Money Saving Tips That Work for Our LARGE FAMILY!

hey guys it's Janice from Ozark Family Homestead and today's video is special it's special because we're working together with another YouTuber and we're talking about saving money now our video today is specifically about saving money while having a large family because there is a bit of a different Dynamic there and that's what we're going to talk about now Dawn over at money mom her video is going to be specifically about saving money with a small family so between her video and ours surely there is going to be something there that you're going to find useful what I will do is I will put a link in the description box below for Don's video over at sensible living with money mom and you'll need to be sure to check it out too but we're going to talk about large families here we go okay so one of the ways we save quite a bit of money as a large family is by buying our clothing at the thrift store now the one I like to use we have a Goodwill here relatively local to us and on Mondays and Tuesdays they have 75 off one colored uh it's a tag it's a plastic tag I'll show you when I get inside so 75 off Mondays and Tuesdays and when I go in I try to tunnel vision and only focus on is that your watch beeping if it's a new watch it's her new watch beeping I try to Tunnel Vision on whichever color is the 75 percent off I don't want to look at the other colors and be tempted by the things that are going to be more expensive so Anna and Abigail and I are going to go inside Goodwill today is a Monday so we'll see what we can find and we're going to take you along with us for a little bit of it here you like that okay so 75 percent off on the green tags there so that's what we're looking for let's find green tags for baby sister wow yeah those are fancy I think she's good on pants now yeah let's see and I found some things in there some pants get some books okay we're back in the van I am so uncomfortable filming inside stores so I don't know how much you could hear I was trying to talk very quietly so people wouldn't look at me but today it was 75 off everything with a green tag so I was in there just looking for the things with the green tag trying not to look at the things with red and yellow and blue tags I do always try to hit the blue jeans because I have three boys that blow the knees out of blue jeans just so quickly so I always check there for the color of the tag that is on the sale that day and there wasn't much to look at today I don't know if someone got there before me or what I did find one pair with the green tag on it I think I may just show you this when I get home because it's hard to do in the van and hold the camera but I found one pair it was regular price guys this is crazy 16.19 for a pair of blue jeans that don't have the tag on them I could not afford to buy thrift store clothes brand new I just can't believe how expensive they are but with the 75 percent off I did go ahead and get this one pair I'm thinking they might fit David I figure surely between the three boys they'll fit somebody that's my thinking so I did get the one pair of blue jeans and I found three books with green tags also I'll show you those when I get back home and you know we like books right but I did try to stick to the green tags so it's all okay right okay so um I always hit the blue jeans I always hit the book section and I always hit the shoes section So speaking of shoes I do want to show you one other system that I Implement to help me keep track of my inventory just what shoes we have on hand and what shoes I need to purchase so I'm going to show you that next okay here is a little stack of index cards that I keep in my wallet in my purse so it's always with me when I'm inside a store and on this like this one here is for Farm shoes and I go through all the sizes I begin at size four for my little my little toddlers and go on up and then when they cross over into the larger sizes here now let me see for example size ones for size ones I have one pair of boys Farm shoes and three pair of girls Farm shoes so if I run across a good deal on a pair of girls Farm shoes in size one I'm gonna pass it up because I already have three pair in my storage tubs at the house now on the other hand if I find a good pair of size 7 shoes that are okay for a boy to wear I'm going to go ahead and pick those up because I do not have any size 7 shoes for boys which would be for David at this point since Samuel and Andrew are above that size but this helps me to know I can pull this out and um just know what I have on hand and I have one of these for girls Town Shoes as well and I have a system the little star means it's a sandal a little heart means it's a dress shoe so size nine girls we have a pair of gold sandals and pink sandals and silver sandals and white dress shoes and some tennis shoes all in a size nine so and this is stapled together because I have more of the girls there in that system snow boots and oh there's the Boys Town Shoes and then mud boots now one thing I do want to point out your watch is making noise again Anna it's six o'clock um one thing I do want to point out for those with large families or anticipating being a large family something I wish I would have done differently mug boots and snow boots do not get the pretty pink ones or the pretty blue ones if you anticipate being a large family having multiple children just get some neutral boots that boys girls it doesn't matter let them wear it if you're not wanting your little boy to be wearing pink boots from his older sister then just get some neutral shoes and because we did not do that when Sam was born you know we bought blue everything and all that stuff and then when Sarah came around we bought pink everything I wish we would have