Homemaking Organized Blog

Mother’s Day is just around the corner (eeeeek!) and just in time Treat (formerly Tiny Prints) is offering you a free greeting card so you can be prepared on this ultra important day (I speak as a mom).

• To get your one free card use  CODE: FREETREAT (choose the “Send it to me first” shipping option to receive the card free. If you choose “Mail it directly to the recipient,” you will be charged $0.44 for postage. Limit one per household)

Have more than one mom to celebrate? Send an unlimited amount of cards for $.99 each.

• To send unlimited cards for $.99 each use CODE: AFFTREAT (Expires 6/15/12)

So hurry and get your Mother’s Day cards now at Treat

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I’m having a giveaway for one of my Digital Planners from A Home Well Kept Series.

These beautifully designed digital planners are a lovely way to organize your home and life.

Each planner has details on managing your time or cleaning your home (depending upon which planner you have) along with many editable pages that you can type into and save the data for your own personalized home organizer.

Click on the following images to find out about each one and then come back and enter the giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Our friends Tawra and Jill over at Living on a Dime have offered an amazing sale to our
readers of up to 50% off of their Dining On a Dime Cookbook and their other print books
along with a bunch of extra freebies!

If you want to skip on to read about the great deal they have for you, visit Living on a Dime

It’s no secret. Many of us spend a bundle of money feeding our families. Yes it’s true that eating out and buying convenience foods is expensive.  When you’re busy, it’s hard to find a better alternative.

Now you can cut your grocery budget, save money and get out of debt using the easy tips and techniques that thousands of other readers have already discovered in the Dining On A Dime cookbook!

If you’re not familiar with Dining On A Dime, it is a wonderful 480 page encyclopedia of inexpensive and easy to make scratch cooking recipes designed to help you dramatically reduce your grocery bill while feeding your family delicious homemade meals. (I got mine during last year’s sale)

During this sale, you can get all of Living On A Dime’s print books for up to 50% off and you’ll get some great bonus items, too!

Whether you need to cut your grocery budget, save money around the house or just make delicious home cooked meals, these Living On A Dime print books can help you get organized and make your life easier!

Go here right now and see the terrific deals for yourself!
Living on a Dime

P.S. Tawra said she’s also got a great early bird special for  everyone who takes advantage of this special deal by Wednesday, so don’t delay! Go check out this wonderful offer NOW!

Find it at: Living on a Dime

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I’ve dropped our monthly grocery bill by a whopping $8 a week.

So are you wondering how I did this? Frankly I am too. Or maybe you’re just wondering what on earth we eat to have such a large grocery bill. Yea me too.

Well you know groceries have gone up considerably. We do eat admittedly well. Grocer’s have wised up to fish being healthy so they’ve raised the prices on that significantly in our area (catfish, basa, salmon, cod, you name it). I make pasta from scratch. Unfortunately I also just discovered heritage grains which are much more expensive than a nice $4 bag of flour (King Arthur) at the grocery store (which is also high). I have a food allergy so if we have convenience food anything it has to come from the health food section of the store which rarely has coupons or lower prices.  We juice which…my goodness takes a lot of fruits and veggies for the three of us. We only use butter. Again unfortunately I discovered the difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano Reggiano. And the list goes on.

So where on earth could I cut corners in an admittedly too high bill?

Well first off came necessity. My husband’s work is governed by the seasons. In the spring and fall are the leaner times around our home. We’ve learned to save up for times like this. But it only makes sense to revisit the grocery bill.

Second came the opportunity to review Crystal’s audio book The Money Saving Mom’s Budget. By many people’s standars we are frugal (except when it comes to food) and already do much of what Crystal talks about in her book but there were bits and pieces that I never thought about which have helped. It was time for a budget review. We’ve pretty much been on the same one since Peanut was small. Making a few small adjustments to the way I went about grocery shopping really have made a difference.

