1. Groceries: We had a no-spend week. Still working on cleaning out the freezer. I want to have most of the current contents gone by August when we'll have more garden produce to freeze. 

2. Cooking: I made boiled eggs in the Instant Pot and bread in the bread machine this week. I need to start changing my menu a little bit to absorb all of the eggs we've been getting. I think I'll do egg salad for our "sandwich Thursday" and then a quiche meal, along with my regular eggs for breakfast. I also switched from pancakes on Saturday to French toast, which is another excellent way to use up eggs.

3. Gardening: I continue to watch the little tomato seedlings that I planted last week. Some of the seedlings suffered from damping off. This happened last year, and the year before as well, but NOT the first year I started seeds. I figured out last week that it might be because I'm "frugally" reusing the potting soil. Oops. I guess I'm not saving money if all of the seedlings die. Next year I'm going to use all pellets, which are much easier to store and use than regular seed starter.

4. Clothing: Ironed patches on several pairs of jeans. I still have to sew around the edges in order for the pants to be back in commission. I also picked up more cans to recycle for diaper money. :)

5. Taxes*: we got our taxes back from the accountant this week. Most people don't bother trying to save on taxes, but if you have income besides a paycheck (rent income, small business income, "other" income, etc.), it's worth getting an accountant to help out. We itemize our deductions instead of taking the standard deductions, so there are plenty of ways for us to save on taxes. This includes putting money into tax-sheltered retirement accounts (something anyone can do), writing off all business expenses and even keeping track of Goodwill donations. I made over $600.00 on book royalties, which was super! But even BETTER, we were able to find enough write-offs to eliminate taxes on that income, which would have been at least $120.00. I'm keeping much better track of my writing expenses this year, as the income will probably be quite a bit higher.

6. Books: I ordered another book from our library's interloan system. I also borrowed an audiobook from the library's Libby app. 

That's about it for this week. I've been spending some of my afternoons finishing up the first draft of The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Produce (or, Frugal Fruits and Vegetables- I haven't decided.). I'm not finished quite yet, but... soon.

Til next time,
-Bethany

*Just so you all know, I'm not a tax professional by a long shot! But taxes are fascinating to me, and I'm proud to say that I found two legit tax-saving strategies this year, all by myself.

​Hi everyone! First off, I want to make a special announcement. I will be hosting a monthly giveaway in my email newsletter, and I need your opinion on what the prize(s) should be! You can complete the 1-minute survey HERE.

​1. Groceries: We went to Kroger for groceries this week and spent $31.73, plus $1.34 at Walmart. Total spent was $33.07. You can see my Kroger haul below:   

 2. Cooking: I made two batches of fruit leather, 1/4 lb. of cheese, and (drum roll please...) chicken sausage! One of my goals this year is to lower my food waste. Did you know the average family spends $1500.00 per year on food waste? We saw it on a billboard while driving home from church. I told Hubs, "I'm nowhere near that careless, but even I waste between $1.00-$5.00 on food every week." He was astounded (I guess I'm supposed to be more perfect than that?! LOL), but it's true. This week I threw out two quarts of frozen rhubarb and a handful or two of pretzels, plus probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. 
 
That's where all of this week's cooking comes in. I made the fruit leather (more like chips) from strawberries that had been in the freezer for far too long. I made the cheese from the last quart of milk in our fridge, about to go rancid. And the "sausage" was made from a bag of chicken gizzards, hearts, and livers that I found in the freezer. I've always wanted to try making sausage. I knew that I would never, ever eat the innards as they were, so it was the perfect time to use the Kitchen Aid meat grinder I got for Christmas... in 2015.

It turned out pretty good, for the ingredients I had on hand. I added some wine vinegar, oil and spices to the ground organ meats, then cooked it up and froze it in muffin-size portions. We tried some on baked potatoes and in soup, and it wasn't that bad! I HATE the taste of liver, and to be honest, seeing it come out of the grinder grossed me out a lot. I wasn't sure I'd be able to eat it. Hubs likes liver, so he thought it was pretty good. I thought it was a tolerable way to eat organ meats. 

