It’s been a while (sorry!)

Craaap, it’s been so long since I’ve posted. The past few weeks are sort of a blur of stress, insurance/repair stuff and settling back in.

I have plenty to catch you up on about the ordeal that was the sewer line replacement — many maddening things cropped up — but that’s going to be a long post.

And at this point, I just want to prove I’m still (allegedly) blogging. So.

A not-so-brief review

I ended up having to stay at the hotel for 11 days. And I left for said hotel on a Friday. I usually clean Saturday or Saturday/Sunday. Meaning the place was already a mess.

• Laundry sitting on the dining table needing to be folded/put away
• Dingy bathroom sink and counter
• Cutting board with some dried-on remnants of my last round of chopping (tomato seeds, a withered bit of spinach, etc.)
• Dusty surfaces, and so on.

So when I got back 11 days later — with two suitcases and a bag of food to unpack, a cat who was determined to make up for lost snuggling time and a litter box overdue for scooping — I felt utterly overwhelmed at the thought of housework.

I was determined not to push too hard, so I just pecked away at things.

Night 1: Clean the tub (I’d seen some backup the day I left for the hotel) and a very disgusting toilet (thank god for extendable showerheads and a toilet close to the tub). Take out medications and necessary toiletries.

Day 2: Sit around in a daze thinking about how much cleaning I was behind on. Clean the litter box. Unpack a few more things from the suitcase. Snuggle with cat.

Day 3: Ugh, fine, laundry. So take dirty clothes came out of the suitcases. Do the laundry. Low on salad veggies and chicken, but can’t go get groceries and chop up everything; grocery delivery to the rescue!

(I’ll try to do a post about Fry’s Boost program at some point.) Snuggle with cat.

Day 4: Fold the laundry already sitting on the table, plus laundry from previous night. Finish unpacking the suitcases and feel far too proud about that. Snuggle with cat.

The next several days was mostly just triage as things became unavoidable, like a pile-up of dishes in the sink.

The weekend before last, I had zero weekend plans, which sucked. But it did allow me the energy to blitzkrieg clean. It’s still no higher than “acceptably clean.” But it’s a start.

Actually frugal-ing it up a bit

Once I got caught up on cleaning, I decided it was time to start focusing on finding good deals on things. That emergency fund ain’t gonna rebuild itself!

Protein bars

I eat two to three bars a day, depending on my schedule/if I wake up hungry in the middle of the night.

They’re not cheap — a 12-count box at Target is $16.99; I can get two six-count boxes at Fry’s for slightly less: $15.98.

Still, at two or three a day, it gets rather pricey.

I decided to check Target for sales, and sure enough there was an offer: Spend $40in Health or Beauty, Get a $10 Gift Card.

Unfortunately, this was a pick-up or in-store offer. No getting them shipped to me. And it meant more trouble stocking up, since most Targets have a maximum of eight boxes. Usually more like five.

But this is Phoenix, so I have about four Targets within five miles of my house. It just meant that I had to hop around to different locations over the course of a few days.

I went online and bought discounted Target GCs from CardCash, then placed four orders over two different stores. As I picked up the orders, I got a $10 gift card for each.

Since I eat so many, I figured it couldn’t hurt to really stock up, so I used the free GCs plus more discounted Target GCs to buy two more orders. Then I used the gift cards from that to buy a box in the store.

In the end, I got 19 boxes for an average of $13.01 each. That’s three to four months’ worth.

Woot!

Chicken

As some of you know, I have to make sure to buy the low sodium chicken from the store. Which up until recently seemed to only be Kroger’s Simple Truth brand.

But happily I discovered that some of the Foster’s Farms chicken breasts are also low in sodium.

Fry’s has BOGO deals about every three to four weeks, so I get four to six packages. That tides me over til the next sale.

This means that instead of paying $4.99 per pound, I pay $2.50.

Much better.

BOGO caution

My only BOGO faux pas was for Panera dressing. I kept forgetting how recently I’d taken advantage of the last BOGO sale. So… I now have six bottles in my cupboard.

But they’ll get used up before too long. Besides, the dressing is $3.99 a bottle. So I’d rather have too many that I got essentially for half price than run out while I’d have to pay retail.

Saving on groceries in general

While Phoenix experienced the worst food inflation in the country in the last year or so, produce sales remain wonderfully cheap.

