Hi everyone! I did a terrible job of recording frugal accomplishments last week, so I don't have much to report. We bought milk and Worcestershire sauce at Walmart for $3.16. In lieu of Frugal Accomplishments, I present to you:

Giveaways: Worth Your Time or Not?

I'm at the unfortunate point in our cloth diapering journey where I have enough diapers, but I still want more diapers. There are so many different styles and prints that I want to try on our baby!! Unfortunately, we really do have all of the diapers that we need in a good rotation. I would feel silly to spend more of our clothing budget on diapers that we don't need.

So, I've come to a solution. First of all, I'm going to earmark my bottle & can recycling money for extra cloth diapers and nonessential diaper-related accessories.  Second, I've been conducting a little experiment for the past several weeks, spending a few minutes per week entering giveaways. This week I participated in six. I'm pretty sure the giveaways won't yield much, but I thought I would try it for a year or so and see what happens. Several diaper companies have a weekly giveaway, and many of the small retailers have giveaways now and then as well.

Most of the time these giveaways are done on Rafflecopter, where you can see exactly how many people have entered (and therefore, calculate your chances of winning). You can enter multiple times by doing things like 1) liking a Facebook page, 2) following an Instagram account, 3) following a Twitter account, 4) tweeting about a giveaway, 5) commenting on a blog post, or 6) just taking advantage of a free entry. Most giveaways are hosted on Rafflecopter, but some are done on a Facebook page or Instagram account alone. If you want to enter multiple ones every week, you should probably have Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Most of the time entries do not require that you spam your social media friends, but I'll admit I have retweeted more than my fair share of giveaway announcements. My apologies if you follow me on Twitter.

Another helpful thing to do is set reminders on your phone for the weekly giveaways.


How to Calculate Your Chances of Winning

Why calculate your chances of winning? So you can ignore the giveaways with 400 participants and focus on the ones with 20 or 30 participants.

To put it simply, this is how to calculate your chance of winning:

(6 entries) divided by (4004 total number of entries) = 0.001498501. We can round up the last number to 0.0015, then to 0.002. That means you have a 0.2% chance of winning the giveaway. 

My chances have been anywhere between 0.3% and 5%. If I enter five giveaways per week with a 5% chance of winning, theoretically I should win one prize per month at the cost of (2 minutes per giveaway) 40 minutes of my time. On the other hand, I would have to enter the 0.3% giveaways 333 times to win a prize. Not only would this take a long time to do (1.3 years* at five giveaways per week), it would also cost me a lot of time. 10 minutes per week doesn't sound like a lot, but if you do it for 66 weeks, that means it took 660 minutes, or 11 hours to win a prize. Because most prizes aren't worth more than $20.00, in a best-case scenario your hourly rate for entering 0.3% giveaways would be $1.81 per hour. 

$1.81 is more or less what I can earn collecting pop cans. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but the difference between recycling pop cans and entering giveaways is 1) the income (and therefore, PRIZE) is almost guaranteed, and 2) I'm exercising, enjoying nature and not being on my phone or computer. 

"Bethany!" you say, "Do you realize that you just spent 30 minutes figuring out what your chances are at winning a giveaway and earned $0.00 per hour?" Yes, I do. However, there are obviously a lot of people out there spending the time to enter these giveaways (400 people on the last one I checked), and they think it's worth their time to do so. I want to remind everyone that you are guaranteed to win prizes if you spend your time doing something that is sure to earn money. Then you can spend the money on "free" prizes. 

Does that mean I'm going to stop entering giveaways? Probably not. Although, now that I've done the math I realize that I could spend 20-30 hours writing an ebook for Amazon and guarantee myself a prize every other month or so, I'm not sure giveaways are worth my time after all.


Giveaways Are Like Playing the Lottery

Gasp! Yes, entering giveaways is like playing the lottery, with one fundamental difference: it's free. When you play the lotto game, you're losing time (buying the ticket, scratching it off, throwing it in the ditch) but you're also wasting money. Whether it's $1.00 or $20.00 you're flushing down the proverbial toilet, it's still money that you'll never see again. With free online giveaways, at least the dollars are staying in your pocket.

