Shrinkflation is the process of items shrinking in size or quantity, while their prices remain the same or increase.
Saving Money In My Frugal Kitchen
Last Friday I took some planned over chicken, ramen noodles, steamed broccoli, hoisin sauce, stir fry seasoning, and some sesame oil and made an Asian noodle dish for supper. It was a big hit and gave us leftovers for lunch the next day.
On Monday I made some homemade meatballs. The reason I decided on meatballs is because I wanted to use some crackers to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the meat as far as possible.
Additions like oatmeal, crackers, vegetables, etc. all add bulk to your meat, which makes it go farther and saves money. The meatballs I made with one pound of ground beef made enough for two dinners by doing this.
I was going to make a meatball stew or spaghetti and meatballs, but then my sink decided to stop draining. So I put those in the fridge and on Tuesday I made a brown gravy and added the meatballs and made mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables to go with it. It was also a big hit.
We had a problem with the kitchen sink this week. I was washing dishes when the sink stopped draining. I tried using a plunger and Liquid Plumber, but neither one would work. So I tried to DIY and took the pipe off under the sink, but there was no clog that I could see.
So, I knew it had to be farther down the line. I could rent a snake, but in the end decided to hire someone who used a snake attached to the hose and blast it out of the pipe. It was just a buildup of old junky matter, but it is fixed now and running great. I'm so grateful to have a clear running drain again.
It's a funny thing that we've had more repairmen in the house since the pandemic struck than we have in the past few years. First the a/c installation, the dryer repair, and now the kitchen sink. Knock on wood that this will be it for a while. :)
Bailey made us a chocolate cake to have for snacks or dessert this week.
On Wednesday I took a large package of six chicken breasts out of the freezer to thaw. On Thursday and Friday I cut each breast in half and made copycat Chic-fil-A sandwiches at home.
One CFA sandwich cost $3.79. My six package of breasts cost $9.41, which made 12 filets. My 12 filets cost about 79¢ each, which is a great price for them compared to CFA.
The secret to making them taste like CFA is to brine them in pickle juice. They end up tasting like the real thing.
We ordered a few groceries like lemon pepper tuna, peanut butter, V-8 juice, and green beans from Amazon, but they will not be here until next week.
Oh Monday I needed to run some errands, which included a stop by Lowe's for Liquid Plumber to try and clear the kitchen drain.
We also went to Publix to pick up an RX, checked the mail, and since I earned a $10 gift card to Papa Johns from Mobile Expression this week, we bought a pizza for dinner.
I am a rewards member also and earned 31 points for the pizza, which in turn earned us another $10 gift card, so we will use that at a later time.
eBay sent me an email this week giving me a free $25 gift card for being with them since the beginning in 1999. I was so excited! I decided to buy some more inventory to make items for my Etsy shop. So I'm going to turn this $25 into even more money.
Last week I entered a contest on Instagram that @Debtfreegonnabe was offering for $50 and a 30 minute consultation. She emailed me on Wednesday to let me know I was one of the winners. Woo Hoo! That sure came in handy this week after a $100 plumbing bill.
Saving Money with Reward Apps
Microsoft Rewards - Finally MR has went back to giving five points per search (rather than 1 point) on my account. People had been discussing it on the MR Reddit board and I never did figure out exactly what was going on, but it's fixed now and I'm close to another $10 Amazon gift card.
They've added new rewards, so if you have looked before and not been happy with the rewards, look again, you might be surprised.
If you're not already a member of MyPoints, September would be a good month to join up. If you use my referral link you can earn up to an additional 500 bonus points this month. You can cash in your points for money such as 1,590 points in exchange for $10 in your PayPal account, which is what I like to do with my points.
Free Entertainment
For movie night this week we watched a 2017 version of The Secret Garden, which is free to watch on YouTube. This is a Steampunk version of the classic tale by Frances Hodgson Burnett, with orphaned teen Mary Lennox discovering the magic and mystery of the secret garden.
Bailey and I have watched almost every version of The Secret Garden that they have out there and this one is an updated version with Mary and her cousin Colin being teenagers.
If you read the reviews you'll find that many people found the acting to be cheesy, but I liked it. Mrs. Medlock is much nicer in this version while a new character, Dr. Craven is the evil villain.
For game night we played There's a Moose in the House, which is a cute, matching card game for both children and adults.
Other Frugal Activities
We went forging one day this week and picked the black walnuts on our land.
How was your week? Any frugal activities to share with us?
Thank you for using my Amazon affiliate link when placing your Amazon orders. I earn a small percentage that doesn't increase what you pay and it helps me to earn a living here at Frugal Workshop.
