So guess what? There will be NO frugal accomplishments post this week! That's because I don't have any to share. I did make some meals and saved some seeds from the garden, but that's about it. Instead of an FA post, I thought I'd share a review on a book I recently finished and highly recommend.

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Last week I bought the Kindle version of Kim Brenneman's Home Management: Plain and Simple. Most of the time I prefer buying print editions because they have resale and/or lending value, but with nursing it is easiest to read on the Kindle.

Home Management is a newer, updated version of her older book, Large Family Logistics. The older book is no longer in print, which is probably why she wrote a newer version. I never read the older book, but the newer one is probably better. Having authored a book myself, I know that the week after you finish writing, you find another thing to add. So second editions are always good.


Why I Bought This Book

I stumbled across Kim's website while googling "getting things done with a baby". This post had a lot of great tips on how to make things easier with a newborn in particular. I figured if the blog was that helpful, the book would be even more so. And since Kim had nine babies herself, you'd think she knows a thing or two about getting things done with babies.

Like the older edition, this book is geared a lot toward LARGE families, not new moms like me with just one kid. About a quarter of the book is about how to have older children help with housework and taking care of the younger children. Some readers might whine about this because most housewives don't have older children to cook and clean while they nurse the baby. Or I could whine about how Kim has a dishwasher and I don't, so of course none of her kitchen advice applies to me. But again, being an author myself I know that most authors can only speak from their own experience and Kim's experience is life with a large family. Some reviewers found her systems to be "overkill", but Kim is all about squeezing more time and energy from your day. Personally I really appreciate her focus on simplicity and efficiency. I find that with a newborn demanding lots of time and attention, I don't have the option to putter around the house trying out new recipes, spending 10 minutes deciding what to wear or cleaning whenever it strikes my fancy. If I don't make the very most of the time I have, stuff just doesn't get done. Plus, why spend more time than necessary on things that you don't enjoy? (Dishes, anyone?)

Even with the emphasis on large family life, I found enough productivity gems in this book to make it easily worth the $10.00 I paid for it. When buying a book- in particular a book that will save you time or money- it only takes a few good tips to make the book pay for itself. Here is one small tip that I never thought of: at the grocery store, park your car next to the cart corral. This eliminates a lot of car seat carrying and/or leaving your baby in the car while deciding what to do with the cart after groceries are unloaded. This little tip will help me go grocery shopping by myself (something I haven't attempted yet) and free up valuable date night time. How much is that worth over the course of a year?


Are Home Management and Flylady the Same Thing?

One Amazon reviewer said the book was not worth reading because all of Kim's systems came straight out of Flylady. While some of the systems are very similar, I thought Kim's were much more doable and easy to remember. Her book went into FAR more detail on how to actually implement the systems. It is more of a simplified version of Flylady geared especially toward stay-at-home Christian moms with small children. Unlike Sink Reflections (Flylady's book), Home Management includes things like toy rotation and how to keep the toys under control. While Flylady would say "cut the clutter in the toy room", Kim gives detailed instructions on how to actually make this work. For example, no toys in bedrooms, rotate out toys, and keep toys not being used in a locked cabinet. That way kids are not constantly getting into the toys, getting bored of the toys and leaving toys all over the house (because that's where most people store toys... all over the house). In addition, she points out that toys should be intentionally bought and purged instead of just being a hodgepodge assortment of plastic stuff. Toys need to be open ended so kids don't get bored of them.

I never had to think about what to do with toys until now (and yes, Baby Girl has toys already even though she's hardly old enough to appreciate them).


