Wahl Clipper Set for $14.99 Shipped!

One way we have been saving money around here is by cutting my son's hair ourselves. My husband bought a clipper set from Amazon for about $20 and we haven't gone back to the barber since. Considering each haircut cost us $20 including the tip, I say we are coming out ahead.

Right now Frys has a Wahl 20 Piece Color Coded Clipper Set on sale for $14.99 with free shipping. Seems like a great price to me and it is something that will continue to save you money as long as you own it!

Thanks Slickdeals!

Yeah, I Can Actually Be Frugal...

photo credit

If you have been following my blog for the past seven months (since I gave birth to my third and final baby) you have probably noticed the total erosion of my frugal-ness. Something about having a new baby along with two older kids seemed to have put me into survival mode and my coupons and budget just flew out the window.

I am starting to get back into things though I have been spending way more money on food than I have in the past, some of which I blame on my decision to only buy all natural meat (no hormones, humanely raised, etc.). I feel like spending $100 a week on food for my family is a good number but man oh man, a few years ago I would have crapped my pants if I spent that much a week on food.

So, as I have established, my food shopping leaves much to be desired in the frugal department. Just because I stink at that doesn't mean that I don't do other things that are frugal. I can be frugal! I can!

Here are some things that my lazy butt does (and if I can do them then anyone can do them):

-We use rags. I don't go and buy rags to use; I cut up old shirts, sheets, socks or whatever else is made of cloth. Once I run out of rags I wash them in the washing machine- usuall about every two weeks because I have quite the collection. We do still use paper towels occasionally but to hinder my husband from partaking in the paper towels too much I moved them away from the sink to the other side of the kitchen. You want a paper towel the you gotta work for it.

-I don't have a fancy shmancy cell phone with tons of bells and whistles; I have a prepaid TracFone. I rarely use my cell phone so if you average out how much I spend on minutes it come to less than $10 a month. My husband is into the fancy stuff and has an Iphone but his work pays for it. I actually just bought a new TracFone which is refereed to "the poor man's Iphone" so I guess I'm now into the late 1990's with my cell phone technology.

-I buy my kids' clothing on clearance with a coupon. I stock up on off season clothing and put everything in bins until it is needed. By doing this I am never pressed to have to buy something last minute at a price I don't want to pay. My main place to buy clothing for the kids is the Gap- I have the silver store card which means that I get free shipping on every online purchase (you have to spend $800 a year to get this but between the kids, my husband and me this is so doable). This in itself is worth its weight in gold because I don't have to leave the house to buy clothes with three screaming kids but I also get $10 for every $200 I spend and exclusive cardmember coupons. It is really important to me to buy high quality clothes, especially because my older daughter's clothing gets passed down to the baby. Plus, Gap clothes seem to sell well.

-I use powdered laundry detergent that I buy in bulk. I use Charlie's Soap powder detergent because I like that it leaves no smell and doesn't have weird chemicals in it. I recently bought a 1000+ load bucket of the powder which cost me about $100- this equals .10 a load. Pretty darn frugal if you ask me!

-I do not buy regular household cleaners anymore (except for Pledge- can't live without it). I have a one gallon jug of Biokleen which is super concentrated. I mix a couple of tablespoons and water in a spray bottle and I have an awesome all purpose cleaner- it actually cleans glass better than Windex and it's all natural. Plus it smells good and I know that it is safe to use around the kids.

Maybe there are more things but that is all I can think of right now. I know I won't win any awards for my frugal-ness but what I do works for me; it's lazy frugal-ness and I love it!

Disclaimer: This post contains my affiliate links.

No More Money Down the Drain- Berry Time

photo credit

My daughter loves strawberries so I buy a carton of them every week whether they are $2 a pound or $4 a pound. She is a picky girl so if she likes it and it's healthy you bet I buy it regardless of price.

Because I spend so much on strawberries I want them to last until they are all eaten up- nothing is worse than going into the refrigerator to grab some berries and to see that they are mushy and moldy. It really sucks throwing away half a container that you paid $4 for.

