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My goal, is to put this in each week as a new series, to allow me some regular series going each week.   I will try my best.

As you may know, I believe my role as “Mom” is a great and mighty role.  I believe that when given that role, it is my job to do the best with the resources that God has given to me and be productive with them as well.

Here are my last week’s frugal productivity……

This week was a busy week, we had just gotten back from camping and we were full swing into getting back into school.

It took me a few hours to unpack things and most of the day to wash the bedding and clothing.  I was VERY thankful for my big washer and dryer.

Being in a large family, I have found we have to be creative when it comes to organizing some of our things in our household.  For the bathroom, I have been frustrated with our scrubbie holder.  We used the chrome hooks that were hung in our shower and for the 2 hooks, we held 4 different scrubbies. Every morning, I was constantly picking up someone’s scrubbie that had fallen into the shower, fumbling with trying to untangle my scrubbie, and trying to keep one separate for the child who cannot handle any type of soap on her body.  I wanted to replace some of them and was talking to my oldest and realizing that he wasn’t even using the correct scrubbie all this time!!! I had to do something different.

I have a friend who recommended putting hooks on the back of the door and hanging them separately for each child, the only problem was that we have a pocket door for the bathroom, so that wasn’t going to work.

I then thought of staining a nice piece of cherry wood and hanging it vertically alongside of the shower and having hooks for each child’s scrubbie.  That was a good idea until I realized that the cost for the hooks was going to be $15 plus the wood cost.

Then after talking with my friend who has a “larger than us” family, she said that Walmart had a shower organizer with lots of little hooks for around $12.  I checked it out my next shopping trip and bought it.

This is perfect for us.  It holds all the scrubbies and bars of soap.  I don’t like soap on the shelves in the shower, too hard to clean.  I keep a veggie scrubber brush in the shower for little ones feet and nails.  Some of the older ones also brush their teeth in the shower.  I didn’t realize that was a “weird’ thing to do.  It just cuts down on the time to have to do it outside of the shower.  I put an index card on the wall above the shower and wrote down who has which color scrubbie.  I plan on keeping this up until everyone is acclimated in using the correct color.

 

I had to clean my oven this week.  This is one of those jobs that are NOT one of my favorite things to do.  I do not use natural homemade cleaners, as I have found it is WAY harder to clean.  This is probably the only “harsh” chemical I buy.  (I do buy bleach, because we do use this occasionally but not for regular cleaning.)  Anyways…..my frugal accomplishment would be to NOT use paper towels.  I had ALWAYS used almost an entire roll to clean out the oven, because I didn’t want to deal with the mess.  Well, this time I just used an old washcloth and filled a bucket full of water to rinse the cloth in.  It really wasn’t hard at all.  When I was finished I rinsed off the cloth and hung it under my sink on a little hook.  It will sit there until I have to do this task again, probably another month or so.

While vacationing, I have found that my children really enjoy peaches cut up and covered in granola.  That is something I enjoy eating and all my little ones kept eating off my plate, so I decided to give it to them for a breakfast meal.

We also have an abundance of apples right now, I like to slice up the apples and put them on a plate with a dab of peanut butter and sprinkle granola on it for my children to dip it.  Here is our easy recipe.  

We also went to our local Farmers Market this week while out for an appointment.  I like to see if anyone has containers of things that they want to get rid of and will sell to you cheaper.  I was able to pick up a box of cucumbers for $4.  They were all mismatched and some were curvy, but when peeled and cut up they taste just the same.  I kept these on the counter this week to munch on along with some baby carrots, leftover from camping.

I have upped our Kombucha making process.  My husband and I really enjoy drinking this healthy drink.  I was only able to make a few gallons at a time, due to not having any more large glass containers.  I went to Walmart and found 2 gallon glass “cookie” jars for $15,and now use them for making my kombucha in.  This has allowed me to NOT purchase any other kinds of drinks for my husband and myself which allows us to be frugal in our drink selection.  Plus we are getting all the added health benefits of drinking kombucha.

This was one of my favorite frugal accomplishments for the week.  I had gotten an email from York photo, giving their latest weekly deals. One of the deals was a photo book for $10. I had gotten to see another friend who had done one of these books and I thought it was a really neat project.  It is almost like scrapbooking without doing all the work.  They are normally quite expensive, but once in a while they offer them really cheap.  This was one of those times.  

I had to upload photos, I believe I did about 100 photos for this book. You can do as many as you want, it was only about $1.50 for extra pages, not bad at all.  

You can choose from a million different fonts, background designs, clipart, etc.  I could of spent hours designing these books, but I didn’t . I chose some family scriptures and quotes and picked some simple designs.

I thought it was perfect because I have been making photo collage boards for the last few years to capture our family and this would be something different, but still something besides keeping the photos on CD’s or in a box to never look at again.  I plan on giving it to my husband for Christmas as he thought it was a really neat idea and he doesn’t know that I did this unless of course he reads this blog post!!!

