Every penny counts

I like to think of us as frugal. Many people think we are wacked.

I would never dream of buying bread crumbs. Those bread crumbs most people toss in the trashcan get put into a gallon size ziplock bag, and put in the freezer. Dried out bread goes with them. I always have them readily available. Oh yea. And I make my own bread. It costs me about 25¢ per loaf. When I slice it, I have plenty of crumbs for my 'bread crumb bag'.

We keep our home at 60°. Honestly, you get used to it. We used to keep our home at 65°, but went down 5° last year. We used HALF as much natural gas with that slight change! When we are done baking, or running the dishwasher (I said I was frugal, not Amish), we leave the door open. That heat is paid for, and the steam from the dishwasher adds much needed humidity.

I hang almost EVERYTHING to dry. That includes towels, socks, and underwear. I only run the dryer for sheets & blankets. I hang everything in the basement, and I don't have the room to hang those. This not only saves a small fortune by not running the dryer for 2+ loads every day but, again, it adds much needed humidity to the air in the winter!

I do not buy processed foods. I used to use coupons and get them very cheap, but I have found that cooking from scratch IS cheaper! (No one was more amazed than me.) We also eat much healthier this way. I've had to change my diet to exclude meat, but my family still eats meat. I make at least 3 vegetarian meals every week, and it is much cheaper than a meat based diet. As I've become more used to cooking without meat, our meals are much more varied and I'm cutting out the meat even more.

Those who know me know that I make my own laundry detergent. Before you roll your eyes- it is NOT hard! It takes about 15 minutes to make enough to last for at LEAST 2-3 months. It costs less than $3 to make that much, and it works better than any commercial product you can buy. Seriously!

There are many, many more things we do, and I'll try to share more of them in future posts. Now that Tim is about to join the ranks of the unemployed, we are racking our brains to think of new ways to save money. It's frustrating when we watch these "how to save money" bits on the news every day, because we already DO all these things. So.... what to do..... what to do.......

Could we cut our heating cost even more???
We have 'zoned heating'- meaning each area of the house has its own thermostat. The office/classroom is a heat pit, so we put styrofoam in the windows during the winter. Hmmmmmm.... could we close it off? Where would we do school????

We are getting our house ready to put on the market. The number one thing to do is to clear out everything that isn't necessary for life. So, we got a POD . This has worked wonderfully, but we really need to cut somewhere.

Hmmmmmm........

Today, it hit me! We move our classroom downstairs! (Actually, Tim & had already talked about this) and turn off the heat out there. Then, we move all that "STUFF" from the POD into the office and get rid of the POD. Yea, it feels kinda like a waste after using the POD for so long, but why use it for the next 5 months if we don't have to! When the house is ready to show, THEN we move it out. These two things could save us about $200 a month!

Will we be a bit more cramped this way? Yea. So what. We have a roof over our heads. We have heat. We have food. We have our health. We have 2 cars!! We are so much better off than more than half of the rest of the world. By FAR!

Thank you, God, for all you have given us.
Please keep our thoughts thankful and our heats humble.