A great way to avoid food waste in regards to berries is to wash them in a vinegar solution, which removes any nasties that cause rotting and moldiness. All you need to do is mix one part vinegar to ten parts water and rinse the berries in the solution. Take them out, dry them off and store in the refrigerator (you cannot taste the vinegar on the berries). Your berries will last way longer than normal and you won't be throwing money away on spoiled produce.

Storing Meat and Why Whole Foods is Awesome

To me, being frugal is not just about saving money but it is also about saving time. I have three little monsters to deal with all day which means I try to go to the store as little as possible. One way I avoid the stores is by stocking up on meat. We eat meat at pretty much each meal as we are not the beans and rice hippie vegan type of family so having it on hand is a must.

This is why I stock up- we always have something to eat for dinner and I don't have to drag the kids out to the store for a last minute ingredient. The most important thing about stocking up is being able to store the meat properly. I know others just wrap it up in some plastic wrap and aluminum foil but I use my awesome Food Saver which we've had for over six years and is still going strong. I am very picky about food quality so I like to vacuum pack my food to eliminate freezer burn and any hint of ice crystals. The food also lasts way longer in the freezer when vacuum packed and in my opinion, tastes better. The bags can be pricey but I usually wait to buy them when Kohl's has a 30% off coupon. It is well worth the price of the bags though because like I said, I won't eat meat from the freezer unless it's vacuum packed.

This morning when the baby was sleeping and my other two kids were beating the crap out of each other I packaged up chicken breasts and ground beef that my husband bought on Sunday. He got 6 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast from Whole Foods which was on sale for $2.99 a pound (and wow, is their chicken breast so much better tasting than the stuff from the grocery store plus I barely had to trim any fat off of it whereas the chicken breast I buy at the regular grocery store has tons of nastiness on it I have to trim) and he got about 7 pounds of 90% ground beef from BJ's for $2.89 a pound (regular price-if you buy the huge tubes it is $2.69 a pound).

I put two chicken breasts in each Food Saver bag which ended up being enough for five meals (we ate two chicken breast for dinner last night). As for the ground beef, I put aside one and a half pounds to make meatloaf for dinner tonight and then portioned out the rest in 10 ounce servings for future dinners (I use a scale to do this).

Here is the packaged up chicken. I made sure to lay it flat in the bags so that it would defrost quickly in cold water.

That is how I save time and money. I buy meat when it is on sale and then I freeze it so that I won't have to drag myself and the lovely children to the store more than I have to.

And just a side note about Whole Foods- the nearest store is about twenty minutes from my house. My husband made a trip there especially for the chicken breast but when he got there they were all out of it. The wonderful people who work there told him that because they were out of the value packs of chicken that he could get the more expensive chicken breast from the meat counter for the same price. What awesome customer service! Stop and Shop and Shaws would have given a rain check and told him to go screw (rain checks are great but not when you need the food that day and not when you don't feel like having to truck your butt out of the house again to buy it, especially when the particular store is out of your way). This is just another reason that I love Whole Foods and really wish that they were closer to me so that I could shop there more often. Plus, their meat and produce is far superior to what I can get at the two crap-holes I mentioned before,

Monkey Joes and a Lesson in Being Cheap

For Christmas my husband's cousin got my two older kids gift cards to Monkey Joes. I had never been there before so I looked online at their website- it's basically a big building with bouncy houses and other fun kid stuff in it.

It looks like a fun thing to do with the kids and I don't have to worry about almost killing them at the park. Plus the baby is so little and it's been cold out so I don't like to drag her outside so the kids can play. The Monkey Joes in my town charges about $9 per child and $5 for two year olds which seems to be a fair price, especially since the kids get to run around like maniacs somewhere other than my house. Even though I have gift cards my frugal self decided to sign up for their emails to see if maybe I would be blessed with a coupon of some sort.

Guess what? Minutes later I had a coupon for buy one get one free admission. I saved myself $5 (what my daughter's admission price would have been) and will therefore have stretched our gift cards out a bit further.

Yes, I could have been content with just going and spending our gift cards with abandon as they were free to us but why not make that "free" money last longer?

The lesson in this is always sign up for newsletters and emails from companies because you never know when that 30 seconds of typing will snag you some awesome savings (if you don't like getting tons of promotional email, sign up for a free email account where you can have this sort of stuff sent).