​I've already found another (smaller) bag of organ meats in the fridge to make into sausage. I think next time around I will put more actual meat in, and probably some fat as well, to balance out the organ meats.

I also put up a Youtube video about how I make hash in the Instant Pot. Hash is another excellent way to use up those bits and pieces and reduce food waste!

3. Clothing: Organized baby clothes. I've had a real problem with organizing hand-me-downs in an easy to access way. I needed an inventory to see precisely what I had and what I still needed. Last month I made a list of things I'm looking for, but I didn't have a list of what I already had.

I also put Baby's current wardrobe on hangers beneath her cloth diapers, for easier access. Then I used sandwich bags to hold socks, tights and/or pants for each outfit. My parents used to do this for my younger siblings, so they didn't come out of the laundry room, mismatched, wearing another sibling's clothes. My brother called them "uniforms." 

When I organized Baby's clothes in a way that allowed me to SEE everything, I realized what she did and didn't wear. Hint: she wears the same five outfits over and over because those are the ones I like the best. Of course, I kept some extra outfits, but the least favorite ones went into the donate pile.

4. Personal Care: Scored some free toothpaste at Kroger with coupons. Yay!

5. Household: Lastly, I made some more reusable tissues. I've had the squares cut out for weeks, but procrastinated on threading the serger. Finally, I got around to doing it! Now I have one color plaid for tissues and another color plaid that I'm using for cleaning/paper towels. I keep a stack of both colors in the kitchen, and another in the bathroom, with a hanging wet bag nearby. 

SO, that's about it for this week! If you haven't done so already, be sure to let me know what your favorite giveaway prize is by completing my survey.  ​

Til next time,
​Bethany

Well, we had another decent month here on the hobby farm. 

Chickens & Ducks

Egg production is picking up! In February I got one duck egg almost every day, plus two or three chicken eggs. This amount is perfect for us. Of course, I can always use more if we have them, but when we start getting six or more eggs a day, I have to focus more on using them up or start selling them.


Strawberry Patch & Garden

The strawberry patch is dormant like it has been for the past several months. I did order some seeds for the vegetable garden. This year my focus is going to be tomatoes. I'm hoping to can quite a bit, but also sell some as well. At the end of February, I started all of my tomato seeds plus some herb and flower seeds.

​
Honeybees

I've purchased most of my hive equipment for the bees! The bees themselves won't arrive until late April, but for now I'm keeping myself busy assembling some of the supers and frames. 

My budget for this project was $500.00. I've spent most of that already. There are just a few things that I'd like to purchase yet, so I will probably go over budget on the honeybee project.


Profit & Loss

Expenses:
Package of bees- $120.00
Beehive supplies- $306.50
Beekeeping tools- $39.99
Beekeeping coat/hat- $19.99
Total expenses: $486.48

Income:
Book royalties- $3.15

Net profit: $(483.33)
Year-to-date net profit: $(544.18)

So, that's about all I have to report for February. In March I hope to finish putting together my beehive!

Til next time,
-Bethany

We spent most of last week (Monday-Thursday) in Washington D.C. to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary. It was a blast! The weather couldn't have been better for February (in the 50s), and it was, by far, the most planned trip we have taken together as a couple. Of course, not ALL of the trip was planned out, but we reserved a hotel in advance, thought of a list of stuff to see in advance, and I even brought some food and snacks along with us. For me, that is a big deal.

That being said, I did spend the weekend on some frugal projects that I'm happy to share. I'm also going to include a few things I did the week before last, which I didn't get around to writing about because we were gone.

1. Groceries: we bought $30.00 worth of groceries in Washington D.C.; bread, mayo, salad/lettuce, apples, carrots, cereal and instant oatmeal. I thought we would buy these things at Walmart here in MI before we left, but instead, we decided to start early and didn't get a chance to buy groceries until we were in D.C.

2. Gardening: This week I started tomato, hot pepper, thyme, lavender and delphinium seeds. I also pruned one of our peach trees and used the trimmings for a table centerpiece, and started some sweet potatoes in water. I am SO excited to be gardening again!! It's still way too cold to plant anything, but just being outside is a balm to my soul.