We received sad news this week. My daughter's first grade teacher passed away. She was only 51 years old and had a heart attack. She had spent a large part of her summer cleaning, organizing, and painting her classroom getting it ready for the new school year.
She was always so funny and had the best personality. She came to me after Bailey, who was moving onto middle school, graduated from 5th grade to tell me she would miss me being there regularly. This is a huge loss for our small community and honestly we are just heartbroken.
This week, as usual, we have stayed home, which is a huge money saver. My daughter has had to pay shipping to get inventory sent here, but I told her what we have saved on gas by not going to yard sales more than pays for that postage.
In My Frugal Kitchen
We put a whiteboard on our refrigerator, so we could list whatever leftovers are in there that need eating. It will save us from food waste, which will also save money.
I saved multiple jars this week by washing them and removing the labels. They will be stored with my other empty jars and used for another purpose when needed.
The last of the money saving cookbooks I ordered came to me this week. This one ended up getting lost in the mail, but finally arrived.
It's Ida Bailey Allen's Money Saving Cookbook from 1940. I've been reading it this week and it really does have good money saving recipes in it.
I'll be sure to share them when we find and try recipes we like.
This pair of kitchen tongs loses the parts on a regular basis even when I am cooking with them, which is frustrating.
I finally fixed them using some Gorilla Glue. I made sure to put the glue where it would not come in contact with any food. Hopefully this will fix that problem.
For those that mentioned how good the Tony Chachere's was last week, we agree! I made some fried onions and potatoes this week with smoked sausage and seasoned them with the Tony's and it was very good. We will definitely be using this again.
Gooseberry Patch has these free printables for Skillet and Slow Cooker Dinners if you're interested.
This week I received a survey from Consumer Opinion and $5 for completing it.
Free food for coins. A Chick-fil-A in Virginia needs your coins...badly.
For every $10 of rolled coins that customers bring in, customers will receive the same value in paper bills AND a free entree.
Why are they doing this? To avoid going cashless amid a nationwide coin shortage due.
Entertainment
This week I watched Alabama Moon for free on YouTube. It was a clean, family film, with nothing bad in it.
This week I fixed my laptop with electrical tape. The cord continued to fall out of the laptop, on both ends, and then it would go dead right in the middle of work, which was frustrating me.
So, like Amy Dacyczyn, I decided to fix this little problem and used electrical tape to keep it together permanently. It's worked great ever since and not fallen out again.
Thank you for using my Amazon affiliate link when placing your Amazon orders. I earn a small percentage that doesn't increase what you pay and it helps me to earn a living here at Frugal Workshop.
This week was going to be a good one financially as I was scheduled to work every day. Then on Tuesday the announcement came that school would be closed for the rest of the week due to illness, unfortunately.
It then started raining on Tuesday and we received a months worth of rain in two days. Other school systems around us were closing because of all the flash flooding. I'm positive that school would have been called off anyway due to all the road closures.
On Thursday we ran a few errands. My daughter wanted to coupon this week, so we did.
We went to Publix where we bought multiple packages of Kotex for 50¢ per package.
We picked up two bottles of Herbal Essence for 57¢ each.
You can see them here in the lower left hand of the photo.
We also stopped at Walmart and found a box of Crackers for 58¢, one container of I Can't Believe it's Not Butter for free, and three packages of Cup Noodles Stir Fry Cups for 78¢ each. Ibotta is offering a rebate on those, so they were free.
We watched the movie Harriett for our movie night this week. Based on the true story of Harriett Tubman, we both really enjoyed the film.
Gas is down to $1.88 per gallon here this week!
We went to the bread outlet this week and scored thirty hamburger buns for $1.99.
Thank you for using my Amazon affiliate link when placing your Amazon orders. I earn a small percentage that doesn't increase what you pay and it helps me to earn a living here at Frugal Workshop.
This week I was able to work three days and packed lunches and drinks all three days. I've had five no spend days this week, which helps me to meet some of my goals.
Cloth napkins are always included with my packed lunch from home. In fact this month marks one year that I've been paper towel free in our home. I've not bought any paper towels since April 2018.
At that time we switched to cloth only and it has saved me a lot of money. By my calculations I've saved close to $200 in the last year by not buying paper towels.
Last week eBay had a $3.00 off coupon available, so I checked my Amazon wishlist to see if a book I'd been wanting was available on eBay.
I found this Thrifty cookbook for $3.99 with free shipping, so I ended up paying 99¢ for a book I'd been wanting, and I used a $1.00 eBay card I earned from the Checkpoints app.
Tuesday evening Bailey and I had a movie night. We made pizza at home and watched the Ruth Bader Ginsburg film, "On The Basis of Sex".
