Frugal in the kitchen

I've had a few people ask me recently to share some frugal tips. I thought it'd be easiest to share my frugal tips room by room, just for organization's sake. I'm starting with the kitchen, because it seems to be the easiest place to see fast results.

Food 

Here you can read my post about how to start the ball rolling on frugal grocery shopping. Stockpiling is key!

Next, you must make sure you're using everything you buy. I'm not always perfect in this respect, especially since returning to school. Here is a post about how I used up our turkey leftovers at Thanksgiving, just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Dinner leftovers make great lunches the next day. Grilled chicken can become chicken salad, or be diced and thrown into a tortilla with some salsa and a bit of cheese. Even a couple of spoonfuls of veggies can be a side dish for Sam (14 months old) at lunch. I've dressed up fried potatoes with cheese to make a quick lunch for me. And remember to save the heels of bread for homemade croutons or breadcrumbs! Get creative! Try stretching your dollar by delaying your grocery trips by just one more day, if possible. An eight-day week might make your creativity blossom! My trips are usually about every 10 days, not counting a quick stop by Aldi for milk every few days.

Think ahead! I really liked the suggestion in The Tightwad Gazette, that dinner plans for the next day be made while washing dinner dishes. That way I'm still in the kitchen, thinking about dinner, thinking about what we had and what leftovers I've got - it helps me decide what I'm going to make the next night and determine if anything needs thawing. (That means I'm less likely to have a dinner emergency at 4:30 the next night and run down to the corner grocery for a pricey convenience meal!)

Cleaning

Most of the cleaning supplies I use, I make myself from non-toxic ingredients. There is no need for me to reinvent the wheel and detail all of my recipes, as so many other women have done a better job than I of putting the info out there. I recommend the book Clean House, Clean Planet for the best recipes. I've also made my own laundry soap in the past. Go Google it, I know you'll get a few 100 recipes. My tip? Use the dry recipe. It's easier to put together.

The basic of cleaning with homemade ingredients is vinegar. Don't like the smell? So what?! The smell goes away as soon as the vinegar has dried. I also use tea tree oil, castile soap (Dr. Bronner's Peppermint is my fave), and baking soda. Borax (my one toxic ingredient) is used in the toilet bowl.

Trash Talk

Don't buy paper products to clean with. Good grief! Talk about throwing your money away! Show of hands - how many people have stained t-shirts that they just throw away? Mismatched or holey socks? Start yourself a little bin in your laundry room or in your kitchen for those odds and ends, and put them to good use. Have an unmentionable mess that you NEED to throw away? Then use that old t-shirt to clean it up and THEN throw it away.

Are you reusing your food containers for storage? There are so many uses for salad containers, for coffee cans, for cereal boxes - you can pretty up so many items that most "normal" (read: in debt up to their eyeballs) people would throw away. Don't even get me started about milk jugs. Those little wonders are GOLDEN in a frugal kitchen. And don't even tell me if you're not washing out your ziploc baggies after every use - 'cause you know that those couple of bread crumbs left in that bag makes it completely unsanitary for reuse. (that was sarcasm, btw.) That kind of waste keeps me up at night. *shudder*

Are you composting? Recycling? Trash bags are expensive. Some of you have to pay for trash pickup by weight or volume. Ask yourself, every time you throw something away, "Can I reuse this?"

Are you using cloth napkins? Handkerchiefs? (Use the 100% cotton variety of both.) Handkerchiefs can often be found at Target after Christmas for a steal. I've also found some beautiful vintage ones at garage sales for a quarter. If you have children, are you cloth diapering?

Okay, that's all I've got for now. Next up? The laundry room!

Marsh Triple Coupons!

Total spent = $20.59

Total saved = $66.30

I would've done better, but I had to get milk. Still, not bad!

Frugal Cloth Wipes

I know you've heard me wax poetic about cloth diapers in the past. I love my cloth diapers: frugal, earth-friendly, and so much prettier than nasty plastic diapers. To keep with the theme, I also use cloth wipes. It makes no sense to pay out money for the equivalent of chemical-laden paper towels, and it's just not practical to throw a diaper in the pail and a wipe in the trash. (Not to mention, they can get pricey.)

I knew that I needed to replenish my stock of cloth wipes - the ones I have are threadbare after being washed, over and over, for years. This time, instead of shelling out $5/dozen for some WAHM-made wipes, I decided to make my own. I kept my eyes peeled in the paper for a good sale/coupon at JoAnn Fabrics, so I could make my wipes as cheaply as possible.