Fruit

Most weeks, I’m spending a maximum of $10 on fruit. Sometimes I’ll splurge on something that’s discounted — just not as low as it could be.

But for the most part, the fruit for any given week is very cheap.

Treats

I’m trying to work on my candy/artificial sugar intake. It’s not a linear progression, but it’s getting a little better.

Chocolate

I’m trying to get back to a daily dessert of 1/3 of a large Cadbury bar. It satisfies chocolate cravings without going overboard.

Unfortunately, those have gone up about 42% since before the pandemic. I’m keeping my eyes out for sales, but even with discounts, I’m usually only paying maybe $0.20 less. It’s something, I guess.

Other sweets

I still sometimes get a couple of $1.25 Junior Mints or similar candy. (Junior Mints from the freezer in Phoenix summers are amazing.) And I still occasionally get the big bag of Brite Crawlers, which I eat in entirely too few sittings. One of the main reasons I’m trying not to buy them anymore.

I used to love rainbow sherbet. But it went from $1.79 — almost always on sale at 2 for $2.50 — to $1.99 on sale. So it’s not as appealing anymore. Sometimes it does hit the spot, though.

P.S. I’ve been better about curbing my impulse for another favorite summer dessert, but it’s too good not to share: Put a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream in a dish then halve or quarter a banana — pour Reese’s shell on top. I’m sorry/you’re welcome.

The rest

I don’t buy a ton of other food, and most of it isn’t prone to coupons, let alone big sales. Thankfully, the stuff is pretty cheap on its own.

I have to make about two trips a week, and in each one, I get two bunches of spinach ($1.69 each), four to five Roma tomatoes ($1.20ish) and a cucumber ($0.59). Not a lot of opportunity savings there, but they’re already cheap enough.

Even making big salads — see below — I can get about four days’ worth out of those and two cooked chicken breasts.

Some months, like this one, Fry’s sends me a coupon for the non-Panera salad dressing I like: Simple Truth Rosemary Balsamic. This past week, I got $0.75 off.

And I buy Chobani most weeks to help get calcium in my diet. Depending on what sales and coupons are available, I pay about $1 to $1.10 per cup. They retail for $1.49.

(Yeah, I know the tubs can be cheaper. I’m just not ready for the responsibility of finishing a whole one of those in the necessary time span.)

I should probably work my way up to checking Coupons.com and such, but for now I’m just trying to normalize the current routine.

Look at me, all save-y!

I’m pretty proud of my last grocery haul savings.

Chobani four packs (usually $4.59, currently $3.99) were part of a “Buy 5+ items, get $1 off” sale.

So I got four, four-packs for $2.99 each, and I had a $0.70 off coupon for a single four-pack plus a Fry’s coupon for $2 off $10+ of dairy items.

End total: 16 cups of yogurt for $9.26.

I have a game night coming up, and crackers were included in the promotional products. So I got a family size box of Wheat Thins and one of Triscuits. With the sale, they were $3.49 — $0.50 less than the normal-sized boxes cost.

I also put back two $1.25 boxes of Junior Mints and grabbed a package of Grasshoppers which were (with the promotion) $1.99.

And as I mentioned earlier, there was a rare Simple Truth dressing coupon for another $0.75 savings.

Best of all, cherries were $0.99/lb this week (up to five pounds). So I got 4.38 lbs of cherries for around $4.70

So all in all I paid $35.08 for:

• 2 bunches of spinach
• 5 Roma tomatoes
• 1 cucumber
• A bottle of nice salad dressing
• 2 family-size boxes of crackers (will last at least two game nights)
• 4 four-packs of Chobani
• 1 box of Grasshopper cookies
• 4.38 lb of cherries
• 1 bag of Pretzel M&Ms*

Obviously, not all weeks will be that good. But since produce here remains cheap (no whammy, no whammy, no whammy), and with my trying to take lessen my candy buying, groceries should be cheaper than in the past.

* Yes, the M&Ms aren’t good for me in general, let alone with a low-sodium diet. But this flavor tends to be out of stock in most places — especially when I’m having active cravings for it — and I had a $0.70 off coupon. So I figured the universe was telling me something.

How’s everyone else been in my absence? Any good frugal coups?