The Frugal Weekend

The temperature hovered around 95° over the weekend, which made it around 118° in the car when it was closed up during the day. Needless to say, it was hot!

We spent Friday and Saturday morning at multiple yard sales and rummage sales, which is one of our favorite things to do. 

One of our best finds was a graphing calculator for $1.00! The lady who sold it may not have known what it was worth. We plan on trading this at McKay's Used Books.

We also lucked out on several free things such as a Vera Bradley Purse, The Mummy Movie on Blu Ray, and a 8 quart bag of Miracle Grow potting soil. I was very surprised to find these things in a free box, but they were ours for the taking.

We also stopped by an Mennonite roadside produce stand and picked up some terrific grape tomatoes for $2.00. They are so sweet that they taste like candy.   

I made four more cloth pads for my daughter this weekend. This material came from the scrub shirts we bought at yard sales this summer. This makes pad #26, 27, 28, and 29 so far this summer. Only one more to go to make our goal of thirty pads.

We had a mystery shop for free pizza, after reimbursement, on Saturday night. We brought the movie home and turned it into a movie night and watched Disney's The Parent Trap. 
How was your weekend?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

First Frugal Week of June 2017

Ebay is another source of passive income for my household. In the past I have sold things year round on Ebay, but in recent years have only done this in the summer time when I have more free time from subbing at school. 
This past Monday I listed five items for auction and hopefully after paying all the fees associated with both Ebay and PayPal will end up making some money to add to our summer budget. 
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We found a nice bag at a yard sale last week for 25¢, but the handle was torn off. No problem. I did a quick stitch of it on my sewing machine and it is as good as new. 

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As my regular readers know, my daughter is the coupon queen here these days. She got in on a great deal on St. Ives body wash at Dollar General this week. 

St. Ives body wash was on sale for $2.00 each. She had five manufacturer's coupons for $1.50 off one bottle and a digital coupon for $2.00 off $10.00. So, she bought five bottles and paid 50¢ for all five, which worked out to 10¢ each, which is a great deal for body wash. 
She is also great at keeping our stockpile organized too. She rotates all the stock putting all the older stuff up front to be used first and putting anything new in the back. 

As a result she had already put the St. Ives in the back of the closet, so I did not get a picture of it, but here is our stockpile from the front so you can at least see the stockpile. 
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We spent part of the day on Friday going to yard sales. We both found a Vera Bradley bag, which trilled me to the bone as I love them. Pictured here is a photo of both of them. 

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I made cauliflower taco meat again for dinner today. Here is a photo of it up close. It looks so much like taco meat that it's hard to believe it's actually cauliflower. It's a plant based dish, which is not only healthier for us, but costs less than buying meat.  Here is a picture of it in the taco salads I made for lunch today. 

I also made baked french fries to go with the salads. I did not use any oil in these and they still turned out great. They are much healthier than fried potatoes and my family loves them. 

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Saturday was the first Saturday of the month, which means Goodwill has everything in the store for 50% off the regular price. We went to three different stores and picked up several things. 
One of the things I found were these really nice cotton cloth napkins for $1.00. These are the ones you want to use as dinner napkins because of the material, which feels good on your skin and is absorbent.  I don't care for the polyester dinner napkins as they are not very absorbent.

Another thing I found were these two scrub shirts. Now I'm not going to use them as scrub shirts, but rather use the material to make cloth pads for my daughter. I love the Mary Engelbreit one and buying the material this way ($2.50 each) was much cheaper than buying the same material ($9.00 and up) at the fabric store. 

Speaking of cloth pads, here is another one I made for my daughter yesterday. So now she has two new cloth pads to add to her stash. 

That's it for this week at the Frugal Workshop. I have more things to share with you at a later time like the really neat surprise my daughter made for us after shopping at Goodwill yesterday. I'll save that for another blog post later this week. 
Don't forget to enter the giveaway we currently have going on at the Frugal Workshop. 
I hope you all have a great week!
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Creating Our Own Reusable Cloth Pads

As you may recall I recently purchased a sewing machine at a yard sale and mentioned that I had several projects that I wanted to make. 
One of the last things I was making when my old sewing machine broke down was reusable cloth pads. 
In the interim we've been buying them from the Hand Sewn By Me Etsy shop. We love her cloth pads, but they cost $17.50 plus shipping in the style we like and I knew I could make them cheaper at home. 
This is a picture of one of my daughter's pads sewn by Hand Sewn By Me. 

