Happy Friday!!! If you are new here, this is the day I share some of the frugal things I’ve done recently and then you share yours in the comments. the idea is to encourage and inspire each other—not to make anyone feel guilty.
I’ve been having a hard time thinking of things to share on Frugal Friday. It’s been almost a month since I last post. Most of our fugal things have been relating to not doing something instead of getting a better deal on something. They are kind of every day kind of things and didn’t seem too note worty to talk about. Then it occurred to me that those simple every day things are JUST THE THINGS we should talk about.
- We didn’t go to the movies. We had planned to see the new (can I still call it new?) Star Wars movie as a family, at a matinee where it would be cheaper. It was still going to be expensive when you think about buying a ticket x8, but we’ve only taken the kids to the movies one other time in their entire lives that I can think of–and it was going to be really special. Kind of like our Disney World—bww ha ha ha! BUT FIRST, Darren thought we should watch the first 6 movies. I hadn’t seen any of them and neither had several of our kids. So we borrowed them from the library and netflix and watched them in order. By the time we found enough family time to get that done, The Force Awakens was available on DVD. It should arrive today. We rarely buy movies, but in this case it was $18 for the DVD instead of $48-$80 for movie tickets. I could have saved the $18 and waited for it to come at the library….that would have been a little more thrifty. I’m still looking forward to seeing the kids’ faces when the mail comes today.
2. We pack our lunches. School lunches cost between $1.75 and $2.50, which is really cheap for eating out. BUT we can pack a lunch at home for less than $1. When you multiply that times 5 school age children, we save $240 a month just packing lunches.
3. We try to remove stains from clothes. This one sounds silly, but I have heard people tell me they had to throw clothes away because of stains. They wouldn’t dream of donating or selling a stained item in a garage sale. While I admire their integrity, there are a LOT of ways to remove stains from clothes. I’ll buy stained clothes if they are low priced, since it’s likely I’ll (and by me, I mean my mom) will be able to get the stains out. I should get her to show us how, yes?
Here’s not really a thrifty thing, but it relates. We have so many house projects to do that it would take every dime we could squeeze from our budget for the next 10-15 years to do them. I’ve been thinking lately about living in my house unfinished instead, except for the really cheap things I can do to make it liveable (like paint.) Then we could use the money to make memories with the kids while they are still dependent on us. We’ve dreamed of taking them snow skiing, and to see other parts of the nation and can’t do both. I’ve decided I’m ok with looking at 2×4 studs and pipes and bare insulation if that means I can do better for them.
It’s your turn. Inspire us with some of your frugal activities this week.
I cut my son’s hair. (I stopped for awhile because I was embarrassed by some less than flattering cuts…he didn’t notice, but I did.). I found this website today http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/how-to-cut-boys-hair-like-a-pro and I did much better! School lunches saved us a lot too. Instead of running out to buy a new couch…I decluttered the living room and sewed the tear on the arm…and I think it will do for a bit ( my couch is a bit of a funky red floral–I bought it at a going out of business sale…not my favorite but super comfy). We have the same feelings about home repair. We are on our third fixer and haven’t traveled much even anywhere close because of house repairs. All extra money earned from a previous sale goes to the house as well as extra squeezed out of the budget. and right now we feel house poor ( but my neighbor reminds me we are gaining sweat equity). We are considering painting the concrete walls in our basement and staining the floors to lessen the burden so we have more time and money…we can’t buy back these years with our kids and so we are going to at least road trip it with our kids this summer and enjoy a mini-vacation. The house can wait:)
Stacy! Reading your comment made me feel so much better. I agree, we can’t get this years back. My oldes is about to be a Jr in High School. I can see her adult future charging at us and I want to make more memories first. House poor is exactly the way I’m feeling right now. We paid less for this house than we did for our tiny house, but the repairs are about to drag us under. I think we’re at the point now where it’s structurally stable and electrically sound, it’s just ugly and 50% of the house has only sub floor. Taking it one day at a time doesn’t seem so bad though.
Maybe you can either donate the movie to the library so others can watch it sooner, or sell it somewhere to recoup some of those $18!!
I breastfeed – which is frugal!
We have a church “potluck” picnic this Sunday and I had some “pinwheel”/meat-and-cheese roll-ups in my cart at Costco today. Then I realized that I already have tortillas, and that I could almost certainly make them for cheaper, so I bought the other ingredients to do them myself. It cost more up front, but I’ll have spinach, meat and cheese left over for our own packed or at-home lunches.
Lastly, we are heading out the door to take advantage of the free Parents’ Night Out that is included with out YMCA membership! It’s a great chance for some one-on-one time for hubby and me – run some errands sans kiddos, and probably “splurge” on dinner out, without paying for a babysitter!
