Holy gas mileage!

So, the family and I recently took a trip back home to Oregon. We left Boise Friday in the early morning (around 2am) and went back to Bend for the weekend.

We stopped in Caldwell at the Flying J (exit 29) and filled up with gas. We didn't make any stops for gas again until Sunday evening.

Going the speed limit is fabulous for your gas mileage. I read a tip on saving money from Pinterest and was a bit skeptical on it. It appears as though it is pretty accurate though.

Considering I speed a little (approximately 5mph over the speed limit in town (some times) and a little more on the highway/freeway, and normally don't see 400 miles to a tank of gas. I'd say there is a lot of truth in going the speed limit does save you money!

I can't believe the kind of gas mileage my car got! I haven't seen over 411 miles to a tank that I can remember, EVER. Not even in someone else's car.

My husband calculated the mileage that we got for the trip. It was approximately 31 miles to the gallon! Crazy right?!

Before filling up on Sunday I was wanting to go around the block a few times to see just how many miles I could get to the tank before my low fuel light came on. However, we didn't have time to do so. So the last record I have before getting more gas is 446.9 miles.

Here is a photo that I recently posted to my personal Facebook page. A friend of mine asked what kind of a car I have, while another asked how many gallons my gas tank held. My car is a 2007 Kia Spectra and the manual states it is 14.5 gallons for the tank.

As you can see there is 400.5 miles on the tripometer and about a 1/4 of a tank left to go. 

The next photo is the last one I took right before pulling up to the gas station. Notice the numbers and the fact that the low mileage light is NOT on :)

Laundry, save money doing it?!

How do you sort your laundry?

How do you wash your laundry?

What kind of laundry soap to you use?


I sort our laundry into 4 groups:
I have whites which consist of all of my husband's undershirts, socks and white towels.
I have towels, jeans and sweatshirts/coats
Then I have "the rest". HAHA Which consists of my socks, our shirts, shorts, pajama bottoms etc
Then there is the kids' clothes, they get washed all by themselves.


I wash ALL of it in cold water and rinse in cold water. All of the loads are washed on normal except the kids', their clothes are washed on delicate. I dry on normal.

I've learned over the years, some from my mom and some from the internet, washing your clothing in cold water helps save you money in more way than one.

Cold water of course costs less than warm/hot water so it saves you there. Not to mention that it helps preserve the life of your clothes, so with them lasting longer you're not having to go out and buy new clothes, so it saves you money this way as well.

Another great way to help preserve the life of your clothes is to turn them inside out...Yup, that's right it helps keep the color looking bright longer! It is an especially important thing to remember to do if there are any "sticker" images/letters etc on the article of clothing. That helps keep it intact longer so it isn't all ratty looking! Drying them on low also helps too of course as it doesn't get heated as much on a normal dry cycle.


Lastly the laundry soap I use is the laundry soap I make. It takes just a little bit of time and makes quite a bit. It lasts a long time and the cost per load is less than $0.02. Can't beat that really! Another benefit to the laundry soap I make is that it is okay to use for cloth diapers, which we have! I use the laundry soap for all of our laundry instead having to switch between loads. Its great.

Meal planning- saves money & reduces stress

Do you meal plan? Would you like to?

I've found that planning meals not only helps save money but it also helps alleviate some stress.

Recently a friend of mine shared this site with me that I've found to be FABULOUS and have only used once so far since learning about it.

Thank you Lyndsey at Super NoVa Saver for sharing Food on the Table with me. It has helped tremendously already.

When I signed up I used a code, FEBFREE, not sure if it is still live but enter it when you sign up, because if it is, you'll get it for FREE and won't be limited to 3 meals a week.

One of the great things about the site is that you get to choose what kinds of foods you want recipes for. You can choose what type of meat you want or if you prefer recipes without meat that's available too. You get to select what type of dishes you like best.

You also get to choose if you want gluten free recipes, vegetarian, low carb, low fat or low sodium. Now you don't have to always have those, you can choose if you want those type of recipes always, some times or no restrictions on them. How great is that?!

You select your top 3 stores that you shop at and it will find the sales for that store for the items on your list. Oh that's another thing, it will get your grocery list together for you AND include the recipe that you can have printed and put into a binder for safe keeping for the future.

Of course if you decide that you don't really like it, you can always throw it out and not use it again.

I went to Walmart after printing out my grocery list and recipes so that I could keep my recipes organized and easily accessible for when I'm in a rush to figure out what's for dinner. I got a 1" binder, 5 subject divider sheets and a 3-hole hole punch for under $12.00.

I have my recipes separated by the following: beef, chicken, other, turkey and a blank one at the moment. You can obviously sort yours how you'd like. I'm thinking of changing my "other" one to appetizers and filling in the blank with desserts as I sit here and type this.

Since I printed enough recipes to last for 2 weeks worth of dinners, I had the grocery list for such too. It was a LOT of chicken as that's what our family eats the most. I decided it was best to separate it into ziplocs to freeze. I wrote the name of the recipe and the amount of chicken needed on the ziploc, then rinsed the chicken and placed the amount needed in the coordinating ziploc.


Here is my binder I purchased. I took a regular white piece of card stock as I had it on hand, wrote on it to label it for me and slid it in there.

Here is a photo to show the dividing tabs and recipes in the binder

Just an example of one of the recipes I chose to make for my family.

Quick snap shot of SOME of the meat I purchased on my grocery shopping trip. I hope you can see the names of the recipes and then to the side how much chicken and specified if it was breasts or thighs.