Frugal 5 Friday 9/15/17

Where have I been? Woosh your guess is as good as mine, back to school really got me this year. Frugal Kid #1 started kindergarten and is about 3 miles from our house, Frugal Kid #2 started preschool and is about 15 miles from our house, BOTH Frugal Kids need to be at their respective schools within 15 minutes of each other….ummmm…. the math just doesn’t work out. That means Frugal Husband and I BOTH need to be involved in the drop off process and I’m on my own in the afternoon. Where’s the school bus you might ask? Well we live over a covered bridge (no seriously, an honest to goodness covered bridge), and the school bus can’t travel over it, and if we dropped him off at the designated bus stop we’d be adding a ton of time to his day and the bus stop is almost as close as the school! Phew, I’m tired writing about it, but I’m even more tired living it!

In addition to all of this crazy driving around, Frugal Kid #1 and # 2 were both going to do soccer in the afternoon and each had practice on a different day. We’ve decided that the preschooler just can’t do it, her practice is after an already long day at school and the poor thing (me and her!) is exhausted.

I don’t know how you Mamas with all of your kiddos in school do it! Right now we’re in major survival mode and when I say survival mode I mean it, I didn’t get to take a shower until about 7pm tonight and when I was on my way to the shower I discovered a little puddle of milk, so I wiped it up with my socked foot because I knew I was going to be washing it and I was too tired to go and get a paper towel. I’m not proud, but I guess I saved a paper towel in the process.

Anyhoo, if you’ve stuck with me this far, I didn’t get to posting last week because I had my first of 3 craft fairs this season and I was crocheting like mad to make sure I had enough stock. It turned out that the weather forecasters were saying rain the day of and I think a lot of people stayed home. I did “ok” but not as well as last year. I’m hoping my next one (also my biggest), will pan out better.

Here are my 10 (!) frugal doings from the past 2 weeks. I’d love to hear yours in the comments and I’d love to also know how you make school mornings and evenings easier!!

1. I tried to make as much food that I knew would have good leftovers as possible and to at least have an idea of what I wanted to make in my head so that I could avoid junk food.
2. Our grocery store has a store brand of organic milk, but it generally only comes in the smaller cardboard containers. They JUST started carrying gallons of the same milk and it’s $3 cheaper!
3. The same grocery store sells antibiotic free rotisserie chickens for $4- they make cooking a quick frugal dinner very easy- we used one last night to make enchilada soup and used a few ears of corn from the farm down the street, it was delicious, the whole pot cost less then $10 to make and will equal out to about 10+ servings, it’s also a soup that when eaten with a piece of bread is a very filling and complete meal.
4. I got the oil changed in one of our cars- while it wasn’t cheap, I think routine car maintenance is really important if you want to drive your cars for a really long time like we do.
5. I priced out snow tires for our minivan, it won’t be cheap, but it’s a necessity around here in the winter time and I’m confident I got the best price possible.
6. I took the cash that I earned at the craft fair and immediately made an extra payment on one of our vehicles. I didn’t want to be tempted to use it for something else.
7. I used our credit card rewards to buy some Christmas presents for the kids. We buy a lot of our household goods on amazon and use an amazon credit card, we also use it for big purchases that we know we have the money to pay off. I know Dave Ramsey is not a fan of this method, but it works.
8. I’ve been trying to buy or make something for each child once per week, I did this last year and it really made Christmas smooth sailing with no big giant bill to tackle because I did all of my shopping in one or 2 days.
9. I’ve been trying to make sure lights are turned off when not in use, with the days getting darker sooner, it’s important to me that we compensate and save as much energy as possible.
10. It was warm enough this week that we didn’t need to turn the heat on! Woot!

Thanks for stopping by!