My Tireless Retirement - Week 100!

 

Wow!  It is March already.  Wow!  Week 100 of my retirement is in the books.  Even crazier is that I’m less than a month away from celebrating my 2 year retirement anniversary.  Like they say, “time flies when you’re having fun!”  Are you having fun?  I sure do hope so.

 

I began the new month by picking up a few items at Fred Meyer that were on sale.  One of the items on my grocery “wish list” is pot roast and Albertson’s finally had them on sale for a fairly decent price, however when I stopped in, and I went to two different stores, they didn’t have any.  Sadly, this is not a new issue with them.  Long before the pandemic every hit they have struggled with stocking sales items.  However, when I was in Fred Meyer picking up asparagus and a couple items I had FREE digital coupon offers for I checked their meat department and found a really nice roast marked down.  I did the math and it was less than Albertson’s sales price so I grabbed it and when I got home I put it away into my freezer.  My plan is to gather roasts on markdown or on sale and tuck them into the freezer until I have enough as I will be canning them.

 

My coffeemaker got a good cleaning inside and out.  I made a pot of vinegar and water and poured it into the reservoir and let it sit for an hour before hitting the brew button and running it through.  Then I ran a pot of fresh water through it.  I also bleached the stains out of the carafe before using that same bleach water to soak my coffee cups and travel much to remove the coffee and tea stains from all of them.  It feels really good to have a sparkling clean coffeemaker and pot as well as stain free cups to drink my coffee from.

 

On Wednesday we had a potato bar potluck lunch at work.  I emptied two jars of home canned chili into my mini slow cooker and took that in as my contribution.  I was able to use up two older items from my pantry that had been hanging around for a little while, but were still delicious and added two more empty pint jars to my stash in the garage.

 

In preparation of my next gardening season I planted flower seeds in peat pots and tomato and bell pepper seeds empty yogurt cups.  Then I used a couple old storage bins I already had on hand in the garage to make “greenhouses”.  The flower seeds have already sprouted so I added the grow lights I got last year.  No sign of anything with the tomato or pepper seeds yet, but I’m watching!

 

Ways I Saved $$: 

When I finished cleaning the coffee carafe and cups I used that same bleach water to soak the bottom of my kitchen sink along with my scrub sponge and was able to disinfect both the sink and sponge getting some extra mileage out of that bleach. 

I washed out two gallon size Ziploc bags to reuse.  I’ve already put one of those bags back into service.

 

Meals I Prepared: 

I got off really easy last week as far as cooking and meals went.  I only actually cooked one time which was to prepare a meatloaf, scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole and a lemon poke cake for a Leap Day celebration.  It was so good and no one left the table hungry, that is for sure!  And!  I still had enough leftovers to put a couple into the freezer and one in the fridge.

The rest of the week was literally reheating leftovers and thawing leftovers to reheat.  I had soup and salad meals every other day which was perfect for the wet, windy and chilly days we had last week.  A hot bowl of soup was very much appreciated.

 

That pretty much sums up my 100^th week of retirement.  It was a good one!  How was your week?

FYI - My retirement week runs from Friday through Thursday.