I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘frugality’ Category

My son started preschool this week, and right before school began we got a list of things he needed to bring in for the classroom.  This weekend I took him shopping for the items he needed to bring, and one of them was a package of stickers.  I took him to Dollar Tree to find some stickers, and in doing so, found out he had very specific ideas about what kind of stickers he wanted (animals) and what type (large, not small).  Because he had such a clear idea beforehand, it turned out that the selection at Dollar tree was inadequate and we ended up having to go to target to buy the stickers.  So instead of the $1 I thought I was going to spend on a package of stickers, I spent $3 for ones more to his liking at another store.

But, that was okay.  There are times where a lesson in finding the best bargain and using your resources wisely would be an appropriate one, but this time, for this item, for me it wasn’t it.  For my son has a very significant speech delay, and although he is four, his level of communication lags more than a year behind his biological age.  In fact, that’s why he goes to preschool - he goes to a special education program designed specifically for 3 and 4 year olds with developmental delays (he attended the school last year as well).   So for him to come up with this clear vision for what he wanted, and be able to clearly communicate it to me, and make choices between different options, was a big feat all on its own.  And a feat I chose to reward.  And frugality, after all, is not just about finding what’s cheapest.  It’s about finding the best option all around, not only in price but in quality and personal preference.  I may not have found anything wrong with the generic stickers at the Dollar Tree but ultimately, they are stickers he’ll have to use in his language book at school and he should have ones he enjoys.

Next week when he helps me shop for snacks for his classroom (they rotate snack weeks and the first week in September is his) we’ll have to have a more stringent budget in place and make choices between items.  But for today, I’m just happy we found stickers he approved of, and I understand what he wanted.

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So it has been a week of the plastic bag challenge - for me,  to reduce the number of plastic grocery bags I have from 60 to 10.  I am excited by all the suggestions and tips I received in the first post, and I am compiling all of them into a list for the end of August.

As far as how I did, as I mentioned in the comments on the initial post, I made an error and didn’t bring my reusable bag into Walgreens with me, so I collected another plastic bag.  That was technically in July, but since it added to the number I had on August 1st I think it counts.  So, 61.  But I did find a new use for the ones I have that I hadn’t already been doing.  My son is in the midst of potty training and without going into gross details, the bags have come in handy disposing of some accidents.  That is (hopefully!) not a continual source of disposal but I think it may get rid of a few more than I would like.  Combined with the ways I was already using the bags (trash liners, diaper pail liner for my daughter, raw meat transport from the store) this has helped me get my overall count down to 55.  Which is not on pace to get to 10 by August 31st, but I am making progress.  The key is not to bring any new ones into the house, which I am doing okay at.

So if you are eliminating plastic bags from your stash, how are you doing?  How much progress have you made?  Have you found any new uses for them?   Share in the comments!

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I am, basically, a coupon failure.  This always happens to me - I try to use coupons and it seems like it is going fine, and then I get into my coupon groove and suddenly I am spending way more than I ever intended to.  Learn from my mistakes - here are five mistakes I’ve made and how not to make them yourself.  Hopefully this week I can improve by heeding my own words.

1.  Don’t buy things just because you have a coupon.  This is common sense but I can’t repeat it enough.    I start out with the best of intentions, but then I find myself clipping coupons for items I hardly ever buy, or for much more expensive name brands versus my usual store brand (and not amazing coupons, either).  Twenty-five cents off an item that is generally $2 more than its generic equivalent will rarely do you any good.

2.  Pair coupons with sales.  There are websites such as Coupon Mom and The Grocery Game that do this for you if you are so inclined, and I may try one eventually.  You can do this yourself as well by watching circulars and keeping all your coupons handy when you shop.

3.  Read the coupons carefully and make sure you’re buying the correct item.  Some coupons can be rather specific - and if you buy the 20 ounce item and the coupon is for the 15 ounce one, you are out of luck.  or, like me, you can mix up brands - you can’t use a coupon for Pillsbury cake frosting on the Betty Crocker one that’s on sale, even if it was an honest mistake.

4.  Don’t stock up it you can’t use it - or if you’ve already stocked up.  There will always be another sale.  Okay… almost always, at least.  When you already have 8 tubes of toothpaste at home - think carefully about adding another.  There is always more to buy!  Endless stocking up defeats the purpose of saving money, because you will never spend less.