Have you ever won a giveaway?
Did you keep track of how many you entered in order to win?

Til next time,
-Bethany

*When entering cloth diaper giveaways, keep in mind that you are only going to be cloth diapering for 2-3 years per child. If it takes 1.3 years to win a prize... you'll have to find a better way to supply your stash.

I hope all of you are having a wonderful Monday! Here are some frugal things I did over the last seven days:

​1. Groceries: Last week was a no-spend week for groceries. I don't plan on spending much this week either, although we're running out of milk. I did pay $5.00 for a vegetable tray for a church potluck. Yes, I had every intention of bringing a homemade one! I even washed and cut the celery and cucumbers. Unfortunately we ate every last carrot and I didn't get a chance to buy more before Sunday morning. Maybe next time. :)

2. Cooking: I made larabars and broccoli soup in our Vitamix with some things I had on hand. I also tried chopping cheese in the Vitamix. It was nowhere near as pretty as shredded cheese, but I think it will work in a pinch.

I also roasted peanuts and almonds this week and made Good Girl Moonshine (Trim Healthy Mama recipe). GGM is just cold tea with ginger, apple cider vinegar, and stevia in it. Basically dressed up water.

3. Household: I serged half of the reusable tissues I made last week. I put them in a kitchen drawer and hung a small wet bag beneath the drawer. That way I have somewhere to put the dirty tissues right after I've used them. The wet bag system has worked great! In addition to nose-wiping, I've also used the flannel squares as paper towels. In addition to storing dirty washcloths, the wet bag also stores soiled cloth napkins and other kitchen laundry. 

​4. Sewing & laundry: I darned six socks, mended a cloth diaper and fixed a pair of baby pants.

5. Valentine's Day: We didn't have a particularly frugal Valentine's Day, but Hubs did give me a new houseplant (yay!!), and we used a coupon for lunch/dinner. We planned to go out to eat around 3:00 pm to beat the dinner rush but still avoid the lunch crowd. Our plan backfired when we showed up to our chosen restaurant, and they wouldn't take us because we didn't have a reservation. This was a little confusing because last year Hubs tried to make a reservation for Valentine's Day and the restaurant wouldn't make one for that day.

So, we ended up picking a different restaurant. That restaurant said they didn't take reservations (only "call-aheads") and they were full until 7:00 pm. It was about 3:30 now, mind you. When we told them we were ready to eat at 4:00 pm, they finally said they could take us. Yay! As it turns out, I ​ended up having a $5.00 off coupon that we were able to use. At least there was that! We also brought home some of the food for the next day. :)

So lesson learned; call your restaurant a WEEK beforehand to see what their Valentine's Day policy is and plan accordingly.

Til next time,
Bethany

​1. Groceries: Wow. Just wow. I spent a whopping 54% of our monthly budget last week. The Sunday before last we did a weird "in between" grocery shop- I didn't want it to overlap with my Tuesday Aldi haul that week, so I lumped it together with this week's groceries. The "in between" haul cost a massive $54.72, almost half of which was spent on junk food for an impromptu Super Bowl "party" that we decided to host. That large sum got tagged onto this week's much more modest haul of $12.26. You can see what I got in the pictures below:

​I didn't do a whole lot of extra cooking this week, but I did make some taco seasoning. 

2. Personal Care: I cloth diapered this week (like always), which saves between $9.60 and $11.20 per week depending on if I use disposables on Sunday. Sometimes I do this because we spend a lot of time away from home and it's cumbersome to carry four or five cloth diapers in the diaper bag. Since I was running short on clean diapers this week, I decided to take Sunday off. Technically I still have half a box of baby shower diapers left though, so I'm not "saving" on disposables by using cloth. On top of that, I still haven't saved enough money using cloth to break even with the $200.00 initial investment. I still have another month** to go- then I'll *actually* be saving money by using cloth diapers.

