The Thriftess & Company

Hi all,

It has just been a flurry of activity at my little house! My spare room is clean finally, and a visitor has landed in our home for a few months. A cousin of my husband's, hereafter referred to as "M", needed a place to stay while going to school. He called on Thursday and arrived on Tuesday, so some frantic cleaning went on!

Also I am cooking a turkey this week. I love turkey and it has gone on sale after the Easter holidays. We also didn't get any at Easter this year, both of our hosts made other things. The scary part is that I have never made a turkey before, because I have a mother for those kinds of things. However the turkey I bought cost barely more than a frying chicken, so if ruined, I will not cry. (I still will, I hate wasted food more than just about anything)

I realized that I haven't actually talked about anything frugal for a while. So I'll sum up a few of my activities lately:

Grocery

I have started the "kitchen garden" on my windowsill! This is where you grow what you can just on your windowsill. I know that you can grow green onions for sure, this was my starting point. All you do is save the white bottoms from your green onion and put them in a glass of water on the windowsill. Change the water periodically (whenever it looks murky) and within a few days you should start to see the ends grow slightly from the middle. Before you know it you have green onions! Then you just trim what green sprouts you need for each meal.

Another item I have seen grown first hand is Romaine lettuce. Same thing as with the onions, just soak the butt end of a head of lettuce in a cup and it will start to sprout new leaves from the centre! 

At a ladies craft night I also won a kitchen herb garden. Three little pots with five different seed options. So I have that to start as well.

I am really excited about these projects. I looove saving money at the grocery store!

Hair
 
Next I got my hair coloured at 50% off this week. Getting my hair done is my one big frivolity. :( I try my best to find someone cheaper that I still like, but so far I have tried two different people on three separate occasions and I am not very happy with the results. 

The thing with hair is that it is so easy to get caught up in a false economy. If you find someone to do it for $80 instead of $150, the shock at payment time is easier to swallow. However if they don't do the colour right (I like my foils) and roots are obvious at 4 weeks instead of 8, no money was saved. 

I was lucky enough to read my flyers one week and colour appointments on Tuesdays in April were 1/2 off with a haircut, AND they were giving away a free product! While still expensive it was an amazing deal because the girl also gave me a protein treatment during the colouring and my hair looks way way better than the other ladies I have tried here. Sadly, I can't justify continuing to go to her unless my hair lasts 12 weeks. (which would be miraculous.) So after this I am back to perusing the online classifieds for another person who works at home.

But still, the moral of the story is "Read your flyers!"

Paper Towel

Finally, my next big saving project is to cut out paper towel. I ran out of paper towel about a month ago and forgetting to buy it when it was on sale (I always go store brand on the special Sunday-Monday only deals) I have refused to buy it since. To my surprise I haven't actually missed it! The only time I have remembered that we needed it was when we had company for dinner and I had to give them dish cloths for napkins -- embarrassing? Yes, but also stupid. Why wouldn't I just buy cloth re-usable napkins if that is the only thing that I need paper towel for? Napkins were kind of a tacky use of paper towel anyways.

 For cleaning the bathroom I have just been using two cloths. Mirror, faucet, toilet with a dry microfibre and some cleaning spray (in that order and then straight into the washing machine after) and then counters, sink, and tub with a wet rag and spray. 

Clearly for spills there is no reason that you couldn't just use a few rags, and the space they actually take up in the washing machine doesn't really count for anything. 

And voila! I will not buy paper towel again. Greenpeace thanks me.

What can you go without? 

xoxo Thriftess