I found some zucchini in the freezer, marked ‘9.  I don’t know if it was really that old, or if I was lazy when I froze it, but it was perfectly fine.  I made a batch of brownies from an old mix I had in the pantry and stirred the drained zucchini in.  They turned out good.

The single way we saved the most money this past week was the amount of help we got from friends and family with the sorting and moving.  If we had to hire the amount of help we got, it would have cost us hundreds of dollars.  We were able to move 2 huge loads over to my brother-in-law’s.  When my husband offered the one man, who is a relative stranger to us, gas money, he declined, but agreed to take an old wood splitter Rob did not need anymore.  It needs work, but the man seems delighted.  No one else wanted anything.

I found 8 small glass bowls in the attic.  Why were they there?  What was I ever thinking?  Who knows, but I was planning to buy some for the camper.  Even at the dollar store, they would have been $8.  I also found some glass casserole dishes in the basement that I have not used for a long time.  My mom and I cleaned them all up, and I will choose what will fit into the camper, and donate the rest.  I will need more glass/casserole dishes than I use when camping, since we plan to stay in the camper for a few weeks between houses.  I have many offers from friends and family to come to their houses and cook casseroles, etc., if I want to and then just warm things up in the camper.  I may do some of that.  I also may have Rob barbecue everything outside, or give the kids sticks over the fire, when we are at a campground.  I do have a teeny, tiny oven in there and some burners, so I plan to cook a bit in there, as well.  There is a small microwave, and I prefer glass to warm things in.  I had some very old plastic bowls in there, but now I won’t.

We contacted a realtor, who was highly recommended by a friend.  We will have her out Tuesday to discuss things.  I hope that the immense amount of cleaning and sorting will meet with her satisfaction, but she will probably give us lots of tips to finish up the job.  I hope to get a higher price, obviously:)  We are wanting to get this on the market as soon as we can.  As Brandy, The Prudent Homemaker, pointed out–the sooner it sells, the sooner we can stop paying payments on it.  As the payments are very hefty, that’s what we were thinking, too.

Piles of trash were burned, saving garbage fees.  The red car in the background has been inoperable for quite some time.  Rob and my nephew, Steven, got it going, and Steven took it home on Saturday.  He has the parts, which Rob paid for, and will fix it for free.  The door has been smashed in on the side, and he thinks he will be able to get new doors as well.  One of the girls will probably end up with it for a first car when Steven gets it fixed up.

We sold a few more things on e-bay.  They were not costly, but one interesting one was a cut thunder-egg rock Rob found in the shop.  It sold for around $3, and the buyer paid shipping.  I think sometimes we take things for granted, because we have had them for a while.   I remember my mom had one on a little shelf and I always loved looking at it when I was a child.   Rob and his dad loved rock hunting, and so we do have more of them to enjoy.  I’m glad someone else can enjoy this rock.  He wasn’t sure when he put it up on e-bay if anyone would want it, so it was a nice surprise.

My aunt helped Patsy cover a pillow form I found, while sorting, with flannel for her camper bunk.  I already covered another one for Ja’Ana.  I hope to find another form and make one for Lovana, as well.  I think if they can prop up on their bunks, or have pillows for lounging on the floor while watching tv., they will feel more cozy.  I got some new sheets at Macy’s on a very good sale for the camper.  Ours have holes in them out there, and I am replacing them.

Rob went to get the camper back, but it needs one more thing done, so he came home empty-handed.  Hopefully, it will be done soon.  I’d really like this huge pile of things out of my bedroom.  They belong out there.  Almost all of the work is warranty work, but one thing we will be paying for, because we want it done.  It is less expensive to just leave it there until it’s done completely.  There was a seal that was leaking, and that would be tragic if we didn’t get it promptly fixed.  Water is not our friend in a camper, except in the faucet and bathtub:)  By catching it early, and them fixing it under warranty, we saved thousands of potential dollars worth of damage and repairs.  I’m so glad we are year-round campers and took it out over the Christmas break and found this problem before any significant damage was done.

