7 Month 6: Spending

Waste month is over and it's time to look at how we did:

1- Carpooling. Brian and I are going to try our hardest to drive 1 car this month. We did really well on this. There were a handful of days when our schedules force us to drive separately, but otherwise we carpooled most of the time.
2- Become recycling vigilantes. We do recycle, but are lax about what goes in the garbage. No more! I'd say we got better about this over the month.
3- Always using our reusable grocery bags. Another habit I'm lax about. The key is putting them in the car. We missed this a couple times, but did get better. At least now with composting I can easily get rid of the paper bags.
4- No fast food/take-out. Basically, no food that comes in a container you have to toss. This also means I have to eat all my food at restaurants. There was one fast food incident that we won't talk about but otherwise we did really well: no pizza, no thai, no lunch takeout.
5- All Starbucks runs have to be made with a travel mug. No cardboard cups. I went to starbucks once in the afternoon for an iced tea and got a plastic cup. Otherwise, I used my new travel mug, which I adore.
6- Eating everything in the fridge before it goes bad. Also, eating out of the freezer and pantry before hitting the grocery store. Eh, not so much. We're moderately good about this and didn't get better or worse.
7- Hopefully composting. We are asking our landlord if we can built a little compost bin in the backyard, and we'll get a counter top pail for the kitchen for scraps. I'm hoping to do some gardening this summer and hate the idea of good compost items going to waste. Yes! It's amazing how small our trash bags have become since composting and recycling better. We could take it out once every two weeks if it wouldn't smell. As it is, we could switch to a smaller bin if we wanted.

A lot of these habits will continue- the travel mug is a habit, composting is necessary, carpooling is fun and we saved a little in gas money over the month. Not as much as I thought we would, but we still drive about the same amount, but together instead of separately.

This month is spending and the goal is to pick 7 places to spend our money this month. As I'm just coming up with this today, this will start tomorrow. I looked over our bank account for this past month, and we spent money in 23 places (which lumps all our bills together). This included basics like groceries (3 different places), gas, Brian and my's respective coffee shops and my daily parking. Our extra's this month were a couple different restaurants, the movie theatre, target, cash for the farmer's market, haircuts.

My picks for the month:
Online Bill Pay - yes, this is a bit of a cheat, but other we wouldn't be able to eat.
Parking
Pick N'Save & Metro Mart for goceries - this means no Sendik's (my favorite, more expensive, grocery store). Those two are owned by the same company, so I'm lumping them together.
Gas
Brew Bayou - Brian's coffee show on campus

That leaves us two spots to play with over the month- a favorite restaurant we'll hit a couple times, or an emergency Kohl's trip....?

Things I'm not counting: our money to church and compassion international, or spending money on gift cards. We'll see how we do!