Tag: frugal things we do

These are the things that we have done to save some money this week.

Since so many dairy products are in very short supply or non-existent at our markets, I decided it was worth the money to buy these. We eat a lot of Mexican food so sour cream is a necessity. I also use heavy cream in my coffee. Then there is cream cheese which is used for so many things. They will also save us a bit of money over buying these foods. Prices keep going up!

The induction motor for our furnace came yesterday. It has the gasket and everything else we need to install it. We paid $ 214.+ tax and got free shipping. The heating company wanted $701. + tax. Hubby will be installing it tomorrow.

These are the leftovers from the lasagna that I made for Hubby’s birthday. We ate it the last two nights and it is now in the freezer in containers.They are Bento containers for the freezer so I can add a veggie and some garlic bread to each before I heat it all up. We will probably pull them out on our busy days over the next 6 weeks or so. I also made his carrot cake. He was delighted. Celebrating at home saved us so much money!

I had been planning on buying a new makeup bag. The one on the top is the old one that I keep in my vanity. However, it is permanently stained and the inside liner is falling apart. Since I don’t wear as much makeup as I used to, this smaller bag is perfect to contain it all. I was going to order a new one yesterday. But then I remembered that I had some bags in my makeup bin that holds extras. Those extras are contained in bags. So I pulled the bin out and found the new one. It was holding spare lipsticks. Swapping the lipsticks out to the old bag and the makeup to the new was perfect. I don’t know what makeup bags cost today but every little savings helps.

Hubby has been working in his gardens getting them ready for winter. His grass that he planted on the sides of the driveway is all coming up. He has been watering it everyday by hand since our sprinkler system has already had the lines blown out.

We need deli meat so I pulled a turkey tenderloin from the freezer to thaw. I will be roasting it for dinner tonight. Then tomorrow I will cut it up on my meat slicer to use for deli meat. I paid $ 5.99 for this tenderloin many months ago. It is 1 and 1/2 lbs. Buying that much deli meat would have cost about $14.50. Plus mine will taste so much better. We have a tomato and some already cooked bacon to use up. So BLT’s sounds good for dinners this weekend while we watch football.

I cooked a dozen eggs in the instant pot for easy breakfasts and snacks.

I did one load of sheets using the Eco cycle of my washing machine this week. I am trying to save as much energy as possible since our heat is now on. It’s getting very cold at night.

That’s about it! I hope you all have a great weekend! Feel free to share what you did to save money this week in the comments.

We had our sprinkler system lines blown out by the company we use. This saves us money by preventing frozen lines over the winter which can be very costly to repair. I am also happy that our water bills will go down because we won’t be watering the lawn now. Our last 3 month bill was about $200.

Hubby moved the sprinkler system lines under the new garden. They were in the way of two rose of sharon bushes that are going in there. Now the landscape company can dig there and we don’t have to worry about them cutting the lines. It would have cost us many dollars to have the sprinkler company do this.

The heating company we use came and informed us that the induction motor in our furnace is very noisy and is probably on it’s way out. They want $ 701.+ taxes to replace it. We don’t want it to die this winter but we also don’t want to pay that price for it. Hubby did some research and found he can purchase the motor for about $200.+ tax. My son has installed a few of them so we can get any advice on doing it from him. Plus Hubby is an engineer and he says he can install it in about 20-30 minutes.

The only money I spent on groceries was $35. on fresh produce and dairy at Walmart and the cost of the chicken that I wrote about earlier to can. I canned 24 jars of meat this week.

I repaired a curtain in one of the guest rooms. It was coming apart where it hangs on the rod. They don’t make things the way they used to.

I had Walmart deliver me 6 cases of canning jars. I will need them over the winter. I am glad that I did because I heard yesterday that they are going up in price.

I only did 2 loads of laundry this week. One of clothing and one of sheets and towels. I used the Eco wash and cold water. I used the wool balls in the dryer to cut down on the time necessary.

