Category: Thrifty Thursday Roundup

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.

This week I…

• Food prepped, like every week. This week I cooked a big batch of steel-cut oats, Spanish garbanzo beans with spinach, sautéed garlic kale, roasted cauliflower and roasted sweet potatoes. Last night I also cooked a big batch of lentil and mushroom stew, mixed it with mashed potatoes, baked it in a casserole dish and then cut into individual servings to freeze for B. I like to have a few things in the freezer that I can pull out to give him for lunch.

Last night we ate some baked potatoes loaded with ranch dressing and buffalo tofu, with some garlic kale on the side, and we have leftovers to eat the same thing tonight. Tomorrow my husband will cook collard greens, cornbread and a big pot of beans and we’ll eat that through the weekend.

• Saved money at a birthday party by not drinking. I’ve been avoiding booze for most of the year, primarily in an effort to lose a few pounds, but it’s saving a few dollars here-and-there as well. Last Saturday a good friend had a birthday party at a drag brunch, which was quite expensive on its own – $72 for entrance, which included food and one drink (which I donated to the birthday boy), and another $20 for tipping the queens, but if I’d been drinking I likely would have spent another $30. I did still tip the staff as if I’d been buying drinks, because it’s a dick move to take up somebody’s table all day, barely spending anything but keeping them from having any other customers, and then tip a standard percentage on your minuscule tab.

• Took B to a free rescue farm Sunday morning, although we did pay the $5 donation to get a bucket of food to feed the animals. As B had zero interest in feeding the animals, we may skip that part next time. He had fun with the goats, but mostly he wanted to sit in the playhouse and declare that it was his house and not ours.

• Took B to gymnastics open play on a day when admission cost just $2 and two cans of food for the local food bank, rather than the usual $10. Even with a punch card it works out to be $7 per visit, so two dollars and two cans of beans is definitely cheaper. However, that comes at the cost of it being very crowded, and he had a few collisions with older kids sprinting all over the place while their parents were who-the-fuck-knows-where. That, combined with it not really being at a good time of day for us anyway, means we probably won’t be in a hurry to go back. Which is kind of a bummer, because he’s finally reaching an age where he can play intentionally with a lot of the equipment and he loves going.

• Stretched some protein powder by only using half-servings. I have mixed feelings about protein powder, because I prefer to keep my food as minimally-processed as possible. And I’m of the opinion that most people are getting PLENTY of protein, and that if we went out of our way to get fiber the same way we go out of our way to get protein we’d all be much healthier. But I’m trying to stay in a calorie deficit right now, and in the hopes of preserving muscle mass I’ve decided to add a little chocolate protein powder to my oatmeal instead of the cocoa powder I’d been adding. So I bought a bag of Costco-brand chocolate protein powder (using a shop-card balance), and I’ve been weighing out half-sized servings because I don’t feel like I need to add 25 grams of protein to my oats. All that is to say the bag will last me twice as long. And a fun little anecdote – there’s been a lot of press about protein powders containing high levels of heavy metals, but I saw a Reddit comment from a guy who works in a lab and tested the Kirkland brand protein powder himself, and he claims the levels were all well within acceptable ranges. But whatever levels of heavy metals might be there, I’m only getting half of those at a time, too.
• Waited to buy ice cream until it went on sale. We usually buy store-brand ice cream, which we find just as delightful as any other. But I happened to notice Tillamook’s German chocolate cake flavor while grocery shopping last weekend, a flavor I hadn’t seen before, and I’ve always loved German chocolate cake. It was always my grandpa’s favorite kind of cake, and my mom made it every year for his birthday. I decided to wait until it went on sale to buy it, and lo and behold, it went on sale this week. I grabbed some yesterday when I did our mid-week fruit run. Calorie deficit or no calorie deficit, I’m going to fit some ice cream in.

