A few frugal things from my trip with Sonia last week, to start us off!
1. I planned a week of meals for Sonia and me
Sonia’s got a number of food allergies, which means that eating out is a little bit of a challenge.
Happily, our rental had a full kitchen, so to keep costs down and also to work around her allergies, I planned for us to eat in on our trip.
And I worked up a menu plan before we left.
We stayed in Avon, which is a pretty remote part of the OBX, so it’s not like there were tons of restaurant options anyway! Eating in made sense on a lot of levels.
2. I brought some ingredients from home
For example, I knew I wanted to make chicken katsu, so I made a batch of tonkatsu sauce, put it in a small Ball jar, and packed it in the cooler.
I also brought panko (from Aldi) and I poured some jasmine rice (also from Aldi) into a container to bring along.
I also packed a little jar of oil, brought my salt and pepper, and measured the spices for baked ziti into a little plastic sauce container that I’d saved from a takeout meal.
I bought fresh ingredients, such as meat, eggs, and dairy once we got to the beach. But by packing some of the shelf-stable stuff from home, I was able to buy fewer groceries at the beach.
(No Aldi on the OBX!)
3. I strategically packed food to bring home
We did a pretty bang-up job of using up the perishable food from our trip, but of course, there was some that needed to be brought home.
Leftover potatoes from our seafood boil, browned in leftover bacon grease from our BLT night
The night before we left, I froze the milk, the half-package of bacon, and the butter.
Then the next morning I packed those in the cooler, along with some things from the fridge. This is a double win; the frozen food is guaranteed to stay cold on the drive home, and those frozen foods act as an ice pack to help keep the rest of the food chilled.
The only things I had to throw away were some oat milk (no space in the cooler!) and the last bit of leftover shrimp from our seafood boil.
Overall, I consider that to be a pretty big success, because vacation food waste is so super hard to avoid.
4. I picked some mulberries
On my usual walking route, there’s a big mulberry tree, and I was pretty sure all the mulberries would have fallen off by the time I got back from the beach.
But I am happy to say that I was wrong. Yay!
So, I picked a quart of them yesterday.
5. (the fail) I ordered the wrong cat-scratching sheets
You know how I was pleased with myself for ordering the furniture protector sticky sheets to keep Miss Chiquita from scratching my leather furniture?
Well, I opened them up and started applying them and THEN I read the label.
Which says, “Don’t use on leather furniture.” See?
Whoops! All the furniture I’m trying to protect is leather. Sigh.
Soooo, I will probably give these away on my Buy Nothing group and then I will order some that are safe for leather furniture.
This is what comes of placing online orders too quickly. 😉
Your turn! What frugal things have you been up to?
(and feel free to include a fail if you want!)
Jem
Monday 26th of June 2023
I’m going to try writing a FFT because for once I feel like I’m actually successfully frugaling it up!
I got really mad at the sheer greed of grocery stores in our area. This coincided with a lengthy time period where I was doing all the shopping as my wife was laid up for several months after surgery. It was a long enough time frame and I was mad enough to start really keeping track of what cost what, where. There is no store that you can assume is cheaper overall! They all have certain things that are deals and other things that are inflated. Now I circulate between four or five stores. I don’t go to all of of them every week, but probably every couple of weeks. I’ve started going online when in one store to compare that day’s price in another store. The other day I did that with our bread. It’s about $6.75 a loaf in most stores. Since I was going to another store after I left the one I was in, I decided to check it online as I hadn’t looked at it at the second store before. It was $4.47! Now I will always get it there.
I think being on adhd meds is really helping. It seems more possible to see the forest instead of just the trees. Who knew being on adhd meds could be a frugal thing!
I’ve also started making lunches for my wife to take to work since her surgery. I do the prep on the weekend and have all the little containers ready to go, and they’re pretty awesome lunches. Since she has such good lunches she rarely goes out for lunch now, which is another savings, as restaurants here are INSANE in these days of inflation.
That isn’t a list of five, but really I feel like I’m doing about a hundred frugal things every week with this grocery thing. One day I sat in the parking lot after picking up some things at a local warehouse that I’d been waiting to get there, and I added up the same items from the website of the store I used to almost always shop at. On that set of items I had saved about 25%. That is significant!
Niugini Kate
Thursday 15th of June 2023
We were able to fly to our "vacation" destination in a 10-seater plane that charges by the kilo, so we saved money over flying commercial. We had a kitchen in our rental house, so we were able to cook most meals there. We ate "snack plates" of fish and chips while at the beach restaurant, which were about half the price of the "dinner" fish and chips. We took daily anti-malarial medication, which I'm sure is cheaper than getting malaria. No one got giardia either.
Becca C
Wednesday 14th of June 2023
Rented a movie from the library instead of renting it online. It is only a $4 savings or so but over time it adds up.
My dad foraged a bunch of mushrooms and gave some to us. We used up some in bibimbap and then froze the rest.
Made a graduation card instead of buying one at the store.
Made sourdough bread and discard pancakes.
Made stock with a rotisserie chicken carcass. Turned down into tomato soup and froze some for later.
Amanda
Wednesday 14th of June 2023
1) I found out how much I have left in my research budget before I made my travel plans for a conference next month. It was tighter than I expected, so instead of staying at the conference hotel, I found an airbnb a block away. It was a bit cheaper, but it also has a kitchen. Just having a microwave and fridge means I can bring food with me and only eat out when with colleagues.
2) I packed my lunch for my research trip today. I was planning to take an uber between the train station and the library, but I searched it when I arrived, and it wasn't that far. Despite a little rain, it was a very pleasant walk through a beautiful neighborhood.
3) I was planning to meet a friend for lunch yesterday, but she asked if we could just meet at her house because she was waiting for a big shipment. I made sandwiches to share for a fraction of what I would have spent at a restaurant.
4) I bought a book. I try not to buy new books because if I started buying the books I want it would easily turn into a free for all and quickly fill my house. This is a book I know I will use though, and I used a coupon code a conference participant shared at a recent virtual event.
5) I killed our microwave. Evidently heating six microwave meals one after another was too much for the thing. So I found a microwave on FB marketplace in like new condition marked down to $35. I found the exact microwave new at Target for $90. When I went out to the suburbs to pick it up I batched errands so it didn't feel like a waste of time.
Rachelle
Tuesday 13th of June 2023
For a cat that scratches furniture, there is a product called Kitty Caps. They are a plastic cover that fit over a cat's nails - glued on like ladies' acrylic nails. My cat who never scratched before, started to do so the last year of her life. We used these to save our sanity and furniture. They worked great and fall off naturally after time. I learned after they are applied to keep her contained until the glue dried.