Frugal Success and Failure

It's been a week of both success and failure in the frugal life - don't so many weeks seem that way?

On Monday, I was pleased to actually accomplish an afternoon of "freezer cooking."  I baked calzones (and the kids made mini pizzas) and chocolate beet/carrot bread (tastes a lot better than it sounds), and I also cooked up big pots of black beans and rice.

It was very satisfying to get a bunch of cooking accomplished in one afternoon, even if very little of this will even make it to the freezer.  These days I can't seem to set aside a whole day for once a month freezer cooking - due mostly to the amount of time and energy it takes every day to care for and entertain three preschool kids!   Instead, I am trying to accomplish a couple of hours of cooking at the beginning of each week, because it takes so much stress out of the week to have some of the more extensive cooking done.

Unfortunately, the frugal success of pre-preparing several homemade items was tempered by a real bargain-shopping failure on Tuesday!

As another part of my attempts at better organization, on Sunday I had prepped my coupons for Bloom's super double coupons day this week.  We go to the farm on Tuesday mornings, and I had decided to try to stop at Bloom on the way home.  This was a risk, since we are all pretty tired after a hot morning in the outdoors, but I nevertheless gave it try.  Well, the kids were well-behaved; Bloom had all the items in stock; I found a couple of extra deals - I happily sailed into the checkout line.  And those of you who are up local couponing bargains will already have figured out my error - the super double coupons day was on Monday.

I admit - I was too embarrassed to take items off my order, since practically my whole order was double coupon items.  I purchased the whole order and was just grateful that it was relatively small.  In the end, most of the items were still an okay deal with the undoubled coupon, though I definitely would not have purchased a couple of them if I had not thought they were a more outstanding bargain.

In defense of my own mental state - Bloom ran several weeks of super doubles days on Tuesdays recently, so I guess my mind was stuck in that mode.  You better believe I'll be double and triple checking the dates of particular promotions in the future.

I was a little frustrated and disappointed leaving the store, especially as I had put the time and energy into prepping and carrying out the shopping trip.  But I try to chalk these errors up to a learning experience and let them go.  Frugal living always involves a certain amount of experimentation, and everyone makes mistakes.

I am grateful that the loss of a few dollars in doubled coupons won't make or break our budget right now  On to the next bargain!