New Year

One thing I’m really looking forward to in the new house is that there are no stairs. Not because I’m lazy, but because the children are constitutionally incapable of going up and down without acting, and sounding, like an entire herd of thundering elephants.

Food waste: some bean soup I defrosted. We ate some but there was just too much of it. Note to self: freeze in smaller portions. Some chia seeds I had soaking. It should have occurred to me that I can’t just keep adding seeds and water to the solution. Part of a tomato that drifted to the bottom of the fruit bowl and acted like an apple until it got a bit black. I bravely ate the unaffected portion. And the usual suspects from the children’s lunches.

I filled the trunk of my car on Sunday and took it to the Goodwill: clothes, toys, books, old kitchen stuff. I also shredded many documents with the able help of #1Child, who’s discovered a new avocation in shredding. And I sold another book on half.com and several magazines on ebay. I freecycled two decrepit kids’ bikes and a open container of goldfish (the goldfish kept dying, we moved onto a sturdy betta fish). I think I can get rid of 3 bookcases, a couple of small storage units, the enormous and unwieldy dresser in #2Child’s room, and my huge desk which is just a clutter magnet anyway. Phew!

Moving stuff out to move

Probably buying a house, which means moving, so decluttering is accelerating.  I took 6 grocery bags of clothes/shoes to Goodwill this week, donated some books to the Prison Library Project, and managed to sell a dress, a pair of shoes, and three books on eBay or half[dot]com. Tomorrow when the consignment place opens I’ll call them about taking a couple of jackets and dresses and combine that with taking in some old-fashioned jewelry to the place that buys such things. 

Went out for a pricy dinner last week.  Somehow I thought “we want to take you out” meant the other couple would treat … that plus the babysitting added up fast.  It was fun, though, and they are wonderful friends.  It evens out because they threw a great party (catered!) this past weekend and my parent came and watched the children, so we had a free fun night out.

Ate lunch for free at work twice last week.  Free lunch today and free dinner tomorrow.  And with Other Adult working through dinner time 5x/week, my dinners are much cheaper. 

Have to remember to make the luminarias with the children to use up the thrift store candles and the miscellaneous glass jars.

Raffle for savings

Last week my mother treated the children and me to a Christmas party put on by one of the clubs to which she belongs.  There were snacks and, excitingly, a raffle for which not many attendees bought tickets, apparently.  I bought 6 tickets for $5 (the party was a fundraiser for a Good Cause) and won a $20 gift card to a local toy/bookstore and a $10 gift card to a local cafe with a pound of coffee.  Each child got a craft kit. My mother (who bought 12 tickets) won a giant Christmas wreath and a journal. SCORE!  We used the cafe card the very next day.

Thrift store this week: I got a bag of miscellaneous candles — I want to make luminarias with the children; a holiday dress for #2Child; a pair of knee-high boots, real leather; 4 tops; and a puzzle for #2Child for Christmas. $35.  The dress was the most expensive item at $9.99.

Had free lunch at work twice.

All this, and we’re buying a house and about to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and see our monthly expenses rise, not in rent/mortgage so much as in utilities.  Lalala!

Double food save

I hope this counts, haha.  I’ve been saving the uneaten fruit slices (apple, mostly) in the freezer.  The bag filled up so I made a simple fruit puree.  I thought #2Child might eat some, but that wasn’t happening, so I used it in baked goods instead, breakfast cookies and some oatmeal muffins for Other Adult.

I realized that I haven’t bought cheese sticks in a long time.  The plastic packaging was the deal breaker there.  That also led to the homemade yogurt and to the cessation of granola bar purchasing, although OA gets them, and Clif bars, frequently. Now the argument is that OA needs them “for work” although OA also goes out to lunch every. single. day.  OA is not a brown bagger.  OA thinks my efforts to reduce waste and to conserve energy are silly.  Okay, now I’m pissed off.

What’s the money going on?

I have a bag in the freezer where I put random leftover fruit, mostly apple slices from the children’s lunches.  It was full so I put the fruit in a pan and cooked it til soft, then pureed it.  Then I made breakfast cookies and used some of the fruit puree there — as well as the leftover egg yolks from the Thanksgiving meringue.

Made turkey soup. Other Adult expressed not wanting to eat any more turkey. I ended up giving all the leftover turkey and the leftover soup to my mother, who was happy. 

Used stale bread from the freezer for #2Child’s french toast. #2Child likes it cut up in small pieces anyway.

Made a palatial lasagna last night thinking it would be two nights’ dinners, but everyone was so hungry that now there is enough leftover for a weekend lunch at best.  I can’t regret being the victim of my own cooking success.

Totalled up October’s food costs.  Even leaving out our dinner out with friends ($40) and the kids’ school lunches, I spent almost $600.  HOW?! 

Must speak with Other Adult about a better way to share paying for household costs.  The business where I pay for everything is not good or necessary any more.

