Turn it off!

The kids are home from school today because of yet another snow storm that is blowing around outside. I am determined to continue my thrifty ways even with all the miniature money-suckers around though. I have spent a good portion of the day following them around and instructing them to TURN OFF THE LIGHTS, especially when I find them on in nearly every room of the house during the daytime when lights are not necessary. Sigh. 

I did catch myself using some unnecessary electricity as well. With so many people living here, our dishwasher gets used OFTEN. I usually have to run it twice a day, sometimes more such as holidays or weekends. One thing I was doing without even thinking about it was using the "heated dry" cycle to dry the dishes faster. Honestly, this is really not necessary and uses quite a bit of electricity. So I simply turned that off and leave the door cracked open to allow the dishes to air dry. I suppose if I was feeling like Martha Stewart I could towel dry the dishes, but I seriously don't have time for that. 

Dinner was nice and cheap today. We had tacos with yellow rice and corn- yummy! The ground beef for the tacos was purchased on sale a while ago and has been waiting patiently in the freezer for me to cook it up. The taco kit I used was less than $1 after coupons, and the corn was bought on sale as well. The rice was FREE thanks to coupons (my favorite price). Our dinner cost just under $5 total for the 7 of us. Not too shabby. 

Hubby also did something frugal today- he cleaned! He went through the giant pile-o-crap on our desk and found a couple gift cards that we had completely forgotten about. He decided to use them to buy himself a treat (some DVDs from Best Buy). I don't even know where the gift cards came from in the first place, but it's always fun to find things like that. I wonder what I'll find when I do the laundry...