Last Friday I did a look back at everything I had done that was frugal over the course of the week. As I sit here today, I'm not sure this is going to be so easy. Last week was all about shopping, but this week was definitely not a shopping week. Probably the most frugal thing we did was Jason and I sat down this past weekend and planned our meals for the week based on things we had in the freezer and fridge, and I just picked up a few things to round it out. I knew what we would have, and it kept me out of the grocery stores all week.
Another regular money saver for us is packing lunches. I was thinking about this today as I packed up three lunchboxes (Jason packs his own). Alanya would eat hot lunch at school every day if we'd let her. When she first started school, we let her pick and choose because it was still so exciting for her to have a hot lunch. But at $2.00 a pop, that really adds up. Ben likes to say that I could feed our whole family for a week with $2.00 and a few coupons. Probably not, but he's on the right track. The rule had been two hot lunches a week, but we weren't really sticking to it. If it was a busy morning and the kids all said they wanted hot lunch, it was easy for me to agree. New rule is once a week. Period. Don't think my kids are suffering, this isn't the lunch we'd get 25 years ago in a crumpled bag. Today Ben and Alanya both had hot chili in their thermos. (I just got chewed out by them because I put the wrong thermos in the wrong box! Ben was not very pleased he had the Hannah Montana thermos, and Alanya said there was way too much chili in hers! Ooops!) We had the chili for dinner this week and it has two kinds of beans and is loaded with vegetables. Hope they aren't forever labelled in school as 'the gassy kids'. Noah took peanut butter and jelly on two leftover pancakes. For Noah it's always pb&j, it's the vehicle that carries it that changes for him.
This year while packing lunches I also changed the way I did drinks. Fifty cents to buy milk? Are you kidding me? I have reusable plastic drink boxes and they take one for lunch and one for snack. When this school year started I switched from two milks to a milk and a water. The kids stopped complaining after two days, and I save a full gallon of milk a week.
What else did we do to save a little? We moved forward with refinancing. Paid bills online. Wore warm socks and shoes and a sweatshirt while home so I wasn't tempted to turn the heat up. Threw a snack in my bag when I went out in the morning so that I wouldn't impulsively buy anything to eat. It's the little things that add up. Thanks to Jennifer at Getting Ahead for encouraging me to reflect a little!
3 comments:
Hey Laura, I am struggling with packing lunches for ds. they can buy lunch $2.25! and ala carte items, for $.50 each. I put $15 in at the beginning of January to last all month. which works out to hot lunch once a week and 1 ala carte item a week. But I can't come up with good stuff to pack. He doesn't like PB&J and of course is asking for lunchables. Ugh! It looks like you had a great week! We had a "too cold to go to school day here" and it totally feels like Saturday already.
Jennifer, one of the lunches my kids have instead of a sandwich is 'lunchables'. I send in crackers, cheese and a few pepperoni slices. They think it's awesome, and one of the fun lunches. Go figure. Do you have a thermos? My kids take pasta, soup, chili, rice and beans. I even send yogurt in it with cereal and raisins for them to do "mix-ins". Have you posted on Shoestring? They might be able to come up with some new ideas.
I do the fake Lunchable thing to for my son! With his school lunch running $2.75 a day, there is just no way. We let him buy one day of his choice a month. It's usually footlong hot dog day.
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