Thrifty Thursday Roundup

This week I…

• Started a part-time job! I’m contracted for up to ten hours a week, and I will be making sure I hit that ten hours to make every cent I can. And having gotten my feet wet this week, I can tell it won’t be hard to fill those hours – my primary job is to maintain internal files, but there’s barely an existing filing system to maintain. I’ll have to build it out first. This is pretty much my dream job – unseen, all alone, making sure everything gets put where it’s supposed to go. And the money I make will be very impactful for us, which can partially be attributed to our already-thrifty lifestyle. If a person’s monthly expenses are already sky-high, an extra couple thousand might feel like a drop in the bucket. It doesn’t feel like that to us.
• Signed up for a free week-long trial at the YMCA. We went for the first time yesterday, and B played happily in the kid zone for an hour while I played happily with the gym equipment I haven’t been able to touch since pre-motherhood. This trial gets me not just a week of free gym access, but a week of FREE CHILDCARE. I only have regular car access in the summer, when Kyle bikes to work. Last summer B wasn’t ready for a drop-off situation, he would have just cried. Thanks to preschool, he’s comfortable with me leaving now. I’m hoping utilizing the YMCA will keep him comfortable with drop-offs so we won’t be starting at zero again when school starts in September. I’m going to join for real after the trial membership ends, but the free week is nice.

• Food-prepped, as usual. I cooked big batches of garbanzo beans and black beans from our big stash of dried beans. I roasted the garbanzo beans and have been eating them for breakfast with roasted broccoli and roasted potatoes. For lunch I’ve been eating black beans and “Mexican rice” (idk how widespread this is, but a genuine Mexican abuela taught me to blend tomatoes, garlic and onions with water to use as the cooking liquid. I just blend store-bought pico de gallo) with a salad. On Tuesday Kyle made a big rice and bean bake (thrifty tip: tell that voice in your head that says you need a ton of dietary variety to simply shut the fuck up, this “need” sounds ridiculous to most of the world) and we’ve got leftovers for Friday and Saturday, when we’ll be too busy to cook. Last night I cooked “ratatouille noodles,” something we made up a long time ago in B’s play kitchen and I decided to finally make for him. It’s just roasted eggplant mixed into a standard tomato sauce, but must be served with farfalle noodles or it isn’t authentic play-kitchen ratatouille noodles. He was THRILLED, won’t stop talking about “Mom’s ratty noodles.” We’ll eat the rest tonight.

• Bought a discounted open-box stroller from a resale store. Remember that free jogging stroller somebody offered to give us? I’ve learned now that the world is full of people trying to offload their old strollers, and they are not honest about the condition. We can’t use the stroller we were given. We really loved the stroller we needed to replace, so I found the same stroller in “barely used” condition at Goodbuygear. I’ve bought things this way before, and I think what happens is people buy things before their baby is born, and by the time they decide they’re never going to use it the return window is long closed. Everything I’ve ever bought like this has clearly never been used. I’m happy to use something that might otherwise end up in the landfill, and save a little money in the process.

• Bought a $50 Molly Moon’s gift card for $40 at Costco. We love taking B out for ice cream on hot weekends.