I researched many web pages and YouTube videos on how to make these the best way possible. 
The first thing I needed to buy was some PUL fabric, which is short for polyurethane laminate, which is waterproof, so the liquid in the pads will not leak onto your clothing. I bought this fabric at Hobby Lobby using a 40% off coupon. The fabric is $12.99 per yard, but with the coupon only cost $7.99.
The next item I wanted to buy was some Zorb material, which is a material that quickly absorbs liquid and is created and sold by Wazoodle.com. The Zorb that I wanted sells for $7.99 a yard, but after taking a short online survey I received a 20% discount and was able save $1.60 off that price and only paid $6.39 for the fabric. 
We've also been buying flannel as I want to use this material inside the pad as a liner above and below the Zorb. We have found multiple items at yard sales. Like the stack of receiving blankets here my daughter found last week for 50¢ each:

We also needed to have some type of snap press in order to attach the snaps to her pads. My Mom has been wanting to get me something for my birthday back in May, so I suggested a snap press and she agreed. 

So, she bought me the following Kamsnaps press from Amazon for $28.97.

Kamsnaps

We've also been picking up material as we find good deals on it when we are out and about. 

Here is some fabric we picked up at the Samaritan Center thrift store for 75¢. This is the material I made  her first pad out of today and there is still plenty more to make more pads. 

The pads my daughter likes are called exposed core pads and there are plenty of YouTube tutorials on how to make these. I started out this project by making the top part of the pad or the core. Here is a picture of it when it was done.

After I was done making the core I made and attached it to the bottom of the pad and also attached the snaps. 

Here is a picture of the front and back of it when it was finished. Now it's not a perfect sewing job, but from what I've read and seen on YouTube, you get better with each one you make. 

And here is a picture of it folded up and snapped, which makes it easy to store in her bag or purse. 

I did a rough calculation on this pad and I figured I made it for less than $3.00, which definitely saves me money over buying them from Hand Sewn By Me on Etsy. 

Now don't get me wrong, I love the cloth pads made by Hand Sewn by Me, but I'm a single mom on a low income and I have to watch how I spend my money. This is something I can easily do myself to save money, so I will be making these myself from here on out.  
Making more cloth pads for my daughter will be one of my summer projects this year. I'm definitely looking forward to the end result and saving money on something we need.  :)
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Cloth Pads

Hand Sewn by Me on Etsy

There is a lot of information online about making your own cloth pads. I made some a few years ago and I've bought a few online over the years too. 

My favorite pads come from Hand Sewn by Me who has an Etsy shop where she sells hers. There are also a lot of shops to buy cloth pads online and at places like Etsy and Ebay if you are interested. 

I used cloth pads when I had a yeast infection last year because the disposable ones I used every day were deodorized and making the problem worse. 

Hand Sewn by Me on Etsy

My daughter ended up with a UTI last summer and made the switch over to cloth to try them out and they immediately made the situation better. She is allergic to many things, turns out the chemicals used in disposable pads are also one of them. 

The end result is that she absolutely LOVES cloth pads, and she has noticed a world of difference in using them. She has said she will not go back to disposable feminine products.

Hand Sewn by Me on Etsy

I am loving the fact that I am saving so much money on feminine pads. 

There was a point in time that we were spending around $50 a month on feminine pads for both of us, but mostly for her. 

We worked with her physician and now with that and the transition to cloth pads we are saving a lot of money in this area of our budget. 

The money I spent on the cloth pads will more than pay for itself in just a few months.  

Hand Sewn by Me on Etsy

The only problem with this was that we only had a few of them on hand when this first started and since she wears them everyday she ends up washing them every day also. 

Last summer I went to shop our local thrift store looking for fabric. I found several items of clothing, mostly from flannel, that were perfect for this project without having to buy new material. 

I bought a cute pair of flannel pants and using my seam ripper took those apart to use the material. I also picked up several baby blankets as they are the perfect material to use. And the thrift shop only charged me 25¢ per blanket.

I also bought a baby mattress pad cover to use that as a non absorbent material, so they would not leak. You can see the pattern I made up here along with the core I made for her and the stack of material. 

Unfortunately, that is when my sewing machine decided to stop working. I've not had a chance to replace it yet, but I will and I will finish these for her someday. 

Hand Sewn by Me on Etsy

In the meantime I bought some for her from Hand Sewn by Me on Etsy. Her craftsmanship is wonderful and my daughter loves these. 

The things I love about these are the money we have saved since switching over to cloth. And the fact that my daughter has not had a UTI since she switched over to cloth. 

Switching to cloth was the right choice for her and such a money saver. 

Sometimes we have frugal failures. I tried to take the most frugal route by making cloth pads myself, which did not work out. 

But I found another route, which will take me longer to recoup my money than my original plan, but is still a frugal choice and still saves me a great deal of money in the end. I will recoup my money in just a matter of months. 

That is a a win-win situation to me.  :)

Belinda

Living within my means in southern Tennessee