My magic pantry

I was making my husband’s lunch last night (as I do just about every night), and I took the jelly jar out of the fridge.

“Shoot!” I called out.

“What’s wrong?” came my husband’s voice from the other room.

“Oh, nothing really,” I answered, scraping the inside of the jelly jar with a long knife. “We’re just almost out of jelly and I didn’t want to go to the store tomorrow.”

“I can stop on my way home?” came his generous response.

“No, it’s okay I can….” I trailed off as I opened the pantry to get a jar of peanut butter and found an unopened jar of jelly staring me in the face. I didn’t remember buying it, but there it was. “Never mind, honey.”

How did I have jelly that I didn’t know I had? Well, I would like to attribute it to the magical powers of my pantry and its ability to breed jars of jelly when I close the door, but probably that wasn’t it. Maintaining a well stocked pantry is one of the most important things that I do to save money on food and to reduce my monthly household budget. That trip to the store to pick up jelly, especially at 5PM when stomach juices are flowing and especially especially if hubby had gone for me, would have turned into a $25 impulse buy. (Look what I got! And it was such a good deal! And looked so good!)

A pantry only saves you money, though, if you don’t spend too much money stocking it in the first place. If you go out tomorrow and spend $200 to buy everything your household will ever use, you will not have money left in your budget for milk next week, and you will still find that you run out of things. Here are some ways to stock your pantry will saving your budget:

Plan

Make a list of things that your family uses regularly, and uses up regularly. In my household, that list always includes peanut butter and jelly, Listerine, toilet paper, frozen vegetables, bread, and canned tomatoes. Your list may be completely different. The important thing to remember is that you DO NOT save money by buying things on someone else’s list. You only save money by getting deals on things your family needs and uses.

Double up

If you see a somewhat decent sale on something you regularly use, buy two of them. It will cost you a little bit more money this week, but will save you money next week, or whenever you would have bought it again. Next week, you’ll have extra money left in your budget to buy two of something else that’s on sale.

Buy big

When you find a fantastic sale on something, buy a ton of it. We currently have 8 boxes of family size tea bags in our cabinet that I bought for 50 cents a box. How long will it take us to run through that? A long time. A long time before I ever again would imagine spending $2.50 on a box of tea bags.

Another way we do this is by shopping at a warehouse club for certain items we use a lot. For example, if we’re starting to run dangerously low on toilet paper, I go out and buy a jumbo pack at Sam’s Club. It’s not the best deal available, but it buys me time. I know have until that pack runs out to find a good deal on toilet paper. Trust me, that’s something I do not want to run out of, and running to the drug store at midnight to buy the overpriced 4-pack is definitely not something I’m willing to do.

Keep track

It’s important to keep track of what you have in your pantry. The can of beans languishing in the back of your pantry for six months is not saving you any money. You need to use it. Every so often, go through your pantry and pull out three things you haven’t used in a long time. Go to a good recipe website (I like http://www.allrecipes.com) and find a good recipe you’ve never tried to use up those things. Then don’t buy them again unless you know you’ll use them.

Another thing to keep track of is when you’re almost out of something. An item gets added to your grocery list when you open the last one, not when you use it up. It’s even better if you start shopping for a deal when you’re down to two. If you only have two left, it’s time to look for an “ok” deal instead of just a rock bottom deal.

Share

The other really cool thing about having a full pantry is that you are able to share. Last time I went through my pantry, I pulled out a full grocery bag of stuff I bought because it was almost free but that I realized now we just won’t eat. The whole bag is going to my local food bank at the end of the week. I’m also able to invite people to dinner because there’s always plenty, and to whip up a soup, casserole or dessert to bring to a friend when something goes wrong. The love and joy that comes from doing these things is even better than the money it saves me.

That really does sound like a magic pantry, doesn’t it?

More small changes: Cleaning

More small changes for the day, this time focused on cleaning:

Change #11 – Banish one chemical

Choose one chore for which you now use a harsh chemical (scrubbing the tub, cleaning the toilet, washing the floor, cleaning the oven) and try it with something healthier. Maybe baking soda will work or vinegar water. Maybe all it takes is dish soap and water. Maybe just water. You could be buying chemicals you don’t need at all, and you’ll never know unless you try. I keep spray bottles of soapy water, vinegar water, and clear water under my sink so that it really takes no more effort to clean this way than it would with chemicals

Change #12 – Ditch disposables

Lately it seems like there’s a disposable version of everything: disposable wipes, dusters, scrubbers, even toilet bowl brushes. You don’t need to give all of these up to make an impact; just try to cut back. In place of paper towels or treated wipes, use cloth rags cut from old clothes or reusable microfiber cloths. I use microfiber in place of the disposable static dusters and the Swiffer mop pads, too. I think they even work better.