And then, guess what I found on Craigslist? A dozen flannel receiving blankets for $5! Just what I needed: cheap flannel! I pounced on those blankets, you can bet! Two of them turned out to be made of something other than flannel, but no worries.

Originally, I tried to cut my wipes 8x8 inches, and only zig-zag the raw edges of two squares together. That didn't work - too much fraying. So then I cobbled this method together:

1. Cut wipes to desired size. (In my case, that's 8 inches x 8 inches.)

2. Enlist the help of a five-year-old to do my seam ripping. (Not that I make any mistakes, mind you!)

3. Sew squares right-sides together with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Leave an opening to turn wipes right-side-out.

4. Snip the corners to reduce bulk.

5. Turn wipes right-side out, and sew as close to the edge as possible, all the way around.

6. Enjoy the finished product: 38 wipes for $5. (Quite a savings!)

The Lovely Bones

If you're a vegetarian, you'll want to skip this post.

It was a good Thanksgiving. As one of my Facebook friends said, the dessert to main dish ratio was just right. (We had 8 desserts for 15 people.)

Yes, I stocked up on turkeys when they were on sale for 57 cents a pound. Not as good as last year's 44 cents a pound, but I'll take it.

Now that the feast is over, I have picked the bones clean. Literally. After the feast was done yesterday afternoon, I took the turkey carcass (isn't that just a lovely word, carcass? "What are you eating, dear?" "Carcass! It's delicious!") and stuffed half of it into the crock pot with some unpeeled carrots, unpeeled but halved onions, and some celery stalks. It made a lovely broth that will flavor rice and help with casseroles in the coming month. This morning, I took the second half of the carcass (again! That word!) and repeated yesterday's crock pot adventure. For tonight's dinner, we'll have turkey noodle soup, made from the bone broth/stock I made today. YUMMO!

For those of you who are stock-illiterate, let me break down the process:

1. Strip every piece of usable meat from the bones of your leftover turkey.

2. Put said bones in a big stockpot or crock pot, set on low. (If you had a big turkey like we did, you may have to do 2 batches.)

3. Wash some celery and carrots, chop 'em in halves or thirds, and throw them in. Chop a couple of smallish or just one large-ish onion in half, throw it in. (Don't worry about peeling. Really.) Pour in water to cover.

4. Let simmer for a few hours. At least 3, but 6 is better.

5. Put a nice big bowl in your sink with a sieve (or colander lined with cheesecloth) on top. Pour the pot's contents into the bowl, letting the sieve filter out all the solids.

6. Allow your stock to cool. Taste it - you'll need salt! Don't be shy. Like Ina Garten says, "The difference between dishwater and good stock is salt!"

7. Cover and refrigerate. In a few hours (or the next morning) skim off the fat. Some people like to cook with turkey fat. I sometimes give it to the dog on her food. It's too greasy for me, and I'm not afraid of fat!

8. Using a ladle, portion the broth into Ball canning jars and store it in the freezer, with the date on the lid. (I put my jars in the sink while I ladle. Less mess.) Leave an inch/an inch and a half headspace to account for expansion during freezing.

Simple & frugal. All those trace minerals from the turkey bones are in the broth. Enjoy!

So much to say, so much to say, so much to say

I know I've been gone a while. Sorry. Having four kids, being pregnant, and trying to get into nursing school keeps me hoppin'!

Wait, didn't I bring everyone up to speed? Lemme start again:

1. I've gone back to school. Since a BS in Education won't get me anywhere, I'm working toward an ASN. Hopefully, I'll graduate in May of 2013, pass my NCLEX and become an RN. Pray for me.

Okay, yeah, I know I said a few posts back that one cannot work 40 hours a week and still run a household and parent effectively. I still stand by that, 100%. So Hubby or I will be part-time. (Hopefully, it'll be me. We'll see.) My decision to go back to school was based on a lot of factors. Can we make it on one income? Yes. Do I want to continue to juggle as we have been, since the recession hit? No. We're doing just fine, but I need a little more security, a little more certainty. One of us needs to have a recession-proof job. And one of us needs to work while the other goes to school. It just makes sense that the person going back to school would be me - Hubby has a job (while I would have to look for one, and being with child doesn't exactly endear one to potential employers), and since I have one degree already, my getting a second degree is faster than Hubby going back and starting from scratch.

