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Where are you going, Mom? I ingrained in myself that in order to have fun, I have to spend money, and that's just not the case. Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm the world's okayest mom, and it is summer break, which means my kids are home every single day, and life is about to get more expensive. I'm going to try something for 1 week. I'm not going to spend any money. No spend week. It's going to be my time to not only get creative with budget meals, but also find fun free activities that we can do throughout the summer. Genuinely, as a mom of four, I feel like I am such a consumer, and I need to buy so many things all the time. But, a no spend week is a good way to reset and see what I actually need to be buying. So, wish me luck.
Let's set some ground rules. So, for this no spend week, that doesn't cover the absolute necessities, mortgage, bills, utilities, health insurance. Oh my gosh, my health insurance is so expensive. No spend applies to nice-to-have things. I'm also going to forego my weekly grocery shopping haul, and utilize what I already have in my fridge and pantry. I have a lot of food stockpiled just because I don't feel like cooking it, and this will force me to make room for what I get at my next shopping trip. I think we've gotten into such a pattern of feeling like we have to buy something whenever we leave the house. Anything fun costs money, and I just know that's not true. There is so much junk and wasteful stuff in my house just from having that
mentality. Getting more creative is going to improve our lives a lot in the long run. Sweet apple. When you can't go to the store to buy toys, your children will get creative. Playing with an apple. As if she was in a room full of toys. think the older boys will be too affected by this week. It's more the younger kids who don't understand why they can't get something. If I say no to Lenny, it usually doesn't go over very well, but we're working on it, and this will be a great exercise learning how to say no and coping with those feelings. I'm going to be really bold and say that I don't think they're going to notice, including Matt. I
genuinely don't think Matt will notice. That man just exists. I am going to be so creative and work overtime to keep this week super, super fun. Famous last words. I need some real food. That's just a lot of beans, a lot of tomato sauce. I could do spaghetti. Hmm, let's think on this. I'm doing this week with no crap, because I think that's only fair. I don't get to go to the grocery store the week before and do a big extra haul. The first thing I have to do is take stock of my fridge, freezer, pantry, and emergency food closet to see how I can compile all of these items to make meals. The other thing is activities. We have a lot of tried and true free activities that we love to do. It's going to be quite a challenge. Here we are.
Oh, except it's a tight squeeze. I thought day one was going to be a breeze. Out this door. Oh. Gotcha. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, right? What I need to figure out is an activity to do with Lenny while the kids are at school. So, I decided to lean into tried and true the Toy Story No. the library. Toy Story library, same thing, right? Go to the library. All else fails, go to the library. I scream this all the time. Go to your public library. You can not only get amazing books, audiobooks, video games, DVDs, VHS, what No, not VHS. The library is my favorite free activity in the summer because it is so cold inside. It's air conditioned. It's the perfect place to spend
several hours of the day with your kids. Cuz my kids love the computers. They can play them all day. You can read all the books you want, bring some home. This summer, hit the public library while we still have them. I know am smiling. I know the library is safe. There's no way I need to spend money at the library. I see a bunch of books out on racks in front. Oh my gosh. Ours is having a 20 cent children's book sale. That is such a good price and my kids blow through books like tissues.
I swear when we go to Barnes & Noble it's $200 and it lasts 1 week. My kids read so much. That took every ounce of willpower in my being to not shop the five for a dollar books. They also had vinyl records for $2 and CDs for $1. I'll have to buy them another time. Everything in my being wants to buy 30 books because I know I'm going to need books this summer. I couldn't even wail in agony. I had to be quiet cuz it's a library. I checked out a ton of books for the kids. Successful library day. Food is still going pretty well. Blended wanted to go out to eat while we were out, but I was able to entice her with some mac and cheese at home. So, I'm
going to make mac and cheese. I am so hungry right now. Thinking I'm going to make something that I've been trying to figure out how to make for a while. I have one thing that's just been kind of making the rounds in my pantry shelf to shelf because no one really wants to eat them and it is sardines. I have an absurd amount of sardines and I just haven't been very excited to make them. I did not buy the sardines. My mom gave them to us. She's like those people that were on Extreme Makeover Home Edition where you'd say, "Oh, I like horses kind of." And then they'd be like, "Your bed's a horse. Your walls are horse.
