We added some leftover yams on the side and had a bowl of miso soup (from mix) as well.

Leftover Turkey Lo Mein

Ingredients

• 3 Tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoon oyster sauce
• 1/4 Teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 4 Cups cooked spaghetti
• 2 Teaspoons sesame oil
• 2 Tablespoons peanut oil (we used canola oil)
• 4 Minced garlic cloves
• 3 Cups broccoli florets
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 lb turkey, cut in strips (we just eyeballed the amount)
• Green onions to garnish (optional)

Instructions
1. In a small bowl, mix together the soy sauce, brown sugar, oyster sauce, and red pepper flakes. Set aside.

2. Combine the pasta and sesame oil in a bowl. Toss until well coated.

3. In a large skillet over medium-high height, saute the garlic, broccoli, and onion for 5 minutes in your chosen oil (peanut, canola, or other). Add the turkey and saute for 5 more minutes, or until cooked through.

4. Add the pasta and sauce mixture to the skillet and cook 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly.

5. Garnish with green onions and serve.

Why Are Exotic Pet Supplies So Expensive? Tips to Cut Costs

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I didn’t do any posting yesterday because I was out running errands with a friend. While we were out, we stopped by a lot of different stores. I checked out some deals, but I had a strict budget for myself, which was $2 for any fun things + whatever it would cost to get some pet supplies I need.

I ended up spending $2.17 at the thrift store for 5 vintage books for the boyfriend, and about $46 on pet supplies. I always have an “ouch” moment when I go to the pet store and hear the total. It’s not like I buy anything extravagant, I buy what my pets need to be healthy and happy. It’s just really hard to finds deals and coupons for anything beyond dog and cat food.

I have three pets currently: a chinchilla named Dua and two rabbits, Barney and Gracie. Now when I adopted them, I knew the costs, and in the beginning I was spending much more than I spend now, so I’m glad to say that I have found some ways to save money. In the end, it’s just really frustrating, especially when I flip through the coupons inserts from the newspaper or visit coupon sites, and all I see are coupons for cats and dogs.

Anyway, I just try my best to save what I can and work with the system. For example, on my trip to the pet store yesterday I spend $41.47 without tax. Before coupons and discounts it would have cost me $49.97 plus $5-6 in tax). I bought two large 96oz bags of timothy hay and a 40lb bag of litter. Now on a normal trip I would only buy one back of timothy hay and a smaller bag of litter, but the timothy hay was on sale for $3 off so I decided to stock up, and only the largest bag of litter was on sale $1 off. For once I had a coupon to use! But that’s only because I bought Feline Pine, which there’s a $1.50 off printable coupon for at Coupons.com. That much litter should last me a few months and the hay (which is what I have to go buy the most) should last about 2 months. So not only did I save $8.50, but I’ve saved time and bus fare that would be spent on another pet store trip in about a month.

So, the savings are no so bad, but not the best. There are other ways I implement savings for pets.

Shop in Other Sections of the Store

First off, I buy litter in the cat section of store, as you can see by the fact that I bought Feline Pine (the Original non-clumping variety). For whatever reason, most companies that make exotic pet products charge an exorbitant amount for litter if it’s sold in the small pet section. I think this may be because smalls pets often use smaller amounts of litter over time in comparison to cats, so they expect the pet owners to just eat the costs.

One of the best examples of this is the litter Yesterday’s News. I used to buy this litter exclusively because it’s made from recycled newspaper, which made me feel better environmentally, plus the animals liked it and it was safe for them. Now, if you go to the store and buy their “Rabbit Litter” it’s $9.99 for a 10lb bag (the largest you can get). That’s $0.99 per pound. If you go to the cat section and get their “Cat Litter” it’s $16.99 for 30 lbs, which is only $0.55 per pound, almost half the price. The only difference between the “Rabbit” and “Cat” litter: name and price. Everything else is exactly the same.

Other items that may be cheaper in other parts of the store include litter boxes and toys (you have to be careful to inspect them and be sure they’re safe for your pet).

