1. Groceries: I went to Kroger this week and scored some deals. See below:
3. Garage sales: I went to some city-wide garage sales and picked up a few bargains. I spent just $9.05, plus a few dollars for gas to get there (it was less than seven miles away). Based on retail and/or thrift store value of the items I found, I saved over $50.00. In fact, we had just ordered a new $25.00 bike seat on Amazon, and I found one at a garage sale for $2.00! The garage sale seat is not as nice looking, but it will do the job. I plan on returning the new seat.
5. Critter control: we caught one raccoon in the trap this week. The raccoons have been eating all of the chicken eggs before I can rescue them. Now, at least one offender has been eliminated. I also set out a new Japanese beetle trap around the garden. This was my first year setting traps for the Japanese beetles, which love feasting on my raspberry plants and roses. Last year I hand-picked the beetles, which definitely had an effect but was very time-consuming. The traps weren't exactly cheap at $3.39 each, and they only come with two bags. But I followed the instructions and really noticed a difference; the raspberries came before the beetles did! I had several decent days of picking before the beetle population really picked up and started chewing into the berries.
Now that we have a kid, I find myself buying solutions as opposed to creatively coming up with free ones. Sometimes these solutions are worth the money, other times they're not. The beetle bags, for example, free up at least 30 minutes per day (of hand-picking beetles) during the berry season. If I have just one week of raspberries, that's 3.5 hours saved. By using the trap instead of hand-picking, I've bought myself three and a half hours, at the cost of less than a dollar per hour. If I could replace all of my chores for just $1.00 per hour (via tools, mostly, but also services) I could get TWICE as much done, or just have a lot more free time! Some chores I don't mind so much, but others I would love to kick to the curb.
The great thing about being a stay-at-home parent is that your time is already worth $7.00 per hour, simply because you're not sending your child to daycare. So you don't have to feel guilty about spending (a little) more on time-saving tools.
Well, that's about it for now. I hope you all are having a blessed week so far!
Til next time,
Bethany