Category: 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.

This week I…

• Went to the chef store and bought a 10lb bag of dried garbanzo beans, 10lb bag of rice, 25lb bag of oats, a gallon of Frank’s red hot sauce and a 24-pack of frozen field roast burgers for $120. These are all things we use a lot, and it’s much cheaper to buy them in bulk. The veggie burgers are among the pricier things we eat, but it’ll probably take us like a year to go through the box and it’s way cheaper than going out for burgers.

• Got a library book and watched a series of free videos to try to refresh my memory before starting my new job. I’m excited to start the job, but this kid has my brain feeling utterly vacant.

• Used my student status on Target’s app to get $10 in rewards, and all I had to do was create a “college” wishlist and share it. I put the minimum number of things on it (literally just random shit, not even things I want), made it private to ensure nobody will ever actually buy anything from it, and I emailed the link to myself to satisfy the share requirement. It took like two minutes and the $10 was applied instantly to my account.

• Bought my kid a dollhouse for $25 instead of $50 by redeeming the $25 in reward points I evidently had at IKEA. I had been looking for a dollhouses big enough for his people toys and wasn’t having any luck at Goodwill, Offerup, etc. This one from IKEA was easy to assemble and he loves it.

• Downloaded the Kanopy app to our TV and watched a couple free movies courtesy of the library. We don’t watch a lot of movies, what with the kid, but it’s nice to add a few more free options.

• Food prepped, as always. This week I made lentil bolognese and turmeric rice for my lunches, and buffalo garbanzo beans to make myself little wraps for breakfast with some lettuce, tomatoes and corn tortillas. I made B some marinated cucumbers and a big batch of sweet potato, pinto bean and cheese quesadillas to keep in the freezer. I made two tamale pies over the weekend, one for us and one for a friend with a new baby. We ate seitan gyros from the freezer the last couple days, and tonight Kyle is making a big pot of lentil soup.

This week I…

• Moved B to his big boy bed, the components of which were acquired using a variety of money-saving strategies:
  • I found the car frame on Offer Up for $50 last summer, and it’s been sitting in pieces in the garage this whole time. I knew I wanted it, so I started looking early just to make sure we’d have it when we needed it. The price of the bed new varies by website, but is about $200.
  • I used up the last of our Costco shop card balance to buy the mattress, so it only cost us $17 in real money. The mattress came with a waterproof protector and a pillow.
  • I bought two sets of Pottery Barn cotton car and truck sheets from someone on Mercari for $70. These go for $70-90 new per set, and I thought it would be useful with a toddler to have two sets so if one needs washed I can just throw the other set right on. I bought the sheets about a year ago, too.
  • The blanket is Kyle’s from when he was a teenager. It was made for him by a lady at church or something, and has been sitting in our linen closet for over a decade.
  • The black surface under the bed is an airflow mat that I bought new from Amazon. It has a bunch of little channels and spaces for ventilation. I’ve experienced mold under a floor bed before, and the $100 I spent on it seemed worth it to prevent a moldy mattress and floor. I hate shopping from Amazon, but I try to limit it to times when it’s the only place I can find what I’m looking for.

• Bought B four basic pairs of pants from Goodwill for $12. He had outgrown most of his pants and we were rotating the same three pairs for a little while.

• Bought B three cute pieces of clothing from our local kids consignment store for $27. It’s more expensive than Goodwill or buying directly from sellers on second-hand platforms, but it’s a good way to get some cute stuff sustainably and for a lot less money than buying new. The firetruck pants alone seem to run about $50 from Mini Boden. There are people out there silly enough to spend $50 on a pair of toddler pants, and I am happy to take their leftovers at a fraction of the price.

• Bought all the snacks for our preschool parent meeting and divided the cost between 6 other participating parents. Our class was asked last-minute to bring snacks, and it just seemed easier for one person to buy everything. Part of it was selfish – I wanted a good variety of food and a few healthy options, and eight people showing up with bags of potato chips would not have been that. It worked out to be about $7 per person, which I think is pretty reasonable, and we had a pretty good spread with fruit, a big salad, hummus and pita chips, and cookies. A few other parents brought things to round out the table (cupcakes, chips and sparkling water). The other classes applauded our teamwork. Everyone thinks we’re the best class now.

