Five Frugal Things

All of my Five Frugal Things stem from the fact that I am having a no spend week this week to jumpstart Frugal February, so here they are:

1. Redistributed my resources

We live in a two story house and it feels like each floor is a different country sometimes:) When I am upstairs I hate coming downstairs for something and vice versa, so this has led me to have two of certain items in the house at all times. For example, I have two containers of face moisturizer because sometimes I take my showers upstairs and sometimes I take them downstairs (I know this sounds lazy, but it is what it is!)  So this week, I ran out of moisturizer upstairs and conditioner downstairs (my daughter informs me that there is no more conditioner in the pantry…) Since this is my no spend week, I cannot simply run to the store for a new bottle, so I just refilled the empty containers with some from the newer containers and its like magic! **Redistribution of resources sounds way more exciting than refilling bottles with other bottles, so that’s what I am calling it…

2. Cleaned out my spice cabinet

Another thing that I ran out of was cinnamon and cumin.  Of course, I needed both this week and already spent my allotted grocery money at the store, so I was bummed. Until I thought that maybe I had an old container somewhere in my messy cabinets.  After a 5 minutes of cleaning out old powdered sugar and hard marshmallows, I found an old cinnamon container with just enough cinnamon to last me for the week and a whole bottle of cumin.  So the moral of the story is, organization always pays off:)

3. Made my family eat oatmeal candy

I hope my family is not the only one who whines over the weirdest things??! This past week was Ground Day and I had a cute treat planned that involved Oatmeal Crème Pies (which my family loves) but I forgot to buy them before my Frugal February started… Since I did not want to waste any of my precious grocery money on Little Debbies, I decided that Oatmeal candy (some people call them no bake cookies) would work just as well.  Of course, half of the family complained that they were looking forward to Little Debbies, but frugalness prevailed:)

4. Discount apples

Since this was my no spend week, I had only $25 to spend at the grocery store for essentials.  One of my essentials each week, are apples.  This week, I noticed that Kroger had large Ambrosia apples on their discount rack for a bag of four for just $1. **It was kind of a gamble because we had never tried Ambrosia apples before, but Emma said they were ok thankfully.

5. Redeemed free items with coupons

I always try to save my freebie coupons and gift cards for Frugal February to spice up our month a little. This week I used a coupon my mom gave me for a free item from Zaxby’s and got two free Whitt’s BBQ sandwiches with coupons for donating blood (Thanks Rachel!) Free always tastes great:)