A new month and a new opportunity to save. I'm ready for this!
Mar 1: I started the pantry inventory yesterday and today, I
decided I needed to use some of the surprise ingredients I found: frozen
chili, a can of pineapple (one of several that will expire come May), a
box of just expired macaroni. Determination to salvage was strong
after tossing those two long expired items the last day of February.
So I made up TWO entrees from the box of macaroni, with a bonus single
serve entree. Chili Mac for dinner today, along with Pineapple Upside
Down Cake with a single serve casserole of chili mac for the freezer was
the first meal. Entree Two: a freezer main dish of Macaroni and Cheese
with a lovely homemade cheese sauce. A frozen entree of mac and cheese
at the grocery goes for $9. I know because I have bought them on
occasion, gasp... I used 1/2 and 1/2 that had just reached the
expiration date to make my cheese sauce, saving half a bottle from
spoiling which increased my savings in making this dish.
Savings: $11 (not tossing the macaroni or the half and half and NOT buying frozen mac and cheese).
Made up my favorite little cake recipe and poured over drained crushed
pineapple, brown sugar and melted butter. Yummy! I thought of a dozen
ways to use those five remaining cans of crushed pineapple. Now I just
have to choose which ones I will make. In the meantime I
saved $.50 making a conscious effort to use the pineapple.
Here's
a bigger savings: $32... How so? I noticed an ant on
the counter top where I do baking early this morning. I killed him and
then found two more. Then I noticed what looked like three or four
'bodies' lying about. We've had a little spider that came in on the
houseplants who has made it her personal business to kill ants this
year. Honestly she's the best pest control I've ever had! She seems to
track down all those little scouts and has no mercy whatsoever.
Natural pest control at it's best, lol.
However, she was unable to keep up with this infiltration. And they
discovered the baking cupboard where boxes of dried fruit, and more
importantly two tubs of Ghiradelli melting chocolates were stored.
Hence the 'bigger savings'. I discovered that the bottom of the dark
chocolate tub was cracked just before the ants got into that container.
The cupboard was emptied, the chocolates and fruit repackaged...and
disastrous loss was avoided. Thankfully because...
I inventoried the bottom pantry cupboard this afternoon. Oy. Three
cans of black beans, two of peaches and two cans of coconut milk went
into the garbage. Expired months ago.
Losses of -$5.77. Not
good. I felt ill even though the monetary amount was small. And I came
up with a possible solution. I'm buying some brightly colored dot
stickers. I'll color code to highlight those that need to be used
immediately, soon, or simply first.
Mar 2: I wanted to make a real Shabat dinner this week. But I
hadn't done prep work. Solution was to use what a container of
cornbread dressing from the freezer, leftover mashed potatoes, canned
green beans, cranberry sauce. All I needed to do really was to bake the
chicken to go along with the easy side dishes.
When I opened the package of breasts this morning I found two large
breasts. Only one was XL and the other was XXXL. I cut the biggest in
half for our meal today, put the second breast on to boil with homemade
chicken broth (from the freezer) for a second meal. That allotted me
two meals from one package of breasts.
Savings: $2.23
The potatoes were initially meant to be potato soup with Reubens but I
lacked ingredients essential to a Reuben. I added some half and half to
the potatoes to moisten them and then put in a casserole to reheat. It
kept them nice and fluffy and didn't dry them out.
Leftover gravy, mashed potatoes and the meat I stripped from the second
breast went into the leftover broth. I will make meal from this
tomorrow. That is a NO WASTE couple of meals. Love it!
Our midday meal was so hearty that we ate our dessert as a late snack this afternoon. Neither of us wanted supper.
Savings there: $4.
Mar 3: It's been cold cold cold all weekend long. We ran the
little propane heater nearly all day long yesterday and it's been on all
morning thus far today. The floors are chilly cold to the barefoot, so
I've had on slippers all day long, too. Not complaining. It's the
first time this winter we've had the heater on for the full length of
the day. It cuts down on how often the electric heat pump must come on,
saving us electricity.
I made chicken and dumplings today...I used the leftover gravy and
mashed potatoes from yesterday's meal, the meat from that XL breast, and
added in chicken broth leftover from making the gravy. All I really
needed extra was two cups of those lovely frozen mixed vegetables we
bought at meat market and two bay leaves, a handful of chopped onion.
