What do you do when you're up at 2 AM?

I know I shouldn't be doing this. I should be trying to sleep. And I do try for a while. But, the other night, up from 2 AM to about 4 AM, I just could not sleep!

I considered going outside and planting more in the garden, but my fear of encountering a coyote in the dark stopped that thought in its tracks. I considered sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor. After all, this would be a good time to insure no one set foot on a still-wet and very clean floor. But that just sounded like it would take too much energy at 3 AM (and might wake other members of the household, who would then come get a midnight snack, and there goes that opportunity to keep the floor from being walked upon just after mopping).

So, what do I do in the wee hours of the morning, while I wait for the time to have a cup of coffee? The other night, I was online, shopping for shampoo! And I bet some of you do that sort of thing, too!!

I keep a list of items to look for in the near future, when I'm out shopping. This list sits on the table next to my computer. I grabbed it, and began my midnight rendezvous with the online merchants.

While the rest of the family is content to use whatever is cheap, for shampoo, I use a color protecting shampoo. It's a particular brand that came highly rated for maintaining color treatments, which prolongs the time between colorings, saving me both time and money.

So, I shopped and shopped, and kept finding better and better deals. Found the shampoo I've been using at ULTA, near us, at a pretty good price. But a few minutes later, I stumbled upon a deal for the same product at JC Penney. Their salon carries the brand I wanted, cheaper than other stores in the area, and they have a coupon going on through this weekend (for an extra 10% off), that I could print out to take with me to the mall.

But wait, it gets better. I had all the time in the world (that's how it feels at 3 AM, right?), so I began reading more and more reviews about various products, and came upon a recommendation for a drugstore brand of shampoo, in the budget category! (Budget category -- that's calling my name!!) I thought, well this is worth a try.

In all of my late night shopping, I had come across a couple of coupons at drugstore.com for Proctor and Gamble hair products. Wonderful! I could buy an amount that would last me about 1 year (I really do use shampoo in the "size of a dime" amount when shampooing my hair). And it would cost 1/5th of what I paid one year ago, for a pricier brand.

So, while on drugstore.com, I wanted to take advantage of a couple of coupons, so I found the hair color that I've been using and added 4 boxes of that (an 8-month supply, which means I won't have to be looking for a deal on my color for a while). This then gave me 2 more coupons to use in this purchase. Using the coupons on the hair color, yielded a savings of about $1 per box over Target's sale price (and Target has pretty good sale prices on hair color).

And wanting the free shipping, I began to look around at other categories of beauty and health care. I take a particular supplement that I believe is helping me battle my present fatigue. Locally, at Super Supplements, I pay about $25 for a bottle of that supplement. By using yet another drugstore.com coupon (on supplements), and combining with a current sale on this brand, I paid $17.99 for this health care need (savings of $8 over what I was prepared to spend later this week). And I got my free shipping.

For items that were already on my shopping list for the near future, I was prepared to spend about $65. With my middle of the night shopping, I spent $40. I didn't buy anything that I wasn't already planning on buying. So the savings is "real" savings. And I about completed finding all of the items from my little list.

A savings of about $25, in exchange for 1  1/2 hours of my precious sleep. I'm not totally convinced this was such a good plan. If I wake up again tonight, I think I'll just go get a snack and go back to sleep.


One suggestion about middle of the night shopping -- just hold everything in a "cart" until the morning. You really will sleep on it. Then, in the morning, you can be sure of what was going on in your mind in the wee hours. No purchases that sounded good at the time!

Now tell me, what do you do in the middle of the night when you just can't sleep?

(p.s. I am currently working on finding new places to buy "my regulars", and save some money. This week, I picked up 8 tubes of toothpaste, at a savings of $2.24 over what I usually spend. Every last bit of savings means that our income stretches a little further towards our goals -- currently saving for a new furnace.)

Blogging issues

So, over the past week, I've put many, many hours into trying to solve my feed issues with this blog. This is time that I could have put towards active frugality and/or sleep. There appears to be some sort of error in my feed delivery, which I am unable to correct. So, I'm stuck. I don't have any more time to devote to solving this issue. And my personal knowledge of all of this is limited.

I'm just going to leave this as it is. If you want to continue visiting my blog, that's great. I can tell you about when my blog will post most weekdays. But your feed reader will likely not update with my blog, indefinitely. As far as I can tell, the email delivery still works.

Email is delivered between 5 and 6 AM Pacific time. I publish my posts by about 4:30 AM Pacific time.

If in the future I have a burst of energy or a person willing to help me on this issue, then maybe my feed delivery issues can be resolved.

We're all very busy people, myself included. It doesn't make sense for me to strip away time that could be spent in my volunteer capacity, taking care of a home and family, and paid employment, to try and fix whatever is wrong with the feed delivery for this blog. For the time being, I will continue to post about the various ways that I maximize our modest income.

I understand that without feed delivery, my readership will continue to dwindle. Sometimes, I just have to wonder, is this God's way of pushing me in another direction? It could very well be. Until I have His answer, I'll keep posting. Until tomorrow,
God bless.

Baking bread from scratch DOES take a lot of time

Baking from scratch isn't feasible, time-wise, on a daily basis. I do have other things to attend to! But that doesn't mean that my family need go hungry, or skip out on grains, ever.

When I just don't have time/energy to bake bread, rolls, or other items to go with meals, I simply switch out the bread that I might have made,with a starchy food that takes less time and energy. A potato takes only minutes to "bake" in the microwave, compared to the an hour or more to bake muffins, rolls or bread to go with a meal. A pot of rice requires minutes of hands-on time. No toast for breakfast? Oatmeal-for-a-crowd can be made in the microwave in minutes.

A family can still exercise frugality in meal preparation, without daily baking, just by choosing other, low-cost, but time friendly, starchy foods, such as oats, rice and potatoes. When I know I will be in a time crunch for a week, then I save any homemade bread I have for to-go or on-the-run meals. Then at dinners, and other meals at home, we eat those quick or easy grains and starches. And to keep rice, potatoes or oats from being ho-hum and boring, I think about these starchy alternatives as I would the desired bread product. If my plan had been to make French bread pizza for dinner, but I’m out of French bread or buns of any kind, then I might make pizza rice, topping plain rice with all of the usual pizza toppings. Or, if I had hoped to have toast for breakfast, I also know that oatmeal with my favorite toast toppings of peanut butter and jam is quite delicious. And if I had wanted to serve toasted cheese sandwiches with a bowl of soup, but all out of bread, well then, a microwaved potato, topped with cheddar is also yummy.

I remember growing up, it seemed like a crisis if we were out of bread. Someone in the house would be sent out to the grocery store to pick up a loaf, because what would we eat if we didn't have bread?! The same thing with milk. If we were out of milk, well what on earth would we eat for breakfast the next day?! And I know that my childhood household was not alone in this type of thinking. This is common. Whoever plans the meals/does the shopping realizes that the house is out of some common food item, and makes that last-minute rush out to the store.

Well, at least with bread products, this family has found many solutions to the all out of bread problem.  And yes, I am enjoying a bowl of yummy oatmeal, topped with jam and peanut butter, this morning for my breakfast!