The Frugal Five: #84

 The Frugal Five: #84

With inflation on the rise and salaries not increasing, our ability to make ends meet keeps going down.    Therefore, we must be more careful with our money.   The Frugal Five is a series where we celebrate the daily or weekly activities that help us live a frugal life.    

This week I am exploring how to keep costs down during busy weeks.    Keeping dinner on the table instead of eating out is one of my strategies to get the job done.    Here are some of my tips and trips.   

1- Freezer Meal Preparing Session 

This week I had a few days off, so I took some time to organize my freezers and prepare freezer meals for the next month.   Unfortunately, I have small freezers, so I can not prepare more crockpot meals, but you do what you can when you have the resources (time and money).     Hopefully, preparing some freezer meals will help us resist eating out.  

Pro-Tip→    Shop your sales and prepare simple meals that your family loves.    One of our favorite crockpot meals is Mississippi Pot Roast.   This is easy to prepare and will feed your family for multiple meals.   

2- Homemade Italian Rolls  

Making homemade Italian rolls is easy and so affordable.   At the grocery store, I would pay $3.00 for just 4 rolls.    My recipe will make 6 rolls for just $0.75.    Since we were eating Ravioli (Monday) and Meatball Subs (Friday), I needed Italian Bread for 2 meals this week.    Instead of purchasing a loaf of Italian Bread ($2.00) and Sub Rolls ($3.00), I made one hard roll recipe and formed it into 2 different sizes/shapes.   This allowed me to use the bread twice this week.   

3- Cleaning up the Backyard

 I enjoy being outside in the spring and summer, so it is important to continue to work on my backyard as often as possible.    Last year, we needed to have an arborist in to address several trees that threatened our home and it was a good thing we did because several trees fell over the winter due to heavy winds.   All of which fell towards our wooded area and NOT towards our home.      However, several stumps should have been removed but the service wanted a lot of money to remove them.    We decided to wait and remove them ourselves.   My husband drilled holes into the stumps and placed a stump-killing mixture.    We were a little disappointed that the stumps were still strong last fall, but this spring many of them are ready to be removed.    The larger ones might just need a little more time.    This was a much cheaper solution.    

4- Blackberry and Raspberry Bush 

Last summer, my husband purchased a blackberry bush for my birthday.     Unfortunately, the bush didn’t make it through the winter.     Fortunately,  he kept the receipt and the store has a replacement policy.   Although we haven’t picked up the blackberry bush yet, we plan on doing so shortly.   

In addition, we were able to pick up a twin pack of bare-root raspberry bushes this year from Costco.    If we would have picked them up at the Home Depot, it would have cost twice as much.    We planted both buses next to each other at the edge of our wood line.  Hopefully, we’ll get some fruit this year. 

5- Preparing my Spring Garden

This year, I am planning and tracking all of my gardening activities in addition to the amount of produce my little bed will produce.    Last year, I did not do a very good job taking care of my garden and I plan on doing a much better job this year. 

Last week, I planted my seeds and sent them to the greenhouse with my friend.    These little seeds will grow into strong plants for my summer garden bed.   

However, now is the time to prepare my community garden bed and directly sow my spring bed.    I will do this in stages because I do not want all of the produce to be ready for harvest simultaneously.  I directly sowed all of the peas, carrots, radishes, beets, and onions plants.   The plants sowed in stages include lettuce, spinach, and kale.  In addition, I am considering planting broccoli.   These plants will grow and be ready for harvest between May and June.       

What Free-bees have you been able to pick up this year?    My entire year is attached below.    

Here is my list:

Do you want to see what we did last week?   

Just click on the picture for the link. 

Please leave a comment below with your ways of saving money this week.