Back to school has hit at our house already, as my three youngest have ventured back to school last week in our year-round school district. I still have two at home with me, but they are the oldest and are easily entertaining themselves. I get a lot more done with children gone, though I have been missing them terribly.
I kept myself busy with articles and research. So what articles showed up in the Frugal Living Blog last week?
Is there any better feeling than cleaning out a coat pocket or fishing through a jean pocket, and pulling out a five, ten or twenty dollar bill, that you forgot was there. It’s like “found” cash. I have a rule on laundry day.
Finding Extra Cash in New Ways
Yes, it’s another post that stems from our preparing our house to sell. This time, we are looking at the back yard. I’ve always been one to save money on anything I can, but with yards, you have to keep them looking good, for fear of the complaining neighbors or zoning issues.
Most of the time, the kitchen really seems to be the functional heart of the home. There is generally a lot of ongoing activity in a kitchen. This makes for plenty of opportunity to reuse items that otherwise might be thrown away.
Reuse Review: Items From the Kitchen
These days, it is not uncommon to meet people who live paycheck to paycheck. It is also not uncommon to see these people and others living on only one income, and still paycheck to paycheck.
As sad as it seems, at our house, we are already looking at the purchase of school supplies. With three children starting school this Thursday, yes, I said this Thursday, we have to go get them today. Thank you, year-round school.
Saving Some Money On School Supplies
Wallpaper can give any room almost instant appeal. It is a little fancier than paint ,and with proper care, it can last a good long time. Wallpaper sometimes has a reputation of being expensive.
As I mentioned yesterday, my children go back to school on Thursday, which just seems crazy to me. However, we are now in the whole “last minute” school supply mode, quickly gathering up everything we can find, shopping everywhere we can think of, and just generally trying to save as much money as possible. We have five children after all, and a supply list that covers the front and back of a legal pad size piece of paper!
Frugal Places to Shop for School Supplies
There are just some places that you should avoid purchasing school supplies. The reason is, because no matter how great one deal is, that is how they rope you in. They hope by offering a great deal, you’ll stay and purchase the rest. Not a good idea, if you are truly interested in saving money
The Least Frugal Places to Shop for School Supplies
Don’t throw it out! Is half of your summer produce winding up in the trash? The summer heat can shorten the life of fresh produce. But, if you have a few secrets in your kitchen, you can reduce your produce waste. I recently posted an article in the food blog called “Fun with Celery.
These days, you could easily spend hundreds of dollars on facial treatments, moisturizers, anti-wrinkle creams, etc. But you don’t really have to do that to get great results. Nature has already provided everything for you in bountiful ways.
Every time I used to empty out the trash, I was annoyed at all the large plastic bottles that were in there taking up space. Several years ago, we had a recycling program, but now we don’t. So I decided to figure out what to do with all these leftover plastic bottles from anything and everything
Reuse: New Uses for Old Plastic Bottles
Do you seem to always wind up with tons of toothpaste tubes. I do. Sometimes we try one and decide we really don’t like them, other times we just get a new one and the kids might forget about the old one and by then it just seems silly to use it. So they collect in this basket I have.
Reuse: New Uses for Toothpaste
If you want to treat blemished skin in a natural way, don’t look to those expensive creams, lotions and potions that promise natural ingredients from the four corners of the earth. Instead, look to your own garden or grocery store to find everything that you need to make your own blemish scrub.
Think you are a diehard yard sale shopper? Then maybe you are ready to join hundreds of thousands of other people at the world’s longest yardsale. The world’s longest yardsale, also known as the Highway 127 Corridor Sale, spans 630 miles through five different states.
With all the cleaning and purging we are doing as we prepare the house to go on the market, we are coming across dozens of items that we seem to have a lot of. The other day I opened a kitchen cabinet and way in the back behind bottles of seasoning and other things, was six – yes you saw that correctly – six unopened packages of straws. Four of them have more than 200 straws in them. Why in the world do we have so many straws? I seriously have no clue, but I do know what I will do with some of them.
Do you have something on your list to buy the next time you head to the mart store, or home improvement store? Well, get ready to cross it off of your list, because you probably already have something right in your home that will do the job.
Reuse Review: Common Household Items