just bought neutral and everybody can wear it so that's what I would recommend but I like my system it comes in handy and I can put all the things on it that I think is important all right quick little Goodwill haul here I already told you what I've got but I wanted to show you here even though it's not much but the pants these pants do not have tags on them but they are Levi's and they look to be in really good condition so and they were the green tag again I was just looking for the tags that were part of the 75 percent off but I mean ridiculous 16.19 I just it bothers me but with the 75 percent off I paid four dollars and four cents for these pants and I'm good with that really I wanted to just give you guys an example of the deals you can get when you do go in on those 75 percent off days and then I mentioned the three books that I had picked up and these also all green tags because that's what I was focusing on these two up here were regular 1.19 and so I paid 29 cents each for these books you know we're a homeschooling family so books are a big deal for us this one is about ancient Greece and this one is about Admiral Byrd exploring Antarctica so these will be great on our history shelves and then this book I'm not familiar with this title so if this is a big flop of a book you guys will have to let me know it had the seal on it here and it was from a local high school library I guess they did a purging of books and donated them to Goodwill I don't know but it was a little more expensive with the 75 percent off I ended up paying 56 cents for this one here so I'm taking a gamble on this one um it it had the look of a good book so this one will go on our shelves as well so again if your local thrift stores have a 75 off special days special sale of some sort like that take advantage of it and you can find really neat things for your family at a fraction of the cost okay now you guys know we're friends if I'm showing you the storage area of my garage right okay so we're all good friends now and y'all are gonna see my storage tubs the uh the way I keep things because hand-me-downs hand-me-downs are a great way to stretch a dollar if you have a large family especially so I keep things like for instance here snow boots up to size 13 here in the green and snow boots size one and up down here in the brown I keep these and use them for all seven of the children again going back to the gender neutral I encourage that as well and I just label the tubs of clothes and the girls we just transitioned things I even I've even kept my cloth diapers just in case there's an eighth baby then I don't have to re-buy everything all over again newborn accessories baby blankets up there there's some little girls clothing so by having this system I don't even know how much money this has saved us over the years from girls now we're going into boys clothes now all the younger boys clothes I have gotten rid of because David is my youngest and he is now 12. so we have passed along the clothes that uh he's not in anymore but even clothing okay shoes are a big deal there's Town Shoes Boys Town shoes size one and up here we have the mud boots up to size 13 for the little ones mud boots size one and up and again being here on the homestead we use lots and lots of mud boots Town shoes for girls up to size 13. winter bibs for working outside so having all of these things here and organized there's the girls Town shoes size one and up and I do the same thing with Farm shoes if you remember my shoe system on that those index cards that I keep in my wallet for whenever I'm in the thrift stores I have these same tubs categorized that same way so I can find what I need to look for but this system has saved us a lot of money especially with the shoes so I do not have to re-buy Fresh shoes for every single child and if you have a large family I want to encourage you to do something similar to this whatever works for you and save some money okay and something else that saves us I think a tremendous amount of money is line drying our clothes with the quantity of laundry that we do every day I I don't know exactly what the savings is but I have a commercial size washing machine and I do at least one load of laundry per day and I have the biggest clothesline that I could find that was the are they called umbrella clotheslines I'm not sure what the technical term is it's not one big long strand of a clothesline this has four sides and it spins but with the quantity that I Do by not running the dryer there has to be a significant savings I guess I need to sit down and do some math and try to figure out what it is now I use the clothesline spring summer fall anytime it's not raining I will be using the clothesline I'll show you the setup that we use inside the house too because in the winter when we have our wood stove going to heat the house I set drying racks in front of that cook stove or that wood stove and dry our laundry that way so the only time our dryer is really run is when it's warm weather but rainy or when it's cold weather and I have something big that won't fit on my drying racks like sheets or something like that then I'll use the dryer but line drawing I recommend it been doing it for 13 years now and this is how we set it up in the wintertime so you're going to have to use your imaginations here it is end of July beginning of August it's hot here so let's pretend that there's a roaring fire going in that wood stove right now and it's beautiful and you just like to sit and watch it because it makes you feel comfy cozy and it's putting out a lot of heat and I have three of these drying racks I have two of the shorter style here those two there and I have this one taller one here in the middle oh also pretend you do not see all the pairs down there we