by Texas Homesteader ~ 

Preparing for a powerful winter storm, free treats & grocery savings are among the 5 Frugal Things that saved money for us this week. Come see the list!

(Note: Some links in this post will take you to other related articles for further information. But links preceded with * are affiliate links. If you click and buy something I could receive a tiny commission.)

Preparing For Severe Arctic Cold Weather

There’s an powerful storm that’s predicted to barrel through the United States, so we’re preparing for the arctic weather.

Gathering Firewood  – We’ve been cutting downed & seasoned trees on our property into logs and splitting the wood. Then we stacked our main firewood rack with plenty of firewood as well as a hearty supply on our covered porch firewood rack.

Homemade Fire Starters – I’ve also been busy making Fire Starters, both the egg carton ones as well as the Wax-Dipped Pinecones.

There are other preparations being made for the impending inclement weather:

Preparing For Power Outage

Preparing to Stay Warm When The Power Is Out  

Combining Errands

RancherMan & I had to travel to a nearby town for errands. As we typically do we bunched our errands into that one trip to save gas as well as wear and tear on our vehicle.

Grocery Store

Farm & Ranch Store

Pick Up Free Wood Mulch From County For Garden

Reducing miles on your vehicle is always a two-fer win to save money. 

Shop When Expensive Grocery Items Are On Sale

We typically keep plenty of wild pork in the freezer, but RancherMan hasn’t been able to harvest one in a while. So we had to buy meat instead. 

WOW – the price of meat has gone CRAZY, y’all! 

So we watched the sales ads and planned our grocery trip when the grocery store had a buy 1 Roast Get Another For $0.01 sale.

We bought the two largest roasts we could (so the free one would be large as well) and brought them home.

I cut those huge roasts in half and used our vacuum sealer to keep each one fresh. Then I tucked them all in the freezer. 

Ways I Enjoy Serving Roast

Now I can serve a roast supper in several of our favorite ways:

3 Ingredient Pepperoncini Roast

Italian-Seasoned Slow-Cooker Roast

Easiest Instant Pot Roast with Brown Gravy 

Ways We Enjoy Ground Meat

I did the same thing with the ground beef I bought. I separated the large package into approximately 1-lb portions and used our vacuum sealer to keep it fresh in the freezer.

Instant Pot Goulash

Taco Spaghetti

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Sheet Pan Beef Quesadillas

You can see all our other favorite ground meat recipes here –>  

Food App For Free Food Or Treats

Sometimes you can enjoy the little things in life while still saving money. Being frugal isn’t always about deprivation. 

If your favorite restaurant has a loyalty app, use it! 

While we were running errands we stopped at our favorite burger place and enjoyed a buy-one-get-one-free ice cream Blizzard treat using their app. My favorite flavor is Chocolate Extreme and it was FREE!

Preparing For The Vegetable Garden & Seed Inventory

January is a great time to get ready for your vegetable garden. Growing our own food is a huge way we’re able to eat healthy for little money!

Plan The Garden – This week I planned this year’s vegetable garden using an Excel document that I update every year. That way I can make sure I’m rotating my crops, see what grew well last year, my companion plant notes etc. You can see how I Plan My Garden Here. 

Inventory Current Vegetable Seeds – I also went through my seed inventory to see what seeds I had and which seeds I needed to replace. In past years when I haven’t done this I found myself buying more seeds while I was out shopping ‘just in case’. I was happy to see I still had plenty of seeds this year with no need to buy more.

Remember: The best money saved is often the money NOT SPENT in the first place!

Free Wood Mulch – Most counties around here offer free wood mulch from tree trimmers. Since I’ve added another of my Favorite Heavy-Duty Raised Beds in my garden I needed to mulch the walkway around it.  

 

RancherMan & I simply loaded up some large tubs with the free mulch, I laid down some cardboard in my garden walkways and topped it with the mulch. For FREE!

No expensive mulch to buy, no wasteful plastic bags to dispose of. A money saver as well as eco-win! 

Repair Our Mailbox

We have a large *Rural-Sized Mailbox and we love it. But recently RancherMan discovered the rivets on the mailbox door had broken.

Now in our old days we would have just replaced it. But instead RancherMan brought the mailbox to the shop and replaced the rivets with small bolts and nuts. In minutes the mailbox was repaired & he reinstalled it on the post.  

That mailbox is once again good as new without us having to plunk down another $65-$75 for a new one. Savin’ money, bebe!

Bringing Food For A Covered-Dish Affair

Here’s a bonus way I saved money this week. Our church had a covered-dish affair. So I looked in my pantry to see what I could easily bring that could be enjoyed by all without having to buy more food.

I spied some potatoes that were just beginning to sprout. I needed to use them now to keep them from being wasted.

So I peeled & chopped some potatoes, coated them in olive oil and seasonings and roasted them. Everyone at the luncheon raved.

Daily Ways To Save Money

Of course there were the standard ways we typically save money every week:

Cook Homemade Meals  (the EASY way!)

Utilizing Planned Leftovers For New Dishes

Homemade Yogurt Breakfasts 

How about you? What are the 5 Frugal Things you did to save money this week?

~TxH~

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