Saving Time Can Add Up to
Financial Savings in a Big Way - Part 2
by Crystal Dupay

Combine tasks for greater efficiency, and it can save you money. 

 Many of us complain that we simply don’t have enough time to spend just having fun with our families. We spend so many hours a day working and performing tasks like cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping, that there are simply not enough hours in the day for fun time with the kids, to cultivate a hobby or interest on your own, or to spend time clipping coupons and searching the sale ads. But what if we could combine some of these mundane tasks? Sometimes it just takes a bit of ingenuity and a slight shift in our perspective to begin to feel like we are in control of our time and money. Below you will find some tips and ideas on task combining.

 Use your time in the grocery store for more than just shopping!

·          Believe it or not, you can turn your shopping time into some quality time for you and your children. If you have younger children, you can use shopping as a learning experience. 

Teaching social skills: The first area of education would be in social skills, teach them how they should behave in the store.

      Use the store as an educational tool: You can teach them many new words, colors, and shapes by asking them what they see as you walk down the aisles. My husband was floored when we went to the store and our three-year-old pointed out the pinattas to her father and pronounced the word with a perfect Spanish accent! Older children can learn a great deal about money and value by accompanying you to the grocery store. Have them make a game out of selecting the best priced item out of a group of similar items. This is a great way to sharpen their math skills and it’ll help you brush up on yours, too! 

        Make a fun game out of grocery shopping: If you need to get your shopping done quickly, divide your list among yourself and your children and see who can pick up the items on their list and be back at the check-out line first, and the winner would win a prize. Of course taking your children to the grocery store with you is never a good idea unless they understand that you will be buying only the items on your list.

 Making your own games, toys and crafts at home can be fun, educational, and frugal.

 Making your own games, toys, and crafts can sound complicated and time consuming but when done in combination with other tasks, it can actually keep your kids happy and occupied while you complete other duties.

·         Make your cooking time, fun time for you and your kids. When you are cooking, especially if you are making several meals at once, your kitchen is going to be a disaster so what better time to allow your kids to get creative with some messy yet really fun materials! If you'll be making foods that require flour, why not make homemade Playdough at the same time? Homemade finger paints is another option or how about mashed potato sculptures? Older kids can actually help with the cooking itself. One of my favorite "make ahead" meals is ravioli from scratch. Rolling out the dough, cutting it with a pastry cutter, and filling the raviolis is something the  whole family can do together.

·          Use your sale flyers for more than tracking the best prices. Have your children look through the sale flyers with you as you look for bargains. Younger children can pick out pictures as you go along and cut them out for use in making a game to play later. For example, in one of your sale flyers there could be a picture of an apple. Have your child cut out the picture and glue it on to one side of an index card. On the other side, you or your child can write the word apple. You can do this with several cards and use it to teach word recognition to your pre-reader, if he recognizes the word, he wins because he knows what the picture will be on the other side of the card. A variation on this game for older children would be to cut out two of the same picture and use them to play a matching game.

·         Use craft time with your kids to cultivate your own hobby or sew clothing or home decorating items to help you save money. Pre-schoolers love to practice their fine motor skills and you and your child can make a great game together that will fit the bill. Draw a picture of something on a piece of cardboard. A picture of just about anything will suffice but something like a bear or mouse is really cute. Cut out the picture around the outline and let your child color the picture any way he would like. Then, take a hole punch and punch holes all the way around the outline about ½ inch apart. Take an old shoe lace and teach your child how to "sew" around the outline with the shoe lace, taking it in and out of the holes. While your kids are enjoying cutting, pasting, and otherwise making a mess, you can use this time to work on your own hobby such as scrapbooking, rubber stamping, sewing, or toll painting among many other things. Entertaining your children at home with inexpensive items around the house can save you a lot of money in expensive toys. Using their craft time to make your own items to wear or use around the house will save even more, and doing both at the same time will require cleaning up only once, which will save precious minutes.

 There are only so many things that we can accomplish in a day yet there are so many important things that need our attention. We can't create more time in our days so combining tasks that we deem important is one of the best ways to find time to complete them. Using these tips will require some forethought and planning but any lifestyle change that will help us save time, money, or both is worth considering.

 Related Articles:

A Penny for my Thoughts  
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How to Completely Eliminate Credit Card Debt
A debt-reduction strategy called The Debt Reduction Pyramid. will enable you to completely pay off your credit card balances.

Before You Throw That Away!
All it takes is a little creativity to use those things you might otherwise discard without a thought. You know what they say…a penny saved is a penny earned.

"Not Just Beans: 50 Years of Frugal Family Favorites.": 
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