On the frugal front, it's been kind of basic around here, as saving money with the cost of everything has been...well it just hasn't happened. A bunch of medical bills and some expensive prescriptions have gone onto credit card, which isn't ideal, and have to be addressed. I also have to start calling around and seeing if I can get a quote on our garage roof. Turns out that no one has three tab shingles anymore up here because they fell out of popularity (and yes, we went beyond Lowes and Home Depot and looked into local businesses as well). Everyone has switched to architectural shingles instead (whatever those are), which will NOT look good with our old roof shingles from what we have found, so we are trying to see if a roofing company will have means to get ahold of our old style shingles when we can't. While we are at it, I'm just going to get a quote on a new metal roof for the garage just to see. At this point, it's going to be an option (woohoo for more loans *ugh*) if we can't get shingles to repair the roof right or if there is more damage than we are seeing at face value here. At least we got a roll of tar paper while we were out over the weekend, so we can flame it onto the roof (hopefully the weather dries out here) and help to seal it from the rain instead of having exposed wood. After a bunch of research into our home owner's insurance and such, I decided doing a claim wasn't going to happen. We could not get a roofing contractor, anywhere, to come out and give us a quote on repairs or replacement before Spring (which was step one to doing an insurance claim) and looking at our policy and the age of the roof...we weren't going to get much in the way of a payout from insurance for the repairs and then we'd lose any discount we have on our monthly insurance for putting in a claim. So, yeah, we are on our own for this one.
The joys of current year, huh?
Anyway, onto the frugal stuff that has been going on around here.
1. We've gotten a few freebies from the grocery store (seen above there). The breakfast bowl seems to be a part of Carrs efforts to get people to do pick up or delivery instead of shopping in store so every once in a while they'll have a freebie for pick up and delivery only. Nice thing about these freebies is we've actually been getting them, which is nice as trying to get in-store freebies is near impossible anymore....they disappear FAST! I got the flavor my husband picked out of the available options and we just picked it up with our regular grocery order.
The coffee freebie was actually just coincidently being in the right place at the right time. We ended up going to the pharmacy to pick up various prescriptions and there was a digital coupon for one of these free coffee drinks that was only good for a few days. Since I was at the store anyway to hit the pharmacy, I went and found one of the few flavors of the coffee they had left and got it. I'm hoping the cold brew coffee won't be too acidic as my stomach is VERY picky when it comes to coffee and my husband hates flavored coffee, so I'm going to be the one drinking it. My plan is to save it and then drink it as maybe iced coffee a bit later in the season, but we shall see how it all goes.
2. I got minimal materials to finish up the carpeting in my son's room to cut down on costs. I had to get new carpet glue, as when I went and opened the old bucket of glue we had, it was a big science experiment of various molds (I had no idea that an adhesive could mold, but learn something new every day). It was really old, so not sure if that had anything to do with it.
Originally I was going to do an online order with Lowes and then just go and pick it up, but decided to run into the store after swimming one day instead when my husband could sit and keep the son company in the car. I used the site to figure out where the glue was supposed to be shelved and then went into the store, went directly back to that spot, grabbed the glue and was able to check out within a few minutes, instead of wandering around and potentially spending more money. I also found out that doing pick ups at Lowes has a RIDICULOUS mark up! By picking up in store, I saved myself a nearly 100% mark up on the carpet glue (online price for pick up, 39.99 per bucket; in store it was like 24.00 per bucket).
3. I made sure to use up leftovers as we had them, or I made sure to freeze them, so nothing went to waste. We had chicken Chow Mein last night and for the cabbage I actually used up several coleslaw kits I had bought in the past few months that I had not had an opportunity to use before I was worried they were going to go bad, so I just threw them (bag and all) into the freezer. These kits took the place of the cabbage and carrots in the recipe I was making last night and I picked the meat off of a rotisserie chicken carcass I had in the freezer (that I defrosted, of course) to use for the meat (there was actually a nice bit of meat on there). The recipe turned out fine, nothing went to waste and I was able to clear out some room in my freezer where the kits and the carcass used to be, so wins all the way around.
4. My husband has been wearing Lee jeans for years now, but the last like three years, the quality of the jeans has just gone downhill significantly. He's actually had more than a few, near brand new, pairs of jeans rip out by the back pocket straight down the back of the jeans. He was worried he was gaining weight and that is what was causing it, but looking at the reviews online a TON of people, small to large sized, complained about the same problem and were blaming the quality of the fabric. I looked around for better work jeans for him as he does have to do things like crawl over bag lines and stuff at work from time to time, and found Rustler jeans were about 1/2 the price, fit him decent and have been holding up much better. I'm slowly replacing his Lee's as they rip out with the Rustler jeans. I've got a pile of mending to work on (including more than a few pairs of Lees), but haven't had a chance to really work on it with Alvah, so this will have to do for now.
5. I redeemed credit card rewards for a statement credit as I found that getting gift cards (even E-gift cards) had changed and would actually (essentially) cost you money to "buy" them with your points. So, statement credit it is. A few bucks is a few bucks.
6. I gave my husband and my son haircuts. I've still got a bunch of clean up work to do on Alvah the next week as he fought tooth and nail getting the haircut done, but we'll get there.
7. I redid my menu plan a bit and did a quick meal of tacos instead of doing a more elaborate meal one night because Alvah hasn't been sleeping and I just plain wasn't up to doing much (transitioning of the seasons is always so rough on his already crappy sleep schedule). We thought about going out to eat, but I put my foot down and said simply, "We can't afford to" and went home and just cooked some taco meat and defrosted some tortillas we had in the freezer. Dinner was done quickly and with no added expense of spending way too much money eating out (I mean, dude, even a take out pizza is insanely priced anymore! How bigger families afford to eat out is beyond me!).
8. I put some new elastic into the waistband of a pair of yoga pants I've had for years and years (I bought them at Target back before I moved to Alaska and that was over 20 years ago...so, yeah they've held up ridiculously well). While doing so the tie string snapped in two and I saw it was not going to be fixed as it was fraying all over the place. I actually ended up taking some shoe lace material I had in my sewing stores that I had bought for another project I never got to years ago and used it to make new ties for the pants. Just tied some knots into the shoe lace material so the ties wouldn't get sucked out of the waistband, used a lighter to seal up the ends (you melt the ends of the laces to stop them from just fraying apart) and voila! Fixed. Nice part about that project was that I was able to do it all by hand instead of trying to figure out how to pull out my sewing machine to do it (which I need to do desperately to get some stuff done in the next bit around here).
9. I was able to get quarts of Pacific Organic Beef Broth on sale on Amazon one day. They had a coupon for 20% off when you bought three and they were cheap on top of that, so I did two orders of three and was able to get six cartons for $10.66. For beef broth period that was cheap, but for organic on top of it that was insanely cheap! I would have shared it when I got it, but the sale went away super duper quick, so I wasn't able to share it in time before the prices went back up.
10. I have continued to work on Spring cleaning and organizing and am slowly getting my home streamlined to work as efficiently as possible. This week I was able to get my den freezer organized, which is where I store my meat. By doing that I was able to find a bunch of sausage that had fallen into cracks and/or gotten buried in with other meat (probably because I was in a hurry at the time when I put it away, which is typical). So, I now I know to start working more sausage into the meal plan in the coming months to get that inventory back under control.
And there you go folks. Some of the frugal things I've done around here lately. Hope money saving endeavors, big or small, are working out for you all.
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