Frugalista

I heard this word the other day, and fell in love with it.  I am probably not classified as one, but I sure am striving to be one!  I am currently in the kitchen whipping up another batch of dog bones.  I’ve given out a TON of free samples, and people just seem to love them!  Pretty soon I think I will need to start charging for them.  I finally got my butt to the grocery store and priced all the ingredients so that I can have John (from Omega-3) help me figure out the pricing structure.

Another thing I’ve done this week is I’ve made my own laundry detergent.  I was pretty skeptical at first, but I did it, and it works GREAT, and it is SUPER CHEAP!  Two of my favorite things, something that works and isn’t costly.  I don’t know if it is just because I have sensitive skin and have to be careful with what we use, but laundry detergent is SO expensive.  The ingredients for this cost about half the price, (about $9 for everything) and will make at least 3 batches of enough detergent to do approximately 64 loads of laundry.  Can’t beat that, now can ya?  I think our box of fragrance free Arm & Hammer does about 72 loads and costs about $17.  You can see the difference.  I made the first batch up on Thursday night, and used it Friday night with some hesitation.  While the detergent has a very strong smell, it doesn’t transfer in the washer, and it doesn’t bother my skin at all!  Jason even said that his socks felt softer.  If you want the recipe, please feel free to contact me for it. 

Two other household tips we discovered were:

• Wadding up a ball of aluminum foil about the size of your fist, and sticking it in the dryer helps eliminate static!  (Another cheapie!)


• For those tough to get off baked on pains, putting an Alka-Seltzer tablet in hot water and letting it soak works wonders.  I’ve also heard that it helps get rid of the ring around the toilet, but I have yet to try it… because amazingly… our toilets stay pretty clean (and I don’t think we’ve cleaned them since we moved in… which was almost a year ago!)

School is almost over for me… and I think for Jason too… but he is a few weeks behind me.  We have a super busy week ahead of us next week.  Monday we need to inventory our camping stuff because we got a whole bunch of new stuff, so some of the old stuff can go (like our fancy schmancy toilet paper, because now we have biodegradable… eeesh) and we also need to menu plan for our trip and not just throw a whole bunch of random crap in a cooler like we did last time.  Tuesday, we are going to order Jason’s wedding ring that we picked out last week, but there was no SKU on it, and Tuesday was the earliest when a manager’s schedule worked with ours to get it taken care of.  Wednesday, we will buy the planned food for camping, Thursday we have taste testing with our caterer and Friday thru Sunday is camping!  It will be so nice to get away from phones, computer, TV, and video games and just get back to reality.  We’ve invited a friend to go with us, but I’m still not sure if he is going to come or not.  Regardless, it will be nice to get 2 ½ days of relaxation… minus the dog barking at everything that moves… including the trees.  ; )