These are a few things that we did this week to help save some money.  Please feel free to leave a comment with anything you have done to save, I love hearing everyone’s ideas.

• Shawn went back to school this week so I’ve been packing his lunch everyday to save some money.
• We went out yesterday and did quite a bit of shopping in a pretty good circle to save on gas.
• Shopped at Save A Lot and picked up some fillers that I can’t get cheaper anywhere else.
• We stayed home alot this week which kept impulse shopping to minimum and gas usage low.
• The weather the first half of the week was really cold (well for us) but by keeping the curtains closed at night and making a few meals in the stove we didn’t turn on the heat.
• The weather the later half of the week has been beautiful so I’ve had the windows up to allow light and air in the house.
• I’m currently working on decluttering the house, I’ve packed up the Christmas stuff and made note that I do NOT need anymore paper or labels since I was able to pick up some at 50-90% off after Christmas this year.
• Another hint on this which is probably too late now but you should always look for papers that don’t scream Christmas.  This year I picked up a transformers paper, a red paper with multi colored dots, a white paper with blue and red circles, and a black paper with white scrolling on it.  The transformers paper will be good for boy’s birthday parties, the two with dots are great for any occasion and the black paper will be great for adult gifts or weddings/anniversaries.  And it was a ton cheaper to buy it even at full price then a trip down the birthday paper aisle would cost (remember Christmas paper rolls are much bigger).
• Picked up 4 boxes of mac and cheese for free at Target using their new printable coupon.  I also picked up some supplies on clearance to start making gifts for next Christmas.

This coming week will bring more decluttering and working towards simplifying life some.  I believe that the more organized I am and the less stressed I am the better I will be at shopping smarter and saving our money.