I worked every day this past week and there are 20 possible workdays in this month, so I am off to a good start for the month.
On Wednesday, instead of buying the newspaper for 50¢ for the sale ads I looked them up online and shopped the sales that way.
I went to Food Lion on Tuesday to stock up on canned vegetables, but to my dismay they had already switched the sales over to Wednesday, so I made a new plan. They had Ragu pasta sauce on sale for 99¢ per jar. I happen to have 7 coupons for 75¢ off two jars with me, so I bought 14 jars, which made them 62¢ each. I wasn't expecting that deal at all.
January must be tomato or spaghetti sauce month because we've been getting really good deals on them this month. Remember the Hunts spaghetti sauce deal I found earlier this month?
On Wednesday, I went to Publix for their 1¢ sale and found Hunt's tomatoes on sale in the 28 ounce can for $1.99 Buy One Get One Free. I paid $1.00 for one and 99¢ for the other one, which is a stock up price for me, so I bought 20 cans. I was down to nine pint jars of home canned tomatoes, so this was great timing for my pantry.
By the way, the 1¢ sale at Publix this week was a roll of Publix brand paper towels. The rule is you need to buy $10 worth of items to be able to purchase the 1¢ item each week. This has been a good thing for us in our home. We've gotten a half gallon of bleach, and cranberry juice, just to name a few items.
Another item I stocked up on this week was Ajax detergent. Coupon.com has coupons for $2.50 off two bottles and Walmart sells it for $2.50 per bottle. I had two coupons and bought four bottles, so these were $1.25 each. These will come in handy for the two months during the summer when I do not earn a paycheck.
Speaking of cheap detergent, you can use cheap detergent for other cleaning jobs around your home as well. I was reading another frugal living blog and read where this lady uses cheap dish washing detergent diluted with water to clean her commodes. I recently cleaned and reused a dish washing detergent bottle and filled it with half dish washing detergent and half water to clean my commode. I scrubbed a lot, so it was kind of soapy in there, but it worked! And, it was much cheaper than toilet bowl cleaner.
I went to IGA one day this week and stumbled upon an unadvertised deal. There were four one-pound bags of pinto beans on the shelf for 65¢ each. What a great price! There were only four bags though and I bought them all.
I bought a loaf of Nature's Own bread for 53¢. The Dollar Tree sells this bread for $1.00 per loaf, which is a good savings over the retail price. Coupon.com has coupons for 55¢ off a loaf, which is how I paid 45¢ plus 8¢ tax.
I cooked my salmon patties in oil, for those members of my family who eat them, that I used to fry potatoes in earlier in the week, so no extra cost to reuse this oil. Afterwards I disposed of it though as I didn't want to reuse it again since I had cooked it with fish.
All breakfasts, lunches, and dinners were cooked and eaten at home this week or in the case of lunches, were brought to work. My daughter loves her egg muffin machine and uses it every morning. They actually look like the real thing too. I'm just hoping she does not get tired of them. Here is a photo of the salmon patties I made for dinner one night this week:
Thanks to a tip from Brandy at the Prudent Homemaker, I watched the first show of season four of Downton Abby for free this week on PBS.org.
On Saturday night we rented a movie from Redbox using a free rental code, so no cost there.
I paid bills online this week as usual to avoid any postage costs.
My daughter and I attended a free couponing class at the library on Saturday. Many of the things discussed I already knew, but there were a few things I learned and met a few people as well.
What are some of the frugal things you've done this week?
Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
It sounds like you had a very good week, Belinda! I don't buy ready-made pasta sauce, but I do buy pasta noodles. And I can count on it going on sale every January. So, weird coincidence on the pasta meals. I wonder if January is national pasta month or something? I bought 14 boxes of pasta this past week. That should last for 4-5 months for us.
ReplyDeleteVery good planning to stock up on laundry detergent, and other supplies, for the summer months when you won't have a teaching income. A lot of folks don't think very far ahead, and seem as if they're taken by surprise when summer break means no paychecks.
Thank you, Lili. :) I Googled and didn't see a national pasta month, but I'm grateful we are getting such good deals this month. I'm not sure if you watch Extreme Couponing or not, but it seems like to me they always get in on a good pasta deal, many times even getting it for free. Good for you on getting 14 boxes this week. It's nice to have all that stored in your pantry. I was just standing in mine staring at it this morning. lol
ReplyDeleteLast summer was rough with no paycheck and I plan on doing some very good planning on my part this year to make sure that does not happen again. Thanks for the cheering on. :)