Your whole room is a horse." That's how my mom is when I say I like something. And then I realized I don't actually really like Long-winded answer. It's time to tackle the sardines. I have this pasta that I've been meaning to use. It's like a veggie rotini that the kids don't really like. I can make pasta salad out of it. Veggie rotini. I got to use it cuz it's all I got. the sardine will turn into a kind of like a tuna. Worth a try. The taste is actually pretty mild, but it's that fishy smell. I prefer tuna. I'm thinking if the sardines are in small pieces, maybe that fishiness will disperse a little bit.
Delectable sardines. It's actually looking really good. Okay, this actually smells and looks so good. The kids didn't really like it. Everyone has foods they don't like. I devoured this pasta salad and I liked it so much, I might buy sardines again. And that's why I love doing this week because I actually changed my mind on a food that I was dreading having to use. The big deal was getting an activity done that was completely free and I checked that box and I'm ending day one feeling very, very good. In my head I'm thinking, well, it's just going to be hard for the kids. No, it was actually hard for me.
Hopefully day two is a little easier. Just absolutely feral today. Day two, I went into my reserves of the toys that I only bring out in case of emergency. This thing is like six years old and still kicking. It still hits every summer. Henry gets out from school earlier than Jackson and Wyatt. He and Lenny miraculously got along pretty well playing at the water table. The water table is fine. I love it. It gets us hours of entertainment. I just bring it out sparingly because I never want my kids to get sick of it. It will be my worst nightmare if they get bored of the water table. I've had that thing for six years. It has never steered me wrong, but the second they're sick of it, I'm going to lose hours of
peace. The kinetic sand was another story and I'm going to be so real with you right now. This is how I got a lot of stuff done free. No spending today, not taking Lenny out to do stuff, and this is how I was able to work. This was a gift from Christmas, kinetic sand. I usually don't allow it, but honestly, it gets hours of entertainment. I really thought that putting the kinetic sand outside would solve all my problems, but it actually just took all my inside problems and made them outside problems. I had a big old mess to clean up. I don't know where these trash bags came from, but this is the price you pay. But, you know what? I didn't have to buy anything. Sometimes I just let them trash things. Sue me, okay? It's my own
house. The big thing today is we have an evening baseball game right at dinner time, and it's so tempting to just eat at the snack bar during the baseball game. Not going to do that. I'm going to make something even more exciting, okay? Good old-fashioned hot pockets. I think they actually sell these at the snack bar. We usually do burgers. I'm going to heat some hot pockets up, bring them with me, make sure my snack bag is fully packed with waters and drinks, so that there's nothing we have to buy there. Jackson had his last game, and it was my turn to work the snack bar. Every parent has to work snack bar shifts. Okay, we're here at baseball, I'm about to do my snack bar shift. No matter how many snacks I pack, we end up
spending a lot of money. Can't spend money if my other kids aren't there, and just go by myself with Jackson, because the only way we function is by getting in line at the snack bar over and over, buying things to just keep the kids quiet. Made it through baseball. I didn't get anything at the snack bar. Did I want to? Yes. Did I? No. I have not cooked for the little kids at home. This ends up being a test of my willpower, because another person in our family who loves the snack bar is me. And when I'm working in it, I'm just in there like swiping my card, buying myself little treats. And I couldn't do that, and it ended up being a pretty successful game. They lost, but we're not going to talk about that. So far, nobody has noticed a
thing, and I'm going to keep it that way. Good morning. Can you tell by my face how last night went? I had Lenny and Henry both crying about different things. I don't think I finally went to sleep until about 3:00 in the morning. Day three is another school day. Lenny and I decided to keep going through the pantry. I'm making pancakes. This morning is one of those mornings I would maybe treat myself to a coffee or something, but I'm going to make my coffee. This is not out of the ordinary. Yeah, I can make pancakes and eggs, like I usually do, because I have so much pancake mix from when it was a dollar.
