Also as a side note: I reuse lids when I'm canning something as cheap as potatoes. If the jar unseals for some reason, I've lost less than $0.40. But if I'm canning meat or something more expensive, I always use new lids. It's not worth saving $0.10 at the risk of wasting $1.00!
Total spent on groceries this week was $35.24. It's hard to stay under budget when there are so many awesome sales and deals going on.
3. Cloth diapers: My Thirsties AIO diaper, pocket diapers and bamboo inserts arrived this week! I am going to do a full post on my cloth diapering adventures soon, but until then I'll share just one frugal project I've been working on: fitted diapers!
A fitted diaper is just a prefold that has been shaped like a diaper. You use it the same way as you would flats or prefolds (that is, with a cover), but the bulk has been moved around a little. This is very easy to do with a regular old prefold. Right now I'm trying a few different designs to see what works best. You can see how much better the prefold fits Baby Girl now:
4. Line-dried one load of laundry. I've started line drying indoors again. Our indoor line consists of screw-in hooks on either side of our bedroom wall. On laundry day, I string up the line and hang the clothes on the line, which runs over our bed. When I'm done hanging everything, I make sure to turn on the ceiling fan to improve the airflow.
One nice benefit of line drying indoors is that it acts as a temporary humidifier. This is nice because our heated indoor air is so dry in the winter. I put a hygrometer (measures moisture) in our bedroom, and on laundry day the humidity went from 45% to 55%. So not only does indoor line drying save money, but it also improves the air quality for us. So when my diapers aren't diapering, they can function as little humidifiers.
5. Used a gift card and Ebates to purchase a gift.
6. Got a $10.00 gift card from Amazon by using Swagbucks (and Ebates)! November is a great time of year to start doing Swagbucks if you haven't already. Most of my big online shopping sprees are done during this time. In addition, I've noticed that Swagbucks put out several high-value codes per day last week, as opposed to their usual $0.02 daily afternoon codes. It did take me a year to earn that $10.00 gift card, but... it will buy another two cloth diapers for Baby Girl. :)
So that's it for this week! I'm pretty excited about sharing next week's accomplishments as I have several projects in the works already.
Til next time,
Bethany