harvested from our pear tree okay I have to show you then we harvested from our pear tree we have two pear trees and this is what we've brought in so far and we need to do some storing and preserving of pears okay but it's winter time it's winter time and we're pretending that's not there we've got a roaring fire and all the laundry is draped on these three drying racks I will adjust my routine in the winter time and I will do my laundry in the evening and just before everybody goes to bed I will come in here and we will drape everything on these clothes racks here and we have the wood stove we Crank It Up For The Night Time and in the morning it will pretty much all be dried and I did not have to run my dryer at all we will then fold it first thing in the morning and then go ahead and put things away I make stacks on the kitchen table here and everybody puts their clothing away before they eat breakfast in the morning so that's our routine and again like I had said earlier the only reason that I would not be using these if is is if it's something like sheets that wouldn't fit that great here and then I will go ahead and use the dryer in that case I feel like there was something else I was going to tell you guys oh I was going to tell you the reason why I do it at night time this just takes up the big walkway between the front door and on into the kitchen which is the main thoroughfare here in our house and obviously I do not want this space taken up in the daytime so that is why I changed my schedule and we do laundry in the evening so these can sit out at night and they're not a bother okay one of the other ways that I think really really helps our family save money is by getting rid of expenses that we used to have in our monthly budget and I'm about to show you so I'm heading outside here I'm about to show you a way that we save money every month and most people do pay this bill that we don't pay so here I'm gonna turn the camera around here and I'll show you what we do differently all right now pay no attention to any rooster noises or goat noises that you may hear in the background because right now we're focusing on not on Dudley the goat we're focusing on the burn barrel right here this burn barrel is what enables us to burn our trash every month we handle our own trash management I guess you could say this Barrel here costs us probably fifteen dollars it's just a metal barrel with a lid on top and for that fifteen dollars we can burn trash in this for at least a year Sean says that we typically get more than a year out of these burn barrels and this is what we put our burnable trash in we have a little uh oh what are these called concrete blocks down here set up and this is what we use to burn our trash now I was thinking about doing a video on our trash management if that's something you think you would be interested in put it in the comments below if you guys are interested in how we do it you know I'll share the whole the whole routine that we go through with Recycling and burnables just all the things so if you're interested in that let me know I am going to go through one other item that we just do without an expense that most households have I think TV TV is the other thing that we do not spend money on so we have not paid for like table satellite any of that stuff since 2009 whenever we moved out here to this Homestead so no bill for that whatsoever except there was probably about a five year period where we did have Netflix for that five years but we have not even done Netflix for a very very long time so we don't do Netflix we don't do Disney plus we don't we don't do any of them I don't know what all of them are even anymore but we don't do any of them that's a big big fat zero on our monthly budget now what we do do is we do get DVDs from the library and they will do interlibrary loan for us for free if there's a specific title that we want to watch we do have a collection of DVDs here in the entertainment center that the family likes to watch together and we have YouTube YouTube is great you guys so we can get on YouTube and watch things that our family wants to see too so Abigail are you doing a good job as my camera woman okay Abigail's recording for us here so thumbs up for Abigail are you giggling okay on to the next thing okay so we're gonna talk about next the way that if I have to decrease our monthly budget I typically go for the grocery aspect of it first since we've already pretty much eliminated all the non-essential things out of our monthly budget groceries is where I can cut back and this is the part where I want to encourage you to grow as much of your own food as you are able to because it does help it does take some Blood Sweat and Tears but it does help with the grocery budget so any fruits or vegetables or eggs milk meats that you might be able to grow yourself look into that now we have a pretty full Homestead with the dairy cow and the chickens and we raise our own meat birds and we raise ducks and we have a big garden and we have an orchard and we have the berry patches but I know there are people living in say a subdivision and you can't have those things but what can you do let's look at what you can do and then go from there can you have hens but not a rooster some places do that some people will eat rabbit meat is that something that you can do in your area or Quail for eggs or Quail for meat container gardening don't mind the cow the dairy cow sees me and wants me to come pay attention to her and she's noisy my point is to just think about what you can do to raise your own food and become less dependent upon the grocery store but also decrease your monthly expenses at the same time okay Daisy I'm coming okay speaking of growing some of your own food this is just some of the things that