Small Successes

While it wasn't a cheap weekend, this past weekend was a weekend of small successes.

I went down to Holt's on payday to pick up some moisturizing lotion for my face. I have some cream left, but with the weather changing it was beginning to feel kind of heavy. My face was starting to break out, and I was hoping to kick that before it got out of hand. They have a sales "event" coming up, but it's one where they give you 10% back in gift cards, and you have to spend $350 to qualify. Not happening. I asked the lady at the counter for a bottle of lotion and she launched into a sales pitch on how I really won't see the full results unless I also use products X, Y and Z with it. Great. My skin is a gleaming beacon for sales people, screaming: sell stuff to me! *sigh* Anyway, 10 minutes later I've left the sales counter without the bottle of lotion, but with a handful of samples! I know from last time I used their samples that I'll be able to get a couple weeks worth of use out of them before I run out. So, it doesn't appear that I'll be spending money on moisturizer this month. If I get the sales pitch again next time I go in I may just order it online.

Spring is coming in a hurry right now. Where I had snow up to my hip 2 weeks ago I now have a patch of sad looking grass that is about to turn green in the coming weeks. I did a little online hunting for a weedwacker, because the $150-$250 for a gas model wasn't really an option. Success! I went on to the Canadian Tire website and found a little electric model for $40. I'll have to drag an extension cord around behind it, but I don't care about that. I have to do that with my lawnmower already anyway.

I spent probably a good hour Sunday evening making breakfasts and lunches for the week. I now have a stack of peanut butter bagels, salami and cheese sandwiches and containers of salad for this week in my fridge. I spent  a little too long in the shower this morning so I didn't have time to boil water for tea, but having my breakfast and lunch ready for today means that my spending will be limited. Extra bonus is the fact that since I've been focussing on eating my veggies again rather than reaching for easy carbs (scones, muffins, buns), I've been feeling better. I don't feel bloated, my skin feels better, and I'm not dealing with the hunger swings and crashes. Fewer crashes = less spending. Even better is that I'll probably be able to curb the recent migration of pounds to my midsection again.

I said sayonara to the dry cleaner and handwashed a couple of my dry clean only items last night. The result? Well, I'm wearing one of the items right now and it looks and feels the same as it does when it comes back from the dry cleaner's. Minus the chemical smell. You can consider me sold. Maybe now the money I set aside for clothes will actually be used on new clothes rather than on cleaning my existing ones. Score.

I FINALLY picked up an iTunes card when I went for groceries yesterday. Now I can download music without using my credit card. That only took me... oh... 2 and a half months... Oops. The important part is that I did it.

Did any one else have an small successes this weekend?

Covering All Bases

So there is a distinct possibility I MAY have a second roommate moving in. Maybe. I'm kind of excited about this to be quite honest with all of you.

Anyway, it's laundry day week for me. And by that I mean I've pretty much neglected washing my clothes for weeks and I'm working through the stuff I don't normally wear anymore. Given the fact that I take the more European approach to clothes (wear them more than once if they aren't actually dirty), this means I haven't done laundry in a while (save a load of undergarments 2 weeks ago).

Most of you probably already read FB's blog Fabulously Broke, but if you haven't sauntered over to her other blog The Everyday Minimalist I'd suggest you check it out. She did a post a couple days ago about how people dry their clothes around the world that got me waxing nostalgic about my university days. When I moved into my apartment I bought one of those folding drying racks from IKEA to hang my delicates to dry on. It was under $20 at the time, and was one of the smartest purchases I made during that timeframe.

Now, I grew up in a rural area, on an acreage, where you get dirty looking after the animals/gardening. My dad is a mechanic, so you can be sure he gets pretty dirty too. We had one of those extra large washers that advertised it would wash 20 pairs of jeans at once, along with the matching dryer. You could do a lot of laundry in my parent's washer. Imagine my horror at realizing that my apartment only had 1 tiny washer and dryer per floor (Shall we say 3-4 pairs of jeans?), and that it would cost me $2.50 a load to wash, and $2 a load for ~25 minutes in the dryer (plus more for extra drying time).