We were able to clean the basement out and make a place to stack storage bins.  We saved at least $200 by not having to rent a storage unit for those things for another month, at least.  We are finding that storage units are costly.  We have never had to rent one before.  One place, that is less expensive ($189/month for the biggest unit), is full.  Another one is around $229 for a little less space.  Yikes!  That will add up quickly.  All the more reason to be thankful for the things we can store over at my brother-in-law’s.

We had a simple birthday dinner for my sister today.  We spent very little on the food and presents, but enjoyed the time together immensely.

My niece, Alissa, found some candles in the drawer, and lit them up for her mom.

Jake was watching eagerly because he wanted his mom to wish for little toy cars for him when she blew out her candles.  Silly boy!

This past week was a mixture of saving and spending–kind of like life–full of good and bad.  Here’s how it went:

The pigs continue to grow.  An appointment was made this week for the mobile slaughter man to come the first week of March and take care of them.  They are all spoken for, except 1,  and several are paid for.  We anticipate Rob’s labor will pay for our pig.  It got a little complicated when we realized a few weeks ago that one of them had not been properly castrated by the woman we bought them from.  After phone calls, and pictures being sent back and forth, she traded in the incorrectly fixed pig.  Thankfully, Rob was able to catch it with no problem and take it back.  So, it was not a complete loss as it would have been if we had been stuck with a viable boar.  They aren’t good to eat, and we have no need for a daddy pig.  The new baby is smaller, by far, then the other ones. So we are out a bunch of feed, plus the cost of transporting the pig and trading it in.   We are still not sure how we are going to handle that–but the good news is that we are still going to make enough money from the other ones to pay for our pig.  We will be lucky to break even on this one, though.

Rob picked up a temporary job and earned a bit of $.  He might have been needed one more day, but a piece of glass he had previously stepped on caused an abscess in his foot, causing us to go to the doctor for lancing and antibiotics.   She said he had to stay off of it.  The good news is that he is healing up nicely, now, and he did get paid for the one day.

We sold some dishes, cookbooks, home-school books, and a few small items from the shop on e-bay and a used book store.  We got over $150, which will bring our savings total for fixing up the new house up to around $600, once we get it all into the right account.

We did not buy a new refrigerator or popcorn maker when they broke.  I am using the fridge in the garage and a pot for now.

We had our taxes done instead of having Rob do them with Turbo-Tax as usual.  It was complicated this year because we had done some logging.   We had a fear that we would owe a lot, but that was not true in the end.  We also worried that our inexperience and lack of knowledge would cause us to make a mistake that would come back to haunt us later.  We will be getting a small refund.  I’m sure we paid taxes, but there was enough money withdrawn from Rob’s paychecks from last year to cover it.  I’m so glad we had this firm do the taxes.  They had a lot of experience in timber sales, which is why they were recommended to us  and knew how to calculate which part of the sales were actually profit, and how much timber was purchased when we bought the property (they don’t consider that profit).  We still do have expenses to pay, such as replanting baby trees, etc., so still are not spending the money until after we have paid what we need to.   Still, we had envisioned paying, and ended up not paying and even are getting a bit back—-happy day!

We have been eating a lot of that cauliflower I froze last fall, along with many other vegetables I preserved by canning or freezing.

I shopped on Thursday at Costco for myself and 4H club, which was Friday.  I am in charge of cooking classes and there were 9 recipes to prepare for this week.  I purposely chose recipes that used my stockpile.  I didn’t have everything.    I didn’t have time for multiple stores, so got what I could at Costco and spent about 10 minutes in a Safeway getting the few remaining items.