So, why nursing? I wanted a worthwhile job, one that is more than punching a time-clock. I want to serve. (Coming from an education background, I felt a strong need to contribute.) I want job security for my family. I want a job that makes me think. Nursing offers me all that. It's a technical field, I'll constantly be challenged, be learning, be thinking. It's not a job in which I can rest on my laurels. I need that constant mental stimulus. Nursing is obvious.

2. I'm pregnant with #5. And if I hear one more person ask, "You mean, ON PURPOSE?!" I think I just may scream. Good heavens, people - I have four children already! I know how this happens! (What is it Janet Smith says? "If you don't want to go to New York, don't get on the train!") What ever happened to "Congratulations!" I think the assumption is, since Hubby lost his job in 2008, we are somehow destitute. Not the case, thanks. He's making just about what he was then. We have insurance. Anyone notice that we're frugal? We don't throw money around. It's wasteful. So thanks for your concern, but we're doing just fine. Yes, we live in a 3 bedroom with soon-to-be five children. Babies don't take up much room, I've noticed. We have plans to move, but not until I'm out of school (either by flunking out - KIDDING! - or by graduating.) So the problem will be solved in a couple of years. I like my very small house payment. I know only one other family that pays three digits, besides us. It helps us live below our means.

Well, that sounded rather rant-y, for an update. I'll be back as time allows. Hopefully next time I'll have pictures!

Cheapo homeschool solutions

As any homeschooling mom will tell you, cheap solutions are often the best solutions. (Tell that to some of my teacher friends. The lists parents get at back to school time make my frugal hair curl! But that's a soapbox for another time.)

First up is the way we track our subjects every day. We had the problem that halfway (or less) through a day's lessons, the boys would ask me how much work they had left to do. My response would either be a patient litany of how much we still had to accomplish, or (more often) the response, "We have left what we have left." I had to come up with a better solution. I thought about making a way to keep track during the morning of what had been done and what still remained. I brainstormed magnets for the fridge that could be moved from one side to the other, a white-board that could be checked off, a list on the chalkboard that could be erased... but those all required me to either purchase something or do some kind of set up every day. I wasn't willing to add another task, no matter how small, to our day.

Then I came up with this solution:

Simple and cheap. They're just index cards, with the subjects of the day listed, one on each card. Each boy has his own color (which goes along with me color-coding my kids, but that's for another post) so it's clear who has done what. They each have a pile at the beginning of the morning, and as they complete subjects, they put the corresponding card away. When they have no more cards left, they have no more work! (It's a great time-saver for me, too. I don't have to keep a running tally in my head of what we have & haven't done.) I did get fancy-shmancy prepping for this year, since I "laminated" them between two sheets of clear contact paper for durability.

I can't remember where I picked up my next idea - it was a homeschooling blog. If you know where, let me know. I'd like to give this woman some credit! (Edited to add: Lindsay found it for me! This idea is from Kimberlee at Pondered in My Heart. Thanks, Lindsay!)

The idea was this: use milk jug lids for spelling practice! Write a letter on each lid, and let the kids practice spelling by switching the lids around. This is PERFECT for my boys, who avoid writing like it's the Black Death.

I store my lids in an old shoebox in the homeschool cabinet. I've since refined my lids so that all the vowels are blue, and all the consonants are orange.

If you look closely at the picture, you can see piles of subject cards, too. And a spoon. Hmm. So there you go! Cheap and cheerful!

This frugal idea has been linked to Frugal Friday over at Life As Mom.

Two unrelated thoughts

Adam has decided that he doesn't want to be an altar server any more. My poor Catholic mama heart is breaking. Doesn't he look just perfect in his cassock and surplice? After he fainted at the altar on Christmas Day (yes, really), he's been afraid to serve. So I got one last picture to remember his serving days. He's not completely off the hook, though. I told him that he still has to serve for family weddings, funerals, and homeschool Masses.

I'm going to miss seeing him in his vestments. (Are they vestments, when he's just an altar server?)

Now, for the unrelated bit. I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier! Hubby & I like our morning (decaf) coffee, as I've said before. However, we often have leftover coffee. Being a coffee snob (who is so grateful to have an almost sister-in-law who works for Starbucks), I don't like it reheated. When in North Carolina this past weekend, I watched my friends reheat their coffee from the previous day's brewing and shuddered at the thought! I've debated pouring leftover java on the plants, but I don't want to harm them with too much nitrogen. I use the grounds in our compost, after having reused them at least once. But what to do with the leftover joe?