1.  I started taking a calculator. What?! Yes this one little thing made the biggest change. I go in with a set dollar amount and I add up as I shop along. This kept me from adding all manner of this and that EVEN THOUGH I had a shopping list.
2. Cook more from the freezer. During the lush times I purchased lots of meat when I could and it’s now sitting in the freezer. I’m big about filling the freezer but hesitant to use it. Since it’s a fairly new edition to our household I still had time to mend my ways. So I’ve been using up the goods in the freezer.  And now my grocery bill has very little meat in it until I land on a good deal.
3. Take advantage of great deals when I see them. I usually never land up these kinds of things but recently my grocery store had ground turkey for $.99 a pound. Normally it is $4.99 a pound and at the warehouse store (Costco) it is $2.99 a pound. Even with my new smaller dollar amount to work with I had enough cushion to fill up the freezer. It was great.
4. I still use coupons but I need to schedule time to do it more thoroughly. Mostly I focus on coupons for the food items which is great but I need to spend some more time on coupons for non-food items.
5. Since we started juicing I spend more time on the perimeter of the store than before. We juice organic so that’s not necessarily cheap but I put a lot more thought into the fruits and veggies we buy. Even with this this addition the grocery bill is cheaper. I’ve started the garden so that will help even more. Also when I see things like onions or apples for very cheap I buy a lot.
6. As a sort of updated envelope method we have a checking/debit account only used for shopping. On payday I put the amount I’ve allotted for groceries into this account for the next two weeks and that is what I have. Using this and the calculator keeps me on track.

Right now this is all I’ve done but it has made it possible to reduce our grocery bill significantly.

Wahoo!

So sorry folks. You know how you type up something and you omit some pertinent information? Well I believe I did that with the giveaway. My current giveaway is part of the UBP 2012 prize pack pool. But! Since I know how big the number of entries is and how I failed to say that it was part of the prize pool I will host a giveaway for one Digital Planner edition of the winners choice next week sometime (probably Wednesday). So stay tuned…

K

Hi and welcome to my neck of the internet. I’m a stay at home, work at home, loving home, mom of one (currently). I carry a foster care license and a history of travel.

Have a cup of tea…

A nice cup of tea (and a sit down). A Denby teapot and cup with milk jug. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A slice of cake…

Cakes! (Photo credit: Vanessa (EY))

Listen to some music…

And learn ten things about me….

1. I’m a Christian.  I go to a non-denominational church.

2. I worked in a hospital for 10 years. No not as a nurse or anything exciting. I was a paraprofessional in the medical library. I loved it and am still close friends with my peeps today. It’s a very tight nit community in the medical library there.

3. We homeschool using Bob Jones curriculum. On year three of using this curriculum and I Sweet Peanut is learning so much.

4. I play the piano. I took lessons as an adult and play for my church. I have also taught a bit of piano and am currently teaching our daughter.

5. I sew (a little). If I can’t find a modest outfit for my peanut in the store I’ll sew it. I use a vintage Singer.

6. I love to experiment in the kitchen (with hubby and daughter). Our recent forays are juicing and pasta making.

7. I love Vintage Homemaking. I know it wasn’t as lovely and sweet as it’s made out to be but there is much to glean from the ways of the past.

8.I’m trying to lose 20 pounds (who isn’t). I work out every day, eating well but I probably eat too much. Did you know losing weight is only about 20% exercise?

9. I do like to clean. I’m sorry. I’ve been pretty bad at it since moving to this house 4 years ago as it is a pitstop to buying a house but I do get in cleaning frenzies and scrub from top to bottom.

10. I speak a little Italian, even less French. Bits of Spanish (the stuff that sounds like Italian), 2 or three sentences in Japanese and Korean. People think I’m fluent in many languages. Get the accent right and you’ll sound like a native even though you’re only saying hello.

p.s.- We’re giving away 2 copies of our Digital Eplanner Combo The Managent of Time and Clean and in Good Order from The Well Kept Home series.

p.s.s – Whoops! I forgot to say that this giveaway was part of the UPB 2012 prize pool. But to remedy that I will host a giveaway of my own sometime next week.

Bathroom (toilet and bath) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Okay most likely this is not a topic you relish discussing. But it is something that needs to get done so why not talk about it?

The question is, what is the right way to clean the bathroom?

Even among professionals there are varying degrees (surprisingly) of what is right and wrong.

Within my own family we have different ways.

1. My mother pre-sprays everything first, including the toilet, then wipes down using a separate cloth for the toilet.

2. I have two separate piles of cleaning clothes. One’s I have written ‘T’ on in permanent marker for the toilet and ones for everything else. Both are white and sewn like a tube so I fold and wipe etc. The ‘T’ ones get washed on sanitary in the washing machine.

3. My sister feels that anything that touches the toilet must be banished from the house. She uses disposable cloths on the toilet and those throw away wand thingys.

We sit around and laugh about our varying styles.

And then I went and watched a few videos on bathroom cleaning thinking I could find a nice one to post on the blog. Watching them I realized how different everyone was and so I left off finding one that I liked well enough to post.

The best are these ones from Expert Village by a nanny and housekeeper. She is very good and detailed but there are 29 of the videos just to show you how to clean the toilet.

So how do you clean your bathroom?

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