Post-Thanksgiving update

Food waste: half a can of coconut milk, carefully placed in a glass jar in the fridge. Should have frozen it. I made half sandwiches for the children’s lunches at home the other day, they didn’t eat them. Horrible war between eating them myself (saving! but fattening!) and throwing them away (wasting! but slimming!).  I made a meringue for dessert on Tday and saved the egg yolks in the fridge, and keep forgetting to use them in either of the two batches of pancakes or the muffins (made with leftover cranberry relish), so I fear those may turn. I should get off my fat turkey-eating ass and freeze them.

No shopping was committed on Friday.  Small Business Saturday saw us trekking to our local downtown and me spending $32 (including tax) on stocking stuffers. We also ate at a place that turned out not to be participating so Other Adult didn’t get the $25 Amex credit. Whoops.

Hypothetical extra money

I always love this kind of dreaming.  The Non Consumer Advocate asks here (http://thenonconsumeradvocate.com/2010/09/what-would-you-do-with-an-extra-100-1000-10000-2/) what would you do with an extra $100? $1000?  $10,000?

$100: get my hair cut and buy a new pair of shoes.  Oh no, that was before I got a traffic ticket this morning. Pay ticket.

$1000: Put it towards the car repair bill.

$10,000: Put some in the children’s college savings funds, use some for family vacation. I received a legacy in this amount a year ago and that’s what I did with it. Some stayed in the emergency fund.

Now, if I didn’t want to save any of it, just spend spend spend, I’d do this:

$1000: family weekend out of town at a nice hotel OR send the money to my sister so she and her partner could come and visit.

$10,000: arrange a family vacation in some fun spot like Costa Rica, pay for mother, sister and sister’s partner to join us.  Extra money, I would invite a couple of friends to come as well.

More spendy times

The children needed new jeans and pants. #1Child was adamant about NOT getting them at the thrift store. Off to Target. 6 pairs of jeans, 1 pair of leggings, $120. Oh well, now they’re equipped for the winter.

#1Child was ranting the other day about how “you never want to spend your money, you have all this money and you don’t want to spend it.” I stopped, took a deep breath, and said calmly, “Why do you think I have a lot of money?  What makes you think that?”  I was honestly curious. #1Child either could not, or chose not to, answer.

Food waste: some leftover white rice that went bad. Most of two pears that went from ripe to putrid overnight, literally. I chopped off the good bits and threw them into the bag in the freezer where I’m keeping other miscellaneous fruit leftovers.  And I don’t know if this counts, but I was making croutons under the broiler and burnt them, so had to throw out the charcoal blocks formerly known as bread AND the baking sheet that had caught on fire.  Whoops.

Food save: I made yogurt with the half gallon of milk I got for 99 cents because it was going to expire the next day. #1Child refused to drink expired milk, even after I explained the difference between sell-by and use-by dates.

A friend just gave me a bag of long-sleeved Ts.  They all fit and look great. 

I managed NOT to buy shoes, even though they were on sale. I don’t need shoes.  I took my shoes with the broken strap to the shoe repair place and had it fixed for $9. I would have had them fix the broken purse strap, but they wanted to charge $25. Since I got the purse at the thrift store of $3.50, I passed on that, took it back home, and used krazy glue. So far, so good.

Spendy times

The car needed over $4K of work.  On the other hand, I couldn’t buy a new car for $4,000. And now it runs great. I hope to keep it at least another 5 years.

Food waste: Leftover rice noodles. No one eats them! Ever! I suggested to Other Adult that we cook fewer rice noodles next time. OA said, “They’d be good if I fried them. But somehow I didn’t think of that.” I repeated that we should just cook fewer rice noodles in the future. Also, and this really chapped me, I bought OA some pork chops. OA is the only one here who really likes pork. And the pork chops sat in the fridge until they went bad. That’s the last time I go out of my way to get OA meat. Honestly!

I did take a canteloupe that was getting soft, pureed it and turned it into canteloupe bread ala this post:  http://asugarhigh.blogspot.com/2010/06/cantaloupe-bread.html

It was fine, but the recipe says two loaves.  Yes, two dwarfish loaves!  That amount of batter would have made one decent-sized loaf. I froze the second one.

I also started a bag in the freezer for leftover cut-up fruit, mostly from the children’s lunches. When I’m in the mood I’ll defrost it and turn it into fruit muffins.

Most excitingly, I went to my first food swap today. After worrying myself into making two different items, I arrived to find that there were only 3 other attendees, two of whom were the organizers.  Still, it was a start.

Broken promises

I’ve fallen off the Unprocessed wagon by eating white rice and pasta. *hangs head in shame* Also, part of a sugar cookie. I made a batch for the children’s Halloween party tomorrow (the little guests decorate their own cookies. put the kids to work!).

I joined Real Mom Nutrition’s pantry challenge, where you spend $50/week on groceries and eat your pantry supplies, and then went grocery shopping and spent $70 at Sprouts and $40 at Vons.

Also, my car needs “$1200, $1300 easy” worth of work. Curse that heating and cooling system! However, it’s STILL cheaper and environmentally than buying a new one — right?