Put it in ice cube trays, and save it for iced coffee!

Why didn't I think of that sooner?! I freeze all kinds of things in ice cube trays - chicken broth, tomato paste (I can never use a full can, and hate to throw any away), homemade baby food; why not coffee?

Short cut!

As organized as I like to think I am, sometimes life throws a curve ball. Soccer practice, an unexpected Play-Doh tragedy, sick kids - life happens, and dinner gets pushed back. In response, I'm trying to be a bit more proactive. Thus, this post about beans.

I love black beans, and I refuse to pay for canned beans. Dry beans are so much cheaper and (I think) tastier. The trouble is that I have to think ahead when I want to serve beans. I have to remember to soak them the night before. That doesn't always happen. What's a mom to do?

I cheated.

I cooked two pounds of beans in my crock pot, drained them and allowed them to (mostly) cool.

Then I pulled out some sandwich bags and a big freezer bag, and divided my cooked beans into serving-sized portions. And - this is important - I labeled my freezer bag before I filled it!

See how organized I am? (Actually, I'm just forgetful, so I labeled the outside of the freezer bag with my portion sizes.) I divided each cup of beans into a sandwich bag (cheaper than freezer bags), and then put all my sandwich bags into the big freezer bag. And I tried to get as much air out of each bag as possible to decrease the chance of freezer burn.

So now I have a head-start on dinner on those nights I run late! Next up for the freezer is pre-cooked taco meat!

What frugal looks like

Drying cloth diapers and clothes on the clothesline:

Filling a planter 2/3 with recycled styrofoam peanuts, before topping them with potting soil, to grow your own cooking herbs:

Upcycling an ice cream container for a compost bucket, because your children broke your pretty one:

And using that compost in your garden, to reduce your summer grocery bill:

Repurposing what I repurposed...

Okay, forgive the bad, grainy pictures. It was a cloudy day, and I did the best I could with light.

I needed a pot holder for my cast iron skillet. I hate realizing that I need to pour something out of the skillet before it burns, and then having to hunt (quickly!) for the pot holder that I'd just used and set down somewhere...

I wanted one of those handy-dandy ones that fit over the handle, but I really wasn't willing to pay $5.99+ for it. I mean, it's basically a padded sock, right? So I rummaged around in my scraps, and found a block that I had made for this quilt, but hadn't used. It was the "odd man out" and didn't fit into the dimensions of the quilt I made. So I traced around the handle of my cast iron skillet, and made a pot holder using that tracing as a pattern for this:

See? Fits perfectly! It's denim on the outside, lined with flannel on the inside. Durable, and keeps me from burning my hand.

Second, Adam was complaining that his legs were cold. (It just so happens that the chair he sits in for schooling is in the coldest spot in the house.) He wanted some leg-warmers like I wear. I grabbed a pair of knee high socks of mine that had holes in the heels and were headed for the rag bag. I found a tutorial online, and repurposed those holey socks from this:

To this:

So I managed to solve two problems in our house for $0. Yay for me!

For more frugal tips, check out Frugal Fridays, at Life As Mom.

Trio of tips

See the frugality in the above picture? No? Well, look closer:

1. Unplug appliances when not in use! You can see the "unplugged" plug of my kitchen radio/CD player. Do I really need it to be plugged in all the time? Of course not. Why not pull the plug, so that I'm not paying for the digital clock to be on? (After all, I have multiple clocks in my kitchen already. Who needs one more?)

2. As a mom, I love portable snacks. But buying individual sized everything gets expensive. One of my solutions is to buy ONE package of individual servings, and refill the containers. In this case, raisins. I reuse my little boxes, refilling them from the big container. This reduces my per-ounce cost, but I still get the advantage of portability.

3. Canning - okay, sure, not rocket science there. But I preserve my own garden produce (in this picture, yummy salsa), and I got my canning jars for free by asking around. Put the word out when you're on the hunt for something. You never know when someone will be glad to pass their junk (your treasure) on to you!

Check out more thrifty tips at Life as Mom.

