Freezer Inventory

Today I decided to attempt to tackle one of our deepfreezers. We have two, one we put all the prepared meals in, and the other is the dumping grounds.
I don't know about you, but going into my freezer is often a surprise, and a surprise that I actually have the items. Or worse, none of the items. A downfall of being a stockpiler is the assumption you always have items on hand. Today I discovered I was out of bread.
I threw everything out of the deepfreezer onto the floor. I brought over milk crates to help sort the items. 
I often grab veggies, fruit and ground beef from my deepfreezer. After I sorted the items, I grabbed large reusable bags and sorted on these 3 categories.  Then I put the randoms on top. As you can see, I have lots of treats. My daughter has a party this weekend, and icecream for the kids. I found a package of candycane bark from Costco that I had forgotten about that was a great surprise!
After taking inventory, I am now aware what I have in the house for food. There was more fruit then I realized which will help cut down on the upcoming weeks' food budget.
Now, get organizing the freezer and happy saving. Who else is cheap?
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CAA Discounts

I have realized that there are a lot of deals that I have been missing if I had used my CAA card.  I went through the list of all the deals posted on the CAA website that I would use. I hope that the list helps you out.

DINING
10% off Durty Nellys
10% off East Side Marios
10% off Hard Rock Cafe
10% off Jungle Jim
10% off Montanas
Free soft drink when you buy fries or poutine at New York Fries
15% off Ryan Duffys
2 can dine for $15.99 Swiss Chalet


ACCOMADATIONS
15% off Atlantica Resort Oak Island and Halifax
10% off Best Western
10% Cambridge Suites
5% off Delta
Hampton Inn has monthly specials
10% off regular rates at White Point
$20 off Sell Rate at Digby Pines
10% off Lord Nelson

ACTIVITIES
10% off Anne of Green Gables
$20 off Cirque Du Soleil
10% off Fisheries Museum entry and Gift Shop
$1 off Martimes Museum of Atlantic
Neptune Theatre random discounts
$3 off family pass Ross Farm
10% off Via Rail
$9 adult pass, $11 Kid Pack and kid pass$27.50 2 adult passes 2 drinks 1 popcorn for Cineplex, only available at a CAA office

Minimilist?

 This year I took on a HUGE endeavor, purging our house.  It took this long because I have touched every item we have, including all of the holiday boxes that are packed up.
As I touched each item, I asked myself if the item serves a purpose, or brings me joy.  If the answer to these questions was yes, it stayed, and if not, away it went. No item was safe. This is a great documentary I recommend if you are needing a little motivation. http://www.theminimalists.com/netflix/  
For those that have been following my blog for a while I sell a lot of items online. You can re-visit this here:
http://guesswhoscheap.blogspot.ca/2016/08/yard-sale-part-two.html
I posted a lot of my items on Facebook Buy and Sell Groups to sell.  It takes effort to take and post the picture, put on Facebook and answer questions but it helps out financially. It was a nice perk to earn some money as I was attempting to travel the road to being a minimalist. I have a goal to sell or save $5 a day.  By selling the items it helped a lot with making extra payments on our home mortgage.  Win Win.
I hate to admit this, but I have packed and priced up 21 boxes for a Yard Sale that I will be having this Spring.  Sadly, this doesn't include what I sold online. It has been a very lofty goal for me to be a minimalist and if you visit my house you may not notice that I have tried. But I see a difference and hey it is all about our own personal path.
I list things online to sell that is over $2 if I have similar items. Then if it doesn't sell it goes in a yard sale box, then lastly I take it to Value Village.  My girls are involved in Girl Guides, if they have their yard sale again this year all the unsold items will go there.
Good Luck to you if you choose this path, and if you have achieved this already I bow down in awe.   And the extra money, BONUS!
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You Tube

