Last Week's Thrifty Moves

I made homemade asian vinaigrette.

I baked two loaves of whole wheat bread.

I made four and a half pints of vanilla yogurt for a total cost of $1.75.  The next batch will cost less because I will only have to buy milk.  This time I had to buy a small container of yogurt to use as starter.

Sunday afternoon the girls went outside with a pair of hammers and a big bag of walnuts, given to us by a friend, and returned with four pint jars full of walnut chunks.  They thought it was a lot of fun shelling them with hammers.  I put two pints in the freezer.  We used some of the nuts in a salad that night.  They are delicious.

I added a cup of water to an empty laundry detergent bottle, shook it real good and had enough super soapy water to wash two more loads of clothes.  I did all of my laundry the rest of the week using two of the three free samples of liquid laundry detergent I was given at the grocery store a few weeks ago.  Each packet was enough for two loads so three packets equals six loads of laundry.  Nice!

After cleaning, reorganizing and restocking the bathroom I collected all the mini sample bottles of soap, shampoo and toothpaste together and we decided to seriously work on using them up.  While I really appreciate a free sample I'm finding that it has created quite a bit of clutter with all those little tubes and bottles.  I took a tube of hand lotion to work so I can use it up there.

Our foaming hand soap dispenser in the bathroom conked out and stopped pumping.  I know they aren't meant to be refilled and reused but I did get six months of use out of it.  I replaced it with a regular liquid hand soap from the dollar store.

I added a little water to the last little bit of soap in the dispenser at the kitchen sink so we could use it all up.  I've decided not to replace that one as we don't really need one there and it just takes up precious space.  It gave me the idea to refill it however by adding half of the soap from the new dispenser and fill it up with water.  I also added water to the new dispenser and now have two bottles of hand soap for the price of one.  The watered down soap works very well too.  I tucked the kitchen dispenser away under the bathroom sink for later use.

We gave our kitchen scraps to the neighbor's chickens.

We watched The Dog Whisperer and an episode of Dr. Who online and listened to music on Youtube.

Since my tenant has no intention of putting in a garden I went over to the house and collected all of my tomato and cucumber cages.  That saved me $3 each to replace them.

A friend of mine told me I could have my flower pots back because she had decided not to use them.  When I showed up to get them she also had another ceramic pot she no longer wanted and gave it to me as well.  I arrived home from my friend's house to find our landlady had set out two huge pots for us to use.  I won't need to buy anymore pots this year.  Lucky me!

My friend also gave me her coupons and ads from the Sunday paper.  I was able to clip several coupons to use for groceries.  I also clipped nine coupons for free items from Harbor Freight, no purchase required.  I'm thinking it is probably time to redeem some of these.

I made a mini Easter basket for our little lady staying at the nursing home out of a clear deli container I had saved for this purpose.  I decorated it with items I already had on hand and filled it with candy I purchased at Walgreens with a coupon.  It turned out really cute.  My whole purpose for buying things as inexpensively as possible is so I can easily afford to give things to more people more often.  This is a prime example. 

What wonderful things did you do last week to save money?  I love hearing about it!