You win some, and you lose some

I bought some yummy Starbucks frappuccinos at Walgreens this past week, courtesy of a sale + coupons. After I drank my first frap, I noticed how pretty the bottle is. See?

It looks like a miniature old-fashioned milk jug. I wanted to keep it, because it's pretty. But I wanted to USE it, not just keep it around, taking up space. I tried putting pens in it, but the mouth is too narrow, and the glass is too tall. Jelly jars work better for pen storage. Then I tried using it as a vase for a couple of flowers:

Fuzzy picture and my poor photographic skills notwithstanding, that didn't work, either. So I have three of these little bottles hanging out in my stockpile space, waiting for a use. Ideas?

Waste not, want not

My children will not eat the heels of a loaf of bread. Occasionally I get creative when making PB&J, and I face the heel inward, tricking the little monsters into eating their sandwiches. But those little people are crafty, and I'm afraid they'll catch on to my scheme, so I have taken to collecting bread heels in my freezer. I can't bear to throw perfectly good food away. (And because I know you're going to ask, I don't eat sandwiches at lunch, I eat leftovers. No heels for me, either.)

Eventually, all this saving leads me here (and keep in mind this is about half of what I had in the freezer):

What to do? Hubby gave me the idea of making croutons! (Forgive the picture below. I was holding a wiggly toddler.) I stacked my heels about 2 or 3 high on a cutting board, and sliced through them with a pizza cutter, making crouton-sized squares. Then I spread out the croutons on a wire rack and let them get a little hard & stale. (That's an important step, if you like crunchy croutons!) I had to wait a couple of hours.

Next, I put the stale bread cubes in a bowl, poured some free (after sale & coupons) dressing on them, lidded the bowl, and shook like mad! (The kids got a kick out of that!)

After putting my cubes on a cookie sheet, I baked them in the oven at 350 for about 10-12 minutes, opening the oven a couple of times to turn the cubes, preventing burning. After letting them cool, I stored them in an airtight (garage sale find) container. Now I have "free" croutons to go with my garden cukes and tomatos that are coming in right now. I confess that I was a little puzzled about the color of my croutons - they're darker than the store-bought kind. But then I slapped my forehead - aha! - we only eat whole wheat bread! Of course my croutons are darker!

Below, you can see Joey holding the freezer bag full of bread crumbs we made from the other half of the heels. I just threw the rest of my bread in a food processor and gave it a quick buzz. "Free" breading for recipes!

Garage sale scores!

Today I hit a great neighborhood garage sale and scored! I'm sorry that I have no pictures to share, but I had to put all the clothes away before the kids scattered them all, and of course, the toys are now strewn about the boys' room.

I took $20 from the ATM this morning, and came home with $3. Here is a list of what I bought with my $17:

• 6 long-sleeved shirts for Luke
• 2 short-sleeved tees for Adam
• 1 long-sleeved tee for Adam
• 1 pair of shorts for Adam
• 2 heavy sweatshirts for Adam
• 1 stocking cap (winter) for Luke
• 1 sweater for me
• 1 shirt for me
• 2 Rescue Hero action figures
• a bucket of Magnetix action figures
• a tub of Legos
• 6 bangle bracelets for Gracie
• 2 play sheilds
• 2 play swords
• 3 books for Adam
• 2 Transformer action figures
• 1 wire basket for my bathroom
• 1 winter coat for Adam
• 1 Bullseye and Woody toy for Luke
• 1 big Magna-Doodle
  

I think I did pretty well, don't you? I still wish I would've picked up that Easy Bake oven for $2, though...

Repurposing a milk jug

There are a million ways to repurpose a milk jug. If you are so inclined, you can peruse the two-page spread in The Tightwad Gazette that outlines a couple dozen of those ways. But here is my favorite:

I cut part of the handle off, and slice diagonally across the top. 

And then I fill it with clothespins. I can use the modified handle to slip the jug over my clothesline, or I can put the handle in my pocket (very handy!) so that I don't have to chase my clothespin container as it slides down the clothesline. 

Now I still use my pretty clothespin holder that you can see in this post, but I think my milk-jug holder is more practical. I really like that I can hook it on my pocket or the clothesline. I can make more holders easily, and best of all, I'm reusing something I already have. I've always used several milk jug holders downstairs on my basement lines, but now that I have multiple lines outside, my little hillbilly -er, ah... thrifty secret is out for everyone to see.