Last week Esther suggested making reusable tissues to save money on toilet paper and Kleenex. This I did! I found some flannel shirts headed to Goodwill and cut them into squares. You can see my squares at the top of this post. I also used pinking shears around each square, in hopes that it would take longer to unravel. This turned out to be a real waste of time because the first tissue I ran through the wash unraveled right away. With the others I think I will do a serged or other stitched edge to keep it from unraveling. 

I also said last week that I would be looking for "almost free" disposable Kleenex to keep in handy for illnesses. With some Kroger digital coupons and an Ibotta rebate, I was able to get two boxes of specialty Kleenex for $0.25 each. The jury is out on whether or not this is really a better deal than a roll of Scott toilet paper ($0.48 per roll). However, the disposable tissues are "enriched with aloe and coconut oil", so... there's that.

3. Clothing: We received hand-me-downs from two different friends this week. Yay! I found plenty of outfits for Baby Girl and also some things for myself. I also line dried most of the laundry this week (like I always do) and worked on organizing our storage room (which is really just the room that holds everything that doesn't go in the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or living room. Which is a ton of stuff. 😔 ).

4. Household: I used a coupon on Ajax dish soap this week. I am not a brand loyal person most of the time, but there are certain items we've found that are worth the few extra cents (dish soap, toilet paper, deodorant, etc.). Typically this is not the MOST expensive brand, but just one step above the "cheapest of the cheap" brand. Sometimes I can get a smashing deal on these specific items, but most of the time I just wait for a coupon and purchase the item, when needed, with the small discount that a coupon offers.

That is really about all for the week. I'm sure there are probably things I missed because I didn't keep track of accomplishments very well.

Til next time,
-Bethany

**I calculate diaper savings by the amount of disposable diapers used per day (about eight) multiplied by the cost of a Luvs diaper purchased with a coupon (around $0.20 per diaper).

Hi everyone! January seemed like a short month here on our little hobby farm.

Poultry

The birds are doing great. Right now we have 16 hens, two roosters and two ducks (either one male, one female or both females). In January I was getting between zero and two eggs per day- including one duck egg almost every day.  I've been using duck eggs for THM "muffin in a mug" recipes, and they are wonderful. Finally I've found a use for those yolk-heavy duck eggs. Right now I am just filling the feeder and letting the birds eat whatever they want. When the grass starts to green up I'll go back to "rationing" but for now it's an all-day buffet.

Other Projects
I'm not going to lie. While planning my to-do list for spring, I felt a twinge of regret about selling my goats. No goat babies for me this year. 😔 However, the good news is that I've put in my order for honeybees! My goal for February is to order supplies and a hive kit. As far as gardening goes, I have two more seed packets to buy and I'll be done shopping. Hoping to start some of my herb seeds in February.


Profit & Loss

Income:
Book royalties- $3.15

Expenses: 
Shelled corn- $20.00
Layer mash- $44.00
Total expenses: $64.00

Net profit: $(60.85)
Year-to-date net profit: $(60.85)

And we've started out the year in the red. Last January I also lost money, but only $29.00. I think I'll be lucky this year to break even because of my bee project and also not selling as many animal products as I did last year.

Til next time,
-Bethany

Hey guys! I'm going to do a new monthly post here on the blog. There are a few spending areas I would like to work on this year, and I think some accountability would really help my resolve (and my memory... it's easy to forget goals sometimes). So, I'm going to do a monthly spending report for 1) groceries, 2) personal care, 3) household items and 4) clothing.

Here goes!


Groceries ($130.00): $90.18

We only spent 69% of our grocery budget this month! I managed to pull this off by eating from the freezer and pantry. We were also gone for a week in January and I skipped a shopping trip because we were sick. The money that I didn't spend will probably go toward bulk purchases later in the year.