5.  Don’t be afraid to walk away at the register.   If you’ve misread a coupon, or the store won’t accept it for some reason, tell the cashier you don’t want the item.  Don’t buy what you don’t want out of a sense of obligation or guilt.

Good luck with your couponing!  And this week I vow to improve upon my $140 disaster last week.  Everything may have been great buys, but seriously.  There has to be a limit, and I have again reached mine.

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Our house has two wooden barrel-like buckets in front, one on either side of the end of our front walk.  Last year I tried growing some ecologically-friendly wildflowers in them, and it kind of looked like I was growing weeds.  Which, I sort of was.  So this year I decided I was going to do something different.  In late spring, I bought two young tomato plants for ~$3 each at Aldi.  One was the Roma variety and one was a Beefsteak.   Those buckets have always looked to me like tomato plants belonged in them.  I planted one in each bucket, added extra potting soil, and watered them every non-rainy day.    A few weeks ago I reported on my progress, and said that some of the tomatoes were shiny and about to turn red.

Well, it took them a little longer than I expected from that day, but yesterday I harvested the very first Roma tomatoes.  I picked one and cut it in half, and it looked ripe inside and out, so I picked the other two from that bunch.  And ripe they were, and tasty too!  We had tomato and onion salad as well as some slices just plain.  It was so exciting!

About 4 more tomatoes have turned mostly red and should be ready to pick in the next day or so.  The Roma plant, in total, has approximately 35 tomatoes, the rest still green but bigger by the day.  The Beefsteak is not doing anywhere near as well, but does have 12 green tomatoes of varying sizes right now.

Tomatoes this week at my grocery store were $2.49/lb.  So if I harvest 2.5 lbs of tomatoes, I will more than cover the cost of the original plants, and since the potting soil was left here by the house’s previous owners, that cost me nothing.  I don’t know how much an individual tomato weighs, and I was too impatient to eat these to find out.  But my spouse has a food scale on the way to help him with his ongoing food plan, so I will start using that once it arrives to record my crop.  No more buying tomatoes this summer for us!  And hopefully I’ll have enough for some homemade tomato sauce by the end of the summer.

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Clutter costs money simply in the acquisition of it, and that’s the way I often think about it.  Stop acquiring things you don’t need (or even, upon reflection, want) and you’ll stop wasting so much money.  However, just hanging on to clutter costs money as well.  In more obvious ways, like the cost of storing all the clutter - be it a storage unit or simply a bigger home.  But also in less obvious ways, and that’s what I’ve been combating in my own house in earnest lately.  The abundance of clutter simply hides the actual useful things I have, and makes it so that I think I need things I actually already have.

When we moved to our house about a year and a half ago, I had the best of intentions for taming our clutter.  I was going to go through everything, get rid of what we didn’t need, and only pack what was really useful to us.  But the reality of moving while taking care of a 2 year old and a newborn caught up with me, and in fact, much of what I packed and moved was literally dumping drawers into boxes and carting them here.  When I unpacked, I did do some major decluttering but I also didn’t think too hard about it, and kept a lot of things I really didn’t need to, especially in my clothes closet.   My clothes closet is what I’ve been tackling this weekend.

Much of what was in my closet was there for sentimental reasons.  Not just the typical idea of things that didn’t fit anymore but I hung on to anyway (although there was a little of that)  but things I keep for sentimental reasons but don’t wear any more, mostly because they’re in bad condition yet I haven’t thrown them away.   This is not to say that I think nothing should be kept for sentimental reasons, but a closet full of sentiment hides the clothes I can actually wear.

So this weekend, I completely emptied my closet of clothes, and actually sorted it all.  I kept a few things I know I probably won’t wear, like the first concert t-shirt I ever bought, but all the ripped, torn, and stained items went away.  And what I found was although I seem to wear the same 4 or 5 shirts every week because I thought I didn’t have any others, I actually have 8 or 9 other shirts I could be wearing, but were hidden by the massive clutter of ripped up superbowl shirts and clothes I’ve spilled things down the front of and never got completely out.

Now I don’t need to go shopping for some new short sleeved shirts.   And I can actually see everything in my closet.  If only I could do such a good job sorting my childrens’ closets…

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