1. Grocery shopping: I spent $11.09 on groceries this week, at Kroger. You can watch my grocery haul below:
3. I converted my "wedding and funeral dress" to be nursing-friendly by taking out some seams and adding snaps/hooks-and-eyes. As much as I like this dress, I will probably buy a new one after Baby is done breastfeeding.
4. Continued cloth diapering. I'm working on a few Youtube diaper videos. Cloth diapers create a lot more laundry, so instead of saving $1.00 per week by air drying, I'm saving more like $3.00 or more. As I've mentioned before, air drying indoors during the winter also helps us sleep at night by increasing the humidity in our bedroom.
5. Went thrift store shopping! I bought some cloth diaper-friendly shirts for Baby (to go with leg warmers and/or homemade Maxaloones (big butt pants, especially designed for fluffy bottoms). These were $0.99 each, as we went shopping on the Salvation Army's "$0.99 for all clothing sale". I noticed, however, that some of the shirts I bought would have cost $0.99 at full price, which is good to know for the future. I also bought a book about how to avoid speeding tickets, two puzzles and a burlap coffee bean sack to make into wall art.
6. Avoided buying (some) stuff I didn't need. I have $5.00 worth of Kohl's cash that needs to be spent by the end of January. I also have a Kohl's gift cart with $14.00 on it. I thought I'd order some cute footie sleepers for baby girl, since I can't seem to find those at any of the thrift stores. Unfortunately there was still a $9.00 shipping fee and I couldn't have a single sleeper shipped to my house for less than $20.00. Even with multiple coupon codes and the Kohl's cash, my total was still $14.00. I thought it was a waste to spend the rest of my gift card on just one outfit. Instead, I think we will go to a brick-and-mortar Kohls store on our next date night. That way I can sift through the clearance items and avoid the shipping charge. Who knows, I may be able to get three items with my money instead of just one.
I also passed up some coupon deals that were very cheap but ultimately useless to me.
7. I chose "no-rush" shipping on an Amazon Prime order, and they gave me $5.00 to spend in the Luxury Beauty category. Of course, $5.00 doesn't buy a whole lot of luxury beauty, but I found a set of eye masks for less than $5.00. The key to "free" offers is to make sure that they're actually free. If the free stuff causes you to spend more money than you would have otherwise, it's not really free.
We finally did our household finances (piled up for MONTHS now... terrible, I know!) this week. I'll be posting some of our 2017 spending later this week along with my spending/saving goals for the next year.
Til next time,
-Bethany