Today has been a beautiful spring summer day!   I can’t believe how mild the temps have been for July!  God has truly provided us with some wonderful days!  It’s not too hot to be outside for long, and the kids are loving it!   It’s been so nice to have the windows open and feel the gentle breezes blowing through the house.   This is definitely a welcome change from the heat and humidity!  There’s also the added bonus of no AC running today!  A welcome respite on our electric bill!

I have been baking today which is using electricity, but I’m taking advantage of the hot oven and I’ve baked:

My other frugal endeavors today consist of 1 load of clothes washed using my homemade laundry detergent and they have been hung outside to dry in the nice breeze.    It’s frugal and they smell so crisp and clean!  And if you’ve never tried homemade laundry detergent, you need to!  The savings are unbelievable and it works wonderfully!

I’ve also made extra of the tenderloin.  Some will be for leftovers, and some will either go into another dish right away or in the freezer, most likely in the freezer for now.   It pays to plan ahead.  I’ve posted about planning a baking day, and the same goes for main courses.  Cook once and eat 2 or more times!  It makes those days when cooking dinner seems impossible a little easier to handle because you’ve already got something ready in the freezer.  All you need to do is a spend a few minutes thawing it out and throwing into a simple dish.  Tada!!  You can have dinner on the table in about 30 minutes!

As for other frugal acts today, while they may seem like they make little difference,  they add up over time.  I didn’t have any errands to run today, so we just stayed home, saving gas and wear and tear on our vehicle.  We also had all of our meals from home (Brian takes his lunch), so no unnecessary spending was done.  My menu has been planned for the week so there is no need for us to eat out.  This saves us a huge amount of money!  Just think, even when our family of 5 goes to a fast food burger place, it costs us between $20-$30, depending on where we go and what we order.  If we did this once a week that would be $80-$120/month or $960-$1440/year!! 

Another way to save some quick money on your weekly grocery run is to stop using or cut down your use of paper towels/napkins.  Use dish towels/rags when working/cleaning in the kitchen instead of grabbing paper towels.  If a roll of paper towels costs  approximately $1/roll (forgive me if I’m off, I haven’t bought any in ages) and you use about 8 rolls/week, that’s $416/year!  Will using more dish towels add a lot to your already growing laundry pile?  Not really, you might add 1 extra load every 4 to 6 weeks, unless you’re just really messy!  You can save even more by using cloth napkins in place of paper napkins.   

Also, make sure that you use up any and all leftovers.  If you can’t use them before they will go bad, freeze them!  Save them for a future meal!

There is really no limit to the ways that you can save money.  You’re only limited by what you’re willing to do and how far you’re willing to go.   If you really want to make you money stretch further, then just rethink how you do EVERYTHING, how much you use at one time of certain items, and make it your new goal to not waste anything!   You can find tons more information at my favorite site, Frugal Families.   I’ve learned more there than I could even try to put into a post here!

My favorite saying actually comes from the depression era:  Use it up, make do, or do without!  In other words, waste not, want not.