This past weekend we had a relatively low-cost birthday party for my son, who turned three! Actually we had two parties – Saturday afternoon we invited some families with kids over to play at a playground near our house, and Saturday evening we had some old family friends over for dinner. Here’s what we did to make it relatively low-cost (and low waste):

• First, the location. A playground is free, and we’re lucky to live near this particular playground because it’s somewhat hidden and always empty. We had the place to ourselves, so it almost felt like we rented a place.
• We made the food ourselves. It’s a lot cheaper to buy, for example, blocks of cheese and slice them than it is to buy a party tray. Same goes for fruit and veggies, and of course cake. We prepped our own big fruit bowl, vegetable tray and cheese tray. We also made French onion dip, a chocolate bundt cake and vanilla cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting. We bought hummus and big bags of pretzel thins and pita chips. All the food for this party came from Costco and was paid for using our shop card balance. For the grown-up party later, my husband cooked corned beef with potatoes, carrots and potatoes – all on sale at Safeway for St. Patrick’s Day – and I made a triple chocolate mousse cake. We did candles and singing with that cake.

• Bought a two-pack of good-quality folding tables from Costco using our shop card balance. We like to entertain, so the tables will be used often and I hope they last decades.

• Found second-hand tablecloths. The bird tablecloth is actually a shower curtain I found on my no-buy group.
• Used upcycled cloth napkins.
• Instead of using disposable cutlery I found a big bag of forks at Good Will for like $1.99, and these will be our party forks forever.

• I got all these flamingo plates second-hand and we used them – and will continue to use them – instead of paper plates. This definitely cost more up front, but I assume will pay off down the road, plus it’s way more fun and results in less stuff being thrown away.

• Nothing we brought was landfill, so to keep things out of the playground trash cans we set out containers under the table for compost, dishes, cloth napkins and cans. Not specifically thrifty, but Earth-friendly.

• We bought second-hand toys for his presents. He’s still only three and is happy to receive basically anything, so we got this big box of miscellaneous Duplo pieces from OfferUp and a few of his recent favorite library books from Thriftbooks. The few specific new things we wanted for him we put on a list for any family members who asked, so he got a few new toys too.
• We used up the leftover party food throughout the week. We sautéed the leftover bell peppers and used the leftover cheese to make quesadillas for dinner for two nights. The fruit got used up as snacks, and I’m working my way through the snap peas. The pretzel thins and pita chips are stored in airtight bags for later, and I’m going to freeze the leftover hummus in small cubes to use as sandwich spread.

And a few things not birthday-related:

• We used up the punchcard we bought two years ago for the gymnastics play hour. We have also now aged out of the best weekly time slot, so I won’t be buying another.

• I decorated our downstairs bathroom wall with mostly thrifted or free things. The only thing not thrifted or free is the print of the naked lady, which we bought years ago at a local gallery. Her frame, though, was thrifted.

• We had to replace our dishwasher, which is not thirfty. While we were researching replacement options, we saw this one on a good sale price. We weren’t ready to commit, so we missed that sale, but when we decided this was the one we wanted it was on a sale that wasn’t quite as good, so we waited until we saw the lower price come back. It only took one extra week, and it saved us $50. We also went with a “dumb” dishwasher, which is cheaper and there’s less that can go wrong. We don’t need the features.

• I had a bunch of bananas that needed to be used up or tossed out, so I used them all to make a big batch of freezer pancakes for B. The pancakes I make – made just of bananas, oats, eggs, water and any add-ins – are great to pack with us when we’re out all day and want to bring food with real nutritional value. I made half with blueberries and the other half with cocoa powder and sprinkles. It used up the bananas and gave us something we needed.

• I food-prepped, like always. I have some stuff to use up for my lunches, but I made a big batch of oatmeal, roasted broccoli, roasted carrots, sautéed green beans and instant pot collard greens to get us through the week.

This week I…

• Ate home-cooked food. This isn’t unusual, but it’s the thriftiest way to eat so it gets to be here every week. I cooked beer-braised cabbage with cannellini beans for my entree, and also cooked roasted cauliflower, roasted broccoli and instant pot collard greens to have plenty of vegetables around. For breakfasts I made a big pot of steel cut oats. I made some tofu, rice and veggie burrito bowls to freeze for my kid to eat when we need something. And finally, I made this cheesy cauliflower pie sans crust (just didn’t want to deal with it tbh) for St. Patrick’s Day and it was really good. Last night my husband made a big pot of lentil soup that we’ll eat for the next couple days.