For me, this was frugal, as it will be an inexpensive gift, plus I don’t have to have them printed off and made into photo collages, which is more work as well.

 

I was also able to FINALLY get photos of my children printed off for my living room walls.  York also had another great deal of buy 1 get 2 free 8×10 photos.  The only problem was, amiss ordering them I somehow forgot to get the littlest ones printed off.  Thank goodness Walmart photo has free shipping, I was able to order it and it should be here this week.  Sorry Stephen.  These are going on our living room walls because my walls have been bare for a really long time.

How about you?? Any frugal productivity things that you did this week?

Here are some more ways of how we packed for a tent camping excursion.

I took plastic wash bins for doing dishes in and washing up babies.  For traveling these were great to store things under the seats.  I took my Starbucks coffee jars and filled them with dish soap and laundry soap for easy traveling.

We brought all plastic silverware and paper plates and cups.  I had a bag full of medical supplies for emergencies and a bag full of batteries, mini flashlights for each child, duct tape, scissors, and extra baggies.

I stored our extra shoes in bags and put them under the seats as well. Bread does NOT travel well.  Especially if you are taking a large amount for a trip.  I used 2 diaper boxes and stored our bread in it.  For sandwiches I did flat bread, pita bread, and wraps.  That way I wasn’t freaking out trying to keep our bread from getting smooshed.  

I labeled my pita bread because some of it was going to go bad before the others, so I just put a little note of which ones to use up first.   We took our electric tea kettle for instant coffee in the mornings.  I took ice cream pails for the little ones to use at the beach and put their finds into.

I took a toaster and coleman stove for cooking over.  I realized we would probably just use the fire exclusively and will decide to keep that at home next time.  It was a little cooler so we had a fire going pretty much the entire time we were at the campsite.  After our meals were cooked, I would put a stock pot full of water over the fire and use it to heat up and wash dishes with.  The I would do it again and use it to wash up the children.  We even heated up pots and I washed the little ones in the wash pans for a quickie bath one night by the tent.  They loved it. 
Up front, I kept a bag filled with our bathing suits, a few towels, a sheet to sit on, and one extra hotter outfit per little child.  The weather was supposed to be cooler so I packed that way, but I was glad I took some hot clothing because one of the days turned out to be rather warm and I was grateful for the change of clothing.  Plus having it up front helped to not have to dig through the trunk looking for it.

 

I also packed another bag up front full of our coats.  This was good because while we were out, we needed something to keep us warm and being able to have ALL of the coats in one location helped not to have to look around the van for them all.

Everytime we got in and out of the van, I would take the little ones shoes off(flip flops) and keep them by the door.  We had packed the van to capacity and if a child decided to put a shoe in a crack somewhere, there is no telling where it would be at when we needed it for a bathroom break.  This worked out well.

Here we were as we ventured out.  You can see we packed it to the ceiling.  

Dad and I were ready for a drive.  We tried to leave early but didn’t make it as early as we would have liked.  It was still good.   Here I am ready to embark……..

One of our first stops for bathroom break.  Thankful it had a field for the children to run in.

Plus a coffee shop for a pick-me- up for driving.

We took advantage of our state parks.  Cost me $11 and we were able to goto many of them.  This one had a lumber camp recreated in it.  Educational and fun for inexpensive.  

We did lots of stop off’s and let the children get out and run.  There were lots of climbing stairs and running involved.  We took the stroller but never used it.  They did great for lots of walking.  

Our campground had a nice children’s playstructure.  Here Lauren and I were taking selfies while the little ones played.

 

Sitting by the campfire, getting warm.

The temperature was close to 80 most days, but one night it dropped down to 45 degrees!!! Oh yeah, thankful we took the space heater and heating blankets.  

We had a tent for the older children and one for Dad and I and little ones.  I wasn’t going to bring any type of tv entertainment, but I am glad I did.  At night time after they were all washed up and ready for bed they needed something to help them wind down after a long day.  I had a few movies on my phone that we set up for them to lay down and watch.  This helped hugely, because there WERE meltdowns and sadness as they were getting ready for bed.  That helped to ease the stressfulness of my job.  But we could lay there and watch a “comfort” show and fall asleep.  

Amazing all of the beauty that God gives to us “free.”  We just have to go out there and search for it.

So, did this trip make me to never want to do this again?

Sure we had:

• meltdowns
• crying before bed
• craziness before bed
• a million trips to the bathroom
• dirt in every corner of our tent, including the bed
• craziness before mealtimes

But we also had:

• memories created
• children that still talk of the fun we had camping
• smiles
• laughter
• experience of being outdoors and doing things differently
• good family bonding time

For me, all the bad parts of it, get erased when I see my children just beam with happiness when talking about our vacation.

So, yes I am ready to do it again

 

 

Even going to embrace the dirt.  (Northern Michigan actually has sandy dirt.  Much “cleaner” as far as dirt goes.  Makes for great drainage.  Less mud. 

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?
Or who may stand in His holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol,
Nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.

Psalm 24:3-5