Tag: a little of this and a little of that

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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

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

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

It has been a very busy week of appointments and errands. Our week started off with my son and West coming for breakfast on Sunday. I cooked a lb. of bacon, a lb. of sausage, and scrambled eggs(about a dozen and a half), and made French toast which took 4 more eggs. These eggs are getting expensive. I think I will start thawing the eggs in my freezer for our next big breakfast. It is still cheaper for me to cook than take everyone out to our Greek restaurant for breakfast. Then we spent a few hours playing rummy which this Grandma loves!

We ate all of our meals from our stockpile. We finished the turkey making a big pot of soup. We had a filet mignon, baked potato, and broccoli for dinner last night. Tonight we are splurging and getting take out fish fries from Chiavetta’s. We have not had them since last Lent( they started selling them again in November) so this will be a real treat. This weekend I will put a chuck roast in the crockpot and make a stew with plenty of carrots, onions, and potatoes. That will last us 3-4 days.

Two days ago I ran a lot of errands. I had to go to the Post Office with mail, to Home Depot to dispose of three Ion Recyclable batteries that were no longer charging, fill the car up with gasoline using my $.30 off a gallon, to Top’s for on sale cat litter and a half gallon of Half and Half, and to the liquor store. After that I was beat.

Yesterday, I went to Niagara Produce and purchased a chuck roast to put in the freezer. It was only $4.99 a lb. They also had a huge package of chicken tenders on sale for $2.49. That is the cheapest price I have seen in a long time. I am very low on chicken. Today after I run some more errands, I will pressure can all of it to put on my shelf.

I went back to Top’s yesterday on a 3 day sale to get an almost 9 lb. turkey breast for $ 1.29 a lb. Since I haven’t been able to find much chicken, I will substitute the turkey instead.

That was all I purchased this week so I did not spend a lot of money. After I call my eye doctor for an appointment when their office opens this morning, I will finish the errands that I didn’t finish the other day. I couldn’t get the car washed because it was raining. I will try again today. It is so dirty that it needs a good bath. I tried to bring some bottles back to Fast Cash but they weren’t open yet so I will try again today.

Other than all of these things, we have been cleaning, doing laundry, and watching our shows that we DVR so that we can watch them without commercials. Hubby also installed a new kitchen sink caddy to hold my brush, sponges, and dishcloth. My other one broke. He was having a very difficult time getting the sticky off the adhesive part that held the old one to the sink so that he could install the new one. So I gave him Goo Gone and that took care of it. I remembered that I used to use that many years ago.

Also I finally got the Federal and State taxes done and filed. I am glad to have that out of the way.

Did any of you guys save money or find some good deals this week?

I will we back this weekend with another post. I didn’t forget to tell you about the utility bill. That is coming.

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Every Day

We Had Our Christmas Celebration And West’s Birthday Celebration Yesterday

My youngest son and his family were away for two weeks over Christmas traveling in the Southwest. Then either West was sick or we were or they had football games since they are season ticket holders. We had not seen them since December 7th.

Fortunately my son from Eastern NY came out the day after Christmas and we celebrated with him. It was a wonderful visit and we were so happy to see him.

So we had our Christmas and West’s birthday celebrations yesterday. Rather than anyone cook, we went out to breakfast at our favorite Greek restaurant which we all love. The food and service was fantastic.

Then we came home here and opened money gifts, gift certificates, and emptied our stockings. West was happy with all of his candy, snacks, and money. The rest of us all had Keto snacks, liquor sample bottles(gin and vodka), and scratch off tickets. We had 4 small winners.

After relaxing for a bit, we played rummy which we love and we are very competitive. It was a lot of fun!

Last night Hubby breaded two ribeye pork chops with Italian panko and cooked them in the air fryer portion of my small oven. They were delicious. I made mashed potatoes and we had applesauce as a side.

I checked our budget numbers on Feb. 1st for January and we saved $3160. for the month. I was really happy with that since we paid a large property tax bill.

I have a busy week. I have a bill to pay today and I may start my Federal and State Income taxes. Depends on what else I have to do today like fold a load of laundry, change our sheets, and wash them.

Brunch today will be leftover dinner from last night. We only ate half of our pork chops and there are mashed potatoes and applesauce leftover. Hubby has requested spaghetti for dinner. We have not had that in a long time. I will throw in some ground beef. I always have some cooked up in portions in the freezer. I have a loaf of Italian bread in the freezer that I will pull out to defrost so that I can make garlic bread.

I am also going to hard boil a dozen eggs in my Instant Pot. They will go in salads, get eaten as snacks, and Hubby likes to make egg salad. Perhaps I will make some muffins and SF pudding.