• Made homemade food for our little party Sunday. Kyle made pigs in a blanket for the kids, and I prepared a big fruit bowl and baked some chocolate chip tahini cookies. We also had store-bought hummus and pita chips. Not pictured, I made a huge batch of gyro seitan “meat” from scratch and set it out with some pita bread, lettuce, cucumbers tomatoes, olives and feta. Kyle made tzatziki. Buying groceries for a party isn’t necessarily cheap, but it’s certainly cheaper than takeout or pre-made food.
• Froze six meals’ worth of leftover seitan gyro meat and pita. When I say it was a huge batch of seitan, I mean it was HUGE. It’ll be nice to pull those leftovers out of the freezer on hot days when we don’t want to cook.

• Ate more of the party leftovers for lunch all week. I made some turmeric rice and used that for gyro bowls along with leftover seitan gyro meat, feta, olives, vegetables and hummus.

• Food prepped, as always. I made some oatmeal for B, and also made big batches of blueberry pancakes (for B) and whole wheat blueberry muffins (mostly for me) to keep in the freezer. I made roasted sweet potatoes, roasted broccoli and sauteed garlic kale to get us veggies through the week, and I’ve been eating leftover Turkish red lentil soup for breakfast. Monday Kyle made crawfish gumbo and we had leftovers for Tuesday, and Wednesday he made homemade mac and cheese. Tonight I’m trying a new falafel recipe. Tomorrow I’m making a tamale pie that will feed us all weekend.

This week I…

• Bought four dozen eggs for $5 during a one-day sale at Safeway.

• Found B a “toy” drying rack in a free pile on the curb. I’d been hoping to find a drying rack for his play kitchen because I often hear him over there saying “and then we put the dishes in the drying rack…” It’s actually a real drying rack, but he can still play with it. And bonus, we can use it ourselves if we ever need to.

• Got a $22 dollar haircut. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spent $90 on a disappointing haircut. Never again – now my disappointing haircuts cost a fraction of that. But actually, I’ve liked these last few cuts.
• Cooked some recently-expired tofu. We didn’t have any plans to use it anytime soon, so I just threw it into the air fryer in cubes (tossed with a little soy sauce, olive oil and cornstarch) and B can snack on it the next few days.

• Froze leftover tomato paste in one-tablespoon portions. I used to open a can of tomato paste, use what I needed and the rest would always go bad in the refrigerator. Now I use a one-tablespoon cookie dough scoop to portion it, and I freeze it on a silicon mat before moving it to a storage bag.

• Stacked discounts to buy new bras. My favorite bras are from Thirdlove, and they needed replacing. They were running a promotion for 15% off digital gift cards, so I bought a $100 gift card for $85. Then I used the gift card to buy two bras on a buy one, get one half off deal, for a total of $117 (would have been $159). So I saved a total of $57 doing it that way.
• Sat in my car and read today instead of going to the coffee shop while my kid was in school. It was only for about 45 minutes after getting my hair cut, and I suppose I could have just gone home. But either way, I didn’t spend any money at the coffee shop.

• Food-prepped, as usual. This week I made big batches of pressure cooker collard greens, roasted broccoli, Turkish red lentil soup, oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs. I also baked some healthy-ish blueberry muffins and chocolate spice muffins to keep in the freezer for B (and me).

This week I…

• Bought these groceries for $2.15 after coupon savings and redeeming rewards points for $20 off. I’ve talked to a few people recently who shop at Safeway but don’t use the app, so they don’t get coupon prices or rewards, and that is CRAZY. We regularly save about 1/3 the price of our groceries.

• Took my kid to a free Tot Gym on Monday. We were out at a park and I noticed the attached community center had an open Tot Gym, which is where they put a bunch of toddler ride-on toys and other things in an empty gymnasium. We hadn’t gone to one for a while because B never really figured out the ride-on toys until he got too big for them, but it was a nice change of pace Monday and it used up our morning for free.

• Took B to the Burke Museum Wednesday to spend a rainy day indoors. We have a membership, so it was free. Between the train each way and the museum we were gone all morning, and I packed food to bring with us so we didn’t have to buy any.

• Food prepped. Nothing too exciting this week, and I didn’t take many pictures. Oatmeal, taco salad components (including a corn salsa I ended up hating but B seems to like) and a big batch of garlic kale. We buy frozen Field Roast burger patties in a big box from the Chef Store, and we ate burgers the last two nights. Kyle is cooking a bean and rice thing tonight that will give us a lot of leftovers, and tomorrow night I’m making some tofu and broccoli teriyaki, so we’ll have plenty of food for the weekend.

• Changed my Spotify membership to the student plan, which takes the price down from something like $14 to something like $8. Hey, it’s something.

