Wednesday, October 31, 2012

31 Days:: Wrapping It Up


Phew!  We made it!  This is the last day of 31 Days of Saving Money in the Kitchen.  I have one problem:  I didn't run out of ideas, I just ran out of days!  Therefore, you might see Saving Money in the Kitchen articles in the future.  I'll include them in the "31 Days" tab, even though they won't technically be part of the series. 

Now that I'm done blogging every single day, maybe I'll have time to follow through with some of my own tips.  (Just kidding.  OK, maybe only half kidding!)

As I've said before, I do almost all of the things I suggested this month...but just not all of them at the same time.  I focus on the activities that save me the most money (meal-planning, packaging my own snacks, shopping at Costco, just to name a few) and the activities that take hardly any time (checking out the discount/clearance racks at the grocery store...I'm there anyway!).  When time allows, I add in other activities that aren't worth quite so much money per hour (making my own pizza sauce, making an extra stop for milk).  My point?  The tips shared this month are meant to encourage you, not overwhelm or frustrate you!  Do what you can, when you can.  Every little bit helps.

For those of you who are interested, the post that got the most hits this month was 7 Ways to Save on Produce.  (That number is probably slightly inflated because I linked up at Kitchen Tip Tuesdays, and received a lot of interest from that link.)  The post that came in second was Costco, Part One:  The Good and the Not So Good, followed by Costco, Part Three:  What I Buy.  The posts about Aldi received the next highest number of hits.  Apparently, store-specific information is interesting to my readers!

Although Go Paperless did not receive quite as many hits, it was the post that generated the most comments.  This is interesting to me, because I almost didn't include this as part of the series.  That's because I don't consider myself an expert in this area...I'm only beginning to go down the paperless route, and I'm not fully convinced to go completely paperless.  It sounds like this is an important topic to those of you who have already made the switch.  I appreciate all the comments and information shared in the comments of that post...I certainly learned a lot!

Speaking of comments, thank-you to all of you who added your own useful tips after the articles this month...there was a lot of good information shared in the comments!  I encourage all of my readers to go back and check out the comment section of each article for lots of helpful tips.  The comments that were made will help make this series of articles a money-saving resource for blog readers present and future!   

Did you enjoy this series, or would you prefer that I stick to just posting recipes?  Did you learn anything this month?  What was your favorite tip?  Do you have more ideas for saving money in the kitchen?  Are there any topics that you'd like to read more about?

As always, thanks for reading!

3 comments:

  1. I very much enjoyed the series! I actually checked in with it BEFORE checking my own blog/email at times! So I will miss it! Off the top of my head, my favorite tip was to cut a block of cheese up into your OWN "homemade" cheese sticks! OH ~ and the labeled clothespins for kids cups! Thanks :)

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  2. Hi Lisa
    I really enjoyed the posts this month. I am curious about your recap of hits per posts. For those of us who read your posts on email, do they even show up as a hit? Don't forget about your faithful readers!!!!
    Marcia

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    1. Hi Marcia,
      Don't worry, I'm not forgetting about you and my other faithful email subscribers :) The only time a hit shows up from you is if you or another email subscriber click through to the actual post on the blog (in order to read the comments or make a comment). The hits per post do not include readers who "just" read the posts in their email. I don't have a way to know whether or not they are actually reading the emails or not, so I just looked at the actual hits on the blog to come up with my numbers for this series. I hope I'm understanding your question correctly!

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