We got a notice from our electric and gas company that they will be changing our meters to smart meters soon. That was about 6 weeks ago. We have not seen them. I am hoping they do it soon because these meters will help us keep better track of what we are using daily.

Tomorrow is our monthly Senior Citizen Discount Day at Top’s so I will be grocery shopping to get the additional 6% off on the sale items that we can use.

What are my readers up to today?

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Every Day

Sunday’s Doings

After rising early, I made us a breakfast of SteakUmm’s and 3 eggs each. I love this easy breakfast. Fortunately, I have a 60 count box of eggs in our refrigerator. It has gone up twice in price since I purchased them. So we are using them sparingly.

On Saturday night, I put the stainless steel racks from both of our ovens in one of our bathtubs, filled it up with hot water, and threw 4 Cascade Platinum Dishwasher Pods in the water to soak overnight. I took this picture this morning and you can see how dirty the water has gotten. It took all of the grease off them and most of the brown baked on stuff. I had to use a Scrub Daddy pad to get it all off but it was relatively easy. So the racks are like new.

One of our favorite charities is Tunnels To Towers. We give them large checks about twice a year. We don’t do the $11.00 a month thing but give much more in our checks we send. I finally braved the cold and snow to go out to our mailbox to get our last few days mail. We got these beautiful birthday cards from them. On the right is the cards and the matching envelopes are on the left. It is always nice to get a surprise from them.

When I came back in, our sweet Eloise was asleep on top of her favorite leather chair. I just had to share this pic with you to show you how big she has gotten. She is 8 and 1/2 months old now.

We had a quick dinner before the game last night. One of our favorites is shrimp cocktails. Later in the evening we had some monterey jack cheese on crackers.

One of the ways we save money is to always buy on sale. The shrimp was on sale a while ago for $6.99 a lb. We used the whole lb. between the two of us.

We finally got all of the forms that we need to file our Federal and State income taxes. I am afraid by just eyeballing it that we will owe this year. I will be very surprised if we get a refund. So I am in no hurry to do them right away.

I did two loads of laundry in warm water to try to catch everything up around here. I did use my dryer with our wool balls to cut down on the time needed to run it.

This morning I ran a lot of errands that needed to be done. More on that tomorrow.

Has anyone saved any money this past week or so?

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Every Day

A Busy Day

This morning Eloise let me sleep until 6PM. That was fantastic. Since I went to bed early, I got 9 hours sleep which I badly needed. So I immediately started a load of wash using cold water and hung it to dry. Then I did a second load of sheets and blankets. Those were dried in the drier.

For lunch I made turkey melts and we had SF chocolate pudding for dessert.

I did not go out today because it is in the teens. But I do have a Walmart delivery coming tonight. I needed some produce, etc. so I placed a small order. I will take a picture and show you tomorrow.

My back is really bothering me today but whenever I grocery shop or have a grocery delivery I clean the refrigerator and take stock of what I need. I had to take little rests in between and sit a bit. But I worked through the pain and got it all done.

I empty it of all the stuff and then take all the drawers and shelves out and clean them very well with soap and water. Then I scrub all the walls of the fridge before I put them back.

It’s pretty full right now mostly with condiments. But we are working at eating them all up. They are on the second shelf on the left. On the top shelf on the left is the eggs that were left when I got my 60 count box the other day. You can see the box behind the ones in the front. The box always fits perfectly up there. To the right of them is a container with 2 hard boiled eggs left that I cooked the other day. We use them for salads and snacks.

On the top shelf on the right is butter that I got on sale stacked all the way to the back of the fridge. Eloise’s dinner is in the container and then jellies and jams..

Back behind our medicines are 2 boxes of ready made pie crusts that I purchased over the holidays on sale. I will be using them to make pot pies.

Third shelf on the left is a container with sour creams, dips, cream cheese spreads, and cottage cheese.

Next to that is our leftovers which right now consists of red beans and rice with hot smoked sausage and some cooked mushrooms. Behind that is an overflow sour cream and a jar of applesauce.

On the third shelf on the right is bacon thawing in a pan for us to have BLT’s tomorrow night. I will cook all the bacon and we will use some for brunches too. On the other pan are 3 half and half’s, a quart of milk, and a cold cream for coffee. Behind all of those items are a diet cranberry juice and 2 Ready Whip Zeroes. I keep meats and milks on these pans because I do not like having to clean my shelves of drips and leaks. It’s much easier to clean the pans.

The fruit drawer on the left is just a few apples. The veggie drawer on the right has a package of romaine lettuce, 5 lbs. of carrots, and 1/2 of a huge onion.