This week I…

• Bought a transit pass loaded with $250 for $125 ($140 after administrative fees). I have student status at North Seattle College through my kid’s co-op preschool. I’m enrolled in one pass/fail credit each quarter. That one credit makes me eligible for some student perks, though, like a discounted transit pass. I wish I’d bought one each quarter this year, but it took several months to correct an error in my enrollment. I bought one last year and I still have about $65 left on it, so one pass lasts me a while.

• Used my student status to get 5% off at Safeway for the next year. I tried setting this up earlier in the year, but was held up by that same enrollment issue. When I finally got it set up, I figured it would only be valid for the remainder of the quarter, and this is my last quarter in the program. I was so happy to see the discount is good for a whole year! We buy 95% of our groceries at Safeway, and this will save us hundreds of dollars.

• Food prepped, of course. Before we went on vacation I froze some sweet potato and pinto bean taco filling, and I’ve been eating that on some corn tortillas, with broccoli on the side. I also made a big batch of oatmeal, some plain popcorn for snacking, and those roasted garbanzo beans went into a big pasta salad I made to get us a few easy dinners. I also made a big batch of Ethiopian red lentils with spinach. We ate some Tuesday night and have leftovers for later, and I also froze some in Souper Cubes to bring to some neighbors who have a new baby. Every time I cook for friends with a new baby I experience immense relief knowing it’s not us. Never again.

• Packed a picnic dinner (some of that pasta salad) to bring to the farmer’s market so we didn’t have to buy food. They have booths with some fun snacks and treats, but their meal options are expensive and underwhelming, and the lines are crazy long. After I explained the concept to him, B was really excited about picnic. He talked all day about picnic. Then when picnic happened, he was uncooperative. So that’s another reason to bring food from home – at least it wasn’t a twenty Buddha bowl he kicked all over the blanket.
• Found B a free bike. He has one of those glider bikes with no pedals and has never figured it out. Somebody put a toddler bike with training wheels out on the sidewalk with a “free” sign, and it looked like it was in good shape. I looked the bike up and it’s for age 3-5, which means it should be the right size for him. He’s used to seeing us pedal our bikes, so I’m hoping we’ll have better luck with this one. It’s also a pretty expensive little bike, so extra nice that I got it for free.

This week I…

• Saved roughly 700 by not renting a car on vacation. We’ve spent about $45 on public transit so far, and it cost about $30 for me to Uber to and from Costco to get our Belmont Park passes.

• Bought three sets of two-for-one passes to Belmont Park. This was enough for us to go for two days to ride unlimited rides. It saved us roughly $180. What we’ve learned since then, though, is that Kyle and I didn’t actually need passes at all – the rides B wanted to go on allow a free adult chaperone, so we could have just bought passes for him and not spent any more money. However, we did take advantage of our passes to go on a few rides solo that B couldn’t do.

• Food prepped (some). I roasted broccoli and sweet potatoes on our first day so we’d have some veggies for the week.

• Only ate food out once a day. Otherwise we’ve cooked easy things at our Airbnb (Trader Joe’s and Von’s were both around the corner) or packed sandwiches and snacks to take out with us. We also found a good bagel shop and bought half a dozen, so we’ve eaten good bagels at the house a few times.

• Didn’t go to the Midway Museum. Nothing wrong with going – we went downtown today with the thought that maybe we’d go. It was $44 a person, though, and we decided a three-year-old is just as happy to look at the big ship from the outside, for free.

• Went to a lot of parks. Free entertainment for the kid and some exercise for us just getting there.

A few other notes:

I thrifted his bright orange hat and sewed a strap (with breakaway clasps so he doesn’t dangle himself) onto it, and that has been KEY. It has protected his face, head and neck from the sun, the strap has kept it from blowing away, and I can always see him because he’s bright orange.

Our Airbnb has been wild. When I booked it, it was obvious the photos were heavily airbrushed. But being here now, the yard looks absolutely nothing like the photos. In a good way, honestly. The listing photos somehow removed the trees that line the yard to insert a big, fake, beautiful sunset. However, I’m much happier with the trees that make the space private. Nobody needs to see my face while I sit in the hot tub and listen to the same song 30 times on my speaker. Speaking of the hot tub, the jets don’t work so it’s basically just a hot, tiny pool. That’s not ideal, but I don’t care that much. The couch is actually quite comfortable, which is rare for an Airbnb, but that barely matters because the living room TV doesn’t work. So when we put the kid to bed at 7, we can only watch 5 minutes of a movie before we get nothing but buffering. The house pops and crackles loudly all night as the temperatures drop and it contracts. We sleep comfortably in the bed if we’ve finished two bottles of wine, but not if we’ve finished zero or one (the bed’s fault) or three (our fault). The biggest thing, though, is that the light in B’s room turns on and off, all by itself. We’ve seen it happen several times now. Last night, in the middle of the night, it turned itself on. We have him sleeping in a little tent in there with a sound machine, trying our best to get him to sleep until 6am, and the fucking light turns on?? Disaster.