Voila. I added in a can of evaporated milk that was expiring this
month, and made dumpling batter. One hot and delicious meal for one
cold gray gloomy day.
Bonus savings: $4 my allowance for meals...We have enough leftovers for another meal later this week.
Preventative maintenance this morning. The ant scouts were out on the
other counter where we keep foodstuffs in the cabinet above. I moved
everything out, wiped down the shelves, sprayed a line against the back
walls and sorted through items so that all was nice and neat (and well
away from the ant spray even though it had dried by the time I put
things back in. I tossed only two items. I'll count my loss for only
one as the first was a bottle of dill that I know was several years old
and all but crumbs had been used. The other items
a loss at -
$1.79.
I wasn't inclined to do too much today except play about on the
computer. Occasionally I take a day out to follow all the blog links
within whatever blog I'm currently reading. This week it was Tracy's
Enchanted Cottage wherein she was so kind as to list my own blog here as one of her
favorite frugal sites. Well I checked out her other favorites. Gems!
John offered to buy me a subscription to one of those genealogical sites
so I could happily pursue my new hobby. Kindness itself that man...but
one of those favorite bloggers made comment on her blog that she was
doing research and she could access those sites free through the Family
Search website (Latter Day Saints has a huge genealogical database that
links to other archival paid sites) at the public library! Now and then
I luck upon info that is free through that site but I get frustrated
when 'evidence' is just a credit card charge away, lol. Per this young
lady, I can access those paid sites without charge through the site via
library systems. This is truly
savings! $98 a year for one of those sites and some were pricier.
Mar 4: Fashioned a new wreath for the back door. I spent
NOTHING. I used just what I had on hand and it's cute as can be. I'll
try to get a photo of it to post later this week. I'd have liked it to
be a bit wider and a big more this or that but to have used just what I
have...well I'm pretty satisfied and it certainly did cut out that
desire to go
buy which can bring hardship to a budget.
I worked on the wreath while sitting out on the back deck. I find that
moss is such a messy medium to work with indoors and I learned my lesson
at Christmas when I made that moss covered sphere to use on the dining
room table. Ugh! The bonus of my work space, aside from fresh air and
sunshine and a certain red dog sitting adoringly at my side (and
snitching flowers as it happens, the little scamp!)? Getting to see
hundreds and hundreds of geese winging their way northward and hearing
their lovely calls as they flew. Sometimes saving money just has
benefits that are beyond cost.
Made a meal from some leftover roast beef. That beef roast cost me
$18. We ate from it twice last week (and I will include the fact that
both kids ate from it while we were gone) plus I put up two packages of
meat in the freezer before we left on our trip. I used one of those
packets, frozen bell peppers, a sliced onion (that had sprouted so I
wanted to use it up right away before it spoiled) and made Italian
Pepper Beef for our main meal today. We had enough leftovers from that
dish to make two more hearty servings. Wow. That 'expensive' roast is
looking less pricey by the minute. Safe to say that we just had an
additional
savings of $3.
I replicated those Mc breakfast sandwiches again this morning, this time I used sausage.
Savings: $5 for two homemade sandwiches with coffee.
Mar. 5 Harvest Day in our home. I broke the news gently late
last week that we were going to have to buckle out belts a tad tighter
with the new budget. No complaints from my husband, though he likes it
no better than I do. We will survive, however, and bills want paying no
matter what else goes on, just as people want to eat come meal time no
matter if the world is ending. I explained my hard and fast grocery
budget and suggested some treats would be better halved in the amounts
(we should eventually start to lose weight we've cut so many of our
treats in the past three years, lol).
Our new routine is that I take the check to deposit, the bills to post
and pick up local purchases from local stores. I gather any trash that
needs to go to the dumpster, too. Trying to make this trip to town
count as much as it can, just to save on gasoline.
I did do one thing you might think foolish, especially in light of the
other thing I did today...There's a branch of our bank in three towns
within 15 miles of us. Personally, I like the one in the town to the
west, 11 miles away. It's simple really: they call me by name when I
come in, even at the drive thru. In the town to the east, where I've
banked for nearly 20 years, they still ask for my I.D. I had to go to
the town on the east of us today, but I drove to the bank in the town
to the west first. Yes, I know, with gasoline costs and what they are,
but I just LIKE having someone treat me as though they KNOW me. I paid
about $1 for that trip over to the bank and back again.
