My Frugal List: Week of October 15, 2018

Our Goodwill has everything 50% off for October. I went with the kids to see what they had. I really needed a new winter coat last year since mine was falling apart. I have had it for over 10 years and mended it so many times.  I did not find one I liked for a good price. 


 All Goodwill coats are marked $29.99 so I got this purple (my favorite color) for $14.99. 


I also got this very heavy full length coat for, you guessed it, $14.99. 2 great coats for winter for less then $30 dollars. I was so happy. 


My son found 2 flannel shirts and my daughter found one. They were $3 each and will be Christmas presents. I also found a mini bread loaf pan that was $3 and an ice cream maker $3. Both items have been on my list for a while. I plugged the ice cream maker in to make sure it worked.


Hubby and I went out to the farms. It has been a very busy 2 weeks, everyone else was busy so we had a nice day by ourselves. We picked up 100+ pounds of potatoes. Each bag has to have at least 50 pounds in them. I am a nerd and like to know so we always weigh them when we get home. The white potatoes weighed 55.4 lbs. and the harvest gold weighed 52.4 lbs. I got an extra 7.8 pounds free. We also got some corn, cauliflower, a mum, chocolate chip cookies and a quart of soup from my favorite little seafood place. It was a great day.


I even made some new friends. Good thing YD wasn't with us or should would have wanted us to buy one. They were so cute though. We also stopped at a few yard sales. I got 4 beautiful Easter napkins for $1. We don't have Easter at our house so I don't need more then that. Hubby found a very nice wok for $5. Our old one had broken a while ago. I see fried rice in my future. 

YD had a very busy week. We had her Senior trip meeting. It is mandatory for a parent to go so I was the lucky one. Her class adviser came up to me at the end of the meeting. She let me know that I only had to pay the first installment which is $190. YD had earned the rest in fundraisers. They are always selling donuts, muffins and pizza in the morning or after school. YD always volunteers. You get money towards the trip every time you do it. The school only lets you get up to half off. YD hit the max allowed off. I was very happy to hear that she did.  Her adviser said that she was the only one that got half off. We are very proud of her.

YD also got a job. She has been applying for jobs and had a few interviews. She got a job at the mall. She was hired as a seasonal hire but they said that they usually keep most of them after the holidays. She will only be working Friday, Saturday and Sunday. She is very excited. Orientation and training are this coming weekend. 

YD also has been doing as many scholarships as she can. Some days she only does part of one, other days she has done 5. Some want long essays on certain topics while others don't. 


I made more apple juice and more apple muffins. I had enough cores to make a batch of apple cider vinegar. It will be ready in 6-8 weeks. 

It has been getting cold here at night. I threw a sheet on my tabasco plant to help keep it warm. It seems to be helping. We also haven't been turning the heat on. The house has been 65 degrees with me baking so I put on flannel sheets and extra blankets. I told everyone to put on lots of layers. Hubby set the heat to 60 so if the house drops below it will kick on. 

I had a $10 off coupon for a clothes store. I bought a Christmas present for someone who may or may not read this blog. I only spent $2.36. 


I pulled all of my herb pots inside. They are currently scattered about. I will be using them all winter long. I have been drying some more herbs to use also. 


YD had a friend over and they carved a pumpkin. I will cook it tomorrow and they can carve another next weekend. 

I hung laundry inside. I washed everything on the cold, short cycle. I used 1/2 the amount of detergent recommended. 

Meals have been cooked at home except for one that we ate at my sister's and then Hubby and I shared a meal out for $8.99. We brought all leftovers home. We took food and drinks with us to work/lunch. I did get a free meal at work one day so I saved my lunch for the next day. 

I have been charging my phone at work, using coupons, shopping sales and using Ibotta. Baggies have been washed, errands are batched together and leftovers are being eaten. 

What did you do frugal this week? 




Comments

  1. My week was full of pulling up old things from the garden, going to Rob's appointments with him (only part of them), cooking and helping with a 4H bake sale. It was a super busy week! Pictures are on my blog. This week, I need to finish preserving the last few things I picked from the garden--there's one more batch of tomatoes for pizza/pasta sauce and enough green tomatoes for Salsa Verde.

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    Replies
    1. I need to make more hot sauce and use up the last of my tomatoes. Have a great week.

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    2. That's a great week! Congrats to your daughter on the job and on earning the max discount! My son has been trying to find a job, but he doesn't want to do food (I can't blame him on that; being around the smell of cooking food for long periods of time makes me feel queasy as well), and a lot of places around here are either hugely competitive or don't hire teenagers, so we'll see.