we've had brought in just over the last couple days the green beans here are actually from last year's canning but we're getting tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and okra and lemon squash and Chinese long beans and teeny little Tigger cantaloupes did I say peppers I don't even remember and the eggs and things of course too but we're going to transition from growing your own food to cooking from scratch so Sarah's over here finishing up some supper she is cooking from scratch here with a egg roll in a bowl recipe so let's talk about that just a little bit because this is a huge way to save money okay so even if you're not interested in growing your own food please look into cooking from scratch I really think that that is a big big way to decrease your grocery budget so by just having a well-stocked Pantry with basic food Staples I can pretty much make anything that my family might want there are a few exceptions but for the most part we have just a huge a huge selection of foods that I can make because I have a well-stocked Pantry of Staples and I know how to make things from scratch so it really opens up a lot of doors for you and I know it can get overwhelming but if you could just start with maybe one new recipe per week and after a while you're going to have a whole range of skills under your belt you're going to have recipes that you're familiar with and it's going to become easier and easier there will be a Snowball Effect here so if you do have any specific questions on cooking from scratch let me know in the comments below there also I'm always looking for ideas for new videos that you guys are interested in so if you have suggestions I'd like to hear them oh you guys I just about forgot something okay no eating out we don't eat out it's not in the budget we just don't do it so if our family of nine were to go out to eat I mean I'm not kidding it would easily be a hundred dollars for us to go out to eat so we just don't now I do put certain things practices into place here so that I minimize the likelihood of us wanting to go out to eat because that's the trick right there you have to be prepared ahead of time so if I know that there is a meal that we are going to be on the road for we're going to be in town for I will plan ahead and make sure we have sandwiches packed up now I will splurge on the little the the snack the individual snack baggies of chips I'll splurge on those and we'll take those along in the van with us whenever we're driving and that keeps us from going through a drive-through now there's also times at least there are for me where it's evening it's supper time time has gotten away from me it's late and I will go I have no desire to cook or I have no time to cook so I have to make sure that I have things on hand here in the house that I have bought with the grocery budget and they're fast they're my fast food here for this large family and for me that will be things like the um there are bags of frozen chicken strips from Aldi blue baggies is what ours look like at our Aldi and I will keep a couple of those in the freezer at all times so if I need fast food we will cook those up and make big chicken salads with those or simple things like hot dogs we don't even eat them with buns we just have the hot dogs and we can heat up some vegetables real quick and that would be fast food for us and that keeps us from going through a drive-through or we don't have take out here in the county where we're at but maybe keeps you from getting pizza delivery or whatever you have available in your area so it just takes a little bit of planning ahead and then we don't have that huge expense because I have prepared for those lazy days or busy days or whatever happens to come up the last food related item I want to touch on real quick I think is fairly common knowledge by this point and that is buying in bulk if you're feeding a lot of people it makes sense to buy things in a larger quantity because you typically get a price break per pound per ounce per unit if you're buying it that way and if you are buying for a bunch of people then you're also going to go through that larger quantity faster as well so it just makes sense so I'll get things like here's cocoa powder and hard red wheat and popcorn and oats I'll get all kinds of things that I buy in 25 pound bags 50 pound bags and then I will store them in these buckets and we will just use them first in first out and it ends up being a savings over time for our family so if you're feeding a lot of people and you have access to a place where you can buy things in large quantities take advantage of that I use as I use Azure standard but you may have others that you can use in your area all right guys those are my ideas that I had for you today now I know you guys are going to have more ideas and I want you to share them I want us to brainstorm together I want us to share all the ideas and everybody can benefit from them and we're all saving money and it's a big happy day so please comment below with your ideas whether it's a large family or a small family also make sure you check out Dawn over at sensible living with money mom she has a video out today too on the same topic but for small families so check her out I'm going to put the link in the description box below and if you liked my video please give me a thumbs up and make sure you are subscribed and if you could tell your family and friends to watch Ozark Family Homestead it would help our families Channel grow thank you so much guys bye-bye thanks for watching Ozark family homes and bye [Music] bye

Channel: Ozark Family Homestead

Views: 19,914

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Id: ZrX7_FqZPwk

Length: 29min 46sec (1786 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023