I also got my new beehive in the mail and painted some of it. I chose to get the bottom part assembled and the honey supers (top stacking parts) unassembled. 

3. Books: I received two books from the library's interloan system: 

​They are both historical gardening books (combining two of my favorite things!!!) that I've immensely enjoyed reading. It was especially fun to learn about Monticello gardens right before we saw Mount Vernon because I was able to compare the two. I've got the books for another two weeks, so I'm hoping to finish the Monticello book and pick up some practical tips from the other one.

4. Cans: before we left on vacation, we had some spectacular warm weather. I was able to go on three walks and pick up over $5.00 worth of cans (as if getting some fresh air wasn't benefit enough!). As I mentioned last week, my can money this year is going to extra cloth diapers. 

5. Diapers: speaking of diapers, one of Baby's cloth diapers busted a seam. I left a review and picture on Amazon, and the company offered to give me a refund. So that's another $5.00 that I can put in the "cloth diaper account." I did end up fixing the diaper then (it was an easy fix, but I wanted to leave a review for mamas who don't sew) so I can still use it.

6. Vacay savings: we reserved a cheap hotel ($80/night), and I brought food along for breakfast and lunch. Bringing food from home saved at least $20.00 per day, but probably more. Plus it was more convenient to have lunch on the go than stop for an hour to eat. We also took the metro inside the city instead of paying for parking all day. This saved at least $20.00 per day, plus we didn't have to waste time finding a parking spot. 

As far as sight-seeing, most of the things we did were free. Mount Vernon was $20.00 each, and the Bible Museum was $15.00 per person. Otherwise, the Smithsonian museums, Arlington, and the different memorials were completely free.

Baby did fantastic during the whole trip. Hubs carried her in the front pack most of the time, and I carried our backpack-turned-diaper-bag. By the end of the three days we were TIRED from so much carrying and walking, but that didn't make it any less fun. Since Baby is still nursing, food for her was cheap and easy. She did have a major blowout our second night there. I ended up hand-washing her outfit (one of my favorites ! 😔 ) in the toilet, then scrubbing the stains out in the sink with a bar of hotel soap. Then I let it dry overnight and put it in the window to sun. When we came back later that day, I couldn't believe how much the stains had disappeared! 

You would think that washing poop off in the toilet would be nasty, but when the water gets dirty, you can just flush. Voila, new clean water! A pair of rubber gloves would have been nice though. Of course, I rewashed the outfit in a real washer when we got home, but I couldn't have baby poop in with our other laundry for three days. Overall the toilet and hotel hand soap did a great job.

For the most part, I have quit buying souvenirs when we travel. Sometimes I get a small trinket or functional item (blanket, cookware, etc.) but most of the time I browse the gift shops and don't buy anything. I did get a wax seal set at Mount Vernon for $16.00. I could have saved a few dollars by purchasing the set on Amazon. But I didn't.

There are plenty of meaningful "souvenirs" that you can get or make for free without filling your home with junk coffee cups, shot glasses and decorative plates that hang on the wall. I've made shadow boxes, Christmas ornaments and jewelry, as an example. You can also take home recipes (or just the name of a dish, then Google the recipe) or find a favorite local plant and buy it when you're back in the States. Most of the time, souvenirs are cheaper on the internet or if you don't buy them at a gift shop. My favorite thing to take home is ideas, which I found plenty of.

So... that's what I've got for last week!

​Til next time,
-Bethany

I feel like I did a far better job of reigning in spending last month than we did in January. I made a few changes last month that will help us continue to save money all year long.  You can read about those below.


Groceries: ($130.00) $101.14 

We did well last month and spent only 78% of the food budget. I made two trips to Kroger, one trip to Walmart and one trip to Safeway in Washington D.C. I pulled a few no-spend weeks in February after the outrageous Super Bowl spending that happened at the beginning of the month, which likely helped a lot. I also took meat, cheese, milk and homemade chex mix on vacation so we only had to buy inexpensive items in the capitol city, like lettuce, carrots and bagged cereal. 