I took the kids to McDonald’s Thursday after dance.  I figured we could afford that with the excellent news about the taxes.  Thursday was a crash and burn day for me–I could hardly drag one leg in front of the other, but needed to go with Rob to the doctor (we weren’t sure if he was going to be able to drive after they fixed him up–he actually could).  I also wanted to see what the Dr. found–had I gotten all the glass out, done something wrong, etc.  What did I have to do to take care of it at home? Since he could not see the bottom of his foot, it was all me.  Also, planning and getting ready for so many cooking classes for 4H is time-consuming, and I was exhausted because I had saved that job a little too long.  By the time I figured out that I was the one who was going to go to take the kids to dance, shop like  a maniac while they were in class, and do dinner as well, since Rob was in bed at that point with his foot up, I decided that Mrs. McDonald could make dinner.  They accidentally gave us 2 extra cheese burgers and an order of fries.  They caught the mistake and gave us the extra food for free, as they would have had to throw it away, and it was their mistake. We took them home to Rob and he didn’t even have to get out of bed to eat dinner.

It just gives me a larger appreciation for Rob.  I truly could not do well at living the life we lead without his constant help and support.  He has always wanted a large family,and promised long ago to bear his share of the load of the daily work involved with so many special needs kids. And he has.  He will do doctor visits, therapy, dentists, DHS visits, shopping, laundry, cooking, etc., etc., etc., as will I.  It takes us both. Let’s face it, we do SO much work ourselves because our kids either can’t or won’t.  Don’t get me wrong, we train them, but it often takes much longer to do a job than is normal, or it is beyond their ability.  Then you add in sometimes oppositional behavior, caused by neurological glitches, or just teen-age years, and it gets interesting sometimes.  So, we tag team the emotional part as well, and handing out the consequences, etc. He has never resented giving up the toys he thought he wanted when we were young, such as a fancy pickup, a boat, time for fishing a lot, hunting a lot, etc.  I feel like it’s Valentine’s Day all year long, because our love has grown and matured over the last 33 years to so much more than it was when we first got married.  I am blessed.

This past week, I was able to spend a great deal of time on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday sorting, cleaning out, and even packing a few boxes that will go into storage.

I took some time out from sorting to cook.  The last thing I want to have to do is start spending extra money on take-out food because I am too tired to cook, or didn’t plan well.  I had Lovana make up some pizza crust mixes for the camper.  I also made up a bag into pizza that I had made a while ago.

I plan to make home-made gluten-free biscuit mix in the near future.  Making mixes saves me both time and money.  I also use them to stock the camper to make camping more relaxing.

We did not spend the $50 that we budgeted for groceries this week.  We used our stockpile, canning, and freezers instead.  The only thing we bought from the grocery store was matches. We’ve been building a lot of bonfires while cleaning out, as well as our daily wood stove fire, and don’t want to run out of those!  I’m noticing that Ziplocks and Parmesan cheese are getting low, so I probably will take that money to Costco and get those items with it.  I’m thinking that lettuce/produce will take some of this week’s allotment.  We eat a lot of salad.

I’m noticing that, because I’m willing to dip into the stockpile and use up “special” grocery items, we are eating like kings and queens around here.

Both Rob and I sold several things on e-bay.  He’s finding a few things in the shop that he’s listing to see what happens, and so far, a couple sold.

We are putting all scrap metal that we find while cleaning onto a trailer and Rob will take it to the scrap metal yard soon.

As I pack and sort, I am making a big pile of items to put into the camper as soon as we get it back from the shop, where it is getting some warranty work done.  It is likely that we will need to stay in the camper for a couple of weeks after this place sells, and before we close on the new place, so I’m organizing myself for that.  If, for any reason, that doesn’t happen, we still plan to camp as usual, so it needs to be done.  I try to rotate the food supply in the camper each spring so things stay fresh.  This time, I’ve also picked out a couple of extra bins of food from the garage to pack under the benches of the dinette table.  I chose items like mac and cheese, canned soups, mixes (both home-made and purchased), etc.  I don’t use those items much on a daily basis, but do use them when camping.  If we do end up staying a couple of weeks in there, I want this extra food on hand to make things go more smoothly and to save money.  After all, I already own it!  I also am able to pick and choose out the convenience items before someone eats them.  I did a post on how I stock the camper pantry on a budget on Rob’s outdoor blog.

