An Almost No-Spending Saturday

We just finished a wonderful, productive, almost-free Saturday.  My husband spent a good chunk of the day putting the finishing touches on the greenhouse (adding insulation around the edges of the doors, and chains to hold the doors open while we’re inside the greenhouse).  Right now, he’s in the crawl space doing some work on the hydroponic garden, which is doing amazingly well.  We have tomatoes on our tomato plant already, and flowers on the pepper plants (plants that were started as seeds in August!).  I spent most of the day cleaning our cars, taking stuff to the thrift store and recycle center, and cleaning the house.

The only money we spent was $6.69 to buy a can of Fix-a-Flat for my husband’s car.  When I cleaned the cars, I sorted out all the junk that we didn’t need to be hauling around, and organized the essentials into a box in each car’s trunk.  Each car has a can of oil, a bottle of wiper fluid, brake fluid, Fix-a-Flat, some rags, and an ice scraper.

We also installed a new carseat for our son.  He’s 17 pounds, and won’t fit in his infant seat much longer.  It was a loan from one of my friends, and I’ll be giving it back to her when she has her next baby.  A few weeks ago, I ordered a Britax Marathon convertible carseat, after much online research.  I got it for $219, with no tax and free shipping, which was the cheapest I could find it (most sites were charging $250+).  Yes, it’s expensive, but it can be rear or front facing (right now it’s rear facing, and will be until he’s one), and can hold a child up to 65 pounds.  So over the years, I think we’ll get our money’s worth from this seat.  It’s amazingly solid feeling.  It has clamps that latch down over the lap belt and once it’s installed it feels like it’s part of the car – no wiggling at all.  This is only the second big baby-related purchase we’ve made.  The other was his mattress, which makes me feel good every day when he goes down for his nap.  He’s nearly five months old, and we’ve bought very little in the way of baby stuff so far (and other than the mattress and the car seat, it was all used).  We set up his high chair today, which was a sweet yard sale find last fall when I was just a few weeks pregnant.  It was brand new, and I got it for $20.  We haven’t started our little guy on solids yet, but tonight he sat in his high chair and watched us eat our dinner.  It felt like a big step, even if he wasn’t eating anything.

So that was our day.  The car seat was bought and paid for a few weeks ago, we just installed it today.  So the only money we spent was to buy the can of Fix-a-Flat.  We’re exhausted, but we feel great.  Everything takes longer these days, since we’re taking care of the baby at the same time as whatever projects we’re working on.  So we’re feeling pretty productive with what we got done today.  It feels good to get so much done, and at the same time have a very frugal day.