August Frugals

[fidgiegirl]

$125 for a new dining room set?

I know . . . except we just bought the other set 3 months ago or so!!!

Some day I'm going to explore/master the world of craig's list and ebay! I just know there's money out there for me to make and/or save! I'm thinking some sort of part-time income after I sell the restaurant...

Overall, we do pretty well. I don't know if we could make serioius money at it, but we earn a little extra pocket money and get used goods at decent prices.

Plus we've saved a lot in trash hauling. That's one way you could start. Just post free unwanted items - even broken ones, and ANYTHING, it seems, will get taken. We are very up front about all of the condition of things and it STILL gets taken. We are simply amazed sometimes. We have given away: snowblower (broken - too old), power washer sprayer (broken - just the sprayer), chainsaw (broken - DH spent 6 weeks in a community ed class trying to fix!!), even a garbage can that was almost destroyed, perfumes, toiletries, tampons!, bike trailer that was missing parts, fabric, prom dresses, dog bed, dog food, camping toilet, rooftop luggage rack, luggage (broken!)

Sold: bikes, furniture, surplus antiques, car racks, dog kennel, camper, canoe paddles, local sports memorabilia

Bought: current modem ($50 cheaper than retail and works great), current dining set (and former ) - antique round table that extends to 85" plus six chairs, patio set - table, four chairs + adirondack chair and footstool for $75, floor lamp

GOT for free: dirt! (lots of it!), garage door opener, wheelbarrow, fireplace tools,

Sorry, I got a little carried away with this list. I am quite sure it is not even complete!! I have been Craigslisting since about 2004 when I needed money to go to India and got lots of petsitting jobs off of it. And the buying/selling naturally kind of followed. Ok, it was fun to make the list. If you made it this far, you get a prize!!

[danna]

Aug 30
--trip to Costco and only spent $100.00 between Dd and myself...a lot of good stuff almost all on sale.
--combined errands to save gas
--did the intake interview to volunteer at the city seniors home, it is so close I could walk, volunteering is not necessarily frugal but, it was keep me busy and feeling useful without costing anything....I think a win, win

[bunnys]

Don't think I've spent any money since last weekend. Yesterday and the day before I did my laundry and hung enough of the 3 loads on the line to only have to dry 1 load.

Took my lunch to work every day this week--haven't gone out once. But tomorrow is Friday (the last day of Teacher Week.) If my department wants to go out, I'll go with them.

But totally wasted a bunch of gas this week running back and forth to school. Yesterday (Professional Development) went to the host school, came back home for lunch (gas was less than buying lunch out would have been--way less) then went back, then came home again before going back to my school to take class fees in the evening. Then came home and went to the park to walk doggie. I went all over the place yesterday. Not very frugal.

But the dog has been trying to dig out of the yard this week because I haven't been home and she's bored. Which would not be a good thing.

[Stella]

Thanks for the compliment bke! I kind of enjoy organizing. It's funny because when I was younger I absolutely hated cleaning and organizing.

We're having a pretty frugal weekend so far. We drove out to the Wisconsin border today (under an hour away) to have a picnic with my great-aunt B. We tried to talk her into letting us bring food, but she wasn't having it. She always insists on providing the food and she is such an excellent cook. She made a ham and brought rolls for ham sandwiches and we had pasta salad, watermelon, rice pudding, grapes, pretzels, B's famous molasses cookies, Swedish almond cake and chocolates. It was a feast. As always she sent us home with the leftovers. The ham should give us at least another meal and the ham bone will make some good split pea or navy bean soup.

While Mom was here we started having a snack at the table in the afternoon as well as our breakfast, lunch and dinner. Snacks were previously kind of catch-as-catch-can and harder to plan for. The kids really enjoyed the planned snacktimes and had such a good time with it that we plan to continue it over the year. It's going to make it much easier to know what I need for the week.

We are also getting back to real slow food dining. Don't get me wrong, we've always been eat-at-the-table people, but lately we've been slowing down and taking a little more time to enjoy it and making it more of an event. Pretty place settings, good food, wine. We used to be more like this, but since about the time I was on bed rest with Charlotte I'd been struggling just to get dinner on the table. Now that I've got everything back to good I think we're going to be back to dining like this permanently. It's frugal in the sense that it brings a lot of value and satisfaction for the money. You have to eat anyway, you might as well enjoy it.