Personal Care ($15.00): $23.97 

I went over in this category thanks to my fabulous Bath and Body Works haul. Did you know that B&BW has a semi-annual sale where many items are 75% off? Well, they do, and it definitely drew some dollars from my pocketbook. We also bought toilet paper this month.  I could have done better on the TP (we bought it at Home Depot), but I waited too long for a deal. We ended up paying full price at a not-cheap store.

I can see already that toilet paper might be my biggest challenge in this area. One roll costs about $0.60 and usually lasts at least four days. That means our toilet paper should cost about $5.00 per month. However, in January all three of us had runny noses from cold/ cold weather/ etc. I don't buy Kleenex, so we use toilet paper for tissues*. The sickness wiped out (no pun intended) a large amount of the toilet paper that I just bought. $15.00 budget minus $10.00 worth of toilet paper does not leave a lot left for buying other personal care items. In coming months I will keep an eye out for fantastic deals (as in, almost free) on Kleenex to keep handy in case of sickness. 

*I do sometimes use a handkerchief when I'm consistently blowing my nose. This saves money on TP, but some people think that handkerchiefs are gross. I can understand that.


Household Items ($25.00): $21.52

Last month I bought trash bags and laundry soap. For laundry soap, I bought our usual large container of Xtra from Walmart, and a smaller bottle of Tandil from Aldi. I need to do some detailed math to see if the Tandil is a better deal than Xtra. Normally I just make our own laundry detergent (and I still use that for clothing), but Baby's cloth diapers require a stronger detergent. The Xtra works great for her diapers- I just wanted to experiment and see if the Aldi brand was a better deal.


Clothing ($225.00/year): $50.93

I bought a nursing shirt last month for $19.99. I got Baby Girl a super-cute sun hat for vacation in Cancun ($14.99), plus five sets of baby leg warmers ($15.95) to wear with her cloth diapers. I probably could have made the sun hat, but would've had to buy a pattern (and probably only saved a few dollars unless I found a multi-sized pattern). Baby sewing patterns are definitely going to be on my thrift store/garage sale list this year. I'm thinking I could have made the leg warmers as well; either with old sweater sleeves or knitting them from scratch. However, now I do have some store bought leg warmers to use as patterns for future pairs.

One thing I did this month is make a "needed clothing" printable to use as a garage sale shopping list. Baby clothes are ABUNDANT and far cheaper at garage sales than at thrift stores. The cheapest you are going to find baby clothes, even on 50% off / $0.99 day, is $1.00 per item. Garage sale items are frequently $0.50, $0.25 or even less. The last three months taught me just how fast babies can grow. I want to make sure I have a whole wardrobe for her in 12- to 24-month sizes by the time our 2018 garage sale season is over, so I don't end up paying $2.00 or $3.00 per piece for stuff she will grow out of in a month or two.

So, that is my (selective) spending report for the month!

Until next time,
-Bethany

1. ​Groceries: I went shopping at Aldi last week. We spent $29.55 there, plus another $1.97 for mayonnaise at Walmart. You can see my Aldi haul (with bonus thrift store items!) below: 

Total spent on groceries this week was $31.53. Total spent in the month of January was $90.18.

2. Cooking: I made THM bread and muffin mixes this week, along with a little wheel of cheese! Some friends of ours gifted us a gallon of raw milk, so I used some of it to make the havarti cheese. I realized that our entry room is just the right temperature for aging cheese (50-60*F), so why not? Havarti also requires high humidity to age, so I used a glass cake stand/cover with a little container of water inside to keep the humidity around 80-90%. For those of you who homeschool, cheesemaking is an excellent hands-on science experiment. Several years ago I bought a little hygrometer/thermometer at Walmart and I've had a lot of fun keeping it in different areas of the house. Are my orchids getting enough humidity to bloom? Does air-drying laundry indoors measurably improve the dry air in our bedroom? How humid does it have to be before furniture starts to mold? Does my wheel of cheese have enough humidity to ripen properly? It's quite interesting when you get started. I have this little hygrometer from Walmart.

3. Date night: We spent about $19.00 on date night. We went to KFC and used a coupon. To be honest, KFC is not my favorite; it's one of those once-every-five-years restaurants. But there was enough left over for another meal the second day!