Don’t Buy Edible Toys and Treats at the Pet Store

I do not buy treats or edible toys from the pet store. There’s two reasons for this. Firstly, I am not going to spend $6 on something my pet will destroy in less than 24 hours. My rabbits and my chinchilla prefer things they can rip up and destroy, which is fine because they all need to wear down their ever-growing teeth. The second reason is because I don’t trust the treats and some of the toys sold at the pet store, because they’re often filled with chemicals, dyes, and preservatives that I don’t want to feed my babies, plus they may contain ingredients that just aren’t healthy or safe for my pets.

So what I usually do for this stuff is shop online. There are many websites, owned by pet enthusiasts themselves that sell all kinds of great, reasonable priced chews, treats, and toys for small pets. A lot of times they’re cheaper and they’re usually healthier and safer.

Some recommended web sites:

• Lonestar Chinchilla
• Cats and Rabbits and More
• Chinchilla City

If you’re really crafty and have the resources, you can make your owns toys, which saves a ton of money. There’s a great article on rabbit toys which lists a ton of resources, including the regular toy store, to find or make toys for your rabbit.

Buy Food and Hay in Bulk Online or at a Feed Store

This is something I don’t get to do as much, especially since there’s a major lack of feed stores in the city of Chicago and we don’t have very much storage space to stock up. I know other pet owners in more rural areas may find better deals on hay from feed stores.

I know it’s often cheaper to buy Chinchilla food online. At pet stores, they’re usually sold in quantities of 2-5lbs, but by buying 20lbs or more online, and freezing the excess, it could be cheaper.

These were just a few tips on how I save money when it comes to my pets. If there’s an interest, I can do more in depth posts about this in the future. Also, I’d love any tips from my readers on how they save money when it comes to pet food or supplies. I’m always up for new thrifty tips!

Saving Time & Money: Weekly Menu Planning

This is something new the boyfriend and I tried last week and I am pleasantly surprised by how much easier it made our week go.

This is how things used to go each night: dinner time comes and we spend about an hour or so trying to figure out what we want to eat/what we can make out of the ingredients we have on hand. Most of the nights we ended up eating pasta (we always have that on hand). Some nights there was just nothing to eat. We had all kinds of odds and ends, but nothing that really made a meal. Trying to make dinner was frustrating and time consuming.

That pattern had to go. So, last weekend the boyfriend and I sat down and decided to plan a menu for a week of dinners. This was something we’d never done before. My parents always played it by ear. We decided to make it kind of flexible by just planning out seven meals, but not necessarily scheduling them.

I wasn’t sure how easy it would be for us to make the list. We looked at all of the ingredients we had on hand and started naming off things we could make with them. At the same time, we wrote up our grocery list, adding ingredients we’d need to buy for our meals. Those items inspired other meals we could make.

This was the list we ended up with:

• Chicken quesadillas and guacamole
• Pasta and garlic bread
• Chicken fried rice and egg drop soup
• Perogies with sausage and green beans
• Pizza and salad
• Eggplant parmesean
• Slow cooker lasagna

We went grocery shopping once–this saved us time and money. There were no extra trips to the corner store to buy some necessary ingredient for more money than it would cost at the grocery store.

This saved us even more time each night. Previously it was 8 or 9 (sometimes even 10PM) before we finally sat down to eat. We were wasting tons of time trying to figure out what to make for dinner (and getting distracted in the process). With the list, all we had to do was pick was dinner we wanted and then make it. Each night we sat down to eat by 7PM.

I’m absolutely amazed how something so simple could make life so much easier. I recommend everyone try it. Even if you just have to make dinner for yourself, just take a few minutes to plan your meals for the week. The time saved alone makes it worthwhile.

Reducing Air Conditioning Use to Save Money

Since the move, I’m back in an apartment with air conditioning, which is great. Previously I was devising all kinds of ways to keep cool without air conditioning. Though I’m glad to have ac again, it’s addicting and costly. Ours is supposedly energy efficient, but we haven’t gotten our first electricity bill yet to determine exactly how efficient.

