Tuesday's Frugal Mission

Mer.

Frugality.

Frugal.

CHEAP.

Frugal doesn't necessarily mean cheap. Frugal means thinking about where you're spending your money, what you're spending your money on, and actively making a choice on how you're spending money.

Some days I'm great at being frugal. Others... not so much. OY. I think it's like that for a lot of people.

In any case, today I had a BRILLIANT idea. I saw these awesome curtain rod strings at Ikea and thought - I NEED THOSE FOR MY BACK PORCH.

And then I remembered that I bought the same curtain rod strings - in fact I bought them to string up in the dining room to hold The Monkey's art work but I never got around to it (and I've determined I really like the painting we have in the dining room anyway so I bought magnet clips for the fridge). I thought I might have donated the string or maybe sold it in the last yard sale that we had but no, I didn't do anything with it. Instead the curtain rod string thingy was just hanging out in a basket in the closet.

I even have leftover home decor fabric from when I made curtains for The Monkey's room when I was pregnant. SCORE.

All I need are 4 extra corner holder thingys from Ikea and some type of hanger clips and I'm all set to hang up some curtains - instead of using the tension rods which keep falling on The Monkey when she's playing back there (it's sort of funny. I mean you suddenly hear something snap and then a 3 year old screaming "GHOST! IT'S A GHOST! I CAN'T SEE!!!").

So the total cost for these curtains AFTER finding what I already have in my house will be under $10. WOO HOO!!!

My NEXT frugal mission after Ikea and the curtain rod string thingy is to go to the library.

I reserved 5 books - two are urban homesteading books which are all about turning your yard into a vegetable garden and basically making the most out of a 1/4 acre of land. Here in the city we have like an 1/8 of an acre - but with the tree coming down in the back, I can start to take advantage of all the sunlight we're going to get next year and plan out more vegetables and determine how to PRESERVE what I grow. That's the tough part - you can only eat so much while it's fresh so knowing how to preserve homegrown food is really a good thing to know. I'd like to do lasagna gardening in our front flower beds for vegetables and move all the flowers into the actual yard - but make some sort of patio for chairs and a table (yes, we hang out in the front yard here in Minnesota, sometimes even in the garage!). First I need to read HOW to do some of this shit and determine how much sun the front gets to know if I can actually move some flowers and how bad chicken wire will look from the street. Maybe I should start looking at what grows best for vines... Meh, whatever... I have lots of months to think about gardening and to write down which flowers did the best this year.

Three books are just for funzies - one stupid Nora Roberts book (the last in a trilogy which will take me two or three days to read); another last-of-a-trilogy book in the Grave Mercy series which won't take me long at all; and the 4th book in the Logan McRae series by Stuart MacBride (if you can't tell it's a book set in Scotland by a Scottish author).

And the last frugal thing that I do today:

Make lunch with leftovers from dinner - some type of veggie wrap or quesadilla with the grilled veggies from last night.

Cook dinner with the last of our CSA veggies from last Thursday. Tonight = roasted veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, beets, turnips) with rice pilaf.

If you notice, there's no meat listed above. Basically we get enough veggies where I don't really need to cook meat with a meal. There's no way we can eat everything if I include meat. We become partial vegetarians in the summer with the amount of vegetables we receive with our CSA and with what I supplement from the co-op or Cub or Target or Byerly's. That doesn't mean we don't have meat - in the freezer there's pork chops, chicken, ground beef, fish, and shrimp. I have meat so when we do need some protein I can just pull it out of the freezer instead of running to the grocery store or wherever to get meat. It's a cheap way to eat meat - I buy when it's all on sale (and I don't buy the cheap stuff, I buy organic free range chicken, organic grass fed beef, organic fed pork, etc...) and then I toss it into bags with marinade in portions for 1 or 2 people.

So.. I think that's all we're up to today.

Happy Tuesday!!!