Repurposing and Preventing Waste...Good Money Savers

I know I already posted today but I wanted to share a few things with you today. So here we go:

Since my sons and I all lost our jobs the end of last year. And since then only my youngest son has found a job- things have been tight around here. God has provided for the money to pay our bills and also my sons bills, but that money is running down. But I continue to trust that God is in control.
One of the things that I have learned and have been doing more and more of - is to look at ways to save money. And it is surprising the things that you come up when you start paying attention. You learn to make do with what you have more often. And example of that is - we have a container that we store our large utensils in, but I have more than what my one container will hold. Well I had seen on someone's beautiful blog that they had found a beautiful vintage pitcher and used it to hold the utensils. Well I loved the idea and I really wanted to copy their idea. My husband and I actually went to a local Antique mall looking for one. But did not find one that would work. I did find a cute Avon bottle that was a small little pitcher. So I told my husband that we were successful in our trip because we had found a pitcher...lol. Anyway so I just decided to let it go. Yesterday I finally came up with a wonderful idea! I have a medium sized cookie jar - kind of a beige color with some pink designs along with a heart(which I love) on it. I don't use it for a cookie jar because when I make cookies I make a small batch what ever I think we will want and then what ever is left over - I put in a Ziploc bag to keep them fresh. I am very picky about my cookies - I love fresh cookies. After a day or so - they loose their appeal. Anyway so I took the lid off of it washed it up and then I filled it up with the utensils and it works great. And best part is - no money was spent!

Then I noticed that I had a bowl with about 9 apples in it. Well I had bought a good sized bag and we had eaten some and then just hadn't eaten the rest. They were starting to lose their appeal. Well I decided first of all to make a batch of apple muffins-my mother in laws secret recipe - hence the name of our baker was "The Apple Cake Shop." Anyway so I peeled and chopped enough apples for that batch and then peeled and chopped the rest of the apples and I measured them out into the correct amount of apples needed for a recipe of Apple Muffins/Cake and put them into separate Ziploc freezer bags. And then I put them into the freezer. I have done this before and it has worked well. When you are going to use apples in a recipe that you are going to be baking anyway - you can freeze them. If you are still hesitant to try it. Just try it one time and see. Maybe with your recipe it won't work as well but with this recipe it works good. So I made 2 dozen apple muffins and then I have enough apples in the freezer for 2 more batches of Apple Muffins/Cake.

Anyway so you can see there are many ways to save money around the house - sometimes by reusing something you already have and sometimes by not wasting what you have. And what's neat is that it is fun to figure these things out.

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Before I end this post about saving money - I do want to share something with you all. I made up 2 batches of home made laundry detergent, this time I did something a little different and had a little different results. I had shared how I had put the mixture of the ivory soap, washing powder and borax in the blender. This time I used 1 bar of ivory soap and 1 bar of Fels Naptha and this soap is softer than the ivory soap. Anyway I would recommend you blending it in a blender one half of recipe at a time and make sure the blender is dry. I tried to blend one batch and I am not sure if it was moisture in the blender or if the Fels Naptha so being so much softer made it kind of harden at the bottom of the blender. When I did the next batch - I halved the recipe and it did much, much better. So I just wanted to write a little note to let ya'll know you might want to be careful if you use the softer soap and a blender.

What are ways you save your family money?