Frugal Frolics: Money Saving Recap

I want to start by saying how much my heart goes out to those effected by Helene.  I pray you are all safe and that you did not suffer any awful damage from the hurricane.  I know how terrible it is to recover from a natural disaster and I have so much empathy for those impacted by this one.

In my news, I had some “fun” on the home front.  The pressure tank for our well, located in my pantry/utility room, blew its pressure switch and sprayed an inch, or more, of water all over my pantry.  Thank God my husband was able to jam the switch back in its hole long enough for us to drain the tank or that would have been REALLY bad.  And might I say as a side note that wet dry shop vacs are the best invention ever.  Man, if not for one of those suckers, I don't know what I would have done!

Bright side of the train wreck...the pantry is very clean now.  I don't think the floor has ever been cleaner.

As is, it was not a fun week as I pulled everything out of the pantry, threw away pretty much every piece of cardboard that was in there (so waterlogged) and drying everything as it came out.  

Then it was the running of the fans to dry out the pantry as much as I could, running the carpet cleaner in the hallway (water leaked into the carpet from under the stairs, saturated the carpet and everything started to smell because it wasn’t drying fast enough) and then moving the fans to the hallway to dry out the carpet.  I nearly have everything rearranged (had to accommodate the new lack of cardboard boxes that used to house stuff) and back in the pantry, but man it is a slow process.  So, yeah, the pantry tour is a bit delayed.  I will get to it, though...it is just going differently than I had planned.

Bright side, we have been having problems with our well pressure for a while and my husband was worried it was the pump, but it was the nipple that fed the pressure switch that was just clogged shut that caused it.  We replaced the switch just to be safe as well and everything is working well again.  So, a 65.00 fix and lots of cleaning versus a well pump we’ll into the thousands of dollars?  I’ll take it.

Now onto some other stuff going on around here.

1.  I have been working hard on my kitchen this week, rearranging things, again, to make the kitchen more functional.  I am planning to eliminate the two kitchen carts in my kitchen to open the dining area a bit and get rid of visual clutter.  

A lot of this came down to my decision to get rid of some of my Tupperware.  I really do like the stuff, but it just takes so much room to store and at some point you just have to accept that your space is small, you have to maximize it or live in constant clutter, and clutter gives Alvah anxiety it turns out.  Every time I eliminate a bit more clutter, the happier he gets.  I already decluttered the living room a bunch and he’s been really happy with that too.  So, getting rid of Tupperware so I can store more in the hallway closet is totally worth it.

I have been working on food preservation this year, after a break of a few years, as well.  I’ll cover that in the next post (well part one of a few posts I'm sure), and I’m still working on things, but slow and steady wins the race.

2.  I’ve actually been doing this for a while, but thought I’d share this “frugal hack”.  We have stopped eating out as a family every week due to costs and schedule, but we do get Alvah French fries from Red Robin after swimming once a week as a treat (he is over 6’ now and starving all the time).  Every time we pick up his fries I ask for seasoning salt and I put up any extra they give us in my spice cabinet.  When I get a big enough pile I sit down, tear them open and put the salt into my big Red Robin salt container I bought years ago.  Doing this I haven’t had to try another copycat recipe for the stuff or had to buy a fresh bottle in years.  A benefit to getting take out if there ever was one.

3.  I finally broke down and made an appointment with the eye doctor to get new glasses.  The anti-scratch coating was breaking down on my current pair (still is as I’m waiting for the new ones to come in) and it is impacting my ability to see clearly now.  This time when I went I took the daughter too as she’s never had a full on eye exam (just the basic ones in the past and even that she hadn’t had in a few years) and since it is covered by insurance I figured it was time.  So glad I did that as it turns out the bad eyes on both sides of the family (my husband has great eyesight but he’s the exception not the rule) caught up with her and she needs glasses.  At least we had our tiny savings as I was able to take the cost out of that instead of having to put it on credit card.

4.  I mended a few pairs of underwear, a bra and a shirt.

5.  I saved 10.00 a month the last 10 months to buy a cast iron Dutch oven rack (associate link) to hold my Dutch ovens (I use them nearly every day, it seems) so I could eliminate one of the kitchen carts that is being used to just basically hold said Dutch ovens.  It is a lot smaller than the cart so I am hoping it will work well (Amazon shipped it slow speed so I am two more weeks out to getting it, which annoys me as it was supposed to be here by their original estimate last Monday). I’ll let you know how it goes.

6.  I took advantage of having to run into the store to get milk and picked up a pumpkin for Halloween while I was there.  I scrubbed it with rubbing alcohol and oiled the pumpkin after it dried to hopefully keep the pumpkin from rotting before Halloween.  Worse comes to worse and we’ll carve it early.  I’m not sweating the small stuff at this point.

7.  I fixed a ceiling light.  Alvah jumps on his bedroom floor a lot and the light in my bedroom ceiling managed to vibrate out of its bracket over time and fell from the ceiling and was hanging by the wires when I found it.  I had to take it the rest of the way down, rewire it and rehang it.  My husband was stuck in a traffic jam on the way home, so I handled it (he is a Journeyman electrician so I tend to leave that type of thing to him).  I worked as an apprentice electrician years ago, so it was interesting doing that work again on my own home.  I now know to check said light from time to time as the way it is constructed the problem could occur again.  

8.  Alvah managed to break the new support system my husband had installed in the loveseat.  This time when we fixed it we did a two pronged attack on the problem.  My husband put a piece of unistrut across the length of the loveseat and then I went and made sure the spring steel system of “springs” the loveseat had were snapped into their brackets properly and then I took lengths of rip stop nylon belt/strap material I had bought years ago for some projects and I basically wove an entire new seat with it, being sure to weave it in and out of the existing steel frame and the spring steel “springs”.  So far, so good.  The loveseat has been holding up well to daily abuse and I’m hopeful that this time we fixed it for a while.  Here’s hoping!

9.  I finished up Alvah’s TEFRA renewal paperwork and got it sent in for the year.

10.  We hung up Halloween decorations later than normal due to us being busy, but we got them up last week.  Last week we made Halloween themed sugar cookies.  This week we’ll make some more treats.  I really didn’t want to feel rushed this year so I am glad we are getting things done slowly but surely.  

I'm also working on food preservation projects this week to get my upright freezer emptied and defrosted properly as it is still building up ice flows in the bottom of the freezer.  I am hoping it's not slowly dying on me (I mean it is 15 years old, so it might be something bad coming my way there), but I want to see if I can take care of this problem as right now I can't use the bottom bin in my freezer or everything gets frozen in the freezer with ice, which leads to a bunch of frustration and wasted space.

And yeah, I think I will leave it there for now.  I’ve got other stuff to cover, so here’s hoping I can get some other posts done!