Summer=clothesline

It's summer, and I don't have my garden in, yet. But I have been hitting the clothesline pretty hard. See? 

I've been trying to keep from turning on the a/c, and I'm winning the battle so far. For someone who hates, hates to be hot, I have managed to keep the a/c off, even though my indoor temps have topped 85 degrees. For me, that's HUGE. Part of my a/c battle involves keeping the oven and clothes dryer off. 

I forgot, over the long winter, how quickly clothes dry on an outdoor line. I am loving that I can dry several loads in a few hours (as opposed to 24-plus on my indoor winter lines), and I love the new umbrella clothesline that my mom got me! 

I can hang two-and-a-half loads on my umbrella line! I can put a load on my regular line, start it drying, put a load or two on my umbrella line, and by the time I'm on load 3, my first load is dry. This is GREAT! 

See how much room I've got on my umbrella line? I am in looooove. I think I'm going to need more clothespins. Still cheaper than the dryer, right? 

Keeping inventory

This is a picture that I took just after Thanksgiving, but a comment from my friend Liz made me remember I wanted to post about it! 

On the right is our little white board that Hubby & I use to write little messages to each other. We were both so excited to have Thanksgiving leftovers! I LOVE Thanksgiving leftovers, and so does Hubby. The kids love them, too, because they LOVE turkey, and pumpkin pie. But that's not the point of this post. 

Next to our white board you'll see the freezer inventory. We have a chest freezer in the basement, and I (of course) use it when I stock up on good deals. (In fact, I have a couple of hams in there that I bought for a steal during Holy Week.) 

The freezer inventory works like this: I make a list of what's in the freezer, with a slash mark next to the item, indicating how many of the item I have. (If I have three boxes of stick butter, it gets three slashes.) When I remove an item from the freezer, I make an "X" out of my slash. I lifted this idea from The Tightwad Gazette, when the author writes about keeping track of her garden produce. 

The inventory helps me plan meals, and it keeps me from being wasteful. If I see a good deal coming up on an item, I can check my list to see if it's time to replenish my supply of said item, or wait for the next sale. 

I'm not perfect at remembering to cross off items, and I do make a new inventory list every four to six months (my old one gets messy and inaccurate.) But it does help! 

A Green Easter

Now don't go and think that everything that we did for the kids' Easter baskets was eco-friendly, but we did do a couple of things that were friendly to the Earth and our budget.

First, we reused the baskets from last year. I just stack them on a shelf in the basement after every Easter, and they wait to be used annually. It always amazes me how many people are too bothered to just put something on a shelf! (Here's the math: 4 kids, 18 years each, conservatively estimating $2.99 per basket = $215.28. Yep, I can find the shelf space.) 

Secondly, instead of Easter grass, we used shredded paper to fill the baskets. I shred the pre-approved credit card offers I get in the mail anyway, so why not put them to good use? (A side benefit to this is that I'm not vacuuming up that darn Easter grass for six months. I hate Easter grass!) The kids think it's cool to shred the paper and leave the baskets out for the Easter Bunny to fill. 

Third, I shop at Goodwill for some of the kids "filler" items. I can pick up paperback books at a steal. My kids love to read! 

Lastly, and this isn't as eco-friendly as wallet-friendly, I put a few useful things in their baskets. Pencils, crayons, hair bands for Grace (I should branch out to cool toothbrushes next year!), items that aren't junk. (Really, how much play does a child get out of a wind-up plastic Easter bunny that hops? And how long does that item spend in a landfill after that 3 minutes of play?)

Yes, they still get candy. Yes, they get dyed eggs. I use Russell-Stover chocolate crosses instead of chocolate bunnies - I like to keep Jesus front & center. We reuse our plastic "filler" eggs every year. Hubby insists upon jelly beans every year. In other words, there is no horrid suffering and depravation taking place because we've chosen to be crunchy and thrifty. 

Fluffy and pretty!

It was time to order some new cloth diapers. The last time I had replaced my medium Fuzzi Bunz, Luke was in diapers. That meant that my medium diapers had been in near-constant use since... 2004? With this year's tax return, I ordered a few new FBs from Natural Babies. 

They came in the mail, and OH! They are so soft and pretty! Since this was my first opportunity to order girly-colored Fuzzi Bunz, I took full advantage. (TBH, I also ordered orange and red, but they didn't look as good with the others in the photos, so just imagine them, okay?) 