Luckily, it’s been a pretty mild summer here Chicago. Before yesterday I didn’t turn the a/c on for 4 days. I had it on for a couple hours yesterday afternoon and evening, and now it’s off again and hopefully will stay off for the next day or two.

Sometimes I wish I could leave it off completely, but I have a pet chinchilla, and they are very temperature sensitive, so I have to keep it below 74 degrees Fahrenheit at all times. It takes a little work to keep the apartment cool and reduce the amount of air conditioning I use, but it’s totally worthwhile because it saves money and energy, which is good for me and the environment.

Here’s what I do:

Buy a thermometer

Weather reports aren’t necessarily the most reliable stats on the block. I can search for the temperature for Chicago, but am really getting the temperature at Midway Airport, which is about 10-15 miles away, and when you’re dealing with Lake Michigan, that can make the temperature a couple degrees off.

For some people this may not matter, but for me it’s essential (and convenient) to know what the actual outside temperature is where I live. I bought a great indoor/outdoor thermometer with a remote sensor. I put it in the room with my pets (I also have two rabbits) and hung the sensor on our patio.

With just a glance I can compare the indoor and outdoor temperatures and automatically know when it’s cool enough to shut off the air conditioning and open the windows.

Turn off the AC at Night

Even if it’s too warm during the day, most nights I can turn off the AC and open the windows to let mother nature cool down the apartment. We use fans to circulate air through the apartment, though some nights it gets cool enough to just have open windows. If we really need to suck air in or out, we do have an inexpensive Holmes Twin Window Fan from when we didn’t have air conditioning, that we use.

In the morning I leave the windows open until it starts warming up (I also check the forecast for the day just to see if it may be cool enough to go sans ac altogether). I shut all the windows (and sometimes the door to where the pets are, to keep the cool air in there) and don’t turn on the air conditioning until the inside temperature gets too close to 74. (This works right now because I am home during the day. If my schedule changes, then we fortunately have a programmable thermostat I can set, but I don’t think it’s quite as efficient as I am). I always go off of the temperature in the animal room. If they’re at 72 and the living room is 76, then I just don’t bother with the ac.

Run the Heat Making Stuff at Night

When my air conditioning is off and the windows are open that’s the time that I turn on the lights, run the dishwasher, run the washer/dryer, and use the oven. During the day I try not to do too much cooking (sandwiches, salads, and fruit make great, healthy lunches), but open a window to counteract any heat that may come from the oven. Believe me, this does make a difference, even if it’s a subtle one.

Close the West Facing Blinds in the Evening

We’ve got a lot of windows in our new place, and it’s wonderful because there’s so much natural light that we don’t need to turn on any of our lights until about 8PM. That alone is saving us on electricity costs. The majority of our windows are north facing, but our living room has huge bay windows facing due West and once the sun starts to set, our living room becomes an oven.

Luckily there are some trees and other buildings near us that block out some of those sun rays, but usually there’s about a half an hour or so when we just close all the east facing blinds until the rays dissipate. It helps keep our living room cooler, and save on air conditioning costs.

These are the basic ways I’m cutting our a/c costs. I’d love to hear what you do.

Money Saving Tip: Creative Uses for Clothespins

During and after my recent move, there’s been a lot of item shuffling, donating, recycling, etc. It’s really given me a good chance to look at all of the things I have and figure out whether or not I need them, and also gave me a nice opportunity to find creative new uses for things I already have.

I have a ton of clothespins. I originally bought them because I needed a few to hang some items that can’t go in the drier. They were 50 for a buck at the dollar store, so I have a ton leftover that I’m not using for anything.

While I was unpacking, I realized we didn’t have as many chip clips as we used to and thought about adding it to our shopping list. Then it dawned on me: why should I got spent $3-5 on a couple of chip clips when I have a ton of clothespins readily available?

That wasn’t the only idea I thought of. I remember my mother previously used clothespins to attach skirts and other similar items to traditional hangers when there weren’t enough pants hangers available. Again I can save money by using items I already have, instead of going out and buying pants hangers.

