These are the things we have done recently:
- All lights have been off during daylight hours
- All grocery lists have been based mostly on sale items
- My laptop is unplugged when not in use
- Made meatball casserole with a salad on the side; made 4 lunch and dinner meals
- Took 3 minute showers to see if they took less than navy showers
- Folded towels right away when dryer goes off; towels are one thing that I usually always use the dryer for
- Our heat had been on for a while; we are carefully keeping it a little lower than last year and down to 64 during the night
- I froze about a dozen eggs for future meals
- We received our gas and electric bill for the past month yesterday. We used 393 KWH of electric which was 3 more than same period last year. We used 23 ccf’s of gas. Last year we used 41 ccf’s. This year was much warmer. The average temperature was 60 degrees vs. 53 degrees last year. Our total bill was $ 114.27. Last year’s bill was $ 143.79. Besides it being warmer, I really tried to not use the stove top and oven which is gas. Small appliances were used 95% of the time. It would be nice to see all of our bills go down this year. However we are facing a rate increase starting with next month’s bill.
- I cleaned our refrigerator and made sure that nothing would spoil. I sliced up the fresh peppers that I purchased recently and froze them for winter stir fries. I found extra bags of cheese in my deli drawer even though I already had one open. I froze those also. They thaw overnight in the fridge when I need them. I consolidated the two open jars of wing sauce into one.
- We continue to eat down our chest freezer and can the meat that we can. I scanned the sales that are starting tomorrow. Ground beef will be $ 2.99 a lb. and chuck roasts will be $ 5.49 a lb. I will be canning some of those. Since it is getting colder here, I will put a chuck roast with some vegetables in the crock pot next week.
- My son and grandson took us out to breakfast to our favorite Greek restaurant to celebrate our birthdays which we recently had. It was delicious and a nice change from cooking breakfast.
- Hubby filled the cracks at the edge of the driveway with blacktop filler. Fortunately, we had 24 hours of dry weather after that. It has been raining ever since.
I want to thank so many of you who prayed for me for the lung CT scan that I had last Tuesday. I was diagnosed on a regular CT scan last year with Pulmonary Fibrosis. My mother died of this disease so I knew all too well what I was in for. It is terminal. My primary doctor recommended a lung doctor that he said he and his family would go to if any of them had an issue. I went to him immediately. He looked at the CT scan which the doctor at the hospital said showed some honeycombing in my right lung. He told me that he would follow me and send me for this specialized scan at one year. After a number of tests and 3 month appointments this past year, my doctor sent me for this scan which scans the lungs in segments so they can really look at them well. I found out the results late yesterday.
I do not have pulmonary fibrosis. The area that the doctor a year ago said was pulmonary fibrosis was a small amount of scarring in the right lobe. It could have been caused by pneumonia, bronchitis or even an injury. I did have a skiing accident that broke a number of ribs many years ago. Who knows? But I was so relieved that it is not pulmonary fibrosis. Hubby and I celebrated with a drink last night. So again thanks so much for all of your prayers. God was listening.
Please feel free to add your frugal things in comments. Those comments lately have been so helpful to so many people including me!