My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him.

– Psalm 62:1

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day, he rested from all his work.

– Genesis 2:2

May you have a wonderful, blessing filled day spending time with our Heavenly Father and your family! May your soul find rest this day!

God bless,

Steph

Since I first posted about living frugal, it really got me thinking. I’ve been paying more attention to our daily lives.

My children are in school, and I pack their lunches every day. Some acquaintances of ours could not believe that I could pack a lunch that costs less than $1.00 (give or take a little depending on what they want, but the average is about $0.75). Here are some of the things I pack in their lunches:

• PB&J sandwiches on homemade bread – this is what they take most often because this is what they want. Who am I to argue with protein. (peanut butter bought on sale or in bulk, jelly has been store bought here lately, but I prefer to use homemade.
• cheese sandwich on homemade bread
• Pretzels instead of chips ($1.18/bag at Wal-Mart, but I try to buy them on sale as much as I can)
• fresh fruit (bought on sale) – bananas, apples, oranges, & grapes are their favorites (apples & oranges are sliced at home and divided up accordingly – apples get treated with lemon juice & water to help keep them from turning) – fruits are rinsed well before eating
• carrot sticks/baby carrots are another favorite and cheaply bought
• yogurt – buy in large containers and divide into individual servings or buy on sale (they love Go-Gurt, but it doesn’t go on sale very often)
• ravioli – I can get Aldi’s brand for $0.79/can
• leftover homemade soups or other dishes (pennies here!)
• leftover spaghetti (teachers will reheat noodles in the classroom before lunchtime)
• peanut butter crackers (extremely cheap)
• air popped popcorn (extremely cheap)
• homemade granola (extremely cheap)
• homemade cookies, brownies, cupcakes, muffins, etc. (another item for pennies!)
• occasional piece of candy, but not very often (usually left over from a holiday)
• occasional chips, but very rare – usually after a party of some sort when there are a few left over.
• apple juice/water to drink (bought on sale and put in reusable bottles)

Everything that I send with them is placed into plastic reusable containers which saves on not having to buy baggies all the time. They take a main dish, 1 side, 1 snack, 1 dessert, and a drink.

As you can see, those 4 items usually add up to right around $1.00 on average. So, instead of paying $2.00-$2.25/ school meal/day x 3 kids, and knowing that they’re not eating even half of what they’re “buying” at school, this is a much better alternative. Plus, they get to pick what they want to eat and they usually eat most everything!

As for my husband, Brian, he usually takes leftovers, but he also takes sandwiches, and he takes fruit, and a dessert.

For me, since I’m home, I just round up something here – anything from leftovers to yogurt, fruit, & granola.

So, see – lunches can be cheap! Here’s a break down of the math for you:

Kids:

$6.25/day for 3 school lunches x 5 days = $31.25/week or $125/month

OR

$1/day for 3 packed lunches x 5 days = $15/week or $60/month. Usually, the lunches end up around $0.75/each(or less) or $11.25/week or $45/month

Brian:

If he ate out every day he would average $6/day x 5 days = $30/week or $120/month

Me:

I eat ate home so about the same as kids, or even less since our meals average around $5/meal which feeds us 1 dinner and at least 1 lunch.

Here are some tips to make lunches easier and mornings less stressful:

• portion out items on Sunday night for the week as much as possible (i.e. pretzels, carrots, grapes, sliced oranges, etc. )
• If you know an item will need to be heated before packing, set out thermoses, pot needed to heat food, and something to heat water in
• set out all containers needed for packing lunches
• package up any homemade goodies/candy that they will be taking
• sandwiches can be frozen in advance by putting peanut butter on both slices of bread and then jelly in the middle, but I found that my kids made a huge mess with them because the jelly kept sliding out.

I hope this will help give you some ideas for lunches and how to make them cheaply but still tasty.

