Frugal Accomplishments This Past Week and Accountability For My Struggles

Hi everyone and welcome back to my weekly round-up of all the frugal things I did this week, as well as my accountability for things that I may or may not have done as frugally as I would have liked to.

So first off- cloth diapering. I was going very well this past week! All through rain and snow and an inability to line dry my laundry outside, I was exclusively cloth diapering! Super proud of myself! I washed cloth diapers and even made a make-shift rack in my bathroom to dry them on, since I didn’t have room to hang up my standard indoor washing rack since we needed to bring a whole bunch more stuff indoors because of the storm. What helped was inheriting a bunch of cloth diapers from a friend earlier this past week (mainly pocket diapers, but also a few other types) which meant that with my increased stash, I wasn’t as stressed out about having enough diapers and having them dry in time!
I also didn’t leave any loads in the machine long enough to need to re-wash them, so points for that, as well as points for not using my dryer!
My husband did buy a package of diapers just in case, because I didn’t want to be stuck without in the storm… I did end up using one disposable diaper on Saturday night… because we had problems with our water because of the storm, and until our landlord gets that fixed (hopefully in the next few hours) we’ve been completely without water, so that means no doing laundry, not diaper laundry and not anything else- and not even washing off the dirty diapers with our diaper sprayer…

And as for food waste…
I can’t say I had none.
I did my best to repurpose a lot of food that would have otherwise gotten thrown out- even using up the zucchini bread that I made that I thought tasted icky (fortunately the kids and hubby didn’t mind it) and turned flopped frosting (peanut butter based) into a base for a smoothie.

But I did have some food that ended up in the trash. A little bit of leftover mashed potatoes with tuna fish and ketchup (half a serving, maybe), some foraged greens, some citrus fruit, a tomato, and a bunch of cucumbers. I gotta figure out how to use those cucumbers up, because I’m noticing that cucumbers are one of those things going in the trash most often…

So, what did I get right this week in terms of frugality? Well, here’s what we did to save money this past week:

Free Stuff
Hubby brought home leftover food from a party.
Got a bunch of hand me down cloth diapers.

Hubby got a whole bunch of catered food free that they delivered to his work, but most people didn’t show up to because of the snow, so they had a lot extra.
Got a free bottle of olive oil made from my mother’s olive tree.

Frugal Shopping
Bought hot water bottles with coupons.
Went shopping and stocked up on gluten free bread- great sale- very cheap beef hunks, past prime radishes, dirt cheap grapefruit and cabbage, name brand high quality aluminum foil for cheaper than the low quality stuff, cheap sardines in water, plus other stuff.
Had them slice the cheese super thin at the cheese counter, so you get more from it, able to spread it further.
Bought powdered sugar from a neighbor who sells it at half the price as the store.
Got free pastry bags from the grocery store and free raisins. (In both cases I asked the price of them, because I wanted to buy them, and they just said to take it free!)

Foraging
Foraged sow thistle and suillus mushrooms.
Mike foraged olive leaves.

Frugal in the Kitchen
Kids had homemade waffles for breakfast.

Made wild greens and past prime veggie stir fry with peanut butter tahini sauce.
Made onions, zucchini, and fennel (all either bought cheaply or got free), plus foraged lambsquarters and canned peas from scratch and dent store.
Made cheapo easy pizza with cheapo bought gluten free pita, tomato paste, and super thin slices of cheese.
Cleaned out my fridge and found some veggies that needed using up- combined soft and wilting veggies- turnips, radishes, zucchini, carrots, and turned them into a nice curry.

Made homemade beet coloring and homemade pomegranate concentrate to use as natural food colorings.
Made homemade frosting, and gluten free cake, and frosted it myself.
Served zucchini bread in the crock pot (that I didn’t think tasted good, but they liked it) for breakfast to kids and hubby together with leftover frosting- and didn’t throw it out.

Made scrap soup in the crock pot- with chicken bones, beef bones, and carrot scraps.
Took scrap soup broth and added some leftover rice and lentils from the freezer (that I put there because they came out mushy), an open can of tomato paste, suillus mushrooms, and a bunch of veggies that were soft and needed to be used ASAP to make an awesome soup that was polished off.
Made homemade popcorn.
Put buckwheat porridge to cook overnight in the crock pot.
Made decadent homemade gluten free, refined sugar free chocolate cake.
Made lentil soup for lunch and supper for the family.
Butchered a whole chicken.
Made homemade gluten free bread.
Made homemade hilbeh, a Yemenite fenugreek based dip.
Made homemade roasted eggplant salad using a cooked eggplant sitting in my fridge for a few days, and onion greens from my onions that sprouted.
Deep fried noodles- made some spicy and salty, made some chocolate covered together with pretzels, with my homemade chocolate.

