But here’s the deal, the things I share are things we’ve done, not things I think everyone should do. You’ll also notice that we do some of the same simple things each month to save money, nothing super exciting, just little things that help us out. You’ll also notice that there are some frugal things that we don’t do, or at least don’t do every month. Sometimes there is a time/money trade off and saving time wins out.
oh my, May was a crazy month! We had celebrations, household projects that went wrong and a lot of rain. All of these things impact our budget.
We had our homeschool graduation this month. It is such a sweet time for our community. There are usually 10-12 graduates each year. We know most of the graduates and really like to give a small gift to each one. One way we do this is by having a standard gift that we give to each graduate. For our family, it’s a $5 Starbucks gift card for each graduate along with a handwritten card of encouragement. It’s not huge thing but it’s something to help them celebrate their accomplishment.
We had to replace our bathroom sink faucet because it was leaking. We decided to replace our shower fixtures also while we were at it. I’m not sure how old these fixtures are, but once we started we had one thing after another go wrong. After a couple of days of replacing pipes, checking for leaks,randomly going without running water and asking a friend for help, we finally had a shower and sink that didn’t leak. As I was choosing the fixtures, I had choices to make. We knew we wanted a brushed silver to match the other fixtures but other than that, we didn’t have any preferences. And that is really a key to saving money, isn’t it? Not having to have a certain thing to be happy.
I gave three hair cuts. This really isn’t as impressive as it sounds. You just need a good set of clippers, scissors and You Tube. 
Our garden is very green from all the rain, but is not producing a whole lot. We’ve also had most of our squash and zucchini destroyed by vine borers, many of our onions rotted because of the rain and so did our potatoes. {sigh} But, we’ve sown more squash and zucchini seeds and we’ll try a fall crop of potatoes.
We decided to not fix the drawer holder on our refrigerator that broke. I have no clue how the slider would have broken but it did. Fortunately, it was for the bottom drawer and we can just put it on the floor of the refrigerator instead of in the little hangers. The part of almost $25.
We helped out at our local homeschool conference and used book sale. They had brown bag lunches for $5 each. Since we had already eaten out twice in May (for celebrations) we decided to just pack our lunch using food we already had on hand. It’s not that we couldn’t buy the brown bag lunches and it certainly would have been easier. But it’s really wasn’t that difficult to pack lunches and not spend the $25.
Our children had some friends over for a game night…15 of them. We made hot sandwiches, tea and lemonade and they all brought snacks to share. I love being able to say “yes” whenever they ask if they can have a party. But we can only do that because we say “no” to other things.
The girls and I went shopping at Goodwill for half price day which happens twice a month here. I found a couple of nice shirts for me and some button down shirts for the boys. Both girls found a couple of dresses and Phoebe found some shorts and shirts for the summer. We spent less than $30 and had a great time. 
We replaced two window panes that were cracked. Our windows are 50 years old and really need to be replaced. But until we can save the money to pay cash for them, we’ll just have to make due. Which is totally fine. Replacing the glass is super easy, you just need to have it cut to the right size and some clear silicone. We also re-caulked any windows that needed it.
I’ve been playing around with making some of our toiletries, specifically face moisturizers and toothpaste. I ran out of my regular moisturizer and decided to use that money I would have spent on it to buy some ingredients to make one. I don’t have recipes to share just yet, but I will when I have one. If you are interested in some tried and true recipes, Homemade Beauty Essentials has some great recipes. 
What did you do to save or not spend money in May? Also, don’t forget about the 2 year planner download.