Frugal Things This Past Week

These are the things we have done frugally this past week:

• Made a return to Walmart of a dented can from a grocery delivery
• We had a small hole in the basement wall where the new A/C unit stuff comes in from outside. The A/C guys filled it on the outside but I could see daylight from the hole on the inside. Hubby went down to the basement and filled it with plumbers putty. I don’t want that freezing cold air this winter coming into my house.
• The winter fertilizer has been put on the lawn so the lawn should winter the weather well.
• When Hubby put the new motor in the furnace he noticed that one of the screw holes was stripped. He has been researching how to fix that and he will be doing it tomorrow.
• We have a magnetic closer on our mailbox and the postman knocks if off once in a while. Hubby repaired it again.
• We had a freeze here so Hubby and I trimmed bushes that need to be trimmed in the Fall and threw out most of our annual flowers. We put our hanging baskets in the garage to store them.
• We ate every meal at home this week. With the prices today that saves a boatload of money. I made beef stew, shrimp fra diavolo, a night of odds and ends from the refrigerator, and Chef’s salad. I even had some beef stew leftover to freeze for another meal.
• We invested in another large CD.
• All our patio furniture has been put away in the shed.
• I waited until our gasoline tank on the car was almost empty. I filled it using $.80 off a gallon from Tops Rewards.
• We took the screen door off of our back door and put the storm door on.
• Hubby went up to our tire place to get the regular tires changed over to the snow tires so that the car is ready for the snow we are supposed to get next week. However, there is now a manufacturer’s rule( because of liability issues) that the tire places can’t put snows or even regular tires back on the car if they are over 10 years old. So he had to purchase 4 brand new snow tires which cost us $ 750. Since we will have to purchase 4 new regular tires when the snows come off in the spring, Hubby left all 8 tires with them. So that was an expense that we weren’t thinking about. Fortunately, we save for major expenses. FYI, our SUV was 10 years old last April and had all the original tires. We only have 46,000 miles on the SUV. The man who we always deal with said he was sorry about that. Then he joked with Hubby and said no one keeps their car 10 years. Hubby says I have always kept my cars for a long long time. We have always taken very good care of our cars doing the maintenance when it needs to be done and keeping them very clean. This 2013 car we have now has never had to be repaired. It has had minor body work done when a lady hit it in a parking lot at the aquarium. Otherwise it has just gone into the dealer for recalls.
• Talking about recalls, Hyundai sent us one yesterday to have the entire underside seal coated. They are doing them because they are rusting out. Since they want to do that free for this 10 year old car, Hubby got an appointment to have it done.
• I have been taking 3 minute showers this week.
• We have not used lights in the daytime
• We have had a warm spell so we saved on heating for about 3 days.
• I found a bunch of printed grocery lists that are over 20 years. I will be using them up for my lists the next few weeks.
• I picked up some Halloween cookies that my friend, Jessica, made custom for me at her bakery. I will be giving them to the 4 little kids that live on either side of me for Halloween. I will take them over this weekend for their parents to give them on Halloween. We are not doing Halloween trick or treating because of our age. The schools out here have Covid again. We just can’t take the chance of getting it from someone we answer the door to.
• I did one load of wash using cold water and hung most of it to dry. The dishwasher was run twice this week.

That was it for this week. Feel free to share with us what you did to save money this week in the comments.