      How do you keep all those potatoes from going bad? I have a basement that stays cool all winter, but we also get mice down there from time to time (and my cats think of mice more as super fun toys that move, unfortunately), so I've learned that putting any kind of accessible food down there is a bad idea.

      We had to turn our heat on- it was 57 in the house one morning, and I wasn't going to make my mom babysit my daughter in such a chilly house- but so far we're able to keep it low. Winter's going to feel like it's stretching on forever this year, since it's cold so early! :)

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    3. Hi Stephanie. Everyone around here hires teenagers. I have gotten several of the kid's friends jobs at the movie theater that I work at. YD had to take a math test and she scored 100% so I guess that is how they picked her. She is also very friendly.

      My son didn't want to prep food so he just told that to people when he was interviewing. He works at a food place and does register. Some days he cleans the dining room and does garbage.

      I separate the potatoes into card board boxes and layer with news paper. We eat the harvest gold first because they go bad faster. I will freeze a bunch for easy hash browns. I check them every week and if I see any sprouting or going soft, I pull them. I'm part Irish so I would eat potatoes 3 meals a day. We had some yesterday with breakfast and some with dinner.

      Our heat kicked on during the night but it shut off again this morning. I wouldn't make your mom do that either. Have a great week.

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  2. Hi Mcoia and I love the 2 coats you got and a really good price :). The potatoes should last for a while, are you going to preserve them ?, or keep them in cold storage. Congratulate your YD on getting her new job, how exciting.

    Fantastic news here is that we got our home loan from the bank and we will put down a 36.85% deposit on it from money we had saved. The owners had the home on the market for some time and then reduced the price by $50 000 as they had no lookers on it at all. Of course we jumped on it and organised an inspection straight away since similar properties in the area on slightly smaller 1 acre blocks of land were selling for $230 000. We paid under $200 000 for it and our home is on 1.21 acres of land so I have to say that it was a true steal at the price we purchased it for :). Our settlement is on the 10th of December and we will be moving soon afterwards into our forever home.

    As would be expected not a lot got done again this week with running backwards and forwards to solicitor's office, buying a new to us second car, organising surveyors and pest and building inspections.

    Our Vicky challenge last week added up to $7829.75 in savings :).

    General house buying madness -
    - Went happily crackers filling out lots of forms for the house, new car and getting quotes on house, contents and car insurance.

    Finances/ listings/car purchase/land surveying -
    - Listed 15 items on eBay using a free listing promotion saving $24.75 on usual listing fees.
    - Negotiated an offer to buy our home and saved $7000 on the listed purchase price.
    - DH did his negotiating and managed to save another $255 on land surveying and pest and building inspection previously quoted prices.
    - We purchased a new to us Ford Territory as we are going to be out of town on roads with kangaroos and for towing firewood and manures with. I negotiated the price down by $550 on the listed price in the car yard.

    Home organisation for moving -
    - Broke down the old falling apart wardrobes and took 3 shelving units and some heart swags I made to the Endeavour shop for a donation and took the broken down wardrobes to the tip for disposal. We had replaced the old shelves with new shelves a couple of weeks ago and this will give us less to move.

    In the gardens -
    - Weeded all the front garden beds, pruned grape vines and mulched all garden beds with saved dried grass clippings and dried leaves from the yard to save on Lucerne prices and to use up the lawn clippings here.
    - Picked lots of English lavender from the gardens to dry for sale on the internet and some for the home.

    In the kitchen -
    - Cooked all meals and bread from scratch.

    Hope everyone has a wonderful week ahead :).


    Sewingcreations15.

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    Replies
    1. Most of the potatoes will be kept in my cellar. I will do a big batch of hash browns and then freeze them into meal sizes for easy breakfasts. I check them every week so if they start sprouting or getting soft I will have to take action.

      Congratulations on you forever home. That will be the best Christmas present ever. Congrats on the new car too. I cannot wait to hear all about everything you do at your new home. You and your husband did great on negotiating prices. You have worked so hard saving for it. It will be amazing. Have a wonderful week. Don't go too crazy filling out all of the paperwork.

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  3. You can't beat 2 coats for 30 bucks. I am still in the getting rid of process, rather than purchasing anything. I can't even think of anything I might want, much less need, but when I do think of something I am hitting up thrift stores first.

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    Replies
    1. Trust me, I have plenty of stuff to get rid of too. I have been giving stuff to OD since she moved out. I have boxes of stuff for my son and YD too. Then whatever they don't want will be donated.

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