Loss -$1.
And then I drove to the town to the east and bought gasoline because
it's $.10 a gal cheaper than it is here in this town. Mind you I also
went by the pharmacy.
Savings for 11 gallons of gasoline $1.10.
We also do take out for dinner on this day, our little treat for the pay
period. Right now it comes from the grocery money, previously from the
entertainment budget (which took a header this past budget cut). Today
I wanted Mexican. I went through a half dozen options and eventually
decided that this was the only thing that would do. I was pleased to
discover that I could order a Burrito plate (with three sides! and free
chips and salsa!) for the same price as a chicken dinner with two
sides. Not such a hard 'hit' on the grocery budget at all and nice to
know.
Went to the pharmacy drive thru. There's nothing tempting at the drive
thru window. No pretty new nail polishes or rosy lipsticks or pastel
colored candies for Spring. Sure does make it easy to avoid impulse
buys.
Mar. 6: Leftovers for our dinner today. That's like a free meal
in my opinion. Our salad today was Ambrosia. I used orange segments I
froze in January, a can of that 'gotta use it or lose pineapple' (
savings $.50) mixed with some coconut and a few chopped maraschino cherries. It was a nice cold contrast to the hot chicken and dumplings.
We really enjoy eating these little sausage links made from beef or
turkey. We enjoy them so much I have to be careful that we eat only a
serving and not a whole box! Fair warning this morning to my husband
when I did cook the whole box. "These are being saved for another
meal..."
savings: $.50, insuring that we do get two meals from the box.
I managed to finish that freezer inventory (last of the big inventory
for this quarter) this morning. No surprises in the big freezer. I was
pretty sure of what I had and I didn't have to toss out too much. Some
beans and rice had slipped to the bottom and were undated, so I'm sure
they were older than six months, and 3 hamburger buns. Not sure when we
had those nor why they were at the very bottom of the freezer. I tore
them into bits to feed to the birds, though Trudy has decided I really
meant her to sit guard over them, sigh.
There's an ant trap in the bathroom, the sort filled with an attractive
poison. Those always make me nervous. Not because I'm afraid of
contamination but because it becomes a regular "Party Like It's 1999"
for the ants who trek to and fro and come in droves. I fought my
instincts and left the thing in place. Lo and behold this morning I
found the trap devoid of poison, dead ants littered the counter and
floor. It does work if you leave it alone instead of panicking at the
site of the ants the way I normally do. Letting the ant trap do it's
job and getting good use from the trap
saved $1.50.
Sat down with my inventory lists, the grocery store sales sheets, and my
coupons today. I made out a 'short list' of items to purchase, mostly
fresh produce and dairy items, but a few really good sales items that
will benefit pantry and freezer next month. I figured what I mean to
spend and I should save half of my budget. I'll actually post my
savings tomorrow. Planning ahead is only half the battle. Fighting
impulsive urges and sticking to the list is the harder half.
Mar 7: Grocery day. I planned carefully and kept on task.
Savings today: $24
below the balance I've set in stone. Not a huge savings, but I filled
the holes in our pantry. Next pay period, I hope to just spend the bulk
of my money at meat market. Any leftover this pay period will help
cover costs of produce/dairy products needed.
Mar 8: We had to run to town to pick up pain reliever for John
who was experiencing some allergy problems. We made the trip count:
took off trash, took an article to the post office to mail.
Shopped at home this evening...What is the point? It kept me on task
and I wasn't distracted by sundry other "oh I could use this!" items. I
bought a new set of pantry shelves. Researched several options and
determined I could use a set from Walmart that are made from a resin
type material. Final cost with delivery here to the house was $42.
That is
a savings of $30 over other options. I made sure to
measure my space, and to check on the weight capacity of each shelf (250
pounds) which should work beautifully for me.
Bonus of having new pantry shelving? I now have shelving I can use in
two other areas where I wanted to put shelves. Neither requires a heavy
load capacity and no damage will be done if they do come apart. I can
use what I have in the pantry now.
Savings: $60 at the least, based upon pricing of the lowest quality options.
Total: $268.57
