I'm trying an experiment this week. No meat (okay, one recipe has smoked sausage), all beans, lentils, and peas. Five meals.
This is going to be a fragrant household.
But!
Our grocery bill for this week's meals was $75. Seventy. Five. Dollars.
That includes the beef roast I bought for something like $7.
Our grocery bill rarely drops below $100, even with meticulous planning and couponing. I couldn't believe it when she rang it up.
I hope we turn out to really, really love beans. The idea of saving $25/week almost made me pass out.
I didn't shower yesterday. I looked up the price of a ten-minute shower. *It's about $2.10. Now, I don't know how accurate that is, but I'm guessing it may even be low for this household. I like my showers hot, and in the winter, mine tend to run longer. Even though we insulated most of the pipes in the basement, we still have a few naked ones running around, which means the water loses a ton of heat on its way upstairs. So, I think I'm going to start showering every other day. Don't worry, friends; if you come to my house, or if I come to yours, I'll shower first.
So let's say I drop three showers a week (it's better for my hair and my really dry skin anyway, right?). That's $6.30/week, which is $.90/day.
That's five things. Five down, ninety-five to go.
I'm beginning to think this was a little ambitious.
*That just doesn't sound right. Even with our house and my love of extremely hot water. Okay. I take about a ten-minute shower. We have an older water heater, maybe 10-15 years, it's FREEZING in our basement, water takes about a minute to get warm enough, and I'm pretty sure we don't have a low-flow shower head. I found a calculator online, but it really seems off. So I don't know. We'll call it $.30/day for now.
I'm going to out myself here: I have been showering every other day for...5 years now.
ReplyDeleteI don't generally tell people this, because it doesn't always get the best reactions.
I started the every other day shower thing when I spent a semester abroad in Ireland. It was seriously COLD there, and on top of showers being a huge pain (because hot water was very limited, and I lived with 4 other people), they dried my skin out something awful. The only reason I kept showering daily was because my hair started to look a little bit less than clean towards the end of the second day.
But once my hair got used to the every other day schedule, it stayed clean-looking longer (and has seriously been way healthier since then, too). My skin stopped being so dry it hurt to move. It improved to the point where it was only so dry it was itchy.
And even when I got back to the States, I just kept up the every other day thing. I'll shower when I do something that makes me sweaty or dirty no matter how long it's been (although I do try to avoid washing my hair unless it has also gotten sweaty), but for the most part...sitting around at work and sitting around at home don't make me unclean.
Incidentally, if you use enough that you think it's worth the effort to calculate, you might figure out how much you're saving by not using your soap/shampoo/whatever every day. I take months and months to go through a bottle of shampoo that costs me about $2.50, and I use bar soap, so I don't think I'd bother with that particular calculation. :) But if any of your shower products are on the pricey side, it might be worth the math.
I don't think showering every other day or even every two days is gross. I'm not a sweaty person. Unless I've been sweating, I'm not going to stink. But my hair! Oh my gosh. It's greasy by about 16 hours after I wash it. And if I sleep on it--even if I shower right before bed--, it gets greasy. I've tried to "train" it so I can go longer between washing, but nothing has ever worked. Feh.
ReplyDeleteThat's okay; on days when I'm not going to be seeing anyone, if I get my face washed, I usually feel just fine. And besides, that's what pony tail holders are for. Well, until I get my hair cut on Wednesday.
After a haircut, there are always headbands. :) They don't look all that wonderful with greasy hair, but they keep it off your face.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I've read somewhere that you can approximate the effect of dry shampoo by using...baby powder? I think? You sprinkle it in your hair and brush it out, and in the process remove some of the oil. I doubt it's going to do anywhere near as good a job as just washing your hair, but it might help with the in-between days.