Day 7 Money Free Week - Review

Day 11 money spent - $0
Fly lady - on hold until I'm back in my own home

While I didn't always enjoy it, it was very freeing to spend an entire week money free. Normally, when I get bored or just want to get out of the house, I go shopping at the thrift stores or book stores. While I am very good at looking for deals, I still often spend money I don't need to just to alleviate my boredom. This week I had to discover other ways to entertain myself. I spent some time just hanging out at the library, I made my own instant oatmeal, I dehydrated lots of food, read several books, and had a couple adventures in creative cooking. Not only did my spending moratorium help us save money but it also helped me in a couple several seemingly unrelated areas of my life. It helped me loose weight because I had to eat at home. I can think of at least three times this week when I was heading home hungry and was tempted to just stop and pick up something to eat but didn't because of the money free week. It helped me get in shape. I was much more active this week than normal. I got out and did things instead of wandering around behind a shopping cart. It built my cooking skills. I ran out of milk on the second day of the money free week and had to get creative with some of my recipes. Going "money free" also taught me a lot about eating from the pantry. Normally I see one ingredient, decide what I want to cook with it and make it happen even if every other ingredient in the recipe has to come from the store. This week, I looked at what was in my pantry and came up with creative combinations thereof. It was actually really fun and I made some outlandish and tasty meals.

What did I learn this week?

-I don't need money to be happy. I was at least as happy as normal this week and maybe a little more.

-The easiest way to avoid spending is to not go shopping. If I'm not in a store I can't buy stuff. (simple and yet so revolutionary)

-I don't have to follow the recipe exactly.

- A good deal is only a good deal if you need what you're buying.

-Free cycle. Need I say more?

- I have a LOT of food in my pantry.

-Both the base and town libraries are great!

-Lots of other stuff I'm sure I will remember later.

Money Free Week Day 6 - Late Post

Money spent day 10 - $0
Flylady - still working on hot spots

This is actually yesterdays post. I spent most of the day out in the Valley again helping my brother paint his house. When we were done, I was so tired and hungry it was a fight not to just stop somewhere and pick up food before the 1hr drive home. I was very stern with myself and came right home. Then I snacked on a bunch of dehydrated apples while I cooked some dinner.

Honey was able to get to a WiFi connection yesterday night so we got to spend some time in a real-time chat instead of just sending e-mails back and forth. It was really nice to get to communicate back and forth.



On my last visit to the library I checked out The Home Creamery. I'm hoping to try some of the recipes once I have some milk again. I'm thinking I might be able to set my dehydrator up to keep the milk at the right temperature to make yogurt. Eventually I want o try making Keffir but I need to find a source of keffir grains first.

Money Free Week Day 5 - I am worn out

Day 9 money spent - $0 (yippe!!! Back on Track)
Day 7 Fly Lady - paused as I wasn't home today at all


I spent today at my sister's house watching my 4 year old nephew (on about 2 hrs of sleep). I am worn out. I wish I could post something fun or helpful but right now my main priority is getting some sleep :)

Money Free Week Day 4 - Homemade Instant Oatmeal

Day 8 money spent - $30 (My sister's child care for tomorrow fell through so I had to get gas so I can get there to watch my nephew. I'm sad that it broke my money free week a little but not that I will be able to help out family.)
Day 6 Fly Lady - working on my "hot spots"

Homemade Instant Oatmeal....seems a little like an oxymoron but I'm always on the lookout for quick affordable breakfast ideas. I like oatmeal but it takes too long for our normal morning routine and I usually only buy the little "instant" packets for camping trips and the like. Since I'd dehydrated so many apples and wanted to figure out some uses for them other than just snacking, I decided to try and figure out how to make instant flavored oatmeal. The obvious choice for my first adventure was "Apple Cinnamon" (plus it's my favorite).