I purchased a stain remover bar from Amazon called Vanish. It’s a bit pricy at $12 for a small bar, but it lasts and lasts and has removed oil, lipstick, beet stain and even stains that got missed and wound up being found after they were in the dryer. I figured it saved me a couple hundred dollars in clothing costs.
I replaced half the windows in my house last year and was going to finish replacing the last 6 one room at a time, but it would wind up being $400 more. So, I charged it on one CC card (for the miles*) and I’m going to use a 2% balance transfer and pay it off at zero interest over the next year. The payment is the amount I planned to save each month. Plus it’s my west facing windows, so I’ll save energy this summer too!
*Using a mileage CC and paying it off every month works for me better than the envelope system. And it helps me track business expenses.
We’re remodeling our kitchen. Instead of buying Kitchen cabinets at $5000-$12,000, we decided to have my husband build them (he’s real handy like that!). We weighed the cost of the cabinets vs. the time he would spend in the shop away from the family. He ended building the cabinets for $1300. A big savings!
Angela, we also bought a house in need of major work when we moved to our current home (it’s been almost 18 years now!) and have just fixed what we can, when we can. When our eldest was 1-2, we spent those years remodeling the living/dining areas. We even hosted Thanksgiving dinner once with plywood subfloors and bare drywall! 🙂 No one cared – it is the company and the time together that matter, not the way your house looks. Keep putting time into your children & family, and keep the doors open to loving others, and no one will mind the exposed 2×4 studs. 😉
We are low-income right now from recent job changes, so our kids eat cheaper at school than I could make their lunches (being 10 and 13, their lunches must be fairly substantial) and we prepare a lot of our snacks from scratch. Our city just opened an Aldi, and I’m loving so many of their inexpensive food options that are healthy! And I meal plan from my pantry, fridge & freezer, watching the ads every weekend, so that we can afford to also get Dairy Queen once in a while and order in pizza, which my eldest son is also learning to make at home. He’s becoming quite proficient at making dough! 🙂 Haha.
I for one would love to see your mom’s tricks on stain removal – with two boys, I’ve got a lot of stains, especially this time of year (think mud, dirt, rain, soccer…). I have only one tip to share back – a friend of mine’s mother used liquid dishwashing soap to pre-treat stains on light colors (not dark, because there is a small amount of bleaching that happens with this) and my beige coat has never looked so good! It amazed me, since some of that grime was washed & dried and worn in for a long time. 🙂
Thank you, I enjoy your blog a lot!
Re: Stains and clothes. I am surprised people would send clothes with stains to the landfill! We have a local nonprofit that sells used clothing, and what is not good enough to sell, they send to a company that chops old clothes and makes them into rags (e.g., cleaning washcloths). People can check their communities for similar resources. Also, if you maintain only natural fiber clothes, people could make use of them by making t-shirt yarn (tarn) from old t-shirts, felt or cut wool fabrics for dryer balls or stuffing (stuffed animals, etc.). That’s all I can think of off the top of my head, but maybe it will give people ideas. Hopefully I am not overlapping past advice on this site 🙂 As for cleaning the actual stains. I have a pile of stained clothes to work on and admit that I am feeling challenged on how to get them clean!
I totally agree about putting your time and money into your children and husband. I have grown children and when we talk about when they were young they always talk of memories of things we did. Not what our house looked like or the furniture we had. Not once!
We also are DIY people. We have remodeled our current kitchen, almost finished another bath in the basement and are working on flooring. We could not afford to do these things if we paid someone to do them for us. We are also increasing our garden this year. I am working on edible landscaping. We are thinking about chickens but are not ready yet.
I went shopping with cash this week. New and different is fun. I have to wait and see how all goes with the food budget.
Thanks for all you do.
I just found your blog! Frugality has been a passion of mine for a while since we have 4 kids on a pastor’s salary. Love our life though! A recent tip a friend gave me is homemade laundry detergent. I was very skeptical at first mostly because of the time it would take, but it really was done fairly quickly! Didn’t take much time at all and it saves a bundle since we do so much laundry!! It makes 5 gallons of liquid concentrate detergent (10 gallons total) and ends up being $1.47 per 10 gallons (after the initial cost of buying the container and full boxes of the soap-about $35 to start). And you use 1/4 cup per load (I like to add a little more for heavy/stinky loads-which is most of our laundry) . So that’s $1.47 for 10 gallons, about 640 loads. So $. 002 per load (not even a penny). It’s about $. 06 per 30 loads (about a normal bottle). The fun part is you can add any scent to it you want with the scent boosting crystals! They are easy to find. Everything was on the same laundry aisle at Walmart.
Here is the website she gave me. http://mylilpumpkinpatch.blogspot.com/2011/08/homemade-laundry-soap-tutorial.html?m=1
Hi Carey! I’m glad you found me! I hope to hear more tips from you in the future.