Change #13 - Make a clean sweep

I’m not sure where people got the idea that vacuuming is so much easier than sweeping. By the time I’ve lugged out my vacuum and plugged it in, I could have swept my entire kitchen floor, and I think it gets just as clean with a broom, without using any electricity. I still have to vacuum my carpets, but at least it’s reducing the impact a bit.


Check out the first part of the saving money, saving the world series

Break even challenge

Since I’m not working full time for the summer, I sat down at the beginning of this month and figured out how much money I actually need to make to “break even,” that is, to make it through the summer without having to tap into my emergency fund or savings to pay the bills. First, I took our total outgo budget, including our fixed expenses, gas, groceries, and a small allowance for eating out and entertainment. Then, I subtracted out my husband’s stipend. That was how much I needed to earn per month for us to keep up with our bills. That number was $1800 (400 less than my salary at my full time job, which is worthy of further consideration in the future ). I then divided that 1800 by 30 and calculated that I will need to make an average of $60 a day, 7 days a week.

Now, if this were to be done with a regular job, then I wouldn’t calculate it for 7 days a week because, really, who wants to work 7 days a week? But I don’t plan to earn this money just from one job. I’m going to spend the summer experimenting and playing with different ways of earning money through freelancing, working part time jobs, blogging, writing, mystery shopping, and trying various online opportunities. Since I can do this for an hour or two a day, or take whole days off, I’m going to average what I make weekly over the seven days of that week.

I have very few worries about being able to make $60 a day. I already have a tutoring gig that starts next week where I’ll make $60 three days a week for two hours a day of work, so that only leaves four days of having to scrounge – and plenty of time during which to do the scrounging. Mostly, this will be an experiment in record keeping for me, tracking how much I’m actually making from various activities. Hopefully, I will be able to prove to myself that I can easily get by – if not ahead – should I ever leave or lose my full time job for any reason.

Here are the rules I’m setting for this challenge:

• Part time tutoring and essay grading for my current employer will count as break even money on the day I do the work
• Freelance work, commissions, interest income or anything I make requiring a payout at a later date will count on the day I receive the payout
• If I go under my weekly grocery budget of $50 or entertainment budget of $25, that will decrease my break even requirement for that week
• Gift cards and other rewards from point programs will NOT count as income but will instead count to reduce spending
• Personal spending or discretionary spending above what is budgeting will INCREASE my break even requirements for that week
• Grocery rebates will count as INCOME when they are received, but the original purchase MUST fit into my $50 a week grocery budget or it will increase my requirements of the week it was purchased

I may add more requirements as I go along and notice things that work or don’t work. I’m going to try to check in once a week with a challenge update, and give a weekly total, daily average, and current update total. Wish me luck and stay tuned!

Free Stuff Update

Last week I posted about free stuff you could get at restaurants. I had incorrect information, and Sonic's free root beer float day is actually TOMORROW, June 7. Enjoy!

Doing Nothing

It's not very healthy for me to have vast stretches of open, unscheduled time ahead of me. I worked at my part time job every day last week, and I have a tutoring student I'm working with two hours a day starting next week, but this week I need to rest my mind and body a little, so I am blissfully just sitting around and doing nothing.

Somewhat blissfully.

Doing nothing is a lot harder than it sounds. My mind is so busy with all the critical chatter that it's hard to relax in one place for more than a few minutes. Yesterday, I took my book down to my apartment complex's pool to lay in the sun and read, and five minutes later thought of something I needed to do in my apartment. I lay down to take a nap, and then realized my dishwasher needed to be unloaded and I shouldn't be sleeping yet. I went to run errands and felt anxious because I was away from home and thought my husband might get home before I did and then I wouldn't have dinner ready.

For goodness sake.

I think that they key to all this do nothing angst is to just have a schedule and routines. I should get my laundry and my my dishes done and my house clean first, then write, then schedule in some leisure time in the afternoon so that it's done before dinner time. Without a schedule, the bad stuff is taking up as much time as possible, kind of like my money does when I don't have a budget. If I can just make a schedule, I think I would still have hours in my day to do all the things I want to do, like go to the gym, swim, get some sun and read my book if I just figured out where my time was going.

Hmmm. . . that sounds like a lot of stuff. I wonder what happened to doing nothing?