Month: March 2025

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Every Day

My Project That I Am Working On

I am trying to get more organized in my freezers again. It seems that I have been so busy over the past few months that things have just gotten thrown in them wherever they fit instead of being really organized with a good plan.

So this past week in between appointments and other things, I have been tackling my two freezer drawers in my refrigerator. First thing I did was make a plan. I decided that all frozen vegetables and fruits, potato items like French Fries, quick prepared meal items(any purchased from the market or homemade leftovers), breakfast meats, ( bacon, sausage, ham, Steakums), ice cream, homemade preserves, and the meat I would be using in the next two weeks for dinner would go in these drawers. That will save me from running downstairs so often and opening the chest freezer.

The jars are the preserves and leftover homemade soups. Things that we can grab quickly for brunch.

We always keep a bag of frozen potpies because they are my guilty pleasure, some tortellini which I use in soup, avocados to go with my bacon and eggs once in a while.

I just went to B’J’s on Thursday. Hubby had his physical therapy that day. So I dropped him off and went to the warehouse club to pick up one item. B’J’s was only 2 and 1/2 blocks away. I had a free coupon for a 56 oz. Ling Lings Potstickers that was expiring this coming Tuesday. It was free because we have no tax on food here. By going with him I didn’t have to spend any more for gasoline doing a second trip.

You will see in these drawers that I have two plastic bags with white things in them. Sorry about the pictures but I am still having trouble with my phone. The white things are the potstickers. I repackaged them so that we could get 4 meals out of them and be able to fit them in these freezer drawers. I have a bulletin board on my refrigerator where I put directions from packages so I have them when needed.

I think this plan is going to work well for us. Time will tell. If it doesn’t, I will tweak it.

It took me a long time to do this with the short period of time I had because I had to go through my chest freezer to pull out the things that I wanted upstairs. Then I had to bring things from upstairs downstairs to make room for all of the things. Now my downstairs freezer needs major attention so I will work on that this week in between two medical appointments for me. That is going to take a lot of the rest of my time.

My son and West came for breakfast this morning. Afterwards I planned on going to our town’s electronics recycling with the frame that died the other day. My son said he would take it to his college’s recycling. That saved me a trip. I made eggs, bacon, and French toast for breakfast today. Everyone was happy!

We have been eating chicken for the past few days. We should finish it tonight.

I think I have a sinus infection and possible ear infection. I doubt that I will be able to get an appointment quickly with my doctor. So I may make a trip to urgent care in the morning.

That’s it for now.

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Every Day

A Little Of This And A Little of That

It has been a busy 6 days. I finally had my haircut at the new salon where my hairdresser went. She does a great job and I warned her what a horrible job the new girl did on my hair at Great Clips where she used to be. So she had me wait a couple of more weeks for it to grow in so she could fix it. Yesterday was the day. She was shocked at how bad it was. But she also had other clients who this other girl had butchered so she wasn’t surprised.

She cut it really short so that she could take care of most of the damage which was fine with me. She said at my next appointment she thinks it will be grown in enough to get back to my normal haircut that she always did. Best part is she only charges $20. for a haircut. Anything else is extra. She is renting a chair at the salon. Thank you Erika for doing such a great job yesterday. I was so sick of walking around looking awful or wearing a hat when I went out. Hubby loves the cut you gave me.

While I was out, I ran most of the rest of the errands for the week. I went to Home Depot to drop off another ION battery at their recycle bins. I missed it when I brought the other ones up.

Then I went to Top’s to get our groceries this week. Their ad was not very good. But I did pick up needed celery for $.99 and 1 lb. of Oscar Mayer Center Cut Bacon for $5.99 with a Super Coupon. I will be going to B.J.’s tomorrow combining the shop with an appointment. I have a Free coupon for a large bag of Ling Ling’s Potsticker’s that is expiring on March 30th. It will be no cost to me because we have no tax on food in my state.

We got our Electric and Natural Gas Bill for the past month. It was $270.84. I used 84 more kwh of electricity than the same period last year and 10 more therms. The bill for the same period last year was $208.81 so this one is much higher but $ 41.00 less than last month so at least we are headed in the right direction. Hopefully, it will warm up soon but we are in a bitter cold spell and it is snowing right now.

I am hoping that one of my sons has a chainsaw. We no longer do. We have 2 trees that need to come down. They aren’t that big so I think it is okay for us to take them down without hitting the house. I hate to pay a tree service to do it. They are so expensive. We had two trees that were close to our home taken down last year and it cost a fortune.

We have been trying to use up leftovers the past week or so. We have had 2 turkey BLT’s using up turkey that we thawed, bacon for brunch meals of eggs and bacon that was leftover, tomatoes that needed to be used up and the same for romaine lettuce. Other meals have been rib eye pork chops with fried apples and crispy crowns(emptied a bag), stir fry with chicken and sesame sauce on rice. Tonight will be grilled filet mignon, baked potatoes( I will bake extra for potato salad), and brussel sprouts.