It's like dough. One thing with Lenny, and I've noticed this with all of my kids at this age, she is most entertained when we're doing something together. It's just pancakes. Yeah, it's it's like dough. Yeah. Wow. Sorry, get your face away. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's so funny. Now it's my turn. Hold on, it's kind of hard to stir right now. Let's get it. She's a great helper when it comes to enthusiasm. When I have the time, I like to include her in the things that I'm doing. It's just quality time. It means a lot to her, and she has a lot of fun.
There they are, Mom. She's over there. I'm looking out the window. Looking out the window? We both have bed head, don't we? Want me to bump my head? Yeah. Oh, what? What was that? So, once the kids were out of school, we didn't have any after-school activities planned, but I need them out of my house. When I tell you having three boys, they are jumping off the walls in my house. Like, there's just so much pent-up energy. Lucky for us, we have a lot of parks in our area, so I said, "Get a ball and go to the basketball court. Get out of my house."
Get out. All right, let me see. Let's see you shoot the ball. There we go. Wow, you're bad. Oh my gosh, and the sun is setting. It's so gorgeous. So, it's time to scour the pantry. And one thing I have a lot of is pasta. You can never go wrong with pasta. My kids love it. I make it at least once a week. And then I came across mystery sauce. We're finally making the mystery sauce that has been sitting in the pantry and we don't know what kind of sauce it is. what brand it is.
I know it's Prego. Somebody ripped the label off and this is mystery sauce. So, this is the week we're going to use it. No one has wanted to use it because they don't know what it is. Do you want to try mystery sauce? What do you think? I think it's tomato sauce. It's mystery sauce. It tastes like normal sauce. It's good? I was kind of hoping it would be bad and we'd just get through it. It was actually quite delicious. Mystery sauce, you were good while you lasted. Goodbye forever.
Here's the dilemma we have. I get a little notification on my phone that I had signed up to bring cookies for Wyatt's band party the next day. I don't have any butter, which is like a basic component of cookies. Use cream. I don't have heavy cream. We're going to have to get creative and figure out a cookie solution. Okay. Do you have any ideas? No. And I'm about this close to just run to the store and call this week a wash and buy some.
I have one idea. One time I made cake mix cookies. They were delicious. I made them for Tasty. They only take oil and eggs. Are you up for this challenge? Let's do it. They came out a little wonky. Look. We can make this work. Do it like this. I don't know if this will work for cake mix cookies. They're not hard at all. Oh, no. Yeah, I'll just use a knife. No, you're supposed to Yeah, Mom. Let's just use a knife. Okay, that's good. I got it. I got this.
I know. It's kind of working with me like separating them. That's great. Okay, well, they look better than they did. We'll see how these cool. This is one of the batch that I'm not going to use, but they actually turned out so delicious. Do you want to say it moist? Let's see. So, this is a cake batter? Yeah. It's good. Right? Actually love it. This is good. You happy with your work? Mhm. I feel like I'm working back at Tasty. It saved the day. And nobody noticed that this was because I didn't want to spend money on butter or just buying cookies. Day three.
Came close. $0 spent. We're baking bread. You know, every week I have my bread day. I bake the bread for my family. It saves me so much money. One thing I always have in my house is plenty of flour. I do not spend money on bread. I make it for a dollar. And the bread I make is just flour, water, salt. That's it. And let me help you. Yep, you help me, but don't don't splash it. This is sourdough starter. I usually don't like her to help me make bread because the sourdough starter is bacteria, and I don't really trust her to touch and not like immediately rub her eyes, but she insists.