I’m not the first to be creative with my clothespins, there are tons of other ideas and fun art projects as well. I’d love to hear what you use them for.

Check out further tips at Readersdigest.com and Thrifty Fun.

Money Saving Link: 4 Swiffer Hacks

I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning the past few days between the old place and the new place. Of course, I’ve been taking advantage of opportunities to save money while I clean. I use my reusable Swiffer cloths and rags instead of paper towels, which saves me a ton of money.

I just saw a post this week on Squwakfox, about four Swiffer “hacks.” Basically it’s tips to save money while using Swiffer products. The best tip is to use microfiber cloths or towels instead of the disposable cloths. Check the link for pictures of how they did it and the other four tips.

Free Shamwow

Previously I talked about ways to save money by reducing paper towel use. How about reducing your paper towel use by getting 2 free Shamwows to use?

Just complete a brief survey about your cleaning habits. You’ll receive your two sample Shamwows in the next 2 months.

Thanks to Money Saving Mom!

Money Saving Tip: Use Less Paper Towels

This is something new we’ve been trying in my home lately. The boyfriend and I are constantly looking for ways to cut down waste and costs. Paper towels are crazy expensive here and they really aren’t a necessity, at all.

Between my boyfriend using a new paper towel as a “napkin” for every meal, and me going through a roll every two or three weeks to clean out my pets’ cages, that’s a lot of consumption already. Add in kitchen spills, household cleaning, and other daily uses, those paper towels go fast!

Sure there are cheaper and “greener” paper towels out there, but the goal is to really reduce costs and consumption. So we’ve begun dramatically reducing our paper towel consumption, and here’s how.

Cloth Napkins

Two people using 3 paper towels a day (one for each meal) use about 42 sheets in a week. That’s 2,184 sheets in a year. If we buy the single roll generic Walgreens paper towls at $1.89 per roll, we’d need to buy almost 14 rolls, costing us over $26 a year. If we wanted to go name brand and buy Bounty at $2.39 a roll, that’s about $34.

So we are saving that $26 by using cloth napkins. We were fortunate to get some cloth napkins from a family member, so there was no out of pocket cost for us. Target sells a 12 pack of white cotton napkins for $9.99. If you’re crafty with a sewing machine, you can make your own and save even more money.

Since they’re small, we can easily toss them in with any load of laundry, so were not really spending extra money to wash them either.

Rags

Got old t-shirts you’re ready to toss out? How about a faded and stained bathrobe? Flannel PJs with holes in all the wrong places? Don’t throw them away! Instead, cut them up and use them for rags.

Rags are amazing. You can use them for everything and anything. We use them for general cleaning, as well as soaking up those accidental spills.

Don’t have anything around you’re willing to cut up for rags? Find a local thrift store and search the racks for cheap items to cut up. Spending a quarter or 50 cents on a bathrobe that yields 20 rags is a great investment. Look for 100% cotton fabrics and flannel, they seem to work the best.

My end goal is to stop buying paper towels completely and rely only on reusable products. I haven’t quite reached that point yet, but we’re well on our way to saving money and helping the environment!

See Also:
Money Saving Tip: Reusable Swiffer Cloths

Thrifty Moving: Saving on Packing Supplies

I’ve already tackled the challenge of finding moving boxes for free. So now that you have the boxes, the next step is to pack up your stuff. Easier said than done.

One of the trickiest parts of packing is making sure you pack your items in a way that they will not break during their journey. Often the solution is to buy costly packaging materials.

Instead of spending more money, you can save money and possibly pack all of your stuff using items you already have or can easily get for free.

Here are some of the item’s I’ve used:

1. Newspapers

Newspapers are available in abundance everywhere, and usually you can get them for free (free newspapers or checking recycling bins). They’re great for wrapping dishes and other breakables, and also can be crumpled up to provide cushioning and fill in empty spaces.