I have done 2 loads of laundry in cold water and hung one and dried the other of sheets in the dryer.

We had a weird thing happen to us yesterday. I heard a noise in Hubby’s office. Every few seconds I would hear it. Eloise followed me because she heard it to. We couldn’t find anything but it sounded like it was in the wall behind one of our ladder bookcases. I am thinking mouse but we have never had one. Eloise was interested but not that interested which surprised me. I got Hubby but I didn’t know if he would hear it because he has lost hearing in one ear and most in the other. He could just barely hear it but couldn’t see anything either. It was above my pantry. I was getting worried that we might have a mouse down there. But we have never had one. As I was about to leave the office to go down and check, I saw our electronic picture frame(on the shelf of the bookcase) turn on and the screen become black with a red line across it. I told Hubby and he quickly unplugged it. We listened and the noise was gone. We haven’t heard it since. We got this electronic frame when Alexa was born that holds lots of pictures which recycle in it when you turn it on. It was almost 18 years old so I guess it bit the dust. So we have thrown it out. But I am glad it wasn’t a mouse! And I am happy we have those pictures on other devices.

I have been working on our food storage a few hours this week and I continue to do so. I will be showing you what I am doing on Friday. I don’t think I will have time tomorrow.

So what have you been doing? Saving any money?

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Every Day

Cutting Costs on Groceries, Etc.

We are now making our own yogurt. I had to buy one container to use as a starter. But with each successive batch, I save some to make the next batch.

We eat what is in our home already. The biggest reason is so that things do not go to waste. The next reason is that some of the prices over the last couple of days are starting to come down especially on eggs. They are now down $4.00 for a 60 count since the last time I purchased that box. By keeping my price book, I can tell when something has been reduced. I think they will continue moving in that direction so I will be buying nothing that is already on our shelves or in our freezers. That food was a whole lot cheaper than the prices now so while prices fall I will use up that food.

We continue to make more and more bread items. We are now making our own pizza dough every 2 weeks.

I buy fresh potatoes so that I can make baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, wedges, French fries, fried potatoes, hash browns and potato pancakes. I can get the fresh for about $ .40 a lb. That is a lot cheaper than canned or frozen.

We make our own puddings and jellos from the boxed. Buying the ready made is so much more expensive. I stockpiled about 100 of each over the last 4 years at $.68 each. They are now $ .98 each and up.

We buy generic(store brands) when we can. They are much cheaper. But they have to have very few ingredients when I do that.

I always shop with a list. That prevents me from impulse buying.

Hubby is hooked on diet cola again. I am trying to get him to drink more iced tea. We do buy pomegranate juice that we each drink about 1/2 cup a day for our health.

I am now buying chunks of cheese and grating my own. We have decided that we don’t want the cellulose in our food.

Ninety eight percent of the time I only buy on sale items. I will buy a lot when there is a a good deal. That way I rarely have to pay full price for anything.

I use Fetch to scan my receipts to earn gift cards which I use to defray the cost of groceries.

Well that is enough for now about groceries.

The picture above is of my brunch yesterday. I had my pomegranate juice with 2 eggs over easy and a piece of salmon. One of the reasons we watch our pennies is so that we can afford to buy salmon occasionally. This had been in my freezer for a couple of months. I bought it on sale for $7.99 a lb. which is a great price for my area. It was such a treat. Yes, I pan fried it in butter. I like the crunch.

We have been eating reuben sandwiches the last couple of nights using up the corned beef that I cooked for St. Patrick’s Day. Hubby makes them using the indoor grill in our home. I think we will probably have them again tonight. The rest of the corned beef I will freeze for other meals.

Hubby and I have watched our shows that we DVR for entertainment this week. We have also taken advantage of the warm weather and sunshine by sitting outside.

Hubby has been trimming the bushes. Our landscape guy will be coming the beginning of April to do the real Spring cleanup and mulch all of our gardens. Unfortunately we have lost 1 tree and are about to lose 3 others in our yard. Our pear tree which was so beautiful is dead due to a blight in this area. The same blight is killing 3 spruce trees that are about 20 ft. tall. We are trying to figure out what we want to do to replace them or have them cut down. Trees are so expensive. We are getting older every day and probably won’t be around to see them grow. So most likely we will have them removed and take the stones up that encircle those areas and plant grass.

It was our turn to read the electric and gas meters so I read them yesterday and submitted them to the company. We used 120 ccf’s of natural gas which is about what we used for the same period last year. Our electric usage was 490 kwh which is about normal for us. I expect our bill will be huge. I will let you know when we get it. I never realized until President Trump mentioned that New York state has the highest energy prices in the nation and that is why he is working with our Governor to bring the pipeline in. He says it will lower our costs. I hope so because right now it is so expensive.