I'll turn it. Okay, try not to kiss me. Thank you. We have friends coming over tonight. I need to figure out what to do to host. Are you okay, Mom? Yeah, I'm okay. I just hope I have enough flour. This one is okay. It's like Play-Doh. It does. So, I'm going to have to figure out like some appetizers to put out for our friends. I need to make some sort of meal, and I need to figure out a dessert. But, first things first, if I have bread, we're already good. I already mixed with this flour. It's a little bit gooey.
It is a little bit gooey, but Yeah, but not a lot of gooey. Not a lot. No, just a little bit. I have some teachers and staff that really like the sourdough, and so I would like to gift them some for the end of the school year. It doesn't cost a lot of money, but it's not something that they're ever going to do. So, I think sourdough makes a really thoughtful gift. Mommy, it's turning into sourdough. It is turning into sourdough. Oh. Half of the flour. Okay, I'm going to get bread in the bowl. Now, we prep food. I'm hosting. What am I going to make?
I'm out of everything normal. I would like to keep my friends, and I can't be like, "Hey, welcome to my house. All I have is sardines." Guests coming over. I have a lot of seasonings, hot sauce, olives, a lot of soup. I don't know if they're going to want to eat my soups. Ooh, I've had these forever. What if I did a cherry apple pie? Wait, I don't have butter. Wait, I have pie crust in the freezer. Oh my gosh, yes. Hold up, I have this, too, pumpkin. I have cream cheese in the fridge. And I could do like a pumpkin cream cheese muffin. Ooh, that sounds good. Okay, let's take this out. I need some real food. I don't think they're going to want to eat sardines. I think I'm going to have to save those
for us. What are you doing over here? Refried beans, green beans. Oh. Bush's beans, okay. Campbell's soup, that's kind of weird to serve. I have some mac and cheese. Ooh, that might be good. A lot of tomato sauce. Hmm, let's think on this. Finally figured out a dinner. I saw this trusty Jiffy cornbread mix. If you don't keep this in your pantry at all times, you should. It's less than a dollar. I've got chili, I've got cornbread. The rest was kind of a smorgasbord of whatever I had left. I took the pie crust out of the freezer. I always knew this would come in handy having it in the freezer.
I bought this cream cheese randomly on sale knowing I would need it at some point and here we are. Let's try to make muffins. This pie filling smells and looks delicious. It looks so vibrant red, but there are no food dyes in this. I'm so pleasantly surprised. I like to have some snacks out for the kids when they get home from school because they come home so hungry. Bread, about to do the muffin over here. Okay, these look delish. And this, it's just going to be dessert for dinner, I guess. Wow. Okay, this actually is quite a spread. I had chili cornbread baked, apple cherry pie, pumpkin muffins. Now, what we were missing was vegetables, but luckily, and I mean so luckily, this
woman is not going to judge me. She is one of my closest friends. Let's cut the pie. Hey. Woah. It's a good piece of pie. Mhm. Okay, do you guys want ice cream or whipped cream? Look at that. I might need that again with the Jiffy. It's so messy. Hand me that. Meets expectations. Yeah. Perfect. 25, 25, 50. Tastes like a Sunday. Overall, this was a very full meal. And not only did I have dinner, I had dessert. What this week now is proving to me is that my food hoarding
pays off. If we are in an apocalypse, come over to my house. Day four went super, super successfully. Everything was tasty, everyone was happy and full. Nobody noticed. I cleaned out a lot of stuff in my pantry that I just needed to use and $0 spent. If all else fails, community pools, where is that? We don't have a pool, so we heavily rely on community pools. It is the best way to stay cool in the summer. There are so many other kids there. It's a great way for kids to socialize, where you're best friends for the day, and then you maybe never see them again. Honestly, I think that's a beautiful part of childhood. I really want to work on my kids swimming, and Henry and Lenny have made such huge strides. We did a lot of this throughout the rest of the week,
