This is a new series in the style of The Frugal Girl’s Five Frugal Things, where I’ll be posting weekly(ish) about what I’ve done lately to save money and make things stretch in order to further our financial goals, which currently include us paying off a decent hunk of debt. I encourage you to play along and post your own weekly frugal wins in the comments section below!
Note: There may be affiliate links to books and products mentioned below.
I attended an inexpensive entrepreneur conference
I’ve been really impressed since starting our flower farm in 2021 with the amount of community resources there are for entrepreneurs here, and how that’s translated to more opportunities for us over the past couple of years. My latest opportunity came in the form of an inexpensive all-day business conference, which only cost $25. Normally a conference with the kind of presentations and resources that were presented by this one would have cost three or four times that, and attending the conference also gave me the necessary attendance requirement I need to pitch our business for a grant next week.
Additionally, I also met and made connections with other people in the community, some of whom might definitely buy from us in the future (and some of whom already had!).
To make the conference even more cost effective, it was held in the college town only 8 or 9 minutes away, and since they left lunch up to everyone, I just came home in the middle and ate leftovers. A frugal win all around that should count extra since it will likely help me to bring in more income through better marketing and networking in the future!
We finally took care of the earwig problem
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, our pest pressure this year both on our flower farm and actually inside our house this year has been insane. Somehow, we got a huge earwig infestation in our kids’ room in the basement, which made it necessary that they sleep upstairs in our guest bedroom for a couple of months. However, we were needing to get them back into their own room since we had family needing to stay with us this last weekend, so we finally had to tackle The Earwig Room.
We’d actually talked about possibly calling in an exterminator to spray inside the room, but we decided instead just to do an extremely thorough clear-out and deep clean of the space. Our kids didn’t have a ton of stuff in their room, but enough random little hiding places for bugs (like books stacked on nightstands and stuffed animals everywhere) made it so that we needed to pare down and minimize the room even more. We ended up getting together a large box full of donations from the room, rearranging the furniture into a better setup, and getting some furniture pieces out altogether that actually look better elsewhere. It looked like a brand new room when we were finished, and the best part is, it’s now totally earwig-free (and for the grand total cost of $0!).
I repurposed (more) organizational tools we already had on hand
Since we’re currently on a quest to become minimalists by 2024, I’ve been coming across a lot of organizational tools that were being greatly underutilized, or I’ve been decluttering everything that was in them to begin with so that they could be used elsewhere. My original plan when I made up my official minimalism plan was to buy organizers as necessary after we’d completely decluttered any area down to the essentials, but I’ve discovered that in the vast majority of cases, I don’t need to — either the space looks tidy enough on its own without extra organization, or I come across baskets/bins/dividers during the process that can be repurposed.
I still will probably buy a few organizational tools in the end (like these spring-loaded drawer dividers), but it won’t be nearly as many as I originally was planning on.
This week, my husband set up the stuffed animal net in the kids’ room that we’d brought from our previous house but had never set up, we moved a nightstand from the kids’ room to the guest room to help with organization in both spaces, I brought an empty basket from my master closet down to the kids’ room to organize my oldest son’s neckties for church, and I repurposed a dollar store bin to corral the bottle/pumping stuff so that it no longer has to live on the kitchen counter and can be put in the cupboard just beneath.
We arranged with a neighbor to have our kids walk/ride home together from school
On my busiest days, I could have up to five drop-offs and pick-ups within a 6.5 hour span, and that adds up to a lot of time/gas. To save myself both, I at least arranged to have one of the pick-ups partially taken off my plate — my oldest will walk or ride home with a friend four days of the week, and I’m responsible for them on Fridays. (I would have taken on more days, but the other mom already was having to go to pick up a younger student every day anyway at that time.) This saves me about 7 miles of driving every week, not to mention between 10 and 15 minutes every day.
We utilized the warranty on our new windows to replace a cracked pane
We get new energy-efficient windows installed in our 1920’s home last year, which came with a lifetime guarantee. One of the windows got a crack over the winter, so I’d contacted the company so they could order a replacement. They finally came and put that in this last week, so we got a brand new window (again, ha ha) for no extra money.
Other Frugal Wins:
- I had my husband hit up two grocery stores while he was in the closest “big” city, which overall have better prices/products than our local Walmart
- We drove our more gas-efficient car everywhere we could
- I borrowed this ebook for my Kindle from the library for a fun read
- I used up five brown bananas in our favorite GF banana bread recipe
- We enjoyed peaches and plums from our own yard and pears from a family member’s neighbor
- I bought school supplies on clearance (crayons, markers, scissors, paper) to use as stocking stuffers for Christmas
What kinds of things did you do this week to save money or organize your home better?