I perused the new ads for next week and I don’t see any good deals that I can use. So I will probably not grocery shop.

That is it for today.

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Every Day

Things That We Have Been Doing to Cut Our Grocery Bill

I don’t have to tell you how expensive groceries have gotten over the past 4 years. As I track the price of things that we buy over and over again, it is really obvious. There are many things that we will not buy because the prices have gone up.

At the top of our list is junk food. We no longer buy candy, chips or any other snack like these. Instead we are buying fresh mandarins when we can find them on sale. Lately they have been on sale for $ 2.99 for a 3 lb. bag. If we need a snack in the afternoon, we just grab one of these. They satisfy our sweet tooth and are a good source of fiber. We also buy apples on sale for snacks and to make pies. Both of these last a very long time in the refrigerator.

If we need muffins, brownies, a cake, cupcakes, or cookies, we now make them at home. No more sweet treats from the bakery at exorbitant prices.

We want zero waste of food in our home. We did well this week. We used up all of our leftovers. Yesterday, I had one hamburger and some potato salad left from two other meals. That was it. So Hubby wanted to finish those. I thawed a bowl of turkey soup that I froze when we had roasted our turkey not too long ago. This week we will eat a lot of produce and leftover ham and turkey in salads. Last night, I made a homemade pizza. Today, I will make corned beef and cabbage since it is St. Patrick’s Day. I ended up buying another corned beef for $ 4.89 a lb. this past week at Aldi’s. It was about $ .80 cheaper per lb. than the one I purchased at B.J.’s. These will give us many reuben sandwiches over the next year.

We still buy eggs even though they are so expensive. We just don’t have them every day like we used to. They are a part of our diet that we do not want to give up. I am happy to hear that the price of eggs will be coming down in the next couple of months.

We are trying to stick to proper portions of beef, chicken, lamb and pork when we have them. The same goes for fish and shrimp. I have not purchased scallops in over a year because the price is too high.

We eat salads a lot for dinner. Sometimes for brunch instead of eggs.

We want the prices of food to come down. To make sure they do we are only buying foods made in the U.S. No foreign food for us to avoid the tariffs. It is harder than it sounds. I have been researching the products we buy and a lot of it comes from Brazil, Mexico, China, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Vietnam. You even have to watch your fresh meats and fresh produce. Many are coming in from outside our country.

We no longer buy fresh milk. Hubby and I do not drink milk so many times after making puddings and other recipes, we ended up throwing it out because it had spoiled. We use evaporated milk, powdered milk, and shelf stable milk when we need some.

I have started to replace Eloise’s food with homemade. The store bought prices are outrageous. I have made a recipe with ground cooked chicken, rice, and gravy that she loves. She hates liver and I won’t give her tuna because of the mercury. But we are working on some other recipes for her.

Hubby and I thought about buying a second freezer because there have been so many sales lately on them. However, we decided against it. We have a full freezer right now that we need to use up. If we had a second one, we would fill that up and things would not get eaten in a proper amount of time and spoil. We have decided to use what we have and then replace those items with steaks, hamburgers, chicken, pork ribeyes, etc. These will be things that we will grill outside over the summer instead of using electricity and natural gas to cook in our kitchen. The money that I have been saving on our grocery bill each month will help us buy those meats when they go on sale.

I had planned on doing this post last Friday but life got in the way. We had company, nice weather to enjoy, and many appointments to deal with. Getting old is a pain in the butt. Too many doctors to deal with. UGH!

I am going to try to post as frequently as I can. We will see how this week goes.

What are you doing to cut some of your grocery costs?

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Every Day

Cutting Costs

One of the most important things that we do to cut costs is to use our time wisely. We all only have a finite amount of time to live our lives so we must use it well. Hubby and I are not ones to play online games. I realize that some people use it as a means of entertainment but I could easily see how that could take up immense amounts of time that you could use to cut costs, cook from scratch, track your budget so that you can really see what you are wasting your money on, and track grocery prices, etc.

I did Solitaire for a while because I felt it kept my mind sharp. But I finally realized that I could do that by writing my blog and reading. I love to read but don’t do it as much as I would like to. So I will be adding time for that into my schedule each week.

So getting up in the morning and immediately wasting hours of time online is not in my wheelhouse. I do check my e-mail and facebook messages during the day but very little time is spent doing that. My computer is turned off most of the day unless I am writing a blog post.

We have cut our morning coffee costs. Hubby very rarely has a cup of coffee in the morning. I used to drink 3-4 cups a day. I only drink one with my brunch now. Today I had that cup with my scrambled eggs and SteakUms. Hubby had a toasted cinnamon raisin English muffin that was in the freezer.