W...T...F...

It didn't take much mental math to figure out that I wasn't going to be using that washer and dryer. I just flat out refused, both for the sake of my wallet and out of principle.

I spent my entire 3rd year of university washing my clothes in my bath tub, and hanging them to dry on every surface I could find in my apartment. I lived alone, so I really didn't really have to worry about pissing off my roommates doing that. The only thing that caused me grief was my bedding, which I periodically took down to the laundry mat. I stuffed as much clothing into those industrial washers as possible to save myself the tub washing, but that only happened when I had a load of sheets to wash.

By 4th year I did pay to use the apartment machines occasionally for convenience sake; senior design projects sure do know how to take the wind out of you. But, I still tub washed a lot of my clothes.

Fast forward a few more years and I'm now paying to have clothes dry cleaned. Why? Because I bought a tonne of clothes for work that were dry clean only.

That was smart. S-M-R-T....

I had been cursing the cost of cleaning my clothes, when I looked down at my jeans and realized they also had a dry clean only tag.

Seriously???? It's 98% cotton and 2% lycra! Since when is cotton dry clean only?!?

Seeing as my jeans had already been unceremoniously thrown in the washer and *gasp* didn't shrink, it got me thinking about my other clothes. Why are they dry clean only? What are they made of?

Cotton. Wool. Lycra. Cashmere. Polyester.

Funny, none of those fabrics in and of themselves are dry clean only materials. Cold water hand wash sure, but dry clean? Nah. From what I understand cashmere actually does worse at the dry cleaner's than it does in hand washing.

My wallet hurts thinking about the fact that it's been duped.

I have one dress that I bought in Paris which reads "Special Dry Clean Only". From what I gathered (googled) that meant it was to be sent to "trusted" dry cleaners only. That dress will continue to be dry cleaned.

The rest? You guys have a date with my tub, ASAP. Enjoy the cold bath.

Potato Proof

There is no such thing as "can't"

There are only excuses.

I find this is particularly true with urban gardening. Unless you live in an illegal apartment with no windows, you can garden. I offer my own proof:

 

Those right there are potato plants growing in reusable shopping bags. I had some baby potatoes from the grocery store that were sprouting in my cupboard; rather than throw them in the garbage, I decided to plant them.

They grew :)

Not only did they grow, they also produced potatoes which I ended up eating in the fall.

All of my gardening last year was actually done in containers. Potatoes, herbs, asparagus, tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, you name it. You don't need to spend a lot either, as you can see above a little creativity can go a long way towards getting started. Friends of mine grew tomato plants out of the BOTTOM of their hanging baskets. You don't have to worry about staking them that way, and they don't take up any floor space :)

I will be trying to move my potatoes into the ground this year. We'll see how that goes.

I know of at least one blogger who is planning to write a whole series on urban gardening, which I am eagerly awaiting! I'll make sure to link to it when she puts it up :)

Has anyone done any creative gardening lately?

Winterization

Welcome to Edmonton!

As you can probably tell, it's been a little chilly here lately. Actually, it's been really chilly, but it's going to be quite a bit warmer for the next couple days. There are some advantages to living in a place where the temperature can change by 20+ degrees overnight. (~35 degrees if you're in fahrenheit)

There are some distinct financial advantages to living in a frigid winter climate. Do you honestly think anyone wants to pop over to the grocery store because they have a craving for something? Or do you think you're going to go to the mall "just to look around"? Not a chance. Walking to the grocery store on Sunday(2km round trip) was an exercise in bundling. My car was buried under half a meter of snow this past week, and I haven't yet had the energy to dig a path to it and dig it out. Saves on fuel consumption to say the least.

However, it's not always a good thing. This kind of cold is BRUTAL on the energy bills. If your house isn't buttoned up tight, heat seeps out at every crack. My house was built during a building boom, and lets just say the attention to detail isn't really there. I've been making changes and adjustments as I find problems, but there is a long way to go.

