It has been a busy few weeks and we had a wicked stomach bug and a cold hit 2 of the kiddos 🙁 there hasn’t been much sleep happening lately and everyone has been on survival mode. I’m hoping with the arrival of nicer weather and a week off from school we’ll have better luck in the sickness department. So what have we been up to from a frugal stand point?
- Our wood for next season has been delivered- 5 cords so a small mountain of wood is sitting in our back yard right now. This is frugal because this wood is green, because we purchase it green rather than “seasoned” we save $85 a cord. When we fist moved into our house we bought “seasoned” wood and it was barely dry enough to burn. We’ve since learned our lesson and always start the season with a leftover cord from the previous year that’s nice and dry and by the time we get into the newest wood it’s had 8+ months of getting nice and dry.
- I’ve started hanging laundry out on the line. It’s been slow going because last week was terrible weather wise, but I have gotten a few loads out and that will only increase as time goes on. I’m keeping track of how many loads I hang out in a given season and looking forward to seeing those numbers add up.
- This is the time of year when I really really want to do home projects that cost $$$$$ and I’m trying my absolute best to say NO. Our springs/summers are so short so if I can suck it up and wait until next season it will be worth it! I’m still feeling like our progress on paying things down has been tooooo slooowwww and if we pay a ton of money doing things like replacing the floor on our deck or moving our fence it puts us that much farther away from our goals. I keep reminding myself that sacrifices now, mean much better things in the future for everyone.
- I used a bunch of amazon rewards to pay for a suitcase for myself as I’ll be traveling a lot for work this summer.
- Last week I went on a returning/selling blitz. I sold a stroller, one of my sons ride on toys (for almost the same amount I bought it for on craigslist), and returned a pair of shoes, some face wash, and those darned cat treats I mentioned in another post. It felt good to get all of this stuff OUT of our house and even better to have that money in our pocket.
So that’s all for me! We’ve got some big things over the next few weeks. Husband and I will be taking paid days off from our regular jobs in order to work our second jobs all in an effort to pay off our private student loan. I’m really looking forward to posting our June 1st state of the frugal union, just a few more weeks to get through. Also, stay tuned for a post about frugal car care- I’ve had it almost ready to go for a few weeks but just haven’t had time to finish it up. Thanks for stopping by! How was your week?
Sarah, just a comment on line drying. I finally gave it up because it seems to worsen my allergy symptoms, whether I hang up clothes or just linens. You might want to make sure you all aren’t affected. I would love to still do line drying, but use my gas dryer instead. I do try to save by hanging things up in the laundry room when they are about half dry.
Thanks for the heads up Mari- I’m the only allergy sufferer in my family and it doesn’t seem to matter if the clothes is line dried or not (unfortunately). We couldn’t line dry for a few months when our hours was being worked on and I noticed no difference.