Last Week's Thrifty Moves

Sunday I was up early baking bread, Death By Chocolate Cookies and making a batch of Butter Toffee.  The cookies and candy were my Valentine gifts this year and lucky for me I already had everything I needed on hand in my pantry and refrigerator.  I even re-used bags from my gift wrap stash to assemble all of my gifts.

My oldest needed a ride to an appointment later in the afternoon and the drive home found me stopping in at Walgreens once again to pick up two more bottles of laundry detergent for 99¢ a bottle.  I had no plans to buy these, but my daughters thought it was a good idea so I acquiesced.  It really wasn't hard for them to talk me into it.

They were on sale for $1.99 and I used a digital coupon loaded to my rewards card and a paper coupon printed from Coupons.com to bring the price down to 99¢ a piece.  I also picked up some deodorant for 99¢ each.  Since my oldest needed to go to Dollar Tree I also picked up a deodorant and used a 50¢ OFF coupon making it only 50¢.  Two of the deodorants were set aside for Easter gifts and everything else was put away in the linen closet.

I made a delicious and super thrifty Sunday dinner using items I'd purchased on sale and with coupons.  We had loads of leftovers to enjoy throughout the week.  I shared how I did that last week in this post.

I used a 79¢ cake mix from our pantry to make a pretty bundt cake to take to work on Valentine's Day.  I used a couple squares of Baker's chocolate (from Dollar Tree), a tablespoon of butter and some powdered sugar to make a ganáche to put on top.  The guys I work with really enjoyed it.  The girls made up a 79¢ box of brownie mix to take into school and share with their classmates on Valentine's Day.  They sprinkled them with powdered sugar over the top and they looked very pretty.

I made foaming handsoap solution to refill the dispenser in our upstairs bathroom.

I traded my retired plumber friend a loaf of homemade whole wheat bread for a new flapper for the downstairs toilet.  I think I kind of like this bartering business.  It's a win/win for both of us.

We composted the usual items, fed our kitchen scraps to the hens, put several items into our big blue recycle bin and only added one grocery bag full of trash to our garbage bin.  Because the recycle bin is only a quarter of the way full and we decided not to set anything at the curb for collection last week.

I printed off some more online coupons and downloaded more grocery coupons to my store rewards cards.  I checked out the ads and only picked up a couple things on sale.  I used a lot of digital and paper coupons to pickup low carb yogurts that were on sale making most of them only 38¢ each.  These use stevia and make for a great treat for me.  The pot roast was on sale for $1.99 a pound so I grabbed one.

I worked a little bit of overtime.

Some of the 15 Minute Chores I accomplished to keep my home in order:

Laundry Room & Half Bathroom - vacuumed floors & rug, cleaned the mirrors.  Daily swish & swipe.

Dining Room - wiped down the chairs & table, vacuumed the floor.

Kitchen -  vacuumed & spot mopped floor, cleaned all the shelves inside the refrigerator.

Bedrooms & Main Bathroom - vacuumed & dusted.  My oldest cleaned the bathroom.

Other - two loads of laundry, dusted & vacuumed living room, hallway & entry, swept front porch.

How was your thrifty week?