cleaning, cheaply.

it's been so long, oh my gosh!  hey!  i'm back!  and today, i am going to talk about cleaning products i've been using.

i guess it's good i've been gone for a while, it's given me a chance to really use my homemade products and test them before i blabber on and on about how great they are.

but they really are great!  it was shortly after i settled in to our apartment that i realized one of the first, more important things was to make some homemade cleaners that leaned more toward the natural side.  my husband has allergies, and i have read that not having all sorts of chemicals in your everyday cleaners can help with allergies and asthma.  so because i'm trying to live cheaply, i headed to the dollar store with my list of what i needed.

(by the way, i played with her recipes, and i found her on pinterest, so i need to give credit where credit is due!:
http://littlemsrobinson.blogspot.com/2012/03/homemade-cleaning.html)

so i found everything i needed at the dollar store, for $12.  that was about 6 spray bottles, 2 baking sodas, vinegar, ammonia, dish detergent, and the alcohol.  seriously.  and oh, it's true that the biggest ingredient is water.  i only made the window cleaner, the multi-surface and the kitchen magic.  i keep the kitchen magic in the shower (shower magic?) and have used it in there and on the sinks and whatnot. the window cleaner goes slowly because we don't have really nice windows that need to be cleaned so i just use it on the bathroom mirror and it's fantastic, no streaks. and the multi-surface, or the "cure all" as she calls it, i freakin' use it on everything. everything! it's so wonderful.  i don't even really mind the vinegar smell (that's the new clean smell to me!), but if you do, add some nice smelling essential oils.  i've just been too lazy to remember to buy the oils, and like i said the smell doesn't really bother me much anymore.

those $12 i spent at the dollar store in october have stretched until now, and i'm not even close to out of cleaner.  okay i admit i came close to running out of my multi-surface and i just added more vinegar, so it's a tad diluted now but i don't mind that much.

also, i know i have no children or messy, slobbery animals so that's another reason these sprays have lasted longer in my home. but it's so, so much more worth the price.  without the cost of the spray bottles, the ingredients would have came to $6, for 3 cleaning sprays.  i don't think you can beat that, man.

the dollar store, so legit.

i swear i wasn't paid to do this...

hello!

so my last post was all about the wedding.  we now move forward to... the apartment!

this was adam's apartment so we pretty much had everything we needed as far as appliances went (his mom bought the fridge, and the stove was given to us for free).  all we needed was a washer and dryer.  adam has lived here for nearly two years with no washer and dryer.  he lived at the laundromat because he's a germ-a-phobe!

as we settled in a bit, we decided we had to get a dang washer and dryer.  so we did some shopping around, and settled on a set we just loved.  it was $699 each at lowes, where the delivery was free but installation was $145.  we kept it in the back of our heads and moved on to home depot.  unfortunately they didn't have the set there, and the comparable ones were just not as nice but we were open and kept them in mind as we went on.

our search ended at a wonderful little place called h.h.gregg.  to my knowledge, there are none of these on long island.  i mean, i've never heard of it.  so we are looking around and voila!  we found the set that we fell in love with at lowes!  but this time, they were each on sale for $629.  the sale ended the next day, but we didn't want to make that the deciding factor.  we talked to the salesperson and he informed us that h.h.gregg does the price match guarantee thing.  if they find that set for cheaper anywhere else, they'll match it.  so while he's looking it up to see if he'll be matching this price, i'm doubting that he'll find it cheaper.  and because i'm oh-so optimistic (sarcasm alert), i was assuming he would just lie and tell us that was the cheapest anyway.

mr. john salesperson comes over with the news.  he found the same set at sears (this was going to be our next stop), but for $575.  damn. we were sold.  but, h.h.gregg didn't stop there!  they don't match prices, they beat them.  he sold us the washer and dryer for $550 each.  stfu.

oh, and did i forget to mention that the installation was only $79.95, and you get that money back if you send in the rebate?  you can choose the $79.95 visa card, OR $100 h.h.gregg gift card.  we went with the latter, so we can get our tv there too!

i know this will sound super cliche and a bit lame, but shop around.  i wasn't too happy to go to h.h.gregg at first, because it's not as big a chain as the other stores so i did not think for a second we'd get a better deal.  they showed me, that's for sure.  oh also, these guys sing when they're done!

gettin' married.

whoa hey!  i'm back!  it's been a while but i swear i'll actually update this thing.

so since i've been gone i went ahead and got hitched.  i'm now living in western pennsylvania in our quaint little apartment.  since this blog was meant for being thrifty, let me touch on the wedding and how we tried to keep the price down (also we really didn't set out to do radical savings everywhere, we just tried to do things as cheaply as we could):

• having the wedding on a sunday helped a lot.  it cut the cost in half, if i remember right. and it was just as much fun, too!  don't think that sunday weddings are lame just because they're not saturdays!
• my dress was from david's bridal, and the bolero jacket was off the rack at a place in rocky point, ny called fantasia bridal (they're great).  it had a small stitch that was pulling out a bit, so they took $10 off the price and seamed it right there in the store.
• the favors were all put together/baked by my wonderful second mom mrs. vargas.  shout out to her because she's so great and helped SO much!  and philippia!
• my brilliant mom decided to take a bunch of leftover save the date pictures that i screwed up and cut them to create the tags on the favors. this was a great idea, because i hate being wasteful, and we didn't have to waste any of these messed up save the dates!
• for the dj, we went with tommy's tunes who did SUCH an amazing job.  everyone came up to me and them afterwards just raving about them.  for the dj package i went with the basic, no zap shots, no emcee, just the dj and his assistant (they threw in him and an extra hour for $100).
• the honeymoon was a living social deal, and it was awesome and peaceful and wonderful.  we stayed at shorecrest bed and breakfast in southold, ny.  they have amazing breakfast!

i think that's about it.  like i said, we just tried little things to cut cost wherever possible.  the biggest expenses were the venue itself and the dj.  it was such a blast, here are some pictures from my best friend michelle's blog!

http://mrubyseverything.blogspot.com/2012/10/krista-gets-married.html

a little explanation.

i just want to explain the point of this blog a little bit more, and since i'm still in the very beginnings of it i figured i'd be forgiven for not inserting it in my very first post.

the point of this blog is not that i am this awesome thrifty person that spends such little money on extravagant things.  that i'm some "queen of thrift" expecting my minions to prostrate before me because of all the great deals i've seen.

the point of this blog, really, is that i think being thrifty and frugal is just plain awesome, and i want to be a part of this club.  this is a challenge to myself (and my future hubby, even though he doesn't know it yet).  the way i see it is, what better time to start than right after i get married?

for my whole life i've lived with my family.  i only lived on my own away at school, so coming back home was hard after i had already established my independence.  even though it's been almost 3 years since i'm back home, i've been itching to get back out there and be on my own (mad props to mom for cooking for me all these years though!).  part of this re-independence gaining is not being in debt, you know, pretty easy to do.  no bigs.

enter: the blog!  in all it's cheap glory.  all this being said, i'm inviting you to challenge me.  keep me accountable.  help.

:)