This past week I looked after my aunt's garden while she was out of town. She told me to pick and keep any produce that was ready. I picked piles of squash and some cucumbers. I did pick peppers but left those in the refrigerator for her. I gifted some of the squash to a neighbor who was not planting a garden this year.
Since I had excess squash between my garden and hers, I dehydrated what I was not going to cook fresh. This saved room in my freezer which had extra space for all of the squash. The dehydrated squash takes up much less room. I shredded zucchini and dehydrated this also. The 21 cups of shredded zucchini amounted to 4 cups once dehydrated. I will use the shredded zucchini in muffins.
I combined the errands I needed to run with an errand W had. This saved gas and we were happy to spend the extra time together. We decided to come home to eat rather than picking up takeout. The meal was satisfying and saved money.
I purchased the rest of the toothpaste for the shoeboxes. With coupons we actually made money on two of the tubes. I got two tubes for tax only and spent 50 cents plus tax on the rest. I saw a blog post that flip flops were on sale 2/$1 at Kmart. I placed on order online for store pickup. This ensured that I was able to get the sizes that I needed. It will save time as I only need to stop by the store today to pick up the order rather than dig through the piles to find what I needed.
We got rain twice this past week so I did not have to water the garden. Rain water seems to make everything grow so much better. I had decided to plant some pumpkin seeds from 2011 and was happy to find that they have sprouted. I am glad that I opted to try them instead of purchasing new ones.
One thing I have been doing but forget to mention is packing W's lunch stuff in reusable containers. It means washing a few more dishes, but I do not have to purchase disposable bags. Considering the amount of food I pack in W's lunch each week, this is a significant savings. I am working to get a collection of higher quality reusable containers. They pay for themselves long term and are much better than the cheap versions.
2 comments:
I've been doing that too with John's lunch Dawn, packing more and more in reusable containers. I've had the same box of sandwich bags with new in the box now since first part of the year. I've been using more reusable containers in the fridge for storage for a couple of years now. I generally choose a wide mouth jar (like salsa). I'll less prone to waste food if I can SEE it.
Well done on the savings! The only thing I've been saving on is to get a water metre installed at this property (even if we are renting), we should be saving half the money on bills. We were paying an enormous amount of money before on some premium rate. UGH. I've always been careful with water, but now I'm even thinking about being more careful around the garden.
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