The drawer underneath those drawers is my cheese and meat drawer. It has various shredded cheeses, blocks of cheese for snacks, sliced cheeses for sandwiches, and a few packages of pepperoni.

We will be using the mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, and pepperoni to make a pizza on naan bread for dinner. We season it with a lots of Italian spices.

We have all the bedrooms, bathrooms, and office doors closed to keep Eloise out of mischief. When my son left I meant to close the heat registers in all of the rooms except the bathrooms and our bedroom. So I remembered today and we will see if it saves us anything on our heat bill. With the temperatures so cold this past week and this week, I think we may see a $300.+ bill this month for the first time ever. Ugh.

That’s it for today. I need to go collect all of the garbage so I can put it outside tonight.

I hope you are all having a great day. Be back tomorrow.

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Every Day

Saturday’s Doings

Eloise had me up at 5AM which wasn’t too bad. I think she was cold so I wrapped her in a very soft blanket for a little while till she warmed up a bit. The heat starts coming up to 68 from 66 at 6AM. Then at 8AM, it goes up to 70. I wish I could set it lower but Hubby gets too cold.

I made my coffee with a reusable pod. I used up the little bit of coffee that was in my air tight canister and grabbed another can of coffee from my storage. While I was down there I took 2 hamburgers out of the freezer and we had those with sauteed onions and mushrooms for dinner. We had nothing else with it because we were not very hungry.

After doing some picking up in the house, I heated up some of the leftover chicken and biscuits for brunch. We have a couple of pieces left for a snack during our football game tomorrow. Waste not, want not.

Most of the day I have been cleaning and organizing. I went through my 2024 planner so that I could pull the pages out that had personal info on them so I could shred them. The bulk of the planner went in the recyclables and the garbage.

I cleaned and organized the drawers in our vanity and the cupboards in the toilet room. I filled up the 2 rows with t.p. so that it is handy. It will last a long time because we have a bidet. Then I cleaned the tile floors. The toilet is cleaned every day. I used to use the Lysol toilet cleaner until the price went too high. Then I tried the toilet bowl cleaner from Dollar Tree which was awful. It is 90 % water. So I am back again to cleaning the toilet bowl with a denture cleaner tablet. I just let it melt in the bowl and then scrub. It does a great job. I can get 126 count Equate denture cleaner tablets for $4.44. They will last me about 1/2 a year.

It snowed here for the third day in a row so we did not go out anywhere.

Late afternoon I watched some news on You Tube. Then we watched some football and golf.

I hope you all had a great day.

Categories
Every Day

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

It’s a mostly quiet day today. We did get a bit of snow but the sun has melted it.

We got our property tax bill. I knew it would cost us more for our garbage because we got a second can but that part of the bill was well worth it for $50.00 for the year. Our total bill was for $4664.+. Last year’s bill was $4788.+. So even with the $50.00 additional cost our bill decreased by $123.+. I am shocked because everything has just been going up and going up. It looks like our town and county leaders have done a good job with contracts, etc.

We both got our notices from Social Security showing our 2.5% increases. However, the Medicare payment for each month of 2025 which comes out of each of our checks went from $ 174. to $ 180. so the increase for our Social Security checks wasn’t much. But we both paid into SS and Medicare for years as everyone else does. At least we are getting a bit of money back over the years since we started getting it. I am hopeful that when President Trump is inaugurated that he and the Republicans will fix SS so that our children and grandchildren will be able to get it like we have.

A couple of weeks ago Nielsen sent me a survey and a $1.00 in cash to fill it out and send it back. It only took a minute or two and the return envelope was postage paid. They promised that if I did, they would send me an additional $ 5.00 in cash. That came today. $ 6.00 and a couple of minutes sure beats running all over inside of stores to ShopKick to cash out at $5.00 which I don’t do because it isn’t worth my time or gasoline. It would be nice if these surveys continue. But I am not counting on it.

I entered my last two weeks of receipts into Fetch today. I love getting the Walmart gift cards. They help defray the cost of my Walmart orders.

Brunch this morning was an apple fritter with our coffee. We had purchased a box of them recently. They are Hubby’s favorite. This year I am going to see if I can find a great recipe.

Dinner tonight will be canned Chunky soup and crackers. I am waiting for Hubby to get back from his orthopedic appointment before I pick out what we want from our pantry. The cortisone shot did not work so he is getting the gel injection to see if that works. I hope it works because I hate seeing him in so much pain. If it does he can get them every 6 months. If not the next step would be a knee replacement. Ugh! I am praying that he gets relief from this gel.

I ran the dishwasher last night. It had been three days since I ran it. I spent my hour cleaning yesterday and today in the kitchen. I am organizing at the same time and getting rid of things we don’t want.

What have you been doing to work on your goals for this year?