Personal Care: ($15.00) $10.97

I bought toilet paper ($9.58), toothpaste ($0.89) and two boxes of Kleenex ($0.50) this month. We were officially 27% under budget! 

One thing I did this month to save money: I made some reusable tissues to help cut toilet paper usage. I think this helped. One roll of Scott lasted eight days.


Household: ($25.00) $6.83

We bought two packs of baby hangers ($2.00) and one bottle of Ajax ($1.75) this month, along with a cookie press ($1.26- broke the first time I used it... boo!), measuring spoons ($0.95) and measuring cups ($0.75).


Clothing: $4.21

I bought a 3-pack of tights for Baby Girl this month. If you don't remember, my goal for the year was to spend $225.00 on all three of us. If calculated by the month, it would be about $6.25 per person. Obviously this isn't realistic (usually we buy a few larger items every year), so I'm just watching the amount as the year progresses. So far Hubs has spent $0.00 of his $75.00. I've spent 27% of my allotment and 47% of Baby Girl's allocation. I have a feeling that at least half of the clothing budget will be spent on Baby this year. I would like to buy another nursing T-shirt... sometime. But other than that, we adults don't need much for clothing.

One thing I started doing this month to save money: I darned the holes in my pile of holey socks. This maintenance put about five pairs of socks back in the rotation.

*****

So, that is what I spent on our 2018 Categories That Need Work last month. I'm looking forward to another month of industry and frugality.

Til next time,
​-Bethany

Hi everyone! I did a terrible job of recording frugal accomplishments last week, so I don't have much to report. We bought milk and Worcestershire sauce at Walmart for $3.16. In lieu of Frugal Accomplishments, I present to you:

Giveaways: Worth Your Time or Not?

I'm at the unfortunate point in our cloth diapering journey where I have enough diapers, but I still want more diapers. There are so many different styles and prints that I want to try on our baby!! Unfortunately, we really do have all of the diapers that we need in a good rotation. I would feel silly to spend more of our clothing budget on diapers that we don't need.

So, I've come to a solution. First of all, I'm going to earmark my bottle & can recycling money for extra cloth diapers and nonessential diaper-related accessories.  Second, I've been conducting a little experiment for the past several weeks, spending a few minutes per week entering giveaways. This week I participated in six. I'm pretty sure the giveaways won't yield much, but I thought I would try it for a year or so and see what happens. Several diaper companies have a weekly giveaway, and many of the small retailers have giveaways now and then as well.

Most of the time these giveaways are done on Rafflecopter, where you can see exactly how many people have entered (and therefore, calculate your chances of winning). You can enter multiple times by doing things like 1) liking a Facebook page, 2) following an Instagram account, 3) following a Twitter account, 4) tweeting about a giveaway, 5) commenting on a blog post, or 6) just taking advantage of a free entry. Most giveaways are hosted on Rafflecopter, but some are done on a Facebook page or Instagram account alone. If you want to enter multiple ones every week, you should probably have Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Most of the time entries do not require that you spam your social media friends, but I'll admit I have retweeted more than my fair share of giveaway announcements. My apologies if you follow me on Twitter.

Another helpful thing to do is set reminders on your phone for the weekly giveaways.


How to Calculate Your Chances of Winning

Why calculate your chances of winning? So you can ignore the giveaways with 400 participants and focus on the ones with 20 or 30 participants.

To put it simply, this is how to calculate your chance of winning:

(6 entries) divided by (4004 total number of entries) = 0.001498501. We can round up the last number to 0.0015, then to 0.002. That means you have a 0.2% chance of winning the giveaway. 

My chances have been anywhere between 0.3% and 5%. If I enter five giveaways per week with a 5% chance of winning, theoretically I should win one prize per month at the cost of (2 minutes per giveaway) 40 minutes of my time. On the other hand, I would have to enter the 0.3% giveaways 333 times to win a prize. Not only would this take a long time to do (1.3 years* at five giveaways per week), it would also cost me a lot of time. 10 minutes per week doesn't sound like a lot, but if you do it for 66 weeks, that means it took 660 minutes, or 11 hours to win a prize. Because most prizes aren't worth more than $20.00, in a best-case scenario your hourly rate for entering 0.3% giveaways would be $1.81 per hour. 