too. It's crazy how just one day at the pool can transform the way your young child swims. If you have a pool and you want to be friends, let me know. After the pool, the kids are nice and tired. Luckily, I had a lot of leftovers from the muffins, pie, all the food I made the day before, but there's still more to do. So, we have a baseball party this week. It's impromptu. It was a last-minute thing. A wonderful thing about our community, the pizza place donates the pizza for the kids to have the party. Oh my gosh, I'm going to start crying now. It's just so sweet. We've already handled the coaches' gift, but nobody organized a team mom gift, and I really want to give her something because she's been so wonderful and
helpful the whole season. This is my gift bag, and these are not regifted items that I didn't like. This bag is full of my favorite products. Anytime they go on sale, I will purchase and stock up because these are products I know I will want to gift at some point. All it does is save me money. Barefoot Dreams, one of my favorite cozy brands. These socks were $38. I think this is a two-pack, and they're such buttery-soft socks, but I'm not paying $38 for these. I think I got the two-pack for maybe $10 on Sample Sale. Everybody loves these. They love to wear them, and it's kind of something they're not going to buy themselves. It is like my little gift stash hack, but it's not
crappy stuff that I'm trying to regift or get rid of. Let's shop my closet for her. Some eye patches. I love Patchology. She really likes makeup, so I'm wondering if I should gift her some of this Laura Geller makeup that I have. I think she would probably like this dreamy mist from Pixi. That's very nice. She's really big on makeup, so I think I will put a makeup eraser with her gift. I think she'll really like that. I had stocked up on these this Kundal soy milk body cream and the soy milk body wash. It's like buttery soft. It smells so good. It absorbs so well. And so, what I'm able to do is buy gifts throughout the year as I see them or if I see something on a sample sale, I get much nicer gifts for way less
money. And people are always like, "How do you do it?" This is how I do it. She loved her gift. Day five, nobody noticed and $0 spent. Old money spent, but no new money spent. Oh. Brown. And yellow. Oh, you found yellow? Good job. Usually on a weekend day, we'll go to a play place, like one of those trampoline parks. It does cost money. So, I pulled out one of our favorite activities, which is a nature scavenger hunt. Yeah. Oh, beautiful. That almost looks a little pink. What we've been loving to do lately is hunt by color. We tape them on and it makes this cute little art piece that they like to hang on the fridge.
Guys, is purple or blue? Don't pick it though. We got to look on the floor. We found another red. Oh, gorgeous. Let's tape it down. Let me see. Oh, beautiful yellow. We need blue, orange. Jackson found orange. I found purple. Pretty. Pretty but beautiful. Okay. I found this idea on the internet. This is not my idea. I turn to the internet for so many hacks. What? Mr. Attitude. You know, Jackson, he's 14, so he has his little phases of being too for stuff, but he does enjoy taking walks, and so he'll eventually start participating in the hunt. What is that?
Random bottle cap. Oh my gosh. Finding blue in nature is a struggle, and today we found blue. It was just garbage, but we taped it on anyway. Here's how most of our walks end up, with this girl in my arms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to do a little bit. So much is solved by going outside. I put the extra effort in to make it more of an adventure. So when we got home, we were hungry, and I'm out of protein. I got nothing. So I go into my trusty dusty panic food closet to find whatever cans I have left of anything that contains protein, and I hit gold. Look how good this looks. It's chunks of chicken breast. I always buy it when they have it on sale, because I
know I will need it at some point. When you find gold, you make a chicken salad. I think that I'm just going to throw some of this on some greens and eat this. I always add greens to stuff just cuz it's good fiber, and it tricks me into eating my veggies when it's doused in enough chicken salad. Look at that. I even found little pickles in the back of the fridge to add to this. Mhm. Super lean, there's not like weird stuff in them, and they make a delicious chicken salad, and all my kids love it. But no one loves it quite as much as Lenny.