Differences Between Flylady and Home Management:

1. Days of the week: Kim has Laundry Day, Kitchen Day, Office Day, Town Day, Cleaning Day, Gardening Day and the Lord's Day. Flylady has Cleaning Day, Free Day, Office Day, Town Day, Miscellaneous Day, Family Fun Day and Renew Your Spirit Day. I like Kim's arrangement of days a little better because cleaning day happens before the weekend. However because of Date Night and the sale/coupon cycle of stores in my area, I've moved town day to Wednesday instead of Thursday. Because of that, Office Day is Tuesday and Kitchen Day is Thursday. I like Kitchen Day to be Thursday because that way I have some staples prepared on Monday. In reality I do batch cooking all throughout the week via Instant Pot, so Kitchen Day is mostly "clean and organize the kitchen day". Also, my office tasks are very minimal- mostly planning the weekly shopping and possibly paying a bill or two, although I like to do that right after the bill arrives so I don't forget about it. Therefore, Office Day could also double as Kitchen Day if I don't have too much going on.

2. Zones vs. Focus Areas: Flylady has Zones and Kim has Focus Areas, which are essentially the same thing- rooms. Both Kim and Flylady rotate work on the Zones/Areas every month, one room (or group of rooms) per week. The difference is that Flylady does zone work every day, while Kim suggests doing it every day OR just making it part of cleaning day. I really like the idea of doing deep cleaning (zone) chores on cleaning day instead of spreading them out over the course of a week. That way you already have the cleaning stuff out, are dressed for cleaning, etc. This makes a little more sense for me because our house doesn't get all that dirty with just three people.

3. Routines: both Kim and Flylady have morning, evening and after meal routines. However, Kim also fills in the in-between hours with "routines" like Table Time, Quiet Time, Afternoon Chore Time, etc. I thought this was really helpful for stay-at-home or homeschooling parents in particular. She goes into detail about exactly what each age group should be doing during these "times"; even babies and toddlers. Baby Girl and I already have some "times" that we do every day- Bare Butt Time*, Animal Chores Time, and Afternoon Nap Time. I've found it so helpful to have some pillars in our schedule, even if they don't happen at exactly the same time every day. I look forward to implementing some of Kim's "times" when Baby gets older.

4. Menu planning: Flylady and Kim's menu systems are very similar. Both have you write down what you will be eating for the whole month. Both advise stocking a pantry. The difference is that Sink Reflections dedicates a whole four pages to this chapter and only covers dinner. Home Management covers breakfast, lunch AND dinner, and explains how to stack your menu plan with your different Days (Cleaning Day, Town Day, etc.). Her pantry approach is also more similar to mine (stock up on things when they're on sale) than Flylady's (buy things when you are running low). Kim also gives extra tips on meal planning/grocery shopping, like having three copies of your Basic Grocery List (pantry list): one at your desk for planning your Town Day, one in your purse to jog your memory at the grocery store, and one laminated inside the kitchen cupboard for family members to mark down anything that is running low. 

My menu planning process is very similar, but I don't plan specific meals for the entire month. Instead I pick specific meals by what I have (or rather, don't have) in the pantry that week. Our schedule is not stable enough to plan a meal weeks in advance. Goodness, there are several days each month where I have dinner thawed or even ready to eat and instead we spend the dinner hour at Menards or Home Depot and end up eating out. This is just the reality of our life with Hubs being a business owner. Planning weeks in advance could work great for someone on a more regular schedule.

I think Flylady can work for anybody, but Kim's system(s) will work far better for me in my unique situation. It may or may not work better for you.

So in a nutshell, I highly recommend Home Management: Plain and Simple. It is well worth the $10.00, especially if you have kids at home!

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*Bare Butt Time is when I leave Baby Girl's diaper off for a little bit while I do computer stuff next to her. I think this really helps prevent diaper rash, plus she seems to enjoy it. I know I would, if I had to wear a diaper 24/7!

​2. Meals/Cooking: I made a few meals this week!! Yay! I didn't write down any particular meals, but I do remember we had baked potatoes, chipped beef (actually venison) gravy over toast, eggs, leftovers, and my personal favorite: stuffed mystery squash! I adapted an internet recipe for the stuffing, using sausage for the meat instead of ground beef. The pumpkin/squash was cooked whole in the Instant Pot. That thing has been my saving grace for the past few weeks when it comes to meals! I also made pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds) with seeds from the squash and little pumpkins.