All in all, a pretty good week!

So, what did you do to save money this past week? Any frugal accomplishments you’re especially proud of?

Hello there again, and thank you for tuning in to this week’s frugal accomplishment roundup, as well as my accountability challenge for the areas in which I struggle frugality-wise.
Thankfully, it’s been a good week, where I haven’t slacked too much, and have been relatively productive in the frugal arena.

So, as to accountability first of all…
I haven’t had to rewash any loads of laundry because of forgetting them in the machine! Yay! And I haven’t used the dryer at all, despite it raining outside a couple of days- and I don’t have my laundry piling up too badly! So I’m excited about that!
And on a related note, I did well with my cloth diapering challenge. I’ve been exclusively cloth diapering all week long and haven’t bought any new diapers. I used two disposables this week when we went away for the weekend (after my daughter soaked through her diaper and clothes overnight and I was afraid we’d run out of clean clothes if I wasn’t on top of changing her cloth diapers enough), so that’s great. I probably will buy disposable diapers either today or tomorrow since this week is supposed to have really bad weather, and I’m afraid that if I find out my diapers aren’t drying fast enough, I won’t even be able to go to the grocery store to buy ‘sposies, so I’m going to buy just in case, and hide them away so I don’t have easy access, just in case of emergencies.
As for food I tossed- I will be starting next week a full reckoning, so nothing to share about that for now. But it wasn’t much. (Just stuff that had gone off before I posted about starting this challenge.)

So, here’s what I did to save money this week, in addition to all that above:

Foraging

The kids and I foraged hollyhocks leaves.
The kids and I foraged lambsquarters and sow thistle.

Frugal Shopping

I went to the farmer’s market and bought a bunch of cheap, grade B produce- scouting around for the best prices, doubling and even tripling back to ensure the lowest prices possible. I bought zucchini, persimmons, avocados, apples, and bananas for between 13 and 52 cents a pound.

I went to the scratch and dent store and bought risotto rice, tomato paste, wine, and canned peas for dirt cheap.
Ordered some electric sheets to use to warm our bedrooms instead of heating them with heaters. I got them from a bargain site (with free shipping to boot!) and then they called me up to tell me that they were out of the brand I ordered, and asked if I’d be willing to have them replace the cheaper stuff that I ordered with a more expensive brand, at no extra cost. Of course! And yay!
Mike bought some great towels on sale at a great price!

Frugal in the Kitchen
I ground some short grain rice flour.

I made a bunch of homemade gluten free bread mix.

I shopped from the stockpile instead of heading out to the store for something I needed.
Made fried rice with leftover rice, chicken, and past prime veggies.

I served homemade buckwheat granola for breakfast.

Made red lentil and peas vegan bolognese for my kids with a package of gluten free pasta that I’d bought on sale (and burst open, so it needed to be used up) and past prime veggies. Everyone loved it, and my pickier kid even had 5 servings of it!

I made a salad with foraged chickweed and past prime veggies.

I put buckwheat bread in the crock pot overnight on a timer to have a hot breakfast waiting in the morning (using less electricity than baking in the oven- more on that in a future post).
I made rice with cheapo chicken wings and hollyhocks in the crock pot for lunch.
I served a shake made from cheap produce from the farmer’s market instead of cereal and milk for breakfast.
I served the kids leftover waffles that I had frozen, for breakfast.
I made hollyhocks and salmon heads for brunch for myself.

Free Things

I got some free canned goodies from a neighbor who was giving them away.

I inherited a cute cloth diaper cover from a neighbor.

I made t-shirt yarn out of a stained t-shirt.
I made a t-shirt yarn bracelet/sensory chew toy for my kid.
My boys were interested in playing Minecraft, but its expensive. Even though people were trying to convince me that it’s worth the money, I found a free version of an open source game similar to Minecraft, called Minetest, and my kids are loving it.
I downloaded a free storybook for my kids for my free Kindle e-book reader on my phone.
Trash picked a cute sparkly sweatshirt for Anneliese.

Other

I decluttered a ton of shoes, donating some to the thrift store, tossing some, and offering some others up for sale- making my small cheap house more pleasant to live in.

I reorganized and took inventory of my stockpile so I don’t lose things in it.

What did you do to save money this week? Any frugal accomplishments you’re particularly proud of? Any frugal related thing you’re particularly struggling with and trying to work on? How’s that going?

Frugal Accomplishments This Past Week and Accountability For My Struggles

Frugal Accomplishments This Past Week and Accountability for My Struggles

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