$1.81 is more or less what I can earn collecting pop cans. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but the difference between recycling pop cans and entering giveaways is 1) the income (and therefore, PRIZE) is almost guaranteed, and 2) I'm exercising, enjoying nature and not being on my phone or computer. 

"Bethany!" you say, "Do you realize that you just spent 30 minutes figuring out what your chances are at winning a giveaway and earned $0.00 per hour?" Yes, I do. However, there are obviously a lot of people out there spending the time to enter these giveaways (400 people on the last one I checked), and they think it's worth their time to do so. I want to remind everyone that you are guaranteed to win prizes if you spend your time doing something that is sure to earn money. Then you can spend the money on "free" prizes. 

Does that mean I'm going to stop entering giveaways? Probably not. Although, now that I've done the math I realize that I could spend 20-30 hours writing an ebook for Amazon and guarantee myself a prize every other month or so, I'm not sure giveaways are worth my time after all.


Giveaways Are Like Playing the Lottery

Gasp! Yes, entering giveaways is like playing the lottery, with one fundamental difference: it's free. When you play the lotto game, you're losing time (buying the ticket, scratching it off, throwing it in the ditch) but you're also wasting money. Whether it's $1.00 or $20.00 you're flushing down the proverbial toilet, it's still money that you'll never see again. With free online giveaways, at least the dollars are staying in your pocket.

Have you ever won a giveaway?
Did you keep track of how many you entered in order to win?

Til next time,
-Bethany

*When entering cloth diaper giveaways, keep in mind that you are only going to be cloth diapering for 2-3 years per child. If it takes 1.3 years to win a prize... you'll have to find a better way to supply your stash.

I hope all of you are having a wonderful Monday! Here are some frugal things I did over the last seven days:

​1. Groceries: Last week was a no-spend week for groceries. I don't plan on spending much this week either, although we're running out of milk. I did pay $5.00 for a vegetable tray for a church potluck. Yes, I had every intention of bringing a homemade one! I even washed and cut the celery and cucumbers. Unfortunately we ate every last carrot and I didn't get a chance to buy more before Sunday morning. Maybe next time. :)

2. Cooking: I made larabars and broccoli soup in our Vitamix with some things I had on hand. I also tried chopping cheese in the Vitamix. It was nowhere near as pretty as shredded cheese, but I think it will work in a pinch.

I also roasted peanuts and almonds this week and made Good Girl Moonshine (Trim Healthy Mama recipe). GGM is just cold tea with ginger, apple cider vinegar, and stevia in it. Basically dressed up water.

3. Household: I serged half of the reusable tissues I made last week. I put them in a kitchen drawer and hung a small wet bag beneath the drawer. That way I have somewhere to put the dirty tissues right after I've used them. The wet bag system has worked great! In addition to nose-wiping, I've also used the flannel squares as paper towels. In addition to storing dirty washcloths, the wet bag also stores soiled cloth napkins and other kitchen laundry. 

​4. Sewing & laundry: I darned six socks, mended a cloth diaper and fixed a pair of baby pants.

5. Valentine's Day: We didn't have a particularly frugal Valentine's Day, but Hubs did give me a new houseplant (yay!!), and we used a coupon for lunch/dinner. We planned to go out to eat around 3:00 pm to beat the dinner rush but still avoid the lunch crowd. Our plan backfired when we showed up to our chosen restaurant, and they wouldn't take us because we didn't have a reservation. This was a little confusing because last year Hubs tried to make a reservation for Valentine's Day and the restaurant wouldn't make one for that day.