• I got a $20 haircut. I explained my recent haircut woes in this week’s Monday Gratitude post, but basically I’ve had a long string of bad haircuts and this one finally turned out how I wanted it to. And bonus, it was only $20! Anywhere else in the neighborhood costs at least $70.

• I bought this backpack for $4.21 (regularly $80) using a combination of my REI rewards, an REI coupon and a $20 REI gift card I got for giving blood.

• I took my son to the gymnastics open gym using a punch card I bought two years ago. We went a lot when he was still napping twice (it’s free for under 12 months and a fun place for a crawling baby to explore), but when he dropped to one nap we realized all their open gyms were during his new nap time. Seriously, they’re ALL between the hours of noon and 2pm. This has felt like a huge oversight on their part, since the open gyms are specifically for babies and toddlers. This year they opened a new time slot for kids under three from 9-10am and we’ve been going almost every week. We now have just one punch left, and just one more week before he turns three.

• I took him to the Museum of Flight (we’re members) Sunday morning so my husband could do a little cooking in peace. I didn’t take any pictures, so this is a photo from a playground, which is also a frugal destination.

• We bought big bags of lentils, oats and rice at the chef store. I don’t remember how much this cost, but it’s much cheaper per pound than the regular grocery store. For us, the chef store is what people seem to think Costco is – the most cost-effective place to buy bulk food. We do shop for some things at Costco, but I find they primarily sell large packages of convenience/pre-cooked foods and that’s just not how we eat.

This week I…

• Bought all this (74 cans!) for $30.

I’ve never done a Safeway pickup order – I don’t trust other people to pick out my groceries – but there were a couple huge digital coupons for placing your first online order, so I figured cans were a safe bet and went for it. I received a few cans of the wrong tomatoes, but everything else was correct. I took the wrong tomato cans back to the store and exchanged them for the right ones and somehow got $2 cash back in the process. Beans and tomatoes were on sale to begin with, and I also redeemed $20 in grocery rewards, so my total savings on all these cans was ✨$83.48✨ (or 85.48 if I include the two dollars I got back exchanging the tomatoes).

• More cans. I checked the Safeway clearance shelf and found some diced green chiles, which I use in one of my favorite recipes.

• I froze leftover tomato paste in tablespoon-sized cubes.

I opened a can of tomato paste and only needed a little bit, so I used my tablespoon cookie scoop to freeze the rest. Once frozen I transferred them to a Stasher bag to keep in the freezer. No more mostly-full cans of tomato paste growing fuzz in the refrigerator in this house!

• I took B to the aquarium. We have a membership and brought our own snacks for the outing, so it cost us nothing but our train fare. A fun way to spend a rainy day.

• I took B to the Burke museum (twice!). It’s been disgustingly wet and rainy, so we’ve been visiting a lot of our indoor favorites. Again, we have a membership and brought our own snacks. Although one of the two days my husband came along and we went out to lunch too. 🙂

• I saved over $80 on a trike stroller. I thought it would be a good transitional item as we move into the wants-to-walk-but-only-for-a-few-minutes age, and I also thought it would help us prolong the life of our main stroller, which is starting to fall apart on account of we’ve put literally thousands of miles on it. Most of the trike/stroller combos I’ve seen really suffer on the trike side or the stroller side or both, but extensive research led me to believe this one was pretty good. The jury’s still out on whether or not that’s true, but I found it on a site that sells returns, floor models, etc., at a big discount. I’ve bought from this site before and I love them for helping unite things that are still perfectly good with people who want them. The cherry on top is that we didn’t technically pay for it at all – a generous family member sent us a check for B’s upcoming birthday, knowing we’d use it for this stroller.

• I bought this four-pack of holiday hand soaps at Costco for $3.97. I don’t know what they cost leading up to the holidays, but I’m guessing significantly more. Soap is soap, you know?