One Small Step for Man

I finally got this on Wednesday (it was a 2009 goal...)

AND, I checked out 2 books!! I couldn't find 8 of the 10 on my list, but they are mostly specialized parenting books or social justice reads (I'm a dork), so I'm not surprised. I love how frugal and waste-free the library is, and it's only a 1/2 mile from our house. I see many walks with the baby in my near future.

And for the books that I can't find at my library (they are not at the Stanford library, either...), I am searching for on www.paperbackswap.com (my friend, Ashley, told me about this- she's always full of great ideas). I haven't found too many of the books on my list, but I'm getting rid of about 50 books that were taking up space in our garage!! I usually just sell books that are worth $5 + on amazon and donate the rest, but with Paper Back Swap I can essentially "swap" my old books for used books I want to read (for about $2 shipping). You can also swap-out old CDs and DVDs... I love getting junk out of the house!!

This Week at CVS

I mentioned before that I'm starting to really love shopping at CVS. Why? Because they have the greatest Customer Loyalty program and I'm racking up free items :) When you purchase certain items with your member's card, you get an ECB (Earned Cash Back... it's literally like a gift certificate for a future CVS purchase). Here's what I purchased today:

Gillette Shampoo
Cost: $5.99 (used a $2 coupon) --> $3.99
Earned ECB: $3.00

Natural Dentist Healthy Gums Rinse
Cost: $6.99 (used a $2 coupon) --> $4.99
Earned ECB: $4.00
I purchased two of these (and used two coupons) so that I could actually get money back with a $10 mail-in-rebate. Thanks, BeCentsAble!

** I also had $3 worth of ECBs (gift certificate to CVS) that I used during my purchase.

Total without coupons: $19.97
Total with coupons: $10.97
Earned ECB's: $11
MIR Check:$10

If you consider ECB's like cash (I do because I use them on things we actually need...), we paid nothing for these 3 items and actually made $10! So, in a small, small way- it's like I was paid to shop :)

Booo!

I read somewhere that an easy way to save money was to cut dryer sheets in half. Sure, you're only saving cents/load, but essentially, you'd be getting your dryer sheets for half-off... not bad.

I tried it tonight.

It didn't work.

All of our clothes are full of static and they aren't as soft.

So, save yourself the time and energy- splurge on a full dryer sheet :)