Psst, I make money on some of the links in this post at no cost to you. It keeps the lights on around here. Amazon links are affiliate. 

Happy almost-Monday, everyone! Shoo-ee, where did the time go? We spent the bulk of our Weekend doing uninteresting things like studying and writing. We were rained in from a flash flood, so we weren’t able to do as many frugal things as we would have liked. Nevertheless, we did a few things to live more simply and cheaply on our journey to pay off debt!

How was your weekend? Let’s chat in the comments!

Frugal fails

We haven’t done one of these in a while, have we? Oops! I meant to be more upfront about frugal fails here on Picky Pinchers, but I’ve been bad about including them. There’s something less-than-fun about admitting your shortcomings to hundreds of internet semi-strangers. I’m gonna do it anyway!

But yes, we had some frugal fails this weekend, namely around Food. We awoke on Saturday morning craving breakfast tacos from our favorite taqueria. Let me be clear: we have a love-hate relationship with this place. We love the coffee and quiet atmosphere, but the food and service is hit or miss. As I bit into my taco, I got an unappetizing surprise: a glob of uncooked egg that straight-up looked like a booger. I kid you not. We didn’t eat our food and got a refund. We instead went to Chikfila across the street. It was okay, but in hindsight, we would have been happier (and richer) for eating at home.

Unfazed, I suggested we use a coupon to eat at a hip local cafe. Oh boy. The coffee there was good, but the food was shoddy and overpriced. And at $25 for the meal after a coupon, it was NOT cheap. Again, I felt swindled out of my money and angry that I didn’t just eat something at home.

(For context, we were eating out so much because I was traveling for work all week, and frankly, I was NOT having this whole “cook a five-star dinner from scratch for $2” business)

Anyway, these incidents were infuriating, but they were good reminders. Spending money doesn’t make me happy. If anything, spending money in these cases left me feeling duped and frustrated. It reminded me that, at the end of the day, eating out is a treat and that I’m better off enjoying the quiet at home, even if the meals are simpler.

Sunday cleaning checklist

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but wowwy, it’s been a game-changer.

I’m a total neat-freak. A clean house isn’t a nice-to-have for me; if our house is dirty, I feel unorganized and out of sorts. However, it’s really hard making time to do the deep cleaning that the house needs. After working all week, writing, and trying to relax, I’m spent and don’t want to clean. But hey, even then, the dishes continue to pile up in the sink and the dust bunnies get larger.

We’ve implemented something called “Sunday Cleaning.” For one hour on Sunday afternoon, hubs and I tag team cleaning the house from top to bottom, room by room. I scrub the toilets, wipe all surfaces, clean the litterbox, sweep, mop the floors, and more to get the house ready for the work week. It makes things so much easier when you start the week with a clean house. I recommend it!

If you also clean with your partner, we use Google to keep track of our cleaning checklist fo’ free.

DIY nails

Over the last few months I’ve really been on a Nail kick. But as you guys can see, we’re on a budget. A $50 trip to the salon is a nice treat, but it’s not something I want to do regularly. To get my nail fix, I figured out how to do my nails at home for about $2 per set of nails.

I bought a bulk pack of acrylic nails for $12, a $1 emery board, and $9 Essie nail polish. I file the heck out of my natural nail before applying the acrylic nail (the rough surface helps the glue stay longer). I go over everything with two coats of high quality nail polish and my manicure lasts 7 – 12 days.

Walmart trip

Mr. Picky Pincher and I have an unusual habit for date night. We LOVE going to Walmart in the middle of the night to shop. Around 10 pm we went to the near-empty store to shop for a few items. I also love our store’s robust Clearance aisle, which is like a treasure trove of deals if you know how to dig. We scored 60 cough drops for .50, as well as a bubble gun for $3. Normally I would call that a fail, but those were the two items we actually came in the store to buy. I wanted cough drops before the start of the “sick” season, and we want to get a bubble gun to play with Zap. He loves bubbles, by the way:

I LOVE that everything we needed was on clearance.

DIY movie night

After I learned my lesson with our frugal fails, I was determined to find ways to happily treat myself at home. That’s when I decided to do an at-home movie date night on Saturday. But this was more than your average date night. We went to town recreating our favorite parts of the movie theater experience.

I cranked down the A/C to 72 degrees so we would get the ‘cold’ movie theater feel. We buried ourselves in cozy blankets and pillows and cranked up the sound on the TV. We watched Ready Player One, a borrowed movie from our brother in law. We even made homemade popcorn, complete with melted butter and a Coke.

And you know what? It didn’t cost us an extra dime and we had a great time.

Writing and studying

I’ll be honest with y’all. I was grasping at straws today trying to think of what frugal things we did this weekend. Since it was rainy and awful, we weren’t able to do necessary work in the yard. We spent most of our time working on our respective boring projects. Mr. Picky Pincher studied for hours for a professional test he has in October. I spent hours doing work for freelance clients.

I didn’t think any of this was special at first, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that this stuff is frugal. We’re dedicating time to the things that matter to us. Things that will help us succeed in the future, even though it sort of sucks to do them right now. Nothing is forever, and sometimes, with a little luck, the hard work will pay off. We just have to keep moving.

Air filters

It was time to change our air filter so we picked one up at the grocery store. As we were about to walk away, Mr. Picky Pincher noticed the store was advertising a $4 off coupon for the air filter. They’re normally $10 apiece, so a $6 apiece price was too good to resist! We bought a few to stock up.

Old bananas

It’s a small thing, but I save whatever bananas are left over at the end of the week to use in my breakfast smoothies. It beats paying an upcharge for frozen fruit at the store!

Food

Okay, so food was weird this week. I was gone for work for the majority of the week and hubs fended for himself.

Bistro boxes

Sorry, I was bad about photos! One of my favorite easy dinners is putting together a bistro box. It’s like a homemade version of those fancy snack boxes at Starbucks. For Tuesday dinner we put together our own tasty bistro boxes. We combined odds and ends of meat, cheese, fruit, crackers, pickles, hummus, veggies, and whatever else we could find. It’s a snacky type of dinner, but I really enjoy it!

Monkey bread

One fun baking adventure from this weekend was monkey bread. I found a can of biscuits in the fridge and turned them into a tasty loaf of monkey bread (which is just a fancy way of saying ‘sugary biscuits’). I used this recipe.

I cut the biscuits into fourths and tossed them in a cinnamon sugar mixture. I layered them in my oiled bundt tins before pouring a butter-sugar mixture over them.

After baking for 30 minutes, the monkey bread was warm, buttery, and crunchy. Ahhhmahhgahhh!

Zap’s Adventures

Poor Zap was cooped up inside all weekend because of the rain. He whined and clawed at the windows and wanted to watch the rain. (To be clear: I would let him out in the rain, HE’S the one keeping himself inside!)

Oh, y’all. We bought an automated wet food feeder for Zap. We wanted him to get used to eating from it, so that way he could stay fed when we’re out of town for a few days. The feeder comes with an ice pack that keeps the food safe for up to 48 hours, so it would be perfect for when we travel over the weekend.

Zap realized that there’s food inside other compartments of the bowl. So what does he do? He grabs the bowl and drops it to snap off the top. I caught him red-handed as he was neck-deep in his food for the week. Un-be-lievable.

Here’s the Amazon link if you’re looking for something like this; it’ll be nice once we kitty-proof it.

We want to know: How did you save or spend money this weekend?

The post What A Frugal(ish) Weekend! September 9 appeared first on Picky Pinchers.