The only deals that got me to grocery shop the end of the week were 2 dozen medium eggs for $ 3.49 each at Top’s. And a few things I needed at BJ’s. I got 2 very large boxes of raisins for $10.49 each, one large bag of Skinny Pop( my guilty pleasure) for $ 6.79, and a 8.23 lb. corned beef for $5.49 a lb. for a total of $ 45.18. My total for all groceries this week was $ 79.93. The corned beef was the best price I could find in my area. Most of them were $ 8.09 to $8.69 a lb. Since it was so big, I cut it in half and we will have it for St. Patrick’s Day and I froze the other half for some meals late in 2025.

My shopping was combined with my two doctor appointments this week so as to not waste gasoline.

I have an envelope that I put receipts in so that I can enter them into Fetch every week to save for Walmart gift cards. I did enter them this week. It only takes a few minutes and it is so worth it.

We got our quarterly water and sewer bill midweek. It was for $ 58.03 and included a $ 3.+ sewer rate hike. We used the minimum amount of water. For those who don’t know, I take Navy showers which does not take much water at all. I use the dishwasher about twice a week but wash many dishes by hand like pots and pans, wooden utensils, wine glasses, and the lids to glass containers, etc. I use a dishpan with soapy water and a pan to rinse.

When I boil water for pasta, etc., I use the same water to water plants or flush a toilet. No water goes to waste in this house. We do get a large water bill when we use our sprinkler system to water our lawn about 4 months a year.

On Ash Wednesday, we had coconut shrimp with mango sauce for dinner. On Thursday, I made 2 meals of spaghetti and meatballs. I made garlic bread from a $1.00 loaf of Italian bread to go with it. On Friday, I went to Chiavetta’s and picked up fish fries and French fries. I was hungry so I ate all of my fish. Hubby has some fish left for dinner tonight. We have plenty of French fries leftover. Those items will get heated up in the air fryer. I am going to put some chili on top of my FF’s. Tomorrow night we will finish up the spaghetti and meatballs with more garlic bread. That should finish all the leftovers in the fridge. Waste not want not!

The only other spending we did was to get some Burts Bees Waterless Cat Shampoo for Eloise and some new underwear for me. Mine was 4 years old so it was time for some new. I never put underwear in the dryer so it lasts me a very long time. That was all under $35. I also spent $13.00 for a car wash. Of course the next day, it rained while I was out at the doctor’s so it is a bit dirty again. If it gets a little warmer in the next couple of weeks I will wash it in our driveway.

This afternoon I used my Instant Pot to hard boil a dozen eggs for next week’s brunches, snacks, and salads. I also used some shelf stable milk to make some SF pudding for the week.

In between errands and doctor’s appointments, I have been doing some spring cleaning. My windows are so dirty that I can’t wait until I can wash them.

Well I am off to hang my laundry. I will TTYL.

What have you done to cut costs lately?

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Every Day

Utilities and Savings In February

Our savings for the month of February was $8700. We had no really large bills like the property taxes in January. We also got our tax refund, a class action suit settlement, and a rebate. We had very little spending. We did have a $406. cleaning and X-ray bill for Hubby. Plus our usual monthly bills like telephones, cable, internet, pest control, and security system. So it was a good month.

Our homeowner’s and auto insurance came and is due in March. They are about $190. higher than last year. We pay annually which saves us money. The homeowner’s went up by $100. and the auto by $90. We had no claims on that. On the auto we had to have our front windshield replaced.

Our electric and gas bill for 29 days was $ 311.84. Highest bill we have had since we moved here almost 15 years ago. We used 568 kwh of electricity and 185 ccf’s of natural gas. The $10. flat fee( which I posted about recently) did not come on this bill so I don’t know when that starts. We have cut back as much as we can. I don’t know what else I can do to lower it. It was a very cold winter this year.

I am doing a a lot of miscellaneous things today. My hairdresser who I went to at Great Clips for months left that salon. I had to use another stylist and she really butchered me. I was waiting a couple of weeks to find another salon to get it fixed. However yesterday, my old stylist called me to let me know what salon she had moved to. She left a message. So I will be calling her back today to schedule an appointment for 2-3 weeks in the future. I am thrilled that she let me know. She does a beautiful job on my hair.

I got all the paperwork for my 2024 taxes in it’s waterproof envelope and put away with the other 7 years that I keep.

I pressure canned my chicken that I bought this week.

A chuck roast is cooking in the crockpot with onion soup mix, apple cider vinegar, and beef broth. I then added some celery sticks, sliced onions, and garlic powder. I will make beef gravy when it is almost finished and serve it on noodles. It smells so good. That will give us a few meals this week.

I made out two liquor rebates and mailed them. I scanned all of my receipts into Fetch.

Now I am going to take a nap because I got up early with Eloise because she wanted to play. I am really tired!

That’s it for now. What are you doing to save a few bucks?