The Simple Dollar and Budget 101 both had decent directions for making your own instant oatmeal packets so I used their recipes as a starting point to figure out a recipe that works for me. The first thing I wanted to change was the use of zip lock baggies to store the individual servings. All those plastic baggies seemed wasteful and I've been trying to get away from storing food in plastic. Instead I decided to make a mix that could be added to regular quick cooking oatmeal to turn it into instant. Below is the recipe that worked for me.

For the Instant mix

(this is made to please my palate so you might have to change the amounts to please yours)

1/2 C Oat Powder (oatmeal that's been ground in a blender to make powder)

1/2 C Dried apple bits (I used the blender for this too)

1/4 C Sugar

1 tsp Salt

2 tsp Cinnamon

Mix it all together in a jar.

When you are ready to make the oatmeal, add 2 Tbsp mix for every 1/4 C Oatmeal (the apples tend to float to the top so make sure to get the whole mix in every scoop). Then add as much water as makes you happy and enjoy.

Money Free Week Day 2 - More Dehydrator Fun

Day 6 money spent - $0
Flylady Day 4 - doing OK and my sink is still shiny

Zucchini and Apples

(not together)

Before my money free week started, I picked up some zucchini on sale. Inspired by Sheri over at Green and Crunchy, I decided to dry them and make zucchini chips. (I'm really enjoying my dehydrator and have no idea why it was in the garage for so long)

I couldn't decide which seasonings to put on the zucchini so I tried several different seasonings. Clockwise from the top- taco seasoning, nothing, sodium free Mrs. Dash, Johnny's seasoning salt, and garlic salt (I was pretty light on the ones that involved salt). My favorite seasoning were the garlic salt and seasoning salt. I think because they taste more like potato chips. The chips were great plain but even better with a tiny bit of ranch on them.

Since I had half a zucchini left that didn't fit in the dehydrator, I sliced it up and cooked it with a little olive oil and some spices (Really yummy). I think I'm going to have to add zucchini to our menu more often.

And apples! And more apples! The results of dehydrating a big bag of apples picked up in bulk. I actually should have a couple more jars of apples in this picture but it took me a few days to dehydrate all of them and I wiped out a couple jars while I was waiting.

Day 1 Money Free Week - A Yummy Accident

Day 5 money spent - $0
Day 3 Fly Lady - so far so good

This morning I decided to see if I could use up some of the leftovers and older veggies in the fridge. The idea was to make a soup for lunch. From the fridge I gathered bacon, veggies, leftover Benihana Chicken and then added some of my homemade Chicken stock. I didn't have any onions so I threw in some lipton onion soup mix. I added a wild rice mix with seasonings from the pantry and toward the end I tossed in some frozen peas. I guess the rice soaked up all my stock because the finished product had the consistency of gumbo instead of soup. But it was really, really yummy and I used up some of the fridge debris.

I'm also trying to get rid of a lot of the extra clutter that we don't need and putting stuff up on Craigslist and FreeCycle (depending on the item). I've given away a few things and sold two things so far.

Have you noticed that I've got a lot of self improvement projects going on right now? I've noticed that every time Honey is gone I get in this "fix my world" mode. When honey is home, we stay pretty busy with working on the house and "Army stuff." When he's gone, I can only do so much on the apartment and all the "Army stuff" disappears. Plus, I get kinda lonely. So to keep myself entertained (and hopefully not shopping) I use these times to work on the big projects that are easier w/o honey here.

Let's Try this Again

Day 4 money spent - $20 (food at the Cafe hosting the Pagan Meet up Group and seeds for the Ostara planning session)

Day 2 Flylady - my sink is shiny and I'm dressed to lace up shoes

I haven't done as well as I'd hoped with my spending goals so this coming week (Feb 22-28th) I'm going cold turkey. I officially declare a Money Free Week! No food, no gas, no thrift stores, nothing! I have more than enough food in the pantry to feed me for a month much less a week and I can't think of a single thing I absolutely can't live without in the next week. Let the freedom from money begin!