He must have sensed that it was no fun week, so she found scissors and cut her own hair, I guess. Save me the money, right? Do you like the pickles in it or no? No. No, okay. You want to show off your hairstyle? No. We love it. We were all very happy. And after that, they were still not tired. So what did I do? Throw them in the pool again. You want to be crazy in my house? Get in the pool. End of day six, thank goodness for good weather, because we were outside almost the entire day. $0 spent. I feel like I'm getting into a groove. One thing we will do absolutely is go to the park. A shady park is priceless.
Day seven is something I can't believe we haven't been doing the entire week. We live in an area with a ton of parks and they just entertain themselves. Look at how good you're getting. The swings are a hot commodity these days at the park. It kind of comes and goes, but right now the swings are worth it and they'll just swing forever. Do you want help? For indoor activities, it's time for me to teach my kids how to play some card games. Are you the dealer, Jackson? Hit me. Ah! Is that nine? Oh, no, I got 21. It's not blackjack.
No, it's it's just 21. Wait, I did it. Now you have Nine. Okay, 19. I win and I don't know if that was a poor parenting decision or a good parenting decision. I'm still mulling that over, but I did teach them how to play blackjack. Me, I'm going to hit. Oh my gosh. 22. Wait, 12. No. Yeah, 12. It made me feel really stupid. I'm very slow at adding. Hit me. Oh, I bust. Hit. 17, dealer stays. You're a little too good at this, Jackson. What do you think? You're a little too good at this. We had a blast. At this point, I'm out of perishable protein. That's long gone.
Spam, the best. It's like a delicacy in our house. So salty. I try not to make it, but this is the gochujang Spam. 10 out of 10. I can't believe I've made it through this week without spending any money, let alone making pretty decent meals. And this last meal was no exception. Look at how professional with the chopsticks. Got some spam. Get this a little cooked up, so it's got a slight crisp to it. Oh, you can smell it already. It smells so good. Got some frozen assorted veggies. I only added a little cuz I did put rice cauliflower in with my rice.
Indistinguishable, if anyone needs a picky eater hack. Little egg action. Oh gosh, this smells so good. All right, may not be perfect, may not be professional fried rice, but we are going to eat the heck out of this. The spam is so flavorful. Luckily, I really don't need soy sauce. One of those things I make more as a treat versus because I don't have anything else. So, this just ended the week on a very high note and almost like a gourmet meal to my kids. Try the spam and the rice. Mm. Good. Really good. Is it missing the soy sauce? Not that much. Still pretty good, right? I'm going to do some dad jokes.
Why do you dad fans always carry a map? Because they can't find their way into the end zone. You know it already. Look at that. Not everyone's even finished. Wow, I'm I'm going to have to make this again. I did not realize what a hit this would be. You never know what you're going to get with kids. You know, they like something one day, they don't like it the next day. And so, watching them devour this and absolutely zero leftovers, it was just one of those perfect moments where everything came together so swimmingly. So, I am ending this week feeling like I can keep going. The thing that surprised me the most was I didn't feel like the food was much of a struggle for this week. Just forced me to be a little more creative.
Now, the big question, did anybody notice? No. And that was probably the most surprising thing of all. My kids weren't asking for me to spend money on stuff. I was thinking ahead and making plans. Shows me that if I'm just a little more proactive, we can have the same amount of fun without spending money. I'm never going to tell them that I did this because I don't want them to think of that week as less than or something because I didn't spend money. I will absolutely do this again, especially as we are on summer break. I need all the help I can get. anything you love to do, please leave it in the comments if it's free or low cost. Let's take advantage of all of these amazing resources. I think
my biggest takeaway from this week is that I've ingrained in myself that in order to have fun, I have to spend money, and that's just not the case. I don't have to spend money out of convenience. There are creative solutions to almost everything.