3. Garden: Harvested peppers, hot peppers and tomatoes from the garden. I ended up drying the peppers as well as some carrots. I'll dry the hot peppers later this week. 

4. Line dried two loads of laundry!! Not only did I DO the laundry this week, but I was able to get it out on the line to dry! 

Little by little I'm "reclaiming" some of the household chores like laundry, meals, cleaning, etc. The trick, I'm learning, is to do these things WITH baby girl instead of trying to do everything while Hubs has her or while she is sleeping. This includes watching her nap on our nifty little video monitor! It is so reassuring to watch her little chest rise and fall while I work in the kitchen. The baby carrier and stroller have also been helpful for the outdoor chores like animal chores, garden work and hanging laundry. 

One thing I haven't done much of (that I really wanted to) is baby wearing. During her first week at home I tried some different wraps and slings, but couldn't get the hang of it. Then the weather turned REALLY hot (in the upper 80s! in late September!) and I didn't feel comfortable carrying her for very long in another layer of fabric. Since then we've still had warm weather- nice for everything but baby wearing. A couple times we took her out in the front pack but I still felt it was just a touch too warm. Now that the weather is finally cooling down I've taken up the wraps and slings again. Still not much success so far, but we're working on it. This is something I'd really like to do, especially during weeks like this one where she's just fussy a lot and wanting to be held.

So, that was my little list of accomplishments. See you all next week!

Happy Monday! Here are some of my frugal things for the week:

1. Groceries: spent $35.70 this week on groceries. Cheese was on sale for $2.66/lb. at Kroger, so I stocked up (I like to wait till it's around $2.50/lb). I also found bacon reduced for $2.79/lb. and a bag of three avocados for $1.00. I also got some free Carbmaster cottage cheese (which was awful, but at least it was free), two free bags of English muffins and two free bags of bagels. You can watch my haul on Facebook (internet issues so I couldn't upload to Youtube) to hear about the particulars.

We also spent $4.99 on a vegetable tray for the church potluck that always sneaks up on me. I will do a lot better with this when we have baby's schedule more figured out. For now I consider it a success that we got out the door on time, fully dressed and with a packed diaper bag.

$35.70 + $4.99 + $14.00 (last week's spending) = $54.69 spent so far in October. My budget for this month is $120.00 ($30.00/wk.), so with half the month left, we're right on track. I would love to do a no-spend November but... holiday sales. So that will probably not happen, although I won't buy as much "normal eating" food for the pantry.

2. Garden: harvested and froze some more peppers.

3. Printed some baby pictures at Walmart. This was a lot cheaper than having them printed by the photographer.

4. Downloaded the Libby app to my phone. Libby allows you to borrow audio books for free with your library card. One more reason not to subscribe to Audible. Audio books are great for people who "don't like reading" or "don't have time to read".

5. Activated my new-to-me phone. For the past several years I've not had a phone that makes calls (I use Hubs' old phone for apps and Facebook calling). Since we have a baby now, I thought it would be a good idea to have a working cell phone if I leave the house alone. Hubs dug his old Trac phone out of storage and reactivated it.

Because I rarely make cell phone calls (thanks to Facebook calling and our land line), we decided to go with the cheapest plan possible: buying a $30.00 prepaid phone card with 120 minutes and using an old phone we already had. The minutes last for three months before you have to buy a new card. I doubt I'll use up all of the minutes, but at $10.00 per month it was the cheapest phone plan we could think of.

6. Frugal fun: so last but not least, I got to have some frugal fun on Saturday. I didn't know it until last week, but down the road from us there is a REALLY old house buried in the middle of the woods. You literally can't see it from the road. The real estate agent offered to let me ride along and see the outside (she knows I love local history!). 

The house hadn't been lived in for nine years, so we couldn't go inside. But the outside was SO cool! There was no landscaping and the circle drive was overgrown with grass. It looked like someone had literally cleared a spot in the woods by the river, and plopped a very old house there.

