Money I Spent: Very spendy day, with the total around $400. This was $300 at the vet and $100 for groceries that ended up mostly being diet soda and some $8 organic no-sugar-added peanut butter. I also picked up 3 steaks for about $10 apiece. But now the goal is not go anywhere or buy anything at all for at least a week. We have eggs, milk, bread, cheese, and meat, along with some fresh, canned, and frozen vegetables. Maybe we can make it 2 weeks! Had to take little doggo to the vet because she’s been acting like she’s in a lot of pain for about 24 hours. I couldn’t find anything obvious, but it’s something on her back half that’s bothering her. The veg checked her over, did some bloodwork, and sent us home with a couple of prescriptions and a directive for the dog to lose 3-4 pounds ASAP. Diagnosis was “she probably fell off or jumped off of something and tweaked a leg or hip.” If she doesn’t get better in a few days, I’m supposed to take her back. I think she’s acting a little better already, so hopefully we can avoid going back to the vet!
Money I Avoided Spending: Didn’t buy any other meat or eggs at the grocery store. The current situation has flipped my mental switch from an abundance mindset to a scarcity mindset, so now every time I see eggs or ground beef I feel first like, “I should get some.” But right now, we have everything we need. So I skipped a few things that my brain was telling me to get.
Extra Money I Found or Made: Sold 2 sets of children’s books, which I had originally planned to donate. One set (Betsy Tacy Tib) for $13 and one set (Noel Streatfeild Shoe Books) for $15. I had bought both of these sets of books after they were mentioned in You’ve Got Mail (so 22 years ago?) but never read them.
eBay Expenses: $0 So far this month I have listed 102 items in my eBay store. Hoping that April will be closer to 200! Getting ready for Q4!
Use-it-Up Challenge: Using up leftovers still, though we are about out. We had a “Fend For Yourself” (FFYS) dinner to clear out most of the remaining leftovers.
Decluttering Challenge: n/a
Don’t Go Into a Store Challenge: Fail. I went both into our local grocery store, and into the vet’s office. The vet’s office was business as usual. They are not taking extreme precautions against coronavirus, at least that I could see. There was a bottle of hand sanitizer on the front desk, but that’s all. I made sure to touch as few things as possible, then hand sanitize myself when I got back out to the car.
Grocery Shopping During Covid-19: The local grocery store’s Facebook page announced that they were out of sanitizing wipes for the carts, so I squirted some sanitizer on a napkin to take in and wipe the cart down. But when I got inside, I saw they had a spray bottle of disinfectant and some paper towels. So I actually used both items and double-sanitized the cart. Also, any time I go into a place, I take a small bottle of sanitizer in my pocket and use it several times while I’m inside. In my car, I have a bigger bottle, and once I get in my car, I sanitize again. When I get home, I unload groceries from the car, then wash my hands. Then I use a Lysol wipe to clean off all packaging before putting things away. Then I wash my hands again. Then I use another wipe to wipe down the doorknob, fridge handles, and pantry doors. It’s kind of a pain, but only takes an extra couple of minutes, and better safe than sorry!
Exercise Every Day Challenge: Success! I went out for what was originally going to be an hour-long walk on the trails by my house. However, it was so cold and windy when I walked outside that I almost turned around at the end of the driveway and went home. But I knew I needed a good walk, so I set my timer for 15 minutes and told myself I could turn around and walk home when the timer went off, which would give me 30 minutes of walking. So I headed up the trail and into the woods, freezing, with more clouds coming in and making it even colder. When the timer went off at 15 minutes, I turned around to head home. As I got to the entrance to the trails, I remembered seeing on my Geocaching app that there was a Geocache located nearby. So I pulled up the app. I followed the little beacon on the app and after about 10 minutes of searching the patch of woods, I found the geocache (my first ever attempt at geocaching — fun!). It was under a couple of big rocks, and contained a can with some items and a finders’ log inside. The first find of this particular geocache was in 2012! I thought looking for it was pretty entertaining, so I’m going to start looking for more of them on my walks and hikes. As soon as I left the geocache spot to head home, I decided I would take our Pokemon Go! and see if there were any Pokemons about. I hadn’t opened Pokemon Go! in years, so I didn’t know if it would even log in. But it logged in to my old account just fine, and immediately found a Pokemon for me to catch! So I went for a walk, found a geocache, and caught a Pokemon. It ended up being about a 45 minute outing altogether.
Thoughts: Stay At Home, Day 20! I have not been doing great at staying at home, so I am challenging myself (and the whole family) to stay at home for the next full week. No stores, no nothing. We will still go outside for walks and hikes, and take short daily drives for the kiddo’s driving lessons, but no gassing up the car, no running in to work for a quick thing, no stopping for something at the grocery store. Let’s do what we’re supposed to be doing and stay home. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Fiscal Fasters 