We thought it was a good film, which tells the story of how Ruth Bader Ginsburg brought a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn a century of gender discrimination.
Here is a trailer of the film if you're interested:
This week I was able to pick up some free toilet paper. It was several rolls that were taken off early to put on a new roll. The custodial staff sets them aside rather than throw them away, so I picked up a few to take home with me.
My daughter had her oil changed this week and only paid $20 for the supplies. Her uncle uses synthetic oil at his shop, which is what her car requires.
This week I made a call to Verizon, my cell phone carrier to see if I could get a block on International calls. I've been getting robocalls from France and the Congo and want them to stop.
Last month I accidently hit the redial button on one of them and was charged $6.00 for my mistake. It was my fault, so I paid the fee, but when I was speaking the the Verizon representative he decided to reverse the charge, so now I have a $6.00 credit on my account.
It pays to ask sometimes if a company will waive a fee for you. You never know if you will save yourself some money if you don't ask. Even though I didn't ask in this case, I have asked in the past and had a fee or two reversed before.
If you're interested in stories from the Great Depression you can look on YouTube for several good films about this topic.
One film I watched this week is from the U.S. National Archives, which I really enjoyed. It gives you information about a time when the economy was really bad and can give you ideas on ways to cope if that were to happen again today.
The comment section is good to read as well because people are thinking this kind of collapse could happen again.
I've been reading about food prices increasing due to all the rain and flooding we've had this year.
On Thursday we picked up some groceries from Walmart. Ingredients we picked up include salt, bread, and American cheese. We also picked up a bottle of chili powder on mark down.
We received a check from a class action lawsuit this week for Premiere Protein Shakes, which we bought in 2016. The check was for $17 and some change and was included in a payment I made this week.
That's all the news from here this week. How was your week? Any frugal wins for you? We'd love to read about it in the comment section.
Welcome to Friday! We've had a good frugal week and it was great to be on spring break and get several things done around the house.
Added to our Frugal Pantry this week:
Last Friday my daughter stopped in at Kroger and bought four dozen eggs since they were on sale for 88¢.
She also stopped in at Ingle's to see if they had any meat markdowns. She hit the jackpot there.
She found Laura Lynn orange juice for 99¢. We bought six of those since they were such a good price.
She also found ground beef marked down. The prices were all different, but the most inexpensive one worked out to $1.81 per pound. We ended up with close to twenty pounds all tucked away in our freezer now.
On Saturday we stopped in at Earth Fair to pick up some honey since we were out. I pick up one quart of honey, organic lemons, Numi three root turmeric tea, Numi gunpowder green tea, and one lemon plum to try.
On Thursday we stopped in at Ingle's & Kroger and ended up with more meat for the freezer and a couple of pizzas, which were marked down .
We also picked up three loaves of bread for 38¢ each.
We also stopped in at Aldi to pick up five bags of the onions that are on sale this week for 99¢ per three pound bag.
This cat cot sells for brand new on Amazon for $22.38, but we found one at a yard sale last summer and only paid $1.00 for it.
The cats have loved it and actually wore a hole in the middle of the mesh, so they stopped using it.
I wanted them to have one that is useful, but I didn't want to buy a new one since we only paid $1.00 for this one.
On Wednesday I had the time to patch the hole they had created. Using part of an old towel and some fishing line, I sewed a patch onto the cot from underneath. I sewed two different circles around the patch hoping it will last for a while.
I'm happy to report that the cot is now back in service with our cats.
Other things I've worked on this week include:
- Processing Inventory
- Cross Posting Inventory
- Laundry - Hung some up to dry on the free drying rack we picked up last summer.
Unexpected Expenses This Week:
On Saturday the tire pressure monitoring system on my car indicated that on of my tires needed additional air pressure. Since we live in a rural area, air compressors are few and far between here, and the one I did find was out of order.
Sunday morning I woke up early and went to Walmart's automotive center because they are the only automotive service open on Sunday here.
To make a long story short I ended up buying a new tire. Thankfully, even though I am between paychecks I just happened to have the money without dipping into my savings account.
Saved, Reused, & Repurposed:
I emptied the remains of two jars of cherry preserves, but washed and saved the jars to be used later.
Freebies This Week:
This week I received a free six month supply of medicine for my blood sugar. My doctor filled out the forms for me to receive it for free.
Although this freebie is now expired it was a very nice freebie. A regular size pouch of the Seeds of Change Quinoa and Brown Rice with garlic.
Other Frugal Activities:
We don't use baggies very often for our sandwiches, but use reusable containers instead when we need a lunch packed for outside the home. Same with our reusable water bottles.