We ate all meals at home last week. Hubby’s birthday is this coming week. I asked him if he would like to go out to dinner. He told me he likes my food so much better than eating out. He wants ground meat and hot Italian sausage lasagna and I have all the ingredients already. I will make a roasting pan full. We will cut the leftovers into portions and freeze them. I will probably also make him a carrot cake which is his favorite.

I cooked a dozen eggs in the instant pot so that we had easy breakfasts. Using it once to eat them all week saves energy. We continue to cook bacon in the microwave container. So much less mess and the container goes right into the dishwasher for easy cleaning. But first I save that bacon grease to cook with.

We continue to caulk around our windows to get them ready for winter.

I cleaned the garbage disposal. I don’t buy any special product to do this. I put some baking soda down that side of the sink followed by a little vinegar. I just let it sit while it oozes up. Then I run the disposal with just a little water for a few seconds. It works great! I do it once a week. I hate odors.

Hubby planted grass on the sides of the driveway and he has faithfully hand watered it every day for a few minutes. He continues to maintain the gardens each week.

Spectrum is our cable company. They and Disney were in a dispute over money for the Disney owned channels. Disney pulled their channels from Spectrum for 11 days. They said they were not going to credit customer’s accounts. However, they had a change of heart and they have credited everyone who was missing those channels. I don’t know what the credit is yet because we have not seen our bill. But anything is better than nothing.

Hubby replaced the drum in our Brother printer. This is the second time that he has done it. It sure beats buying a new one.

For those of you who don’t know, Hubby had a heart attack last October. Since then he has a lost a lot of weight. Taking over weeding the gardens and maintaining the bushes and flowers has given him lots of exercise. He told me a couple of days ago that he hasn’t felt this good in years. So I will have to get him on the treadmill this winter for his exercise.

Well, that was it for last week. What did you do frugally?

The locks on our screens in our windows are breaking after 13+ years. They were flimsy to begin with. I ordered some from the company who made the screens. Hubby replaced the one that had broken and another one broke when he was putting the screen back in. It’s a good thing that I ordered many because I think we are going to need to replace them all especially since I will be washing windows and screens this fall and many more will probably break. I have not washed windows in a couple of years because they are building homes behind us and the dirt just flies so it is useless to wash them until they are done. However we just found out that they are building a model home behind us soon. The surveyors were here yesterday staking the lot out. So finally I will be able to wash them this fall. I love clean windows and it has really bugged me that they are so dirty. I wash the insides and the tracks. Hubby does the outside with a squeegee and a homemade soap solution.

I don’t know if I told you but we had to fire our landscapers. We have hired a new company and they will be coming next week to do all that the other landscape company did plus put a new garden and a large Japanese maple tree in for us. Then they will put all new mulch down. Meanwhile Hubby trimmed some of the bushes in our front garden. They needed it. He has had more and more energy as he loses weight. So he says he can do more out in the yard. I believe he is actually enjoying it. I plan on doing the weeding once the landscapers have done it and put the mulch down. If I do one garden a day and keep it up with it, I think I can manage it. If not this company will come back anytime we need them.

Last week Hubby tried to turn the sprinkler system on and it is broken so that company will be coming out the end of next week to repair that and adjust our sprinkler heads which is what we called them for to begin with. Now they have to repair the system too. Our lawn has never looked so bad because of the lack of water.

It seems like everything has been breaking lately: The screen clips, the A/C had to be replaced, now the sprinkler system. I dropped the first cup from our set of dishes that we bought years ago and it smashed into pieces. Fortunately I purchased back then 4 extra place settings that I put in storage so I have a replacement cup. My ring size adjuster broke yesterday. So I had to replace that. My wedding band is too big for me now since I lost weight so the adjuster keeps me from losing it.

Also the electronic part of our dishwasher that displays the count down time is giving us fits. Sometimes it works and other time it doesn’t so I may have to have that repaired.

Now I am not complaining. I just want you to realize that things don’t stop breaking when you are working or in retirement. So account for all of those things when you are planning. Don’t forget that besides appliances and other little things, roofs need to be replaced, painting needs to be done etc. and save cash for that next car.

