It's Budget Time! Toilet Paper...I'll Miss You!

I love paper products. I do! I love them. I love using them. I love stocking up on them. But I've decided we are going to try giving up paper towels and Kleenex. I was just kidding about the toilet paper. I'm not even going to go there! :)

We spend A LOT of money on disposable paper products. A lot. I am in budgeting mode at the moment. We aren't broke, but we have been very lax with our budget lately and hubby is not working as much due to the weather. So I have been thinking about how we are spending our money. We were more diligent about our budget while we were getting out of debt and saving for an emergency fund. Once those things were done, it was really easy to slack off and just float along and live. We really need to follow a budget all the time, not just when things get snug.

Paper towels...well, the one thing I was thinking I would really miss these for would be to clean up cat poo or puke. Yuck. I had contemplated keeping a roll on hand for that purpose, but I have decided that I can have old rags for this purpose that can just be tossed or burned, or toilet paper will work just fine for the cleanup. I bought a yard of gorgeous kitcheny thicker cotton fabric a couple of weeks ago and yesterday I made it into 4 tea towels. I want to make some more, but will probably go through my fabric stash before I buy anymore fabric. There will be a nice stash of those as well as my dish towels in the kitchen. But even going through a lot of kitchen towels a week isn't going to affect my laundry enough to matter. Toilet paper will also be the replacement for Kleenex. Toilet paper is so much cheaper! Savings....I'd estimate between $15 - $30 a month. Since I haven't been paying much attention to the budget, I'm not sure what we have been spending. All I know is we are out of paper towels and Kleenex every time I turn around and adding them to the shopping list!

Another budget friendly change is that when school starts back next week, my kids are packing their lunches. We can save at least $40 a month doing that. Hubby already takes his lunch to work.

I am also going to shop the store ads on Wednesdays and do my grocery shopping first thing Thursday mornings. I always make a weekly menu, yet it is always what sounds good instead of what is on sale. I have set a dollar amount and I am planning on using the envelope system with cash instead of the bank/debit card. While I love the card's convenience dearly, I think using actual cash will help me to stay on budget! I also plan to give some extra though to our menu and make cheaper changes when I can...like using dried beans instead of canned. I think the savings in this category will probably be substantial. By setting a budget and shopping the ads...I am guessing we will probably save an additional $25 - $50 per week.

Hubby and I also talked about cutting out little things. For example, last night he ran to the store with out youngest to get night night pants for her. In all of the holiday happenings, she ran out. But they also came back with Skittles and Sprite for her! Didn't need those! He has a much harder time saying no to her than I do. And it would be nice to get her out of the night night pants too!

So, these are phase one of spiffing up our budget! This all goes along with my last post about focusing. Our budget and money definitely need our attention. If we don't tell it where to go, we'll wonder where it went! :) Yes, we got out of debt. Yes, we have an emergency fund. But I'd really like to have an emergency fund for our emergency fund! Is that silly? The thought of using it really freaks me out. Really, it is odd...I look back to the days when we were in debt and had ZERO saved and the thought of an "emergency" (or an emergency fund) wasn't even on my radar. Maybe I am getting old! :)