The only downside is the ink will come off on your hands and on your stuff. Though it washes away pretty easily, the last thing you want to do when you unpacking is wash all your stuff before you put it away.

2. Grocery Bags

Paper or plastic will do. They’re great for wrapping fragile items, especially the paper bags. Either one can be crumpled up for cushioning.

When I’m packing things that could possible leak–toiletries like shampoo bottles or food items that are not sealed–I will usually wrap them in plastic bags just as a precaution.

3.Towels, Clothing, & Other Linens

Have a lot of random towels? What about clothes? Sheets? You’ll have to pack them as well, so you might as well get some extra use out of them. I use them to wrap anything: dishes, glasses, ceramic figures, lamps, vases, whatever.

I also roll them up to cushion items in boxes and fill awkward empty spaces to keep items from shifting.

4. Tissue Paper

You can easily go out and buy tissue paper for this purpose, but this is another item you make have around for free. It may come from gift bags or shopping trips and is usually tossed out, but keep it if you can! Again, this is perfect for wrapping fragile items in. In my last move I had an entire set of glasses wrapped in the pink tissue paper I got the last time I splurged at Victoria’s Secret.

5. Bubble Wrap & Other Mailing Supplies

If you buy a lot of things online, like we do, then you probably get a ton of bubble wrap, padded envelopes, and other packing supplies along with your order. Don’t throw them away! You can recycle them by using them again when you’re packing up before your move.

Don’t toss up those padded envelopes either! You can put appropriate sized items inside and also cut them open to wrap items in.

6. Yarn

I’m a knitter, so I have tons of yarn around, sometimes leftovers or balls I found at thrift stores or got for free that I haven’t used yet. I’m not going to throw them away obviously, and it’s stupid just to have a box of yarn when it can easily be utilized. Mostly I use it to cushion items and fill in empty spaces.

Most of all, be creative. If you’re moving soon, keep your eyes open when tossing stuff out and think, “Can I use this as a part of my move?” Using free resources around you can save you money.

Have any other suggestions or nifty ideas to save money while moving? Let me know.

See Also:
Finding Free Moving Boxes
Service Review: Public Storage

Money Saving Tip: Keep Cool & Cut AC Costs

For the first time in my life I am living in an apartment without air conditioning and it’s not the easiest adjustment in the world, but it’s only temporary and definitely not the end of the world.

To beat the heat, I’ve done a lot of reading about alternative ways to keep cool and cool your home. The tips aren’t only great for those of us without the privilege of a/c, but also great ideas to help reduce the amount of air conditioning you use, saving you money! Also, it’s better for the environment to reduce your use.

So if you’re game, try a few of these tips:

-If you don’t already have them, invest in some fans. Ceiling fans are great and can reduce the temperature in a room by a couple degrees. Oscillating fans help with air circulation. If you have central air, sometimes just running it on fan mode is enough to keep things cool.

-At night, when the air outside is cooler, open some windows. Use two fans–box fans work particularly well–one blowing the hot air our and one sucking the cool air in. This will significantly lower the temperature in the room.

-During the day, close all windows to shut the hot day air out. Close all blinds and curtains you can to block out direct sunlight, which can heat up the room.

-If you’re willing to invest a little money, buy some UV blocking window film. Easy to apply, it blocks solar heat in the summer and also helps retain heat in the winter.

-Wait to run electronics at night. Everything electronic, from light bulbs to dishwashers, create heat when they’re on. It’s best to run them in the evening when it’s cooler out

-Another source of heat is cooking, so avoid using the stove or the oven as much as you can. Toasting something in a toaster oven creates a lot less heat than setting your oven to 375. Use a microwave or eat cold foods like salads. Another great idea is to use a grill and cook outside. Of course you can always go out to eat, but that’s not necessarily the cheapest option.

If you do have central air with a programmable thermostat, make sure you program it for a higher temperature while you’re away from home. Even just raising the temperature a few degrees can save money.

For more tips check out these sites:
15 Tips for Keeping Cool Without Air Conditioning
Keep Cool Without an Air Conditioner

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