Healthy Snacks Made Easy

When arriving home from the grocery store or farmer’s market, take a few minutes to wash and prepare fruits and vegetables. Cut watermelon and cantaloupe into bite pieces and store in the refrigerator. Cut celery and carrots into snack size and place in zip type bags. If the healthy foods are already prepared, grabbing them instead of prepackaged foods is easier.

What to Do with the Winter Blankets

Bulky quilts and blankets take up a lot of valuable space in closets and linen storage areas. Buy a few pillow shams that match your décor and store the out of season quilts right in the sham. Arrange the shams, which now look exactly like pillows, on the beds.

January White Sales

January is a great month for buying towels and bed linens. Before you take off on a spending spree, take a few minutes and clean out your linen storage area.

1. Check for any bed or bath linens that are too worn to use. Recycle what you can. Old washcloths make great rags. Your husband might like the old towels for drying down the car, the motorcycle, the boat, or just to use in his workshop.

2. Remember the one out, one in organizing rule. If you toss or recycle only two towels, the purchase only two towels.

Turn off the lights!

Gas in Lebanon, Oregon, at the time I am writing this, is $4.25 a gallon. As high as gas is, I think groceries have risen even higher. We sat down and came up with a list of things we could do to cut our expenses.

Here is what we came up with:

(1) My husband found a buddy at work that lives in our area and they are carpooling three days a week.

(2) My husband asked his boss if he could work four 11-hour days rather than five 9 hour days to save driving another day. His boss agreed to try it.

(3) I have been checking out a local farm and produce stand for fresh fruits and veggies.

(4) I am using coupons for household and cleaning supplies and looking for sales to match up with the coupons.

(5) I have always planned menus and made a grocery list, but now I am taking a calculator with me grocery shopping and setting a limit for what I spend.

(6) My parents always taught me to turn out the lights when I leave a room. My husband has a nasty habit of leaving on the lights. He has left them on ALL night before! He is working on creating a habit of turning them off.

(7) Instead of just turning off my computer at night, I am turning off the computer, the printer, both monitors, the battery backup, the mouse charger and whatever else is plugged in down there.

I would love to see your comments on what you are doing differently to cut expenses.