Cutting Costs The Past Five Days

It seems to me that all we have done is spend money which we have this summer. But there are many cost cutting things we have done also.

We changed the furnace filter to keep the A/C running efficiently. We do this every 4-6 weeks. We have turned the A/C up to 76 from 75 to see if it makes any difference on our bill.

I filled our car tank up with gas and saved $.20 off per gallon using Top’s points. I will have to be more efficient with watching prices on Gas Buddy since I won’t be earning points like I used to when I was shopping. I can use my Walmart+ discount at certain stations. The cash station usually has a great price when I don’t have grocery points.

I have been working on using up all of the disposable razors that I have collected over the years for free or on deep discount to shave my legs. I continue to use up all of the foundation for my face that I have hanging around. The same goes for other makeup.

We continue to use very few paper towels so that the next package I open was purchased before the pandemic. We use rags and microfiber cloths for almost every cleaning job.

I still haven’t had to buy toilet paper since before the pandemic. We have a bidet and we have really gotten our money’s worth from it.

Hubby wants me to hire a maid to come every 2 weeks to clean our house. I keep putting that idea off. As long as I can do my morning and evening routines and clean one room a day Monday through Friday, I can do it. I have had maids twice in my life and that has never worked out well. I can’t get over the fact that they don’t clean as well as I do so I end up letting them go. So until I can’t do it anymore, I will continue to do it.

Genealogy research continues to be a source of entertainment for me. I am getting good value out of the discounted price I got a few weeks ago.

I finally finished J.D. Vance’s book so Hubby is reading it. When he is done, I will pass it along to someone else to read.

We have wasted no food. When it needs to be used, we find a way or freeze it.

When I stripped the bed that West was staying in, I set aside those sheets to wash when I have more sheets to wash along with tablecloths or dish towels. I only wash full loads.

I have been watering down our thick shampoos to get more out of them. I have been doing the same with Dawn dish soap. They are much too thick. Every penny counts when you are saving for a goal.

We also cut open our toothpaste tubes to get every bit out of them. With prices going up every week, we need to make sure we use up all that we have paid for.

Hubby has continued since our spring cleanup to do all the weeding and trimming of our gardens. That is a huge amount of money we have saved instead of paying the landscape people to do it like we did for years. I am talking thousands of dollars. He is getting exercise and enjoys it.

I cleaned the dishwasher yesterday with a packet of lemon Kool-Aid. Anyone who has read my blogs since the beginning knows that I have been using that as a cleaner since well before dishwasher cleaners were a thing. It is so much cheaper than those cleaners.

I did 4 pints of peach jam this morning and I have 4 pints to go this afternoon.

What have you done to cut costs the past week or so?