them.

So I am on a mission these next months to eat up what we have! Meals will be made from the freezers and pantries with salads and berries mixed in. It is going to take a long, long time to eat all of the meat, poultry, shrimp, and fish in our freezers but we are going to do it. 

When I stockpile again, it will be done on a smaller regimen and I will be very careful of prices. But that is way down the road!

So from now on, Tuesday’s posts will be about what we are eating from our stockpile and an accounting on how much we spent that week on food. I want to keep myself accountable to you and myself.

I am trying to get back to regularly blogging but I get so involved in projects that the days just slip by. So I have decided to schedule certain posts on certain days so that I know what I will be posting about each day or every other day. But more about that later.

So if you are like me and need to stop feeding your freezers, please join me in your quest to use up what you have. Ask yourself the questions that I posted about above and be honest with yourselves. Your stockpile doesn’t save you any money if you are not using it. Don’t meal plan  and then buy your food. Plan your meals from your stockpiles. You will save so much more money that way.

One thing that I know after almost 52 years of buying food is that there will always be another sale!  So the “thrill of the hunt” will still be there months down the road. 

As usual please feel free to comment or tell me that you are going to join in with eating up your stockpile and save some money for investing, to pay down your debt, or for another goal that you are working toward.  

Categories
Every Day

Happy Mothers’ Day

I want to wish all of my readers who are Mother’s a wonderful day today. I hope your families spoil you rotten. You deserve it!

We will be having a quiet day at home which is the way I like to spend holidays. If it doesn’t rain. Hubby will grill some steaks. If it does, he will fix something else.

Categories
Every Day

Frugal Things The Past Few Weeks

Even though I am dealing with a health issue, those who know me know that I am still being frugal. So it is time to let you know how I have been doing this the past few weeks.

But first I thought I would share with you our beautiful blooming pear and purple plum trees. Finally we have had some warm weather and rain and things are starting to come out in their beautiful colors this time of year.

Now down to frugality:

– We have a very small Dollar Tree in our little town. I was tired of having to stop in all the time and try to get matching locker boxes for my organizing. It was almost impossible. It would be 15 miles round trip to go to the next town. So instead of wasting our gasoline, I placed an online order shipped free to my store. It took a couple of weeks to arrive but I finally have a case of new locker boxes to be able to start to organize in my basement pantry. A case was 18 white and 18 blue.   

– I deposited $14.97 in rebates to our savings account.

– We have a gas stove with a window in the door. Somehow a drip got between the two panes of glass a few years back. I looked and looked and could not figure out how to get in there to remove that drip that was driving me crazy every time I looked at the door. Finally yesterday, Hubby took the entire door apart and we cleaned that drip using my vinegar gel and some Method window cleaning spray. It took him quite a while because it was difficult to get it all apart. They don’t make things easy for you. But such a little thing made me so happy when it was done. 

– Our patio table broke over the winter. We only had three chairs left with it anyhow so it is time to replace it. We have been looking for a set that we like and have not found it yet. Since most sets that will last are between $1000. and $1500., we are taking our time. If that means that we have to wait until the end of the season when they are on clearance, so be it. We have other patio furniture that we can use in the meantime.

– I filled the SUV up again with gasoline purchased at $ .30 off a gallon. My DIL had surgery about 8 days ago for a torn ACL so we took care of West that day. So we needed to take him home and it is a 140 mile round trip. 

– We have several occasions over the next couple of months where we need hostess gifts. I saw these insulated bags on clearance so I purchased them. They are extremely nice and for just $6.04 each including shipping, they are very economical. Since New York has banned plastic bags in 2020, everyone can use these: Insulated Bags . Now to find some “laundry type” cloth bags to use for buying produce. 

– The only shopping I did this week was to stock on some NY strip steaks. Top’s had them on sale for $6.77 a lb. I had the head butcher pick me out a good loin and he cut it into 1 and 1/2 inch thick steaks for us. I ended up with 11 steaks. I food savered them before I put them in the freezer. They will be wonderful grilled outside this summer. I saved $73.43 buying them on sale plus an additional $4.13 using my senior discount of 6%. 

As I was putting the steaks into the food saver bags, Hubby said to look at one of the windows in our great room. I did just in time to catch this picture. I didn’t get as close as I would have liked but I didn’t want to scare the canaries. They had landed on our screen. 

– Last week I was offered a $10 off coupon to try Top’s grocery pickup. I needed to order at least $35.00 worth of groceries to get the pickup for free- no fees and no gratuity. So I ordered $37.44 in items that we needed and then applied the coupon which then cost me $ 27.44. The order was ready in an hour and it was easy to just pull into the designated parking spaces and have someone load it into your car. Everything that you see is on my diet with the exception of the hash browns and the Cheez-It Grooves. Hubby wanted the crackers and I cook the hash browns for Sunday breakfasts when I don’t have time to make my own. BTW, the Green Giant mashed cauliflower is to die for! 

– Hubby also did some touch up painting in our kitchen, great room, and the bottom of the basement stairs. Now the walls look good as they did 9 years ago when they were originally painted.  


– I cashed in my rebates on Fetch Rewards to get some Walmart gift cards. 

Other than those things, we are doing the usual like keeping all lights off when it is daylight, washing in cold water, hanging laundry to dry, and cooking efficiently watching portions.


What have you done to frugally lately?