Frugal Living

There is a blog I love to read.  I have to check it everyday to see if there is a new posting.  I don't even remember how I found it, but it's awesome!  It's called Want What You Have.  A Christian mom with three kids writes it and I love her practical and down to earth ideas and the way she doesn't try to make out to be perfect.  She's just a stay-at-home mom who likes to write.  Anyway, she posts things that she does to live frugally and simply.  One of her posts was, "Twenty-five things we do to save money."  So with that idea, I want to post my own list of things I do to save money.  I may not have twenty-five, but we'll see how many I can think of.

"Things We Do to Save Money"

1. I make my own laundry soap.  I have tried different recipes and have finally found my own version of a couple of recipes that seems to work well for me and our types of laundry.

2. I now hang my laundry out to dry.  It wasn't a deliberate choice.  My dryer broke and I don't have money to buy a new one.  I am enjoying the feeling of self-sufficiency it gives me and my clothes smell great!  So I'm saving money on my electric bill and I'm saving the money of not buying a dryer right now.

3. There are some things we VERY, very seldom buy, soda is a big one.  None of us need to drink it and it is not good for us.  I think it's a huge waste of money.  I almost wrote that we never buy soda, but that's not true.  We have bought it, but it's maybe a couple of times a year.  I very seldom buy potato chips and other junk food.  Now I do have a sweet tooth, so I do buy chocolate once in awhile. 

4. I usually buy almond bark and chop it up instead of buying chocolate chips.  I can buy a bar of almond bark from which I can make three double batches of cookies for less than the price of one bag of chocolate chips.

5. I make cookies from scratch.  I have a very good chocolate chip cookie recipe that my kids LOVE!  When we are at the store and they ask me to buy cookies, I just say, "My cookies taste better than those!" and they agree with me.

6. I only buy cold cereal if it is on a really good sale.  We can easily go through a box of cereal in one sitting, so I save it for a special treat.  We usually have oatmeal or farina (it's the same as cream of wheat and much cheaper! I get it at WalMart.) instead.

7. I set the thermostat to 68 degrees in the winter and 75 or 76 degrees in the summer.  This is easier for me in the winter than the summer because I HATE to be hot.  I just try to deal with it.  Winter is easy because we can just throw on another layer if we are cold.  We are used to it now, so it's not a problem.

8. Lincoln and I don't exchange gifts usually.  We have never really done this.  He didn't grow up getting gifts so he would rather have it that way. 

9. Lincoln cuts his own and the three boys hair.  We have pretty much always done this.  I used to cut the boys hair when they were little, but now their hair is harder to cut so Lincoln does it.

10. I make my own pizza.  The kids would rather have Little Caesars, but I try to make it at home from scratch.

11. I do our own taxes.

12.  I love reading and I love books, but instead of buying books, we go to the library every week.  I LOVE the Salt Lake County Library System!  They have had every book I have ever looked for with the exception of maybe one or two.  It's awesome!

13. Going out to eat is a treat.  We go out together as a family about once every 6-8 weeks.  Lincoln and I go out as a couple about the same.  That's not to say we NEVER get fast food, but it's a rare occasion.

14. Going to the movies is a treat.  When we do go, we go to the matinee, which for the theater we go to by our house that's any movie before 6:00 pm.  It's $2 cheaper and with seven of us, that adds up.  We maybe go 2-3 times a year and only if it's a movie we are dying to see!  The last movie we went to was Toy Story 3 about 3 weeks ago.  Loved it! 

15. Lincoln takes his lunch to work everyday.  He almost never eats out for lunch.

16. I make my kids' birthday cakes and if they have a party, it's a party at our house.

17. When things are on sale, if it's a fantastic sale I buy as much as I can.  Like when Target and WalMart have their notebooks for $.15 I buy 100 or more and that lasts us until the next year when they are on sale again.  Last year I bought so many boxes of crayons when they were $.25 a box that I don't even need to buy any this year.

18. We buy our bread and bagels at the discount bakery.  I love Grandma Sycamore bread and we can get it there for under $1 a loaf.  It's usually $2.99 in most stores.  Bagels are $1 a bag too.  If we can't get it there then I make my own bread.

19. I pay every bill I can online.  It saves me the check and a stamp.  There are very few things that I can't pay online, almost all without any sort of fee.  I pay all my utilities online and pretty much everything else.  I don't pay my house payment online because they charge a fee (I think it's $10) and there is a bank branch just up the street that I just make my payment at.

20. I reuse plastic store bags as trash bags for my small trash cans.  I only buy trash bags for my kitchen garbage can and my recycling trash can. (They use the same size.)

21. Lincoln has several prescriptions.  We order his medication through mail order.  That saves us a bunch, especially since our insurance penalizes us if we don't.

22.  I have pretty much stopped buying DVDs.  I used to think I had to buy the DVD of every Disney movie that came out.  But I soon (but not soon enough) realized that the kids didn't really watch most of them and I had to find a place to store all of them!  If we really want to see a movie, we rent it.  There are very few movies that we want to watch so many times that it's worth it for me to buy. 

23. I try not to buy many convienance foods.  I buy some, but I try to make as much as I can myself.



Well, that's all I can come up with for now.  If I think of more there may be a Part 2.  Now it's time to go make lunch.