Though I am still feeling rather blah about the past 2 weeks in general, I am taking some much needed advice from my hubby and good friend Liz. "Stop worrying so much about what others think of you. Your a good person, with a good heart. You speak the truth and from the heart. If they decide after knowing you for x amount of days, weeks or months, that they no longer can be a friend or acquaintance then you can't keep beating yourself up." They are right, but man it sucks. I always take it completely personally and despite my efforts of trying not too, the feeling never seems to go away.
Anywho, I am trying not to dwell on any of it. Thinking positive will have to get me through until Tuesday when I find out what will happen. Which to me seems so far away.
In the meantime, I have a few orders to put together for Anabelle's Attic. Not to mention house cleaning, a birthday party this afternoon for Emma-James and a few odds and ends I hope to accomplish over the weekend. So I have enough to keep me busy per say.
We are also heavily into rearranging and organizing our bills. Making payments lower on the van and the house. Attempting to consolidate all the credit cards into one. Finding what we can cut out of our monthly expenses to save a little. Looking over the budget though, every item that we have are things that we cannot get rid of. There are only two that we could attempt to try harder to keep down to a better price tag per month. Those being FOOD and MERCHANDISE. Food of course is hard. With seven people its never easy to cut down the cost. Price of food is going up and frankly, its insane. We try to buy "healthy" items for the family. Better meats and fish at Dave's Market, which of course adds up. And watch prices from Dave's to Stop N' Shop, to Target and Walmart. We even shop in bulk at BJ's on everyday items such as toilet paper and paper towels, cat food, dog food and laundry detergent. Still, those don't seem to help. Cutting coupons can only go so far, as most don't offer what we purchase on a regular basis. And last but not least. A small house doesn't give us the luxury of keeping a stocked cabinet with canned/dried essentials. It's enough to make you go bananas. I shop with a list. Write down on big items when they were purchased. Keep coupons handy. Buy non-name brands when possible. Bake cookies/cupcakes/snack items rather then purchasing. I think the next thing I am going to have to do is start making our own bread and maybe buy a cow :-)
Any ideas to keep costs down, I am all ears. Until then, I am off to sew and clean!
i hear you on the food cost front - and we only have 5 mouths to feed! One thing I do is cook a lot more vegetarian meals. Meat (esp. quality meat) is so expensive that we try to do more bean dishes to keep our costs down. Our kids love beans, though, so its not too hard!
ReplyDeleteWe do the same as well. Monday's are "meatless Monday" and Friday's are always fish or just a noodle with a vegetable. Plus we cut costs down by purchasing a whole chicken vs. chicken by the piece. I.E. just the breast, just the leg. This helps give us "extra" for soup and sandwiches and such. I am thinking we might just have to start the bean route too. My kids love them so hopefully it wont be hard.
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