So, we ended up picking a different restaurant. That restaurant said they didn't take reservations (only "call-aheads") and they were full until 7:00 pm. It was about 3:30 now, mind you. When we told them we were ready to eat at 4:00 pm, they finally said they could take us. Yay! As it turns out, I ​ended up having a $5.00 off coupon that we were able to use. At least there was that! We also brought home some of the food for the next day. :)

So lesson learned; call your restaurant a WEEK beforehand to see what their Valentine's Day policy is and plan accordingly.

Til next time,
Bethany

​1. Groceries: Wow. Just wow. I spent a whopping 54% of our monthly budget last week. The Sunday before last we did a weird "in between" grocery shop- I didn't want it to overlap with my Tuesday Aldi haul that week, so I lumped it together with this week's groceries. The "in between" haul cost a massive $54.72, almost half of which was spent on junk food for an impromptu Super Bowl "party" that we decided to host. That large sum got tagged onto this week's much more modest haul of $12.26. You can see what I got in the pictures below:

​I didn't do a whole lot of extra cooking this week, but I did make some taco seasoning. 

2. Personal Care: I cloth diapered this week (like always), which saves between $9.60 and $11.20 per week depending on if I use disposables on Sunday. Sometimes I do this because we spend a lot of time away from home and it's cumbersome to carry four or five cloth diapers in the diaper bag. Since I was running short on clean diapers this week, I decided to take Sunday off. Technically I still have half a box of baby shower diapers left though, so I'm not "saving" on disposables by using cloth. On top of that, I still haven't saved enough money using cloth to break even with the $200.00 initial investment. I still have another month** to go- then I'll *actually* be saving money by using cloth diapers.

Last week Esther suggested making reusable tissues to save money on toilet paper and Kleenex. This I did! I found some flannel shirts headed to Goodwill and cut them into squares. You can see my squares at the top of this post. I also used pinking shears around each square, in hopes that it would take longer to unravel. This turned out to be a real waste of time because the first tissue I ran through the wash unraveled right away. With the others I think I will do a serged or other stitched edge to keep it from unraveling. 

I also said last week that I would be looking for "almost free" disposable Kleenex to keep in handy for illnesses. With some Kroger digital coupons and an Ibotta rebate, I was able to get two boxes of specialty Kleenex for $0.25 each. The jury is out on whether or not this is really a better deal than a roll of Scott toilet paper ($0.48 per roll). However, the disposable tissues are "enriched with aloe and coconut oil", so... there's that.

3. Clothing: We received hand-me-downs from two different friends this week. Yay! I found plenty of outfits for Baby Girl and also some things for myself. I also line dried most of the laundry this week (like I always do) and worked on organizing our storage room (which is really just the room that holds everything that doesn't go in the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or living room. Which is a ton of stuff. 😔 ).

4. Household: I used a coupon on Ajax dish soap this week. I am not a brand loyal person most of the time, but there are certain items we've found that are worth the few extra cents (dish soap, toilet paper, deodorant, etc.). Typically this is not the MOST expensive brand, but just one step above the "cheapest of the cheap" brand. Sometimes I can get a smashing deal on these specific items, but most of the time I just wait for a coupon and purchase the item, when needed, with the small discount that a coupon offers.

That is really about all for the week. I'm sure there are probably things I missed because I didn't keep track of accomplishments very well.

Til next time,
-Bethany

**I calculate diaper savings by the amount of disposable diapers used per day (about eight) multiplied by the cost of a Luvs diaper purchased with a coupon (around $0.20 per diaper).

Hi everyone! January seemed like a short month here on our little hobby farm.

Poultry

The birds are doing great. Right now we have 16 hens, two roosters and two ducks (either one male, one female or both females). In January I was getting between zero and two eggs per day- including one duck egg almost every day.  I've been using duck eggs for THM "muffin in a mug" recipes, and they are wonderful. Finally I've found a use for those yolk-heavy duck eggs. Right now I am just filling the feeder and letting the birds eat whatever they want. When the grass starts to green up I'll go back to "rationing" but for now it's an all-day buffet.

Other Projects
I'm not going to lie. While planning my to-do list for spring, I felt a twinge of regret about selling my goats. No goat babies for me this year. 😔 However, the good news is that I've put in my order for honeybees! My goal for February is to order supplies and a hive kit. As far as gardening goes, I have two more seed packets to buy and I'll be done shopping. Hoping to start some of my herb seeds in February.