Saturday night, as I was living the dream doing a few loads of laundry suddenly our washing machine stopped working. The machine wouldn't drain any of the water. We tried trouble shooting, and did an extra spin and drain cycle and nothing.  We had a problem 2 years ago and we were told the mother board is going on the machine, so we just assumed that it was broken.  To everyone a washing machine breaking is a big deal and causes some problems.  My husband is a massage therapist, he needs to use the machine for work also, above and beyond our household laundry. I spent Saturday night googling and researching prices for  anew machine, sure that this one was dead. I texted my mom who said her boyfriend would come look at it in the morning. This lead to my husband deciding he would search You Tube for how to fix videos. I figured, hey what is there to lose as I had already mentally prepared the machine was dead.  Well, I was pleasantly surprised Sunday morning when my husband said he fixed it!  There was a sock, a rag, a bobby pin, and a quarter stuck in a hole (my technical jargon) blocking the machine from draining.  Yippee You Tube saved us $700 plus tax!!!! 
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Cell Plans

If you are like me, you are addicted to your cell phone. Oh Gosh, I rarely use it to talk on the phone, but I do use it a lot to text, and to surf the net. I use a lot of Data. But not as much as I thought.
When I got my cell phone plan, I got one with a lot of Data and lots of day time air time minutes.  Recently my husband and I have been talking about how we can make our bills cheaper.  The closer we are getting to being Debt Free, the more we are trying to tighten things up.
We logged into our cell plan and were able to view back the past few bills.  We examined the trends  in my cell phone bill with minutes and Data.  We noticed that I was paying for more than I was actually using.  Today we logged online and changed the cell phone plan and are now saving a little over $15 a month!  I am with Koodo but I am sure other cell phone plans have tiered packages also.  For the minimal time it took to investigate the trends, it was well worth the $15 saved per month, that's $180 over the year. I'll take that any day.
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Recharge

Every now and then I need a recharge.  Ideally I would love a spa day. Seriously who wouldn't?  Today I just needed an hour to myself and relax.  And I wanted it to be cheap. I came upon the idea of a nice long bubble bath.  I had bought two large bubble baths from Avon last year for $10, and the scents are amazing.  I use one cap full and the bottles seem to last forever. I lite a nice candle, the smell of the Caribbean (this will have to do until I have saved up for a vacation) and went to my oasis.  I also brought in a novel, you know, the smutty ones you read that you don't tell anyone about? I buy books at yard sales on the cheap, usually a quarter a piece.   They resell for that when I have yard sales, so almost free!
There are many ways to recharge, some have a price tag, some are minimal in cost, but none the less do the trick.
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Menu Planning

I go through cycles where I plan the meals for the week, and I love it when I do.  I find this is a habit I need to work hard to stick to, it isn't natural to me. I HATE COOKING.
The door to our pantry is painted in chalkboard paint. I use this spot as the place where I record our weekly meals. 
There is a lot of food in our house. I spent five minutes and did a little inventory of the meals we have in the freezer, and food on hand.
Romaine lettuce is a staple here for salads, remember you have to eat this quickly before it goes bad.
I bought supplies to make an Epicure Thai meal for dinner with a friend on Saturday night. I will make a different Thai dish for dinner using up the fresh supplies. 
I cut the ends off of it and stick it in water for longer shelf life in the fridge. 
I recently bought a second deep freezer to store prepared frozen meals.  There are half a dozen turkey soups, pink sticker pizzas, and prepared Chinese Food kits that were on sale a few weeks ago and bonus Airmiles. 
This week we are eating out on Friday. A friend gave us 2 free large pizzas at a restaurant in town in exchange for a coupon session.  To upgrade to garlic fingers is $8.05 after taxes so I recorded that amount to come out of our budget. I will use the entertainment budget vs the food budget, the choice is up to you.
On the weekend we are going to the city for the day. We are going in just before lunch. We will bring snacks and a sandwich on the drive in, and for supper we will go to Superstore Grocery Store.

Happy meal planning

** We ordered Hamburger from a local farmer. It is a bit more per pound but delicious! I suggest looking for a deal like this in your area.