Frugal Accomplishments This Week

This week, fortunately, has been pretty frugal. After my adding up my grocery expenses for this last month, I got very motivated to do things to lower our bills in general. I am going to try to make my groceries last 2 weeks, so I can lower our grocery bill by going shopping less frequently. The frugal things that we did all week this week was cloth diaper Rose exclusively, and breastfeed her exclusively, and work on potty training Anneliese so we used fewer diapers for her. We also only hung up the laundry to dry, no using the dryer.

And we've been more on top of turning off lights and fans, etc... when not in use.

Here's what else we did to save money this week:

Sunday-
Made pancakes for breakfast instead of serving cereal and milk.
Served leftovers for lunch.
Made a legume based dish for supper.
Printed up coloring pages from the internet for a homeschooling lesson.
Found free educational stories online on livesteam for the kids to listen to.
Made chewy chocolate chip cookies.

Wisteria that I foraged

Monday-
Turned an old cereal box into a coloring project, and then puzzle for the kids to play with.
Made homemade healthy Butterfingers type bars.
Served leftovers for lunch and supper.
Got a huge amount of past prime produce for free. Washed, scrubbed, and dried them off to make sure they wouldn't spoil.
Made a batch of homemade dill pickles.

Transplanted tomato plant

Tuesday-
Went into the city, took some homemade food (made from the past prime produce) to eat while there instead of buying food to eat.
Bought a lot of super cheap produce from the past prime stalls at the farmer's market, and a bunch of cheapo cereals from the scratch and dent store. Got a big bag of onions and leek for free- rescued it before it made it into the dumpster.
Bought a few cheap accessories to spiffy up my look for cheap.
Sorted out the various grades of past prime produce, washed and cleaned the good stuff, and cooked up the stuff that needed using immediately. Turned extra soft peaches into fruit leather, and extra soft tomatoes into tomato sauce that I then used to make shakshouka- eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce.
To make room in the fridge for all the produce, cleaned the fridge and discovered leftovers before they would spoil, and turned the leftovers into a repurposed leftover supper.
Went to the store and bought chips for Mike's lunches cheaply- they were on sale so I stocked up. Also got salmon on sale as a special treat.
Transplanted a volunteer tomato plant into my window box so neighborhood gardeners wouldn't kill it as they do many of the wild edibles in my area.

Wednesday-
Transplanted more volunteer tomato plants (unfortunately, it looks like they didn't survive the transplanting).
Got Rose's ears pierced at a cheap local place.
Made chicken gizzards, saved the water to use as broth for cooking rice.
Revamped leftover lentil garlic spread by adding flour and egg and making it into lentil burgers.
Gave a visitor a jar of homemade fermented carrots as a gift.

Dumpster treasure

Thursday-
Deboned 1 whole chicken, including dark meat, making it into enough cutlets to serve 4 adults and 7 children, with extras.
Foraged wisteria.
Dumpster dove 4 shirts and a booster high chair.
Bought a game to play with my grandma who is in the hospital on a ventilator- a 6 in 1 game for very cheap. Unfortunately, it looks like she isn't well enough to play games like checkers, etc... so I brought the game home for my kids.
Got a ride home instead of taking the bus.
Brought along food instead of buying while out.
Got some mint from my friend's garden.

Friday-
Had a family BBQ in the park and tasted my dad's homemade miso made into miso soup.
Walked to and from the BBQ with the kids instead of getting a bus transfer, to save money.
Cooked up some foraged lambsquarters
Collected some cans that are redeemable for cash.
Made homemade healthy "Butterfingers".
Made some chicken broth from the chicken bones from the deboned chicken.

Tasty, cheap, and healthy drink

Saturday-
Entertained guests, using all cheap ingredients, including lots of dishes made with the produce I got at the farmer's market, my de-boned (on sale) whole chicken, brown rice I got on sale cooked with craisins I got on sale, and homemade butterfingers.
Snacked on homemade fruit leather.
Hosted a joint communal pot luck dinner in the park, brought along a bunch of dishes that I made with my cheap produce, including Moroccan carrot salad, mustardy potato salad, homemade pickles, and Korean cucumber salad. Provided disposables for the picnic that I bought cheaply at a local sale.
I had forgotten to arrange for someone to bring drinks to the picnic, but I didn't have any empty bottles to fill with water to bring, so collected some empty bottles from neighbors which I filled to bring along. Also brought along a water dispenser that we had, filled it up with lemon slices and mint from my friend's garden for an alternative to water.

Did you have a frugal week or a spendy week this week? What did you do to save money this week?