Profit & Loss

Income:
Book royalties- $3.15

Expenses: 
Shelled corn- $20.00
Layer mash- $44.00
Total expenses: $64.00

Net profit: $(60.85)
Year-to-date net profit: $(60.85)

And we've started out the year in the red. Last January I also lost money, but only $29.00. I think I'll be lucky this year to break even because of my bee project and also not selling as many animal products as I did last year.

Til next time,
-Bethany

Hey guys! I'm going to do a new monthly post here on the blog. There are a few spending areas I would like to work on this year, and I think some accountability would really help my resolve (and my memory... it's easy to forget goals sometimes). So, I'm going to do a monthly spending report for 1) groceries, 2) personal care, 3) household items and 4) clothing.

Here goes!


Groceries ($130.00): $90.18

We only spent 69% of our grocery budget this month! I managed to pull this off by eating from the freezer and pantry. We were also gone for a week in January and I skipped a shopping trip because we were sick. The money that I didn't spend will probably go toward bulk purchases later in the year.


Personal Care ($15.00): $23.97 

I went over in this category thanks to my fabulous Bath and Body Works haul. Did you know that B&BW has a semi-annual sale where many items are 75% off? Well, they do, and it definitely drew some dollars from my pocketbook. We also bought toilet paper this month.  I could have done better on the TP (we bought it at Home Depot), but I waited too long for a deal. We ended up paying full price at a not-cheap store.

I can see already that toilet paper might be my biggest challenge in this area. One roll costs about $0.60 and usually lasts at least four days. That means our toilet paper should cost about $5.00 per month. However, in January all three of us had runny noses from cold/ cold weather/ etc. I don't buy Kleenex, so we use toilet paper for tissues*. The sickness wiped out (no pun intended) a large amount of the toilet paper that I just bought. $15.00 budget minus $10.00 worth of toilet paper does not leave a lot left for buying other personal care items. In coming months I will keep an eye out for fantastic deals (as in, almost free) on Kleenex to keep handy in case of sickness. 

*I do sometimes use a handkerchief when I'm consistently blowing my nose. This saves money on TP, but some people think that handkerchiefs are gross. I can understand that.


Household Items ($25.00): $21.52

Last month I bought trash bags and laundry soap. For laundry soap, I bought our usual large container of Xtra from Walmart, and a smaller bottle of Tandil from Aldi. I need to do some detailed math to see if the Tandil is a better deal than Xtra. Normally I just make our own laundry detergent (and I still use that for clothing), but Baby's cloth diapers require a stronger detergent. The Xtra works great for her diapers- I just wanted to experiment and see if the Aldi brand was a better deal.


Clothing ($225.00/year): $50.93

I bought a nursing shirt last month for $19.99. I got Baby Girl a super-cute sun hat for vacation in Cancun ($14.99), plus five sets of baby leg warmers ($15.95) to wear with her cloth diapers. I probably could have made the sun hat, but would've had to buy a pattern (and probably only saved a few dollars unless I found a multi-sized pattern). Baby sewing patterns are definitely going to be on my thrift store/garage sale list this year. I'm thinking I could have made the leg warmers as well; either with old sweater sleeves or knitting them from scratch. However, now I do have some store bought leg warmers to use as patterns for future pairs.

One thing I did this month is make a "needed clothing" printable to use as a garage sale shopping list. Baby clothes are ABUNDANT and far cheaper at garage sales than at thrift stores. The cheapest you are going to find baby clothes, even on 50% off / $0.99 day, is $1.00 per item. Garage sale items are frequently $0.50, $0.25 or even less. The last three months taught me just how fast babies can grow. I want to make sure I have a whole wardrobe for her in 12- to 24-month sizes by the time our 2018 garage sale season is over, so I don't end up paying $2.00 or $3.00 per piece for stuff she will grow out of in a month or two.

So, that is my (selective) spending report for the month!

Until next time,
-Bethany