My Abundant Life: This Week's Frugal Tasks

Our bathrooms renovations continue and the house is a mess. I had to clear a space for a camera crew to film an interview on Tuesday morning Lots of fun. The up side to having the bathrooms renovated is that I don't have to clean them at the moment. I tried to look at this positively. No cleaning means spare time for me. Spare time means I can do some frugal things.

Here's what I achieved during this crazy week -

* Cooked pie meat for four pies and froze it.

* Made three meatloaves and froze them.

* Made dried bread crumbs from some rolls that were given to me a while ago. They were rolls my family wouldn't normally eat but I saw them as a blessing and froze them until I needed bread crumbs. I then made the dried bread crumbs into seasoned bread crumbs to coat chicken drumsticks ans salmon patties.

* Picked a handful of beans and strawberries every couple of days.

* Made brown sugar.

* Washed our clothes by hand. We haven't had a washing machine plugged in since Friday last week. After Darren washed our sheets and towels at the laundromat ( costing $5 per load ) I've been washing what I can by hand.

* My girls and I had to wash our hair in the kitchen sink a couple of times when we were without a shower. When the ensuite shower was finished we had to have very quick showers as we are all sharing the bathroom while the girl's bathroom was gutted. Oh the joy.

* Kept the heater off most of the time as the tradies liked to have our front door open all day.

* Bought meat specials at Tasman Meats. For just over $80 I was able to divide it into 27 meals for the four of us. Tasman has number 9 raw chickens in twin packs for $6.99, sausages for $3.99 kg, regular mince for $3.99 kg and lamb chops for $6.99 kg. Great specials !!!!

* Sorted out the girls old school text books and advertised them for sale on the Sustainable School Shop website. I was able to pass a few down to Megan from Jessica. Some text books will be used two years running for Jessica. It looks like some folders can be cleaned and used again.

* Hand watered the vegetable seedlings. The rest of the vegetable garden was watered by God. It's such a blessing. THANKYOU !!!

* We gratefully received some blocks of cheese and a loaf of bread from a friend. God is taking care of us and we feel so blessed.

* Made fruit ice cream with frozen bananas, strawberries and a few raspberries ( store bought ). It's a great way to use up soft bananas.

* Diluted a bottle of laundry liquid by 50%.