Thursday Thrifty Roundup

This week I…

• Started attempting to potty train my kid, which meant we stayed at the house all weekend and spent basically no money. My husband ran out to the grocery store, but we went nowhere else. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that.

• Used a gift card to buy B’s big kid underwear.

• Food prepped. I didn’t take photos, but I made big batches of steel cut oats, roasted broccoli and cauliflower, and instant pot collard greens. I had some beans from the freezer and some leftover bread from dinner a couple nights ago that I’ve been trying to use up, too, so I’ve been eating beans with bread for my lunch. I also made a batch of these breakfast cookies to keep in the freezer for B. They’re not the most beautiful cookies ever, but we love them.

• Made a preschool auction basket with things we already had. All families are asked to provide an item worth at least $50 for the fundraising auction, and I probably would have just contributed a gift card except in the fall I was tasked with being part of a different auction and saw that some of the best performers were baskets of hobby items. We happened to have a duplicate, unused copy of a popular knitting book, so I paired that with a few spare skeins of high-quality wool yarn, a (used) puzzle of cats in space and an unopened candle, and that’s going to be my contribution. Will it be the most popular item? Probably not. Is it more interesting than a $50 gift card to the neighborhood pizza place? Yes, and it saved me $50.

• Bought Easter eggs and an Easter basket at the dollar store for $4.50 and filled the eggs with little toy bugs I already had. I would have preferred to not buy new plastic items, but we’ll (hopefully) be able to use the basket and eggs year after year so at least that’s something.

• Didn’t have to buy any gas for our car, as our car is electric and we haven’t bought gas since 2022 (except a couple rentals while traveling). This Iran situation is stressing me the fuck out and gas prices are among the least of my concerns, but it’s nice to not be buying gas right now, or ever.