This post linked to Frugal Friday

I will admit that I have gotten slightly off track with my frugal skills over the last year. It has been so easy to just pick up something here and there at the store, or just throw a load of laundry in the dryer, or have my husband pick up a meal on the way home. (((Sigh))) I will say that we have not been that bad on the eating out, but even a little adds up.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but we have several family members and friends/acquaintances that think we’re really odd for living the way we do. I love Dave Ramsey’s saying “Live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else”. That is definitely the motto of my household. Not to say we don’t make mistakes and get sidetracked, but we’ve found that over time we’ve learned a lot of frugal ways and, even though we do stray, we come back to them very easily because that’s the way we prefer to live.

We have friends and family that eat out a lot and cannot understand why we don’t. I have a very nice sized pantry that we take full advantage of, but even though some grew up with one, they can’t understand why we want to keep one and not have to do a major shopping trip every 1 to 2 weeks.

We live below our means, and that is definitely the hardest for everyone to understand. We have no car payments, no credit card payments, and no loans other than our mortgage. We have worked very hard to get to this point, and never plan to go back to the world of debt.

Do we always make the best decisions? No.

Do we feel deprived? Definitely not!!! In fact, we usually think long and hard before making any type of purchase, and we try to never make a major purchase on the very day we’re in the store. We try to research our options fully and try to make as informed a choice as possible.

Have we ever been faced with the fact that we might have to go into debt again? Yes, but we have chosen to pray about it and leave it in God’s hands. He has blessed us tremendously since we have started trying to follow His guidance.

We love finding new ways to save money, and we love doing things ourselves. I am very blessed to have a husband that is an electrician, and he is also very good at working with wood and building things. This has truly been a blessing in so many ways because just about any repair work that needs to be done, he can do. There’s not very many women out there who have a husband as handy as mine!

Since the running of the household is mainly my job (my husband helps out, too – don’t think he doesn’t!), here are some of the things that I do to help stretch our budget:

• use reusable containers as much as possible instead of plastic zip top bags (we do still use some, but try to save, wash, and reuse as much as possible)
• make my own laundry detergent (this is simple, quick, extremely easy, and EXTREMELY cheap!)
• wash clothes in cold water as much as possible
• hang clothes up/out to dry as much as possible (drying racks are wonderful!)
• bake our breads
• make our own snacks
• cook almost all of our meals (we don’t eat out much, but have been doing a little more of that than usual here lately)
• use up leftovers by either planning another meal with/around them or freezing in meal-size portions
• keep a clean refrigerator – yes this is frugal because you can see exactly what you have and use anything up that needs to be used before it goes bad.
• also cook once and eat twice (or 3 times, 4 times, etc.) – doubling dishes does not take any extra time but it does save you time in the future
• keep a fully stocked pantry on hand at all times
• keep unnecessary lights/TVs off when not in use/needed
• combine trips out as much as possible to help save on gas
• have Brian stop on the way home to pick something up if it can’t wait until my next shopping day
• make my own cleaners – most everything can be cleaned very easily with vinegar & water or a vinegar/rubbing alcohol/water solution (great for windows because alcohol dries quickly)
• use baking soda as a mild abrasive for cleaning
• keep heat down and AC up as much as possible – you’d be surprise at what your comfort level really is!
• if I’m using the oven, I try to combine cooking/baking to be done while the oven is hot – heat once and cook multiple times
• keep curtains drawn when it is cold outside and there is on sun shining, open them up when it is sunny for natural heat
• open windows when the weather is nice and enjoy the wonderful fresh air that God gave us!

These are just some of the things that I do to help save money and stretch our budget. I know there’s other things that I do on a daily basis, but it’s hard to remember them all any more because they have really become second nature. One other thing I do on a regular basis is check in at Frugal Families forums. I have learned so much there on the forums! The ladies there are a wealth of information. If you get a chance, go over and check it out! You can also request a “House Guest Pass” from the site owner. I hope this helps someone else on their journey in frugality.

God Bless,