Hubs also stopped at McDonalds to use up a free drink coupon that was about to expire. He's almost as frugal as I am... I love it! And yes, I did fill out the survey on his free drink receipt. However, he seemed to think that taking his free McDonalds caramel macchiato into church was just as cool as holding onto a $5.00 cup from our local fancy coffee shop. I tried to convince him otherwise... I don't think I changed his mind. One of these days, I'm going to get a Fancy Coffee Drink for free with a coupon, and then wash out the cup and bring it into church every Sunday with just water in it. Hot water, if I want to get fancy. If I actually liked coffee (which I don't), I could fill it with Folgers from home and save myself $5.00 every week. ;)

​4. Thrift store shopping: We recently moved date night to Tuesday night in order to accommodate other things in our schedule. While I did have to reorganize half of my homemaking week (gahhhh) to make Tuesday shopping work, I've found one redeeming factor: the Volunteers Of America 50% off sale! The sale happens on the last Tuesday of every month, which virtually guarantees that I'll get to every single 50% off sale until we switch date night to another day. 

You can see what I bought at VOA in my Aldi grocery haul at the top of this post. I think our best find for the night was a set of Arthur Maxwell's Bible Story books.

I've been thinking about what I want to use for homeschooling materials, and this was one of the things on my list. Yes, it's a little early to be thinking about school stuff for our baby. But in order to find great deals, time has to be on your side. I think the Bible Story books will be a great read-aloud/Bible curriculum for the next ten years or so. The big set of books looks really daunting, but if you read two stories every week day, you can get through the whole set in a year. I really like these books because they haven't been incredibly "dumbed down" like many children's Bibles. A lot of the dialog is quoted directly from the King James Bible. At the same time, Mr. Maxwell put enough "story" in the stories to make them interesting and understandable for a child. 

Before we bought this particular set, I looked online for a ballpark price. They're fairly common (popular from the 1950s-1990s), but even so, I couldn't find them on Amazon or Ebay for less than $4.00 each. Our nine books were not a complete set, so I will have to continue the hunt for Volume 1. However, we only paid about $1.11 each for the rest of the set. That's a savings of at least $26.00!

5. Clothing: I tried my hand at darning socks last week. The darning was faster and easier than I had anticipated, though it took some experimenting to find what worked best. Basically I did a whip stitch around the hole, pulling it tight (as if I were gathering the fabric) as I went along. This alone almost completely closed the hole. Then I went across the hole up and down, then left to right. Some of the holes I started with an up/down stitch, and then went around the hole clockwise. This made the darning less noticeable because the stitches were more even.

The sock to the right was my first try; the left sock was the last one I darned.

I also finished a long-awaited pair of Maxaloones (special cloth-diaper-fitting leggings) for Baby Girl. Even though the pattern costs $10.00, I think it's a good investment for cloth diapering families because it spans several sizes, and the pants themselves are designed to grow with your baby/toddler (the pant legs and waistband fold down for shorter/smaller babies). For the first pair, I stupidly bought knit fabric at Joann's. The fabric cost $10.00 with a quite a bit left over. Ten dollars, people!! This time around, I used a thrift store dress (headed back to the thrift store) and some brown knit from my garage sale sewing stash. Total cost was $0.00. I'm currently working on a third pair made from one of Hubs' old T-shirts and more garage sale knit. I've found that garage sales and thrift stores are a wonderful resource for buying knit fabric. ​

6. Lastly, I finally got around to (having Hubs' help me) frame the thrift store coffee sack I bought for $0.79 a while back. He used scrap wood to build the frame. I think it turned out rather nice.

For this sack, we just took the whole thing and stapled it around the frame. This was a bit difficult because the sack had been stretched out by beans, so some parts were already crooked before we even put it on the frame. If I do this project again, I will cut the backside off the sack and finish the raw edges so there is only one layer to deal with.

So that is about all for the week! How did you all do?

-Bethany