Weekly Low-Buy Recap

What I spent money on this week:

• Medication. I’ve been sick, and went to the pharmacy for Sudafed and NyQuil. I’ve never actually bothered to get Sudafed before, settling instead for DayQuil, which has been found to contain an ineffective decongestant and never does seem to do much. Sudafed has helped. $34.
• Dog medication. I picked up a new bottle of ear drops for my dog, who is prone to ear infections. $27.
• Additional groceries. I ran to Safeway yesterday to buy cauliflower, collard greens, kale, an onion and bananas. We always go grocery shopping over the weekend with a meal plan in mind, but often run out of produce midway through the week. Usually I need to buy more fruit than that, but I’m trying to use up some frozen fruit this week. $23.

That’s it! I consider all of those items to be necessities, so I’m pleased. Regarding my midweek produce runs, I’ve learned something VERY exciting (to me lol) – the Asian supermarket just down the street that closed about seven years ago is finally going to reopen, as a different Asian supermarket. Given that my husband and I share a car and he needs it for work most of the year (he bikes in good weather), it’s going to be really nice to have a walkable grocery store again. Asian supermarkets usually have a great produce section, so I really can’t wait for that. I’m eager to see how their fruit and vegetable prices compare to Safeway and PCC (which is also walkable, but just barely, and their produce is expensive so I usually don’t shop there unless they’re running a coupon).

What I wanted to Buy but Didn’t:

I already have a pair of convertible gloves (fingerless gloves with a mitten flap, and the thumb also folds back) from this brand and they’re the only pair of gloves I wear. They’re great for dog-walking, because I can free my fingers and thumbs to work with a bag, and they’re also great for whenever my kid does something dumb like dump grapes all over himself, which is often. They’re not very warm, and they’re also starting to show some separation where one of the flaps meets the glove, so I was thinking about buying this insulated pair. I like that the company uses recycled materials. I will probably buy these eventually, or maybe add them to a Christmas list. But for now, if needed I’ll try to mend the ones I have.

This bag comes in 6L and 11L, and this is the 11L. I have the 6L and use it as my everyday purse. It fits my waterbottle in the external pocket and my keys, battery pack, kindle, packable grocery bag, wired earpods, chapstick, floss and mirror compact internally. However, it wouldn’t fit any packable outerwear if I needed to take off a layer (when I’m doing something active I like to wear layers of packable outerwear, so this isn’t entirely imagined), and it wouldn’t fit a snack (I don’t like to go anywhere without an apple), and the exact bag but larger would do those things. But for now, I always have a diaper bag with me anyway, and those things can fit there.

Frugal Wins

• I took my son downtown on the train for an appointment this past week, and after the appointment I realized one of my gloves was missing. I suspected it’d been dropped at the playground we’d stopped at earlier, which was in the wrong direction and we were running short on time. Immediately I thought I’d just have to order a new pair. However, I decided to walk back to the playground, and it was sitting there sopping wet, having languished in the sleet for an hour. Glad I didn’t have to buy a new pair, glad the pair I have didn’t wind up separately in the trash.
• I switched my phone service to Mint, which I’d already been planning to do, on a day my credit card happened to be giving 45,000 bonus points for making the switch. So on top of saving $65 a month on my phone bill with Mint, the points equate to $45 off an upcoming travel expense.
• Speaking of travel expenses, we booked a pretty nice hotel suite (a separate room to hang out in after the kid’s 7:30 bedtime is a must) on the Olympic Peninsula for my birthday weekend this summer, entirely with points. We also recently booked flights to San Diego using companion fare for one ticket and miles for another, so for the three of us it was only the cost of one flight plus fees.