It's time to save money!

We're trying to get more frugal at the Jones house, so we're cutting coupons and cleaning the house. I have the kids cut the coupons for me on Saturdays, which also helps them with fine motor skills. I use The Grocery Game so it is not as time consuming. GG continues to frustrate me, however, because I am always finding mistakes or discrepancies. Like, a lot. But in the end I still save a ton of money so it is worth it.

I let the cleaning people go this week (I started working last year as a substitute teacher so I could hire them). So I have gone back to the Motivated Moms Chore Planning System. It is a calendar that gives you chores to do every day, and if you do them you will stay caught up. They have a version with a daily bible reading, and one without. And it is only $8.00!! You download it, print it, and put it in a binder. Love it!

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I had a party last night ...

... and guess who my special guests were?
Yes, my little buggy friends who have been making me crazy this summer flying around my kitchen. I couldn't get rid of them, until I saw Kim's post on this. Apparently, she's been having buggy problems, too.

She said to get a bottle of apple cider vinegar, with about 1/4 or 1/3 of the vinegar left. Cover the top with cellophane (press n' seal works best), and poke a hole in it. Within 1/2 hour, there were 5 bugs sitting on the top, within 1 hour, they were all over it. Within 3 days, I had about 50 in the bottle. Where do they come from? I have no idea. But they ignored everything else in my kitchen, and went straight to this stuff. Yay!

What Works For Me Wednesday

For Rocks In My Dryer's What Works For Me Wednesday, I'm going to share two things I recently purchased from a store called Improvements that have really worked for me.

For the first item, I want you to imagine a set of stairs with white, builder-grade carpet in a house with 3 children, 2 dogs and a husband who loves to garden and then walk in the house with his muddy shoes on. Yes, you're feeling my pain, aren't you? Well this is the wonderful product I found to save my stairs . . . it is called CarpetSaver, and its an every-day carpet runner that goes over carpeted stairs. This is not the prettiest runner you will ever see, but it protects the carpet from daily traffic dirt. It also seriously cuts down on the amount of times I have to vacuum the stairs. Every week I pull it off the stairs and either shake it off or stick it in the washer and dryer. If someone is stopping by to visit, I have the stairs clean in a few seconds. I really love it and have found that it is worth the money.The next item is all about grout. If you have it in your house, you know what I'm talking about. My previous kitchen was all white grout counter tops, and I know how to get that stuff white. So when I walked into my current house right after I bought it and saw that the master bathroom is entirely white tile and grout, I thought I had it dialed in. Boy was I wrong. None of my tricks work to get the dingy-ness out of this grout. Until I found this wonderful product . . . it is Grout Whitener and it's basically paint that goes over the grout and makes it white-to-my-standards-white. It comes with a little bottle that has a top that rolls over the grout and paints the stuff on, so you don't have to sit there with a paint brush for hours. If you mess up, just wipe it off with a wet rag. *note: this is not a picture of my grout! Both photos are from Improvements.*

For more tips, go check out Rocks in My Dryer!