Now to the things that we have been doing to save some money to replace all that we have been spending. It will take a while but little and big things add up.

I filled up our SUV with gasoline purchased at $ .20 off a gallon. I did this while I was out running errands in a circle to save on that gasoline.

We used the air fryer, toaster oven, Instant Pot, and grill for meals. I don’t use my big oven. This all saves us money on our utility bills. We have done no eating out. All meals have been made at home. It is so much cheaper than paying for restaurant or take out meals.

Lights have been kept off in the daylight. We used the air fryer, toaster oven, Instant Pot, and grill for meals. I don’t use my big oven. This saves us money on our utility bills. We continue to reuse warm up water from our showers, from washing vegetables, and from boiling anything.

I made our homemade delicious pumpkin bread for two gifts that we needed.

I mended a curtain. I also mended a pull in a sweater. I cut up some old clothes and made rags.

I washed two loads of clothes in cold water and dried them on the Eco cycle in our dryer. I had no time those days to hang them. When I use the dryer, I have been saving the lint in toilet paper tubes that I had been collecting for a while to use as fire starters in our outdoor fireplace. We also have a collection of Walmart delivery paper bags that we can use. Since we no longer get a print newspaper, these things are a good replacement.

We have been getting free Peacock for almost a year through our cable provider. That will be up soon. So we are debating whether we will pay for it or not. Hubby loves all the sports on it. That may make it worth it.

Our lower price that the cable provider gave us last year when they screwed up and cut off our phone service and then we had to switch to Spectrum from Time Warner is about up also. That is due to go up $20. a month. I will be calling them to see if they will lower that.

My doctor gave me a new drug but only gave me a 30 day prescription to see if the drug would work for me. I can get 90 day scripts for a whole lot cheaper per pill. I called him and asked him to send a 90 instead of getting the 30 day refill since the drug is working well. He sent it.

Hubby needed to purchase a trimmer to trim our bushes. Since we had a service here and in AZ, we didn’t have one. He found a deal on a Ryobi trimmer for $99. and got 2 batteries and the charger for free. Those would have cost us $99. more. Hubby has many Ryobi tools so these batteries are interchangeable in all of those.

Hubby cut some more white and pink peonies from our garden. I put them in the beautiful lilac glass vase that my son sent me flowers in for Mother’s day.

I will be doing no grocery shopping this week. We are cooking meals from our pantry, freezer and refrigerator.

What have you been doing to save a little money?

We did not have to replace the furnace when the new central A/C was installed on Friday. When they installed the new coil in the furnace, the firebox was in perfect condition so it did not need to be replaced. That saved us an additional $ 6,000. They were going to install a new thermostat but Hubby looked at the literature that came with it first. The one we had was a much better one. Many more programmable settings on ours. However since the new one came with the A/C, we have kept it in case ours dies at some point. It also came with a filter that we didn’t use since Hubby had just changed the filter recently. We just added it to our pile of filters.

When I was opening windows this weekend because the weather was so beautiful, I noticed that one of our screen’s clips had broken off. That makes it hard to keep the screen on. It has 4 but now we were down to 3. I asked Hubby if he thought we could get a replacement part. He went to the website of the company who made the screens to see if he could get them. He could and he was able to also get the rod that he needs to install them. So since we have a lot of windows in this house with screens, we purchased 20 of each of those items. Since they are made of plastic, the sun and weather are doing a job on them. So we will be prepared if any more break. The items plus shipping cost us under $17.00. That is a cheap fix.

Hubby was going to grill filet mignon one night for us again. We wanted baked potatoes with them. No one around here has the big baking potatoes. So I had to settle for smaller baking potatoes. Instead of heating up the house with the oven, I cooked them in the air fryer. Same temperature and time as my convection oven. But I baked 4 of them instead of 2. That way I can make a potato salad for a side later in the week.

I cooked fresh mushrooms for the fillets. I sliced them very thin so that they would only take a few minutes to saute on the stove. I didn’t want to use much gas. I do this with most sauteed onions and veggies too.