Local history is an awesome free form of entertainment. While many of us will pay money to get into bigger history museums or see more famed attractions, many towns or cities have small history museums that are free or only a couple of dollars to get into. The internet is full of old public domain books and other information that can be helpful to the local historian. Right now I'm digging into minutes of our local "Pioneer Society"- made up of literal Michigan pioneers in the 1880s (our area was settled in the 1830's). At one time I would've had to go the library (or other public place) and look at the actual papers in person, but now most of that stuff is on the internet for free.

When I got home I looked up some history on the house, and as it turned out the house belonged to the very first doctor in our area. It was occupied by the same family for four generations, which is probably why not many improvements/updates were made (there was still an outhouse in the back yard). It might not be around for much longer (and it's only visible if you're canoeing on the river!) so I'm glad I got to see it. I enjoy pegging historical figures or events to different places in the neighborhood. It's kind of like a treasure hunt to see who lived in this house or that house, when it was built, what the occupants did for a living, etc. Then to top it all off, you can go find their headstone at the cemetery! LOL. (One lady was particularly hard to find... I had to wait until Memorial Day when they opened the mausoleum to find her final resting place.)   

So yay for free educational entertainment!

Til next time,
-Bethany 

​Hi everyone! Another week gone by, a few more frugal accomplishments to report. It's so much harder to get things done these days. 

1. Groceries: I sent Hubs into Walmart to get a few things this week while I fed the baby in the car. Food items that came out included a $7.00 package of string cheese (my preferred late-night snack) and two big boxes- $7.00 worth- of Little Debbie Fudge Rounds and Nutty Buddy bars (his preferred snack). LOL! Total spent was $14.00.

 One of my ongoing goals is to keep food waste to a minimum. These days time flies so fast that I find whole containers of food in the fridge that haven't even been opened and are close to expiring. For example, last week's Greek yogurt is still sitting in the fridge unopened. There's also an almost-full jug of milk and an avocado from last week just waiting to be used. So one of my goals this week is to use up those items.

2. Garden: I harvested and froze more peppers this week. We're also still eating apples fresh from the orchard.

3. Bought a couple pairs of jeans at Volunteers of America for $1.00-$2.00 each. While we didn't get to VOA on their monthly 50% off everything day, I did buy one pair of pants that was marked 50% anyway (all yellow tag items were 50% off). I picked them from the "less good" rack, which were a few dollars cheaper than the "better" rack. I'm crossing my fingers that I won't have to wear these pairs for more than a year anyhow. ;) I also bought a humidifier for our bedroom (another yellow tag item) because of the dry winter air.

4. Signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime's Masterpiece Theater channel. You know that frugal accomplishments are severely lacking when you start talking about frugal TV. But I'll be honest- I've been doing a lot of sitting on the couch lately and Masterpiece Theater seems to be something that all three of us like to do. Anyhow, if you're a fan of Masterpiece Theater and already have Amazon Prime, it might be worth looking into the free trial week.

5. Cloth diapers: This week I worked on reviving my Econobum diaper covers. My mom purchased them as part of this kit, and when Hubs and I got married she gave everything to me. I had a friend look over the covers in particular to see if they were still usable. She thought the PUL fabric was still okay, but the elastic in the legs might be a problem. She also pointed out that they didn't have double gussets like many of the higher quality covers available. Instead of ditching the covers, I've decided to try and fix them up. I can see that renovating, altering or fixing up old covers will be a more cost effective use of my time, energy and 50% off PUL fabric even though I still want to make a brand new diaper cover from scratch.

The Econobum covers are put together quite simply. The legs have regular 1/4" sewing elastic inside a bias cut edging tape instead of specialty FOE (fold-over elastic). The old elastic was easy to remove; I could see that it was indeed stretched. It would be simple to replace, however I wonder if the FOE would be a better long-term solution for my Econobum covers.

