Friday, January 16, 2015

Friday Frugalities

The end of a week, the beginning of a weekend. It is time to go over the frugal things I did this week. Some things worked and of course some things didn't.

The usual frugalities happened this week. I have stayed out of the stores, but will have to go out shopping tomorrow. I do find that staying out of malls, and our small Super Walmart saves me the most cash.  I try for at least 20 no spend days a month, and that is exactly no spend. Nothing, but nothing gets spent. In order to do this I combine my errands so that I do more than one thing on a specific spend day. Take for instance yesterday. I paid bills, bought gas, did some postal things, and got Harv's and my biweekly allowance out of the bank. That was my first spend day since Sunday. I really should have gone shopping, but starting tomorrow there are great sales so I put it off. This means 2 spend days this week, however out of the 16 days this month I will only have spent 4 so I am sitting at 12 no spend days. Pretty darn good.

I find it amazing how our south facing windows keep the house so warm during sunny winter days. Since noon today our furnace has only run  0 minutes. Yes that is right the furnace has not turned on since noon. It is now after 7 at night and still no gas is being consumed and no electricity being used to run the furnace. Great savings!!

I always wash and rinse what I can in cold water. All of my cold water wash is hung on the lines in the basement. This usually means I only have to run the dryer for two or three loads in a week.

All meals were made from items at home, in fact we actually used leftovers for two dinners and two lunches this week. Looking in the fridge tonight I can foresee another leftover meal tomorrow.

Harvey does most if not all of our maintenance around the house and yard. It was time to paint the living and dining rooms (we have an open concept home), and of course we are doing it all ourselves.

The paint was bought with a gift card and only cost us a few dollars over the amount on the gift card.

There is only one problem with doing things ourselves.....

I get to live with this.
Hmmm, this is causing me to panic a little bit and my OCD tendencies are starting to kick in. I keep telling myself that I can handle this for the next week or so (we will be moving some items back and others away from the wall as we make our way around the room). I don't think it is helping much, but I will handle it for as long as possible, reminding myself that the cost of doing this could be triple what we are paying.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

4 comments:

  1. I understand ... couldn't wait to get my kitchen back in some kind of order after we painted.

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  2. Our sales in the UK are coming to an end now and I'm pleased as I do always take advantage of them. I must admit I'm now all saled out and am happy to get back to simple spending or non-spending routines.

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  3. Oh, Jackie - I SO understand! Having all of Justin's apartment in our living room, dining room, basement and guest room is driving me NUTS! But, until he has another weekend off, we can't make any more progress with moving stuff around. Ron and I just can't do it and Justin is working way too many hours to handle it all at once. Breathe...

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  4. Just breathe and tell yourself this temporary disarray will all be worth it in the end. Because it will! :)

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