My Frugal Week

My Christmas Cactus has been beautiful this year and I wanted to share a photo of it with my readers. 
One frugal tip I want to share with you this week is in regards to Dawn dish soap, which can be used in several ways around your home. Today I'm going to share two ideas with you. 

The first tip concerns washing laundry. When you go to put your laundry in your washer be sure to squirt a small amount of Dawn dish washing detergent into the machine. This will help get any stains out of your clothes.  

The second tip I want to share is to take a reusable plastic bottle and squirt a small amount of Dawn into it and fill the rest of the way with water. 
This makes a great cleaner for counters, cabinets, stoves, and washing one or two dishes. 
Stretching your Dawn out this way will definitely save you money in the long run because one bottle will last much longer when you stretch it out this way. 
Speaking of laundry, we are quickly coming to the end of our stash of laundry detergent, which we bought when my daughter was couponing back in 2016. We have not bought laundry detergent or Soft Scrub in all that time. 
This month I bought my first bottle of Soft Scrub in three years. Now we are going to have to start buying laundry detergent again or find another way to wash our laundry. Stayed tuned for updates on this process. 
Speaking of being frugal, while I was wrapping Christmas presents last week I made sure to use something up before I opened a new one. 
For example, I made sure to use ALL the gift tags on a sticker sheet before I opened a new package. I made sure to use all the bows before I opened a new pack. 
And I do that with other items all year long. I make sure to empty a container of something before I open a new bottle. 
My Mother had a bad habit of opening new bottles before she used up the older bottles. As a result, she had her bathtub lined up with multiple bottles of half filled shampoo, which was very wasteful. Use up those items and save yourself some money. 

My Hamilton Beach hand mixer, given to me by my exdh for Christmas in the early 1990s, bit the dust while I was making a cheese ball last week. 

Holiday cooking always makes me nostalgic especially when I use appliances like this and remembering people who are long gone and it made me a little sad. 

To the rescue was my Mom's Dormeyer hand mixer (100 watts) from the 1960s, which didn't have as much power as mine had (290 watts), but it got the job done.

We did go out on Friday after Christmas to get some wrapping paper and bows, which were priced at 50% off. We have plenty to add to our stash for next year. 

The other days this week we've been staying home and working a few hours in the morning and then playing games in the afternoon and watching a Christmas movie in the evenings. It's been fun & saves us money by staying home and using what we have to entertain ourselves. 

Oh Gnome You Don't Board Game

How was your week? Any frugal wins you'd like to tell us about in the comment section? We would love to hear about them. 

Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~ My Linktree

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First Frugal Week of August 2017

Image Credit

School started back here on Friday, August 4th and I am already scheduled to work three days this week and every day the next week. I'm definitely grateful to be back to work and earning again. 
On Friday I made a pasta salad for lunch and dinner for a few days at least. I had so much fresh produce on hand like cucumbers, tomatoes, and broccoli that it just made good sense to use them in something refreshing. 
Friday  night we went swimming and spent about an hour exercising in the pool.

On Saturday we went to several of our local Goodwills for their 50% off sale. I found several pairs of curtains for the house for both the kitchen, hallway, and bedroom. I've had them on my yard sale list, so it's nice to cross that off the list. 
I found a gallon bag about half full of pencils, pens, highlighters, mechanical pencils, erasers, and lead for 50¢. I've already put this in my sub bag as you can never have too many of these. 
I found another Vidalia Chop Wizard like this one: 

I love mine, but if you have one, you know the bottom will break easily. The tops are made very well, but the bottoms are not made as well. We find the tops and middle green parts at yard sales regularly, and I have extras of those. The bottoms are not as easy to find, so I was tickled to find this one marked at $1.00, so we paid 50¢ out the door for it. 
I also found a vintage quilt for $2.00. It is hand quilted and you can tell from the prints that the fabric is from the 1950s era. I bought it with the intention of flipping it, but my daughter wants to keep it, so we are going to keep it instead. 
I found one movie ($1.00) that I've watched, but did not care for so that will go into our McKay's box to be traded. 
We came home on Saturday and I made Salmon Patties, Fried Potatoes, and Soup Beans for dinner. Afterwards we played a board game for more free entertainment. 
We made another exchange at McKay's Used Books during the week with the scientific calculator and more board games we bought at yard sales and realized over $100 in trade credit. I picked up a couple of books, but we mostly saved it to spend on another day. 
Sunday lunch was the rest of the pasta salad while Sunday dinner was leftover salmon patties made into salmon burgers with tartar sauce, cheese, and dill pickles. 
We went to the local apple orchard on Sunday and bought apples. It's that time of year again.  :)
How was your week?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~