Why, why, why do people insist on using crinkly, smelly, chemical-laden paper diapers? These are so lovely to the touch. Would you wear paper underwear? Me either! So why make your child wear a trash bag on her bottom all day? 

I admit, I was a bit intimidated by the choices out there on the internet - so many cloth diapers to choose from. So I ordered one. Just one. It was a red Fuzzi Bunz. And I tried it on Luke, who was a year old at the time. And I was hooked. 

I was so concerned about the extra laundry, and washing poop in my washing machine, and all the horror stories (from middle-aged women) about cloth diapers - none of which are accurate about today's cloth diapers, I can tell you! These aren't your momma's plastic pants! These are pretty, and they smell good, and they're EASY! 

• I do not keep a pail full of bleach-water in my house
• I do not dunk dirty diapers in the toilet, and carry them, dripping and nasty to the pail
• I do not touch poop when changing a diaper or taking them to the washing machine
• I have not had to buy a million pieces of special paraphernalia 
• I save money by not throwing away my diapers after every use
• I save the environment by not discarding my diapers, not using a newly manufactured diaper for every diaper change, not buying more trash bags for my diaper-filled trash cans, not wasting gas transporting diapers from factory to warehouse to store to my home and then to the landfill. Yes, I use water and energy to wash my diapers. But how much water and energy does it take to manufacture and transport single-use diapers? And how much room do they take up in the landfill? YUCK! 

And can we just talk about poop for a minute? If you're a parent, poop happens. It's a fact of life, and you get used to it pretty quickly. Once your baby starts solids, poop takes on a life of its own. It needs to be dumped in the toilet after a diaper change - whether you're using cloth or paper diapers. Yep - go check the instructions on the side of your sposie diaper package. You're supposed to be flushing that poo before your sposie hits the trash! If you're not, well, then you're creating a big problem for our groundwater. (Especially if you also vax your kids. Which is an ENTIRELY different post.) So don't use the poop issue as an excuse for using your chemical-laden, crunchy (and not in a good way) diapers. Stop being a weenie and go to cloth. 

One last thought about cloth: I hear a lot of people whine about the upfront cost of cloth. Look at it this way - buying cloth diapers versus using sposies is a lot like buying a car versus renting one week-to-week. Sure, the upfront cost is off-putting, but which is cheaper in the long run? DUH! 

A thing of beauty...

is a joy at the grocery store! After months of struggling along with my previous coupon organization system, I finally broke down and bought a Mead Five-Star binder, upon the recs of some nice ladies at HCW. I have died and gone to coupon heaven! 

I had resisted buying a binder and accessories for quite a while. My previous accordion file was free, and being the tightwad that I am, I didn't want to spend money on a new system. But I realized last weekend at Meijer that my accordion-file system just wasn't working. Imagine having fistfuls of coupons, sifting through them in the aisle just because you found something on sale and darn it! You knew you had clipped that coupon! Now where is it?! (Now imagine that with a toddler in tow, who is melting down because you won't let her open the Goldfish crackers. Not pretty.) 

Yeah, I was frustrated. So I bought a new binder. I stocked it with two calculators (one for figuring per-unit prices, the other to keep a running total), a pen, paper, paper clips, kid scissors, and plenty of clear sleeves used to store baseball cards. And it zips closed, so if I drop it, I don't have a coupon avalanche! (Right, Hubby?) See? Look! 

In the above photo, you can see the front of my binder. It has a mesh pocket that zips closed. I keep my calculators here, and any coupons that I'm using during the shopping trip that I'm on. 

In this photo (above)  you can see the inside cover of my binder. On the left, there are several accordion folders, in which I keep lists, uncut inserts, and store ads. On the right, you can see a small zippered pouch that holds my scissors, paper clips, and spare note paper. 

And here is the best part- the COUPONS! Oh, they are so organized, and bring a leap of joy to my little thrifty, hyper-organized heart. I purchased some dividers along with the binder, and so I have divided my coupons by my store's layout. Health & beauty comes first, frozen food and bread comes last, with everything else in the middle. I broke out my label maker and labeled all my little tabs, and I am in LOOOOOVE. 

Did I mention that this sucker is HEAVY? Yeppers, it's a bit of a chore to haul her around, but I think it's worth it. I can find everything now, just by flipping pages. Hubby thinks I'm nuts, but that's okay, because I've already saved enough to pay for my new binder. : )