So basically, I don’t know how to review this place. The location is great, and there’s so much going for it. But holy fuck, lights can’t just ghost themselves on and off. I’ll probably just not review it. Fuck it.

This week I…

• Food prepped. I’ve been wanting to keep things really easy and I don’t mind eating the same things on repeat, so I made another batch of sweet potato and pinto bean filling to eat with corn tortillas. I actually eat this for breakfast with a green vegetable (this week collard greens I’ve been stashing in the freezer), and I eat oatmeal for lunch. For me, eating some veggies first thing in the morning feels like the best start to the day, and then lunch feels like dessert which is also fun. People look at me like I’m a goddamn pervert when they see me doing this, though, which is wild. Anyway, I also made big batches of blueberry pancakes and quesadillas (potato, bell pepper, black bean and cheese) to keep in the freezer for the kid.

• Made another tamale pie to use up ingredients. When I made the first one last week I was left with half of several ingredients – cheese, sour cream, buttermilk and frozen corn. So I made another one this week to use everything up, and since we already had the dried beans and the canned tomatoes I hardly had to buy a thing and we ate it for three days.

• Moved our upcoming flight slightly later in the day (closer to the flight time we initially booked before they started adjusting it to be earlier and earlier in the day) and received $105 toward a future booking for our trouble. I remember when airlines offered hundreds for switching from an overbooked flight. So when I saw they were offering $35/person I laughed at how low the amount was, muttered “absolutely not” to myself, and then happened to see we could get a better flight out of it. That’s the real prize. Now we’ll have a more relaxed morning and we won’t need to wait around until we can check into our accommodations.
• I went somewhere free instead of the bakery for the kid’s preschool drop-off day this week. Mostly I did this because I’m going out for cake tomorrow, but saving a few dollars is nice too.

• Thrifted a sun hat and a new warm-weather sleep sack for my kid instead of new. The sun hat is a bit too big, so I’m going to try to sew a chin strap onto it so it doesn’t blow into the ocean next week. The real money-saver would be forcing him to learn to use a blanket instead of buying a new sleep sack, but here we are.

This week I…

• Ate homemade food. I wanted to keep things as simple and quick as possible, so I made a big batch of roasted broccoli and some pinto bean and sweet potato taco filling for my entree. I also made the usual big pot of oatmeal. Monday evenings my husband does his weekly food prep so the kid and I fend for ourselves for dinner, and we ate something from the freezer. Tuesday I made a Mediterranean kale salad and roasted potatoes (kale and potatoes were both on sale this week). Yesterday I made a big tamale pie and some sautéed some garlicky kale, and we’ll eat that tonight too. Tomorrow I’ll make a white bean and kale soup to get us through the weekend. It’s not typical that I do all the cooking – we are not that kind of household – but it just worked that way this week, and that’s okay with me because whoever isn’t cooking dinner has to figure out what to do with the kid and after a whole day of that, I’m all set.

• Took the kid to the aquarium over the weekend, where we have a membership. We brought lunch from home. This means the entire half-day outing only cost us our train fare.

• Bought bulk chili powder at PCC for $2.85 (it was on sale and bulk spices are generally cheaper) and also got a free mango for the kid. Kids get a free piece of produce each PCC visit, and we take advantage of that every time, whether we’re spending $30 or $3.

• Made my own play dough. It’s super easy and hardly costs a thing. I have yet to buy play dough.

• Fought with Abercrombie & Fitch until they gave me the full refund their policy promises. This is so stupid, but I ordered some jeans because well-fitting jeans are hard for me to find (I feel like they’re hard for everyone?) and I have a pair I bought from them last year that I really like. I bought the same size in the same style, but the fit was completely different. I drove them back to the store to avoid paying for return shipping, but they only refunded me the subtotal and not the sales tax. When I contacted customer service I was told that’s their policy. This feels like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen – they literally cannot keep sales tax once an order has been returned. Anyway, it took a week of back-and-forth emails and another trip to the store but I did get the money back. And it wasn’t a wasted trip back down there, since I needed to stop at Michael’s nearby anyway to get some ribbon for altering a hat for my kid. I’m gonna go ahead and not shop with A&F again, not like I ever did much to begin with. I’ve taken it as a sign just be happy with the jeans I have for now.

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.