Cloth Diapers Cost Analysis

A cloth diaper cost something like $10.00. A disposable diaper cost about $0.20. This means that you'd have to use the cloth diaper more than 50 times in order to make the initial investment pay off. This will happen rather quickly if you're diapering a newborn, and slowly but surely if you're diapering an older baby. The trick, as I understand, is to not buy too many $10.00 diapers. Some sites recommend a minimum of 18 cloth diapers; more are recommended if you want to do laundry less than every other day. Less laundry is nice, but if you have to spend more on cloth than disposables, I think the point is moot.

18 diapers x 50 uses per diaper = 900 uses
900 disposable diapers x $0.20 each = $180.00 

Babycenter.com says that most parents spend between $30.00 and $60.00 per month for disposable diapers. At the newborn stage, we are burning through at least $2.00 worth of disposables every day- consistent with their estimate. Depending on the age of your baby, it will take between three and six months to break even with your cloth diapers. You only save money AFTER those initial 3-6 months. 

Most kids are potty trained between two and three years old. Therefore, if you wait to start cloth diapers until your baby is 1.5 years old, the savings will be minimal ($30.00 per month after age two- probably between $30.00 and $360.00 total). Worthwhile savings come when you start earlier and/or use the same cloth diapers for more than one kid. The larger your cloth diaper budget, the longer it will take to pay off (although spending more money will probably make things easier for mom).

Cloth Diapers vs. "Mama Cloth"

Now that we've seen the effort it takes to save with cloth diapers, let's look at cloth menstrual pads. If this is TMI for you, feel free to skip this section. I thought it would be worth a discussion though because baby cloth and mama cloth are so similar. If you are doing one, you might as well do the other. But which saves more money? 

Recently I bought a set of six cloth/reusable menstrual pads. I hate pads, but they're the only option for the wonderful weeks-long postpartum bleeding that happens after birth. My set of six pads cost $18.00 (or $3.00 each). Disposable pads of a similar absorbency cost $0.15 each. In order for a cloth pad to pay for itself, it would have to be used just 20 times (as opposed to 50 times with a cloth diaper). 

Unlike cloth diapers, however, menstrual pads are only used once a month. And you don't have to give birth in order to take advantage of the savings. While full-time pad users will save about $2.50 month, it's likely that I will save just $0.45-$0.60 (because remember? I hate using pads). For a full-time pad user, the $3.00 reusable pads will pay for themselves in less than a year. For the reluctant pad users, it will take between 2-4 years. This seems like a long time, but cloth pads could see 10 years of use (unlike a cloth diaper). Unless you're actively going through menopause, cloth pads are probably a good investment even if you hate pads and only use them overnight.

And what about postpartum mamas? They will save a lot faster, since their only option is to be full-time pad users. Personally I don't like the cloth pads for daytime use because they slip around a lot more- double-sided tape (a recurring cost) would be necessary if you want to do cloth full time. Even so, just one or two uses per day adds up over the course of several weeks. I think mama cloth is good to have on hand, kinda like cloth napkins. Actually, the savings are quite similar. I estimate that cloth pads will save the part-time user about $6.00 per year. It doesn't sound like much, but the investment isn't much either. If you make your own, the investment would be even less. 

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So those are my ramblings/frugal accomplishments for the last week. How about you? Did you do anything frugal over the last week or so?

As many of you know, the birth of Baby Girl broke up the month of September for us. For the last two weeks of the month, Hubs did chores while I stayed inside for the most part, recovering from birth and taking care of our new daughter. 

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Goats

Adi and Barry continued munching on pasture. This month (October) I put them together for breeding. This should bring goat kids in March or April. Unfortunately it's been more difficult to estimate due dates when there is only one doe in my "herd". Last year I did the same thing, putting Barry and Adi together on October 1st. I was hoping for goat kids in March, and they were born April 1st. So we'll see what happens this year.

Another exciting thing that happened: the owners of our 2016 goat kids sent us a picture of Adi and Barry's "grandkids". That was pretty cool! 


