1. Froze extra goats milk to use for soap.
2. Painted the porch with DeckOver. It is a no-slip surface paint sold at the Home Depot. It was definitely not cheap (I think we bought at least $70.00 worth of paint) and not easy by any means. In fact, anyone who buys this should know beforehand that it is like cement. The end result was nice, but it took up a good portion of my Monday.
Regardless, this was a task well overdue. The porch was previously just wood, and would get terribly slippery whenever it rained. More than a few people, including myself, have slipped on the porch and hurt themselves and/or whatever they were carrying. On Saturday morning I was headed out with a box of farmers market goods, and slipped. Thankfully the market stuff was okay, but I scratched up my leg- and worse- stained my brand new jeans. So, the frugal part of this project is not getting hurt and/or ruining personal property.
3. Line dried two loads of laundry.
4. We figured out why Adi was giving less and less milk every day. As it turns out, her kids were poking their heads through the fence and sucking on her. After properly separating the kids from their mom (we switched Barry with Adi, so now he is next door to the kids), I started getting a good 3-4 cups from her every day. We went from having no extra milk to having lots of extra milk in the course of a few days. So by figuring out what was going on, we were able to salvage $4.00-$5.00 worth of milk every week.
5. Sold 4 dozen eggs.
6. Harvested summer squash, green beans, banana peppers, and raspberries from the garden.
7. Worked on my new book. For those of you who don't know yet, I'm putting together a little guidebook on how to eat for $5.00-$10.00 per person, per week. Hubs and I spend between $60.00-$80.00 per month on groceries. With all of the research and new things I'm learning about this topic, we should easily be able to cut it down to $50.00 per month, or $5.77 per person, per week.
I find that there are several camps of people when it comes to frugal food. One group says, "Use coupons!" Another group insists that making everything from scratch is the way to go. Still, there are more people that think CHEAP brands and ingredients are the key to the most savings.
What I'm discovering is that by mixing and matching all of the above strategies, you can spend a minimum amount of money on food. But there is not ONE answer. For example, some foods are not cheaper made from scratch. It might only cost $0.25 in ingredients to make a loaf of bread, but the electricity it takes to bake the bread ($0.32) more than doubles the cost and you are better off buying bread from the day-old rack at the grocery store. The popular strategy of shopping at 3-5 stores every week to save a couple dollars compels one to spend more time shopping and buy even more stuff, in addition to spending more money on gas to drive all over town.
Heat and Busyness: Enemies of Frugality
Frugal accomplishments were a little slim this week. It was HOT! We had temperatures in the 80's and 90's pretty much all week. We also had things going on almost every might, so between the heat and busyness, I really didn't accomplish a whole lot this week.
Of course extreme heat or cold will bring frugal accomplishments to a halt, but I find that being busy outside the home- running here and there- is an even bigger enemy to frugality. When you are out and about, you spend a lot more money on food and random shopping purchases, and all of your frugal projects are left sitting at home not getting done.
Of course there are seasons, weeks and days where home life falls by the wayside. But I think it's a good habit to NOT over-schedule yourself, especially for those of us who prefer being home anyway.
Goals Next Week:
1. Make one batch of soap.
2. Make goat's milk caramel.
3. Finish reading The Lean Farm.