I have sorted out boxes and boxes of books and hope to make it to the home-school used book store this week.  They won’t take them all, but will buy a bunch of it.  Then, I’ll deal with the rest.  We took a huge load of miscellaneous items to a charity thrift store.  I know they will put the money to a good cause.

This week, I took a loaf of gluten-free bread from the freezer that was starting to get ice on it and turned it into gluten-free bread crumbs.  I thawed the loaf.  It was a little too wet from the thawed ice, at which point I decided to make it into crumbs instead of eating it.  I laid it out on the top of a cookie cooling rack and left the slices there for 2 days to dry.  Then, I broke the pieces into chunks and whirled them around in the food processor until they were crumbs.  I left mine quite large, like Panko crumbs.  They were still a little more moist than I wanted, so I cooked them at 250 degrees for 30 minutes.

The entire loaf of crumbs easily fit into a quart-sized zip-topped bag.  I then froze the crumbs so they would last for a really long time.  I know they could be left out, but I prefer to keep mine frozen so they don’t get rancid, or have a chance of molding if they weren’t quite dry enough.

I continued my project of using up food. Since we are definitely putting the house on the market soon, I am now VERY committed to clearing some of it out.

We bought some plastic bins to start putting some of our things in.  We will fill them with non-essential items, packed well and put them in storage.  My brother-in-law has an empty semi-truck trailer he has offered to let us use for free.  There are 2 reasons for this.  1) To empty the house a bit so it looks nicer and is easier to keep clean while it is for sale. 2) Rob does not have a job, so we are not going to qualify for a loan.  So, we will have to sell this house, get the money, and THEN buy a new house.  This will leave us in the camper for a couple of weeks at least.  It will save us a lot of money if we can pack things into that trailer for free, even with buying a lot of bins so mice can’t get into our more fragile things.  Rob got a lot of boxes from the grocery store and I am packing empty canning jars in them.  Moisture and critters won’t bother glass jars.

We have made a hard decision to sell this place, but in the end, we should be able to buy a house free and clear, which will save us a lot of money.  That is the bright spot in this situation for me.  It will be much smaller, and probably won’t come with property, but we won’t know exactly what we will have to work with until we sell this one, so I’m trying not to think the worst.

Rob got these flowers for free from Fred Meyers.  I trimmed off the “problems” that caused them to be free in the first place, and arranged them in my vase I got years ago from a glass blower.

I spent $51 at the grocery store this past week.  I was able to get 5 bricks of cheese (2 lbs), soda to take to the family dinner, salad ingredients, some milk, and some other things.  I was pleased with the amount of food I cooked from my storage.   I’m also pleased with the fact that my food is nowhere near gone.   We had guests on Friday, and ended up with 24 people at the family dinner Sunday.  (I did not bring all of the food, but did bring a bunch of it).  I love being able to entertain without worrying about a big grocery bill.

Rob went to an accountant this year, although he’s been doing the taxes himself the last few years.  This is because we sold some timber and want to make sure the taxes are handled correctly. We don’t want a costly mistake coming back to haunt us later.   The accountant told him we would probably need to hire a study done to determine the value of the timber when we bought the place.  It would be between $800-$1,000 for the study.  Then they would take the amount we sold it for, minus the amount it was worth when we bought it and the replanting fees, etc. and we would only have to pay taxes on the gain.  At the last minute, she mentioned that if he could come up with the original listing where the timber was valued for the sale, she could legally use that.  Amazingly enough, he had it in his files, and we were saved all that money!

We checked out library movies and books.  We’ve been watching t.v. shows on Amazon Prime.  I cleaned out the cereal cupboard.  It was full of crackers and cereal, some of which were just bits in bags.  People have already been eating those items up, since I put them right in front of their little fingers and eyeballs:)  We took a small walk along the Willamette river on Thursday while we were waiting for the girls.