- Wash most laundry in cold and hang to dry.
- Night trained one boy, saving on laundry and overnight pull ups (and embarrassment/middle of the night tension)
- Made good use of our pantry and freezer (see our July menu plan) eating all meals at home (or packing picnics when needed). Used all leftovers well, wasting very little (though some pumpkin bars were forgotten... shucks!)
- Saved veggie scraps and chicken bones for stock. I made at least 4 quarts of stock for the freezer and have enough scraps to make another 4 in a few days.
- Saved overripe peaches by freezing them. I have 3 quarts in the freezer.
- Picked berries from our blackberries, raspberries from friends, and blueberries from a local PYO farm. I canned 7 jars of mixed berry jam to use as Christmas gifts with a loaf of homemade bread. I also froze several quarts of berries, which we'll use for snacks and breakfasts.
- Used saved citrus peels (in a gallon bag in the freezer) and a few fresh pieces to make 10 jars of homemade marmalade to use as gifts at Christmas. Two jars didn't seal, so they are in the fridge for us to use.
- We were gifted some squash, cucumbers, and zucchini. I shredded two quarts of zucchini for the freezer. This will be great for enchilada filling, in pasta sauce, or baked goods this winter. If we have cucumbers left after snacking on them, I will make pickles.
- We visited the church garden and weeded for an hour one day. We also harvested a gallon of green beans, which we ate for a meal and I steamed a quart for the freezer. It was a great outing for the boys, and a good little service project.
- I made two half pint jars of pesto with basil from the garden. I used sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts, and it worked out just fine.
- Volunteered for the food pantry each weekend, and gleaned what we could (things that wouldn't last 5 days until clients came). I came home each week with some veggies to roast and some fruit for the boys.
- Continued to work in Mom's garden, mulching and weeding and establishing new beds. She paid me, which is really nice, and the gardens are looking better for it. (Now if we can just keep the deer out!)
- Posted a few more things online for sale.
- Started using a new budgeting app, EveryDollar. It's helping us really to hone in our finances, though we're generally good at saving. We wanted to get a better handle on things and really make sure that we were saving every dollar we could.
- I have made it through the application process to begin teaching English online through VIP Kid! Once I've finalized my documents and they're accepted, I hope to teach online in the evenings and weekends at least 10 hours a week, which should bring in an additional few hundred dollars a month.
- Continued to research moving our blog over to something self hosted so that we can use some affiliate links and maybe ads to monetize it a bit. I would love to make this happen by the end of August.
- We continue to work toward our goal of a significant down payment (hoping at least 10%, and maybe 20% depending on if they will use the land we own as partial down payment) for our new house (which we'll build), which has been delayed a bit due to COVID and banks being slow to get together financing for us. Additionally, we're having to save more because our income was less than anticipated. Even though we have stellar credit, because we chose to have a stay at home parent who works part time, it affects the whole loan. (Which really stinks. If we had two full time incomes, we'd be paying childcare, which they wouldn't account for...)
- Because of how frugal we've been with groceries this month, we're able to put an extra $125 into savings. I may use some of this to help us stock up on essentials at Costco (plain yogurt, frozen veggies, rice, olive oil, dried fruit, nuts, laundry detergent, etc.)
How did you live and save green this past month? I'd love to hear from you!
