As you may know, my husband and I are really buckling down to reduce our monthly expenses. It seems as though the prices for everything are going up, while our income remains the same. Recent unexpected expenses have drained our emergency fund and we are really trying to get out of debt.
Although our home isn’t that large by many standards, there is still plenty of space for little things to collect. Many of these things don’t normally get used because they are forgotten or aren’t convenient. But purposefully using these little things will help us stretch the budget a bit, as well as giving us new entertainment and the opportunity to try new things.
Yesterday, we had a bit of downtime between church activities. The kids were happily playing for hours in the backyard and my husband was occupied painting some trim for our basement. I decided to clean out the small secretary’s desk that lives in our front hallway. This is an area that tends to collect all sorts of miscellaneous items, from stamps to glow sticks.
I took the time to go through everything from right to left and bottom to top (Yes, I know, I’m a bit backwards there). I was able to find the following items that will now be integrated into the household or designated for use.
Those miscellaneous stamps. I found a bunch of stamps in different denominations. I put them into an envelope. The next time we need postage, we will grab from that envelope. Anything that won’t make up a first class stamp amount can be exchanged at the post office. I estimate that this will save us about $10.
Various event tickets. I found three sets of event and movie tickets. There were four tickets to the movie theater, four tickets to a city art museum and four tickets to a local botanical garden. They haven’t been used for one simple reason. We are a family of five. In the case of the botanical garden, we already have a family membership.
Friends of our recently invited us to a large combination party to honor their two school aged sons who happen to love going to the movies and museums. We can give these tickets to them. The value of all of the tickets is approximately $134.
Other items that we found included small boxes of tissues, hand sanitizer (and I was about to add some to the grocery list), store gift cards valued at $40 and more.
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