The first thing I did when I moved in was change the old mercury tube thermostat (which was hanging off the wall when I moved in, yay foreclosures!) to a programmable one. I'm pretty sure that thing is getting pretty close to paying for itself by now, if it hasn't already. I can assure you that in the mornings I am too groggy and disoriented to remember to turn down the heat before I leave the house, and I'm usually running to catch my bus! It's programmed to turn the heat right down during the day while I'm gone, turn it back up when I get home from work, turn it down again as I'm heading to bed, and then turn it back up when I'm getting up in the morning. Why use less gas than I have to?

Cost: $50         Time: 45 minutes

The next thing I tried to do was insulate my hot water pipes, which are run using lots of small plastic tubing rather than copper or (thankfully) lead. I shook my head when I saw the builders had bundled all of the hot and cold water lines together. You're going to seperate the water, heat up the hot water side, then bundle it all back together with the cold water lines so they can lose heat faster? Brilliant. *facepalm* I've been a little less successful in this one because they had intertangled the piping so badly that I need to take apart all of the waterlines and untangle them to fix this. That means turning off the water to the house. It will have to wait a bit. The sections I did manage to untangle I wrapped in reflective insulation to prevent heat loss. The stuff looks like bubblewrap covered in tinfoil because, well, that's essentially what it is. If you can get to your hot water pipes, definitely wrap them. The less heat you lose this way, they less hot water you'll need to use because it won't cool down as much. That and the water will stay warmer longer.

Cost: $30          Time: Ongoing, but if I had copper pipes about an hour.

I first looked at the house in October while it was still nice out, then I moved in the week before we got hit with the first real cold snap of the year. My kitchen was an ice box! I had no idea why, I was seriously thinking they had forgotten to insulate a wall. It was drafty too. I figured out at least part of the problem this past summer, I could see daylight through the back door! I hadn't noticed it during the winter because it was always dark when I was home! The sun comes up around 8:45 and goes down around 4:15 during December; I was never home during daylight hours during the week, and was quite busy on weekends. Turns out they didn't square the door properly, and the weatherstripping was essentially useless. I grabbed another roll, took the existing stuff off, and positioned it so that it would block the air flow. Not a permanent fix, because I need to fix the door somehow, but it works. Note, the directions tell you to clean your door jam with acetone. If you have conventional nail polish remover, that's essentially the same stuff. Save yourself a couple bucks and use it.

Cost: $13          Time: 45 minutes

The other ice box in my house has been my basement. The only time I had a basement growing up my parents built a commercial kitchen in it. It's kind of hard to be cold standing beside a large pizza oven! So when I noticed my basement was cold, I kind of assumed it was partly due to the lack of heat. It was a bit warmer beside the furnace and hot water heater, but that was about it. There was one window downstairs that I had been wanting to storm seal, but all of the moving boxes had been in the way. I finally got over near the window recently and noticed a definite draft. I had run out of the clear plastic sheeting, so I decided to make a temporary cover out of a garbage bag and packing tape. Boy am I glad I did! The garbage bag was fluttering when I taped up the top, and by the time I had the window sealed it was puffed out like a balloon! No wonder it was so cold downstairs! I'd be willing to bet my clothes will dry faster on the rack now that the draft has stopped. I've noticed a difference in the temperature already.

Cost: $10 (properly) or $1(mine)          Time: 10 minutes

I have the materials to insulate my light switch plates and electrical outlets. It's a quick job, I just need to actually get around to doing it! Pre-punched insulation sheets come in bags of 10 (varied sizing), and all you need is a screw driver. This is seriously the easiest one on the list, and it hasn't been done out of sheer laziness. *slaps hand*

Cost: $5/bag          Time: 2 minutes/outlet

This summer I'm planning to do some caulking around the windows and floor boards as well. I'm hoping that will help some of the other drafts. What have you done to your homes to help with your utility bills? Any tips?