Chickens

Unfortunately we lost several chickens this month due to a neighbor's dog getting into their pasture. Of course this HAD to happen when I was "off duty" with the baby. We had noticed the dog in our yard several times a day for a few days, but didn't realize it was getting in with the chickens. I had no idea that there was a hole big enough in their fence to accommodate the dog, otherwise we would have contacted the owner sooner. Anyhow, I'm guessing we lost between 3-5 chickens. I'm crossing my fingers that the dog got our older hens and roosters (we know he got one rooster) instead of the young hens and still-laying chickens.

So obviously egg production continues to go down, not only due to the weather but also likely due to the fact that there are no longer as many chickens. We've been getting between 2-6 eggs per day- less if the chickens eat the eggs, which has been happening off and on. We have some crushed oyster shells to help with this, but as I mentioned before Hubs has been doing chores and he isn't familiar with the finer points of chicken husbandry. So hopefully now that I'm back "on duty" things won't be as chaotic in the chicken coop.


Garden & Strawberry Patch

The highlight of my gardening month was harvesting ornamental gourds. This was my first year doing them, and it was so fun to see the different varieties. I got at least five different kinds of gourds from the saved seed that I planted. I also harvested several small pumpkins that were grown from saved seed.

My mangel beets are HUGE!!! I think I'm going to store them in sand until I want to use them this winter. 

The strawberry patch is looking a little weedy, as I haven't been out there in weeks. I'm hoping for a few nice days in October to do some garden work.


Profit & Loss

Income:
Books- $6.47
Eggs- $22.00
Total income: $28.47

Expenses:
Layer mash- $44.00
Corn- $22.00
Total expenses: $66.00

Net profit: ($37.53)
Year-to-date net profit: $90.23

So it looks like we are down to two figures in the hobby farm account. LOL... good thing it's a hobby farm and not a real farm. This month I stocked up again on chicken feed. The last time I bought feed was in July when we had more poultry AND I had ordered less feed than I did this time. I'm fairly certain that my two garbage cans of feed will last through the end of the year.

One expense that I'll still have this year is hay for the goats. $90.00 should be plenty for that. 

Til next time,
-Bethany

So, this post is going to be an accumulation of everything frugal I can remember doing after Baby Girl was born. Most all of them are baby-related, in case you're wondering, because that's pretty much ALL I've been doing for the past two weeks.

Grocery shopping: we've done minimal grocery shopping, thanks to many friends and family that dropped off meals. Yum! Some things we did buy were cider and donuts for my birthday as well as crackers. Yesterday after church we did our first post-baby grocery shopping. We spent $18.50 on some "convenience" items that I can just grab and eat: packaged salad, string cheese and crackers. We also bought milk, avocados and a bag of cheesy popcorn for yours truly.

1. Breastfeeding! This was one thing I REALLY wanted to do and so far it's been easier than expected. Baby Girl eats like a champ. I consider this a kind of consolation prize for the rather awful labor she put me through. Being able to nurse obviously saves a lot of money because you don't have to buy food for baby. And nursing itself is pretty cheap. I probably spent $20.00 on nursing supplies like special freezer bags, breast pads, etc. That's been my main "accomplishment" of the past few weeks.

2. Found some things for my cloth diaper stash. When I got married, my mom gave me some cloth diaper prefolds that she didn't need anymore. I dug them out of storage last week. To my surprise I found not only the prefolds, but also some Snappi clips, a pail liner and three Econobum diaper covers. Yay! I'm not sure how well the covers will work (they're 5+ years old), but I'm hoping to revive them with some new elastic. A friend also lent me some of her diaper covers to try out before I purchase any of my own (thanks Esther!). I figure we have two to three months' worth of size 1 & 2 disposables left. By the time those are gone I hope to have BG in cloth full time. We also have some size 3 diapers that she'll be able to use later on, when cloth would be inconvenient.