The potatoes were so dirty so I filled up a bowl with cold water and soaked and then scrubbed them to clean them. I used the cleaning water to water our hanging baskets on our porch. With our sprinkler system up and running now for the season, I will save water any way I can. I reuse shower warm up water and any other water that I can for more than one thing. Since our rates went up in the past year, it is important to save as much as we can on water.

They tested our A/C when they installed it. We have not had to turn it on yet. It was 78 here yesterday and was completely comfortable in whatever room we were in just using the ceiling fans. It will be be 84 today and 86 tomorrow, so we will see how long we can keep it off. We have all the windows closed in the house today and all curtains down on the sunny windows and the house has stayed at a comfortable 72. If the temperature goes up in here and becomes uncomfortable for us, we will turn it on. But I am trying to keep it off as long as we can to save on the electric bill.

Hubby is putting a second coat of the chemicals on the bent grass this afternoon. This should get rid of all of the rest of it and then he can use the Sun Joe to get it up, add top soil, and reseed. The landscape company wanted way too much money to do this for us. We are saving hundreds by doing it ourselves.

We have a lot of appointments this week so I do not know when I will get my grocery shopping done. Fortunately, I only have a few Memorial Day sale items to get to restock us at two different stores.

Hubby cooked chicken piccata the other night for dinner. We had all the ingredients except the capers. I was not about to make a special trip to the market to get them. So he made it without them and we just sprinkled a little salt on each of our plates. It was delicious. What is pictured fed the two of us.

How have you saved money the past couple of days?

While we are waiting for the landscape crew to come and do their monthly stuff, Hubby has been doing the spring cleanup around here a little at a time. We do the April cleanup and save about $600. on that. The landscape crew will come starting in a week or so and weed, trim bushes, plant whatever we need, and mulch all the gardens. They will do this every month until November.

When my son and Hubby installed the bidet, they had to remove the shelving unit that was over and around the toilet because it would not work with the bidet. Hubby found a beautiful cabinet that was on sale with a shelf underneath that has three baskets and installed it up over the toilet. That gives us enough storage room. I had my son put the old shelving unit in the basement. It only had three shelves but it has rungs going all the way to the bottom so I can add some wood to add two more shelves. It will also make the unit more stable. This will give me room to store some cleaning products. I am also going to use an old dresser to store plastic wrap, baggies, aluminum foil, parchment paper, etc. Always use what you already have.

Hubby cut my hair again. He does a much better job than the Super Cuts people and is almost as good as my expensive hairdresser. I have let my white hair grow in and we both like it. So I am done with coloring and highlighting. All of this saves me $140. plus every 4-6 weeks. I think it would have been even more because she was about to raise her rates. This is a huge savings annually for us.

Meals this week were all made at home from scratch. We had taco salads, beef stew, chicken legs, shrimp fra diavolo, and ranch chicken in our instant pot one night. It only took 12 minutes and I have determined that the Instant Pot uses the least amount of energy around here. The meat was so tender too. Last night, Hubby sauteed hotdogs with onions in butter and I made a tossed salad.

Both of our very old Roku devices were giving us trouble. One of them was purchased in AZ 16 years ago. So Hubby found the Roku 4K Streaming Sticks online at a good price and installed them when they came. What a difference they make! We no longer have Amazon Prime. I got rid of that over 3 years ago. But this purchase was over the $25. you have to spend so we got free shipping.

Hubby writes things down on a dry erase board on the side of refrigerator when he empties a food or cleaning item. I noticed yesterday that he wanted me to buy dish washing liquid because he had emptied a Dawn refill. It was so nice to go to the pantry and grab a new bottle instead of shopping for one. I bought a case of them before the prices went up after Covid began. They cost about double now.

Hubby got the hummingbird feeders put up for the season and made homemade sugar water with some red food coloring for them. It only took a day for the birds to come. So we are enjoying watching them every day.