One project I have planned for the next couple months is to try making my own diaper covers. In order to do this frugally, I've been buying supplies at Joanns with 40-50% off coupons. This is slow-going because I can only use one coupon trip. Not only is it slow-going, but it's proving to be more expensive than I thought. For some reason I figured that I'd only have to buy the PUL fabric. However, after we got to the store I realized that I'd also have to buy snaps ($10 w/o coupon), a snap tool ($20 w/o coupon) and most likely some elastic and a pattern. This will really eat into my cloth diaper budget. The cost for fabric alone would be less than $5.00 per cover- a real bargain. But the additional $15.00+ in supplies will increase the cost for my three diaper covers to $10.00+ per cover. You can buy quality covers for that price brand new, on sale. So the DIY cloth diaper cover project will only be cost-effective if I make a lot more than three covers. Sigh.

3. Made nursing tank tops. Before Baby Girl was born, I bought a bunch of $1.68 camisoles from Walmart to make nursing tanks with. I used this tutorial to make them- barely any sewing required! However, the tops did sag a bit low for my liking, so I'm looking for a way to bring the necklines a bit higher.

For some reason I thought that after I had the baby, I'd be able to go right back to my pre-pregnancy shirts. I didn't realize that many of my tops would have to be nursing-friendly. So not only did I have to scrounge up a whole new wardrobe for pregnancy, but now I have to do it all over again for "nursing season". I still wear my old T-shirts around the house, but they don't work well for nursing in public (or when other people are around).

4. A friend gifted me a box of hand-me-down baby girl clothes. I was able to find a lot of things I could use, especially in the bigger sizes (9-24 months). I sort of had some baby clothes organized before our daughter was born, but they were mostly unisex and boy clothes (for some reason I thought it would be a boy). So it was a real blessing to get some girl clothes! 

Along the same lines, I reorganized all of our baby clothes by size and made a "donate" pile for the used boy clothes/maternity clothing that I didn't end up wearing. At this point I have enough baby clothes to last until garage sale season, plus some. Which is pretty awesome.

5. Gardening: On Saturday all three of us (me, Hubs and Baby Girl) got outside to do some light garden work. I harvested peppers and ornamental gourds/pumpkins. Hubs pulled out dead corn stalks, took down the corn fence and helped me dig beets, potatoes, carrots and onions. I saved some onion seeds for next year. I also dug up some flower bulbs that needed to come in before the first frost. Baby Girl helped by sleeping in the stroller while we worked.

​I started the potato project back in July. I had bought a bag from Aldi to eat, but four or five of the potatoes ended up sprouting. Instead of throwing them out or putting into compost, I cut the sprouted potatoes in chunks (each chunk with an eye or two) and planted them in an empty raised bed. From the would-have-been-wasted potatoes, I estimate that we harvested five more pounds of good, edible potatoes. I thought this was fantastic for the 30 minutes of work involved cutting the potatoes into chunks, planting them and digging them up again. Plus, because I planted the potatoes so late, I avoided having to deal with potato bugs. Note for anyone wanting to grow potatoes: I have found that many grocery store potatoes are sprayed with something that doesn't allow them to sprout. Aldi potatoes are an exception to this rule. While this means they have a (much) shorter shelf life, it also means that Aldi potatoes are good for re-planting- and this includes Aldi sweet potatoes. My mother-in-law and some neighbors have had great success regrowing and planting sweet potatoes from Aldi. Like my late white potatoes, the sweet potatoes that my MIL grew were not susceptible to potato bugs as were her other potatoes. Not only are sweet potatoes healthier and worth more money (therefore a better use of time to grow), but they also require less work because of the bug factor. Just something to think about for next year's garden. :)

I think that is about it for frugal accomplishments! As I'm starting to feel better and learning how to work around Baby Girl's schedule, I've been able to do more around the house. At first it was just simple things like making myself breakfast. This morning I was able to chop up a bunch of peppers while baby was in a carrier (it took me two weeks to figure out how to use the darn thing!). Then I finished the peppers while she was napping later in the day. Frugal accomplishments are definitely more of a challenge now, but I feel so much better getting some things done instead of just sitting on the couch all day, waiting for the next nursing session or diaper change. At this point it's less about saving money and more about just feeling good about myself. 

Til next time,
-Bethany