I read my electric and natural gas meter last week so the bill should be coming today or tomorrow. We used just a little more of each than we did last year. However it has been very cold here this spring so we have had the heat on more. I will post about it when I get it. Since our utility company had a rate increase May 1st, I am not expecting it to be cheap.

Today, Hubby will be busy dealing with the pest control people. They come every three months and take care of spraying bees nests and all of the areas where they like to build, spraying around the perimeter of the house to keep bugs out of the house, etc. If we don’t have that done, we end up with spiders in the basement. I HATE spiders. So this is worth every penny we pay.

The A/C guy is also coming for our checkup to make sure the A/C is in good working order for the summer. We have a coupon to get that done for $ 69. I only plan on using it when it is hot and humid outside. But I want to make sure that is is running efficiently when we do use it.

I am hoping to get some groceries today. There are some good buys on meat and condiments for Memorial Day. If I don’t get out today, I will do it tomorrow.

Other than that, we did the usual: washed clothes in cold water and hung them to dry, kept lights off in the daytime, only ran the dishwasher when it is really full, and cooked our food in the cheapest appliance that could get the job done.

What did you do this past week to save money?

These are the things that we continue to do to save a little money here and there:

• Received a $6.00 rebate in the mail. That will be put into our savings.
• We continue to use cloth napkins for meals.
• We are using these containers instead of paper plates. I purchased them a while ago at Sam’s Club. We will use them over the summer when we cook outside. They are so much cheaper than paper plates: https://www.samsclub.com/p/members-mark-2lb-food-tray/prod12540064?xid=plp_product_2
• I returned a part that Hubby didn’t need to Home Depot.
• It has been cold and rainy for about a week here. The fertilizer people came during that period to do our lawn. I was happy because we didn’t have to water our lawn to wash it in.
• We ate all homemade meals at home. Not buying expensive fast food or restaurant food when we can make better and healthier food at home.
• One of the meals that lasted a few days was chicken soup made with our home canned chicken.. It is so much tastier that store bought canned chicken. Hubby made Keto breaded haddock one night. It was so delicious.
• The only groceries I purchased this week at Top’s were 2 packages of 85/15 ground beef on BOGO sale. Each package was about 1 and 3/4 lbs. and ended up costing about $ 3.25 per package. I had not been buying ground beef at Top’s for months because it tasted so awful. I figured I would try it again when I spotted one of the meat guys bringing more out to stock the meat case. I asked him if it has been just ground. He said yes. It was delicious.
• We continue to eat just two meals a day and one snack.
• I made hummus this week from canned chickpeas and some other ingredients. It is much cheaper to make my own than buy store bought.
• We continue to waste no food. I don’t like throwing dollars in the trash.
• Made our own pan fried potatoes rather than buy frozen French fries.
• We had two meatless salads this week.
• I darned a pair of Hubby’s socks.
• Hubby purchased chemicals and the sprayer that he needed to get rid of some bentgrass that has crept into our lawn and spread. It is light green and ugly. The landscapers wanted $700. to get rid of it for us. Hubby applied it today. When it is dead he will clean it out. Put in new soil and plant new grass. The whole job will cost us under $125.
• Our sales tax is 8%. The county which is a few miles south of us is 8 and 1/4%. We have no tax on food in this state. So anything that is not food I try to shop for in our county.
• Our heat is off today and the windows are open to air the house out after a very long winter. We should be in the 60’s the next few days. The sky is blue and the sun is finally shining.
• I forgot about 6 Walmart gift cards that I have earned on Fetch. I will be spending that money on my next delivery order.
• I try to ignore advertising that is everywhere to get you to purchase things that you either don’t know about or don’t need. Hence, I watch no TV and click through the commercials on You Tube. Hubby DVR’s the shows we like from the TV and we fast forward through the commercials.

What have you done to save money recently?

We have been using a lot more chicken in our meals these past few weeks. I had frozen these packages quite a while ago and cooked them all up recently. We ate chicken for a few days and then the rest were chunked up for future meals and refrozen. They are so easy to just throw in a stir fry with some fresh veggies and add a homemade sauce.

I have not been buying much beef with the exception of the 4 rib eyes steaks and lots of hamburger when I see it on sale which is not very often here. I had some beef roasts in the freezer which we used over the winter to make stew and to slice up for different meals. So our supply of beef is very low. I am expecting that beef prices will rise again but I am hoping that there will be some good sales around Memorial Day. So we have been eating down our freezer to make room for hamburger and steaks for grilling season. Meanwhile I have been watching the prices at many meat markets and supermarkets in our area.

We had a gas gauge on our grill that had broken so we never knew how much gas was in the tank. Hubby found one on sale finally and purchased it. Now we won’t be in the middle of cooking a meal and have the tank go empty.

We have decided to plant tomatoes again this year. It worked well for us and I didn’t have to buy any fresh tomatoes last season plus I was able to can a lot of them. I may do some herbs also.

Hubby has finished his research on the property assessments and I think we have a plan in place to make our case for a reduction.

Now that the main living space in my home is all spring cleaned, I will be working in our basement again. I am trying to get rid of anything we don’t need. No sense hanging onto things that we haven’t needed in a year.

While my son was visiting, he helped Hubby put the snowblower away in the shed. It only got used to do the sidewalk twice. Our plow guy did a great job on the driveway and we want to hire him again for next winter. He also helped Hubby get the grill out.

Our new beds are wonderful but they were hard to make because we had a chest at the foot of our king size bed before we got these new ones. The chest was still in place. So we would have to lay across the other bed to make the one we were doing. It was a real pain. Since I want things easy for us, my son and Hubby moved the chest to a guest bedroom. Now it is easy to make the beds.

We are making all of our own bread now with the exception that I purchased bread for this past weekend while we had company. Bread prices keep rising and I can make the little bit of bread that we use much cheaper.

As I use any food, I am putting thought into how I can buy it or use less so that the cost per meal is lower. I am doing the same for condiments. Can I buy them or make them cheaper?

We do not waste food. If we can’t eat something up before it goes bad, I freeze it. We have a lot of turkey leftovers. We will eat them all week until they are gone.

What are you doing to save some money?

I hope everyone is expecting spring soon. It is going to be in the 50’s today and the next few days. That will be about 20 degrees warmer than it has been. I am planning on walking a short distance with Hubby today. Since he has lost so much weight, he has started to walk again. I am enjoying that. We used to walk a lot.

What have I been up to besides spring cleaning? Well, the spring cleaning is going well. It is slow but I am getting there. But besides that I have been neatening up and organizing my pantry. That has told me what I am low on and need to get. So when I find a good deal, I order what is needed.

Lately, there have been very few good deals at Walmart. I am finding that their prices are ridiculous. However, we needed tuna especially since the nice weather is coming and we will be eating a lot of salads. I am very fussy when it comes to tuna. When I was a kid, my mom sent me to school with a lot of tuna sandwiches. Hence, I wouldn’t eat tuna for years. It took Hubby a long time to convince me that tuna can be good. So this tuna is one that I will eat. It is delicious and healthy. When I saw it was just $1.58 a can, I ordered a dozen. That is a good price for here. I can get tuna a bit cheaper on sale elsewhere but I don’t like the ones that the other supermarkets carry.

We have been eating down our freezer and I am hoping to roast our last turkey that I purchased at Thanksgiving on sale sometime in the next few weeks. That will help to give me some more room. Plus I would like to defrost it again when it is not so full.

The other reasons for wanting to pretty much empty the freezer are: to use up things that are getting older so they don’t go to waste, to see what I actually need ( my inventory online has gotten out of hand while we have had so many medical issues), and to use up most of the frozen vegetables since fresh will be here in a few months. Plus meat is so expensive I want to use that valuable space for meat. Hamburger, hot dogs, chicken and steaks will be going on sale for Memorial Day. That week has some of the best sale prices that I can get on those things all year. This is the time of year that I also buy my ketchup, mustard and BBQ sauces. Even though it is only March, I am planning ahead because the end of May will be here before I know it.

What have you done to be frugal recently?