The landlord provides us a 2-door refrigerator with the top freezer compartment. We somehow managed to “squeeze” a chest freezer and an upright freezer into our tiny apartment. The chest freezer was from a deal at our grocery store, yes, we got it almost free with coupons!

The outside and inside of the refrigerator.

The refrigerator is usually more packed than this, I am trying to “empty” it a bit before leaving for Malaysia in February. They are more yogurts in a plastic tub that I left them in what people here called the “Polish refrigerator” – the outside freezing cold weather.

The outside and inside of the chest freezer.

We use the chest freezer for meat. They are currently fill to the rim. The hams and turkeys that are free with coupons before Christmas are taking too much space! I have the meat separated by paper bags, one bag for pork, one bag for seafood, one bag for chicken, one bag for turkey and one bag for beef. I still have a few 2lb bags of shrimps and 30-40 bags of Franks I got in March/April 2009 inside there. The meat can last a long time in the deep freezer especially when they are vacuumed sealed.

Really glad I burned some Catalina coupons to get this vacuum sealer. It makes stockpiling perishable food and meal planning in advance much easier. With the ability to pick up fresh, seasonal fruits, vegetables when the stores are running deals or they are abundant of wine tags to get them for FREE. The vacuum-sealing allows me to use these foods when I choose, rather than rushing to use them up or waiting too long only to find they have gone bad!

The outside and inside of the upright freezer.

The upright freezer is currently filled with frozen vegetables, fruits, ice cream, breakfast food (waffles, strudels, breads) milk and pizza. The content varies from month to month as the deals differ. A couple of months ago, when milk was free with coupons, we have lots of of milk in the freezer, and didn’t have to buy milk for the last six months. Everything in this freezer is either FREE or they paid me to take home. What you see is a tip of the iceberg of what I actually bought at the store. When they paid me to bring home ice cream during a promotion in the summer, I bought more than 180 tubs of ice cream but only brought home about 20 tubs, gave/donated most of them away. The ice cream craze got me $200+ in coupons to buy other groceries/necessities.

The beer companies have rebate forms out throughout the years, especially during special occasions like Superbowl and holiday seasons. You can get beer for free after the rebate, or even make a couple of bucks! For example, Coors had a rebate last month, you buy a 18 pack beer and a $100 gift card, get back $25 in rebate. I bought the gift card with coupons – so no cost, 18-pack beer is about $15 includes tax. I am paid $10 to bring home the beer!

Many people drink during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year when family and friends gather together. Most liquor department at the grocery stores count on the festive season to booze their sales. The retailers often have sales to bring people in. The manufacturers or liquor distributor often use coupons and rebate forms as marketing tools to promote their products. By taking advantage of all the promotions and stacking all the deals together, getting paid to bring home the booze during this time of the year is not a dream!

We have more than 50 bottles of booze right now, they are mostly wine, some sparkling wine (taste like champagne) and a few bottles of rum. Except for the plum wine from the Asian grocery store (I used it in cooking and marinade) which I paid real money for, the others are all FREE after coupons and rebates.

Some will come in handy as last minute gifts when we get invited to parties or family gatherings. The rest is enough booze to last us for the next year. In fact, we had given away 5 bottles as Christmas and graduation gifts.

When it’s only 1-2 inches of snow, it’s fresh, fluffy and light, it’s easy to get them off the car and side walk. The roof, tree and ground covered with a coat of snow looks beautiful! But, there is no fun when it starts melting, it gets icy, dirty and quite a mess. We are expecting to get 7-8 inches  inches of snow next week!

The ground is icy and slippery when the snow starts melting. Our landlord hires a company to plow the snow. That’s the  advantage of living in an apartment, no shoveling snow in the winter nor mowing lawn in the warmer months!

The flight from Midway IL to St Louis MO is only about one hour, however it takes 2 hours to drive down to the airport from the boondocks we live. Since the flight leaves at 8.00 a.m, we have to leave the house at 4.30-5.00 a.m!

T got me hooked up with the International Cafe, I met many new people and getting to know some friends. Many people asked me what do I do with my free time since I am not employed here. Well, I am actually fairly busy in the last year. First, though I don’t work outside of home, I do work online at home a bit. Since I discovered the big wild world of coupon shopping two months after I arrived here and that has kept me pretty busy, especially when we started selling the stockpile at yard sales and flea markets .

Besides, have been donating  tons of the  dairy products and  perishables that I got for free to the food pantry and  shelter.  Before I got my driver license, T helped me to drop off more than 200 bags of cheese and a few hundreds cans of refrigerated dough(to make biscuit, crescent roll and dinner rolls) at the women shelter.

I also join the area woman center and volunteer there. I do the layout and typeset for the bi-monthly newsletters. Actually, they invited me to be part of the Board of Directors, but I wasn’t sure I have time for greater commitment, so I didn’t go for the meeting last month.

We have gone to the flea market a couple of times and were doing extremely well. We started our tables at about 6 -7 a.m, by9.30 t0 10 a.m., we were SOLD OUT. If we are able to go there twice a month, it’s better than me working part time! What would you do? Slave at a minimum wage job and let Uncle Sam takes 1/4 of your pay, or have the stores pay you to shop?

I may eventually go back to school to get a teacher certification, so I can tutor math part time or teach full time  in a public school. I would love to go for a Montessori certification, but there is no authentic Montessori school at this small town where we live. However, during my initial inquiry at the university near us, was told I first have to send all my certs and transcripts to an agency for evaluations. I am yet to dig out all the certs and transcripts to do that!

All in all, I am thankful to God for all the people that He put in my path during this whole year, it has turned out to be nothing I would have anticipated, but a detour that has wonderful scenery anyway!

T brought it to the workshop to recharge the battery, but was told he has to replace the whole battery. Despite me telling him there was nothing wrong with the battery, T and his dad decided to get it replaced and also “fixed” the alternator. The repair bill came up to be $330++.

The mechanics must have thought they got some dumb big fish, they  also “discovered” problems with the shocks and recommended flushing the break fluids. They gave an estimate of repairs, came up to be a few dollars less than $1000!

Though equally ignorant about cars, I knew better not to trust mechanics! I told T no where we are going to spend so much money repairing a car that only cost $3500! So, T talked to his coffee mate, the retired policeman recommended him a mechanic whom he said is honest. T sent the car for him to check the shocks. Guess what? The second mechanic found nothing wrong with the shocks and whatsoever.

Now they have me thinking: we might not even have to replace the battery or alternator! For all you know, all we need is recharging the battery for 5-6 hours!!

Despite all that, I am surprisingly adjusting better than I thought. I have been keeping so busy with all the part time adventures, kind of panicking at the thought that summer is ending SOON! Time really flies, next month will be the first anniversary of my move to America!

]]> http://www.smalltownsonata.com/blame-it-on-global-warming/feed/ 0 http://www.smalltownsonata.com/virtual-tour-of-our-apartment/ http://www.smalltownsonata.com/virtual-tour-of-our-apartment/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:42:28 +0000 LFS http://smalltownsonata.com/?p=387 The front of the apartment building.

Another view of the apartment building from the mail boxes.

Each apartment gets a mail box. Most houses here are not fenced, but our neighbor had “privacy” fence (see behind the mail boxes)

The front porch, entrance to the apartment building.

Our doorway, and steps leading to our upstairs neighbors. Our apartment is actually a few steps below the ground (Which is cooler in the summer)

The laundry room. It’s the room behind the stairs in the picture, which is in between two apartments.

There is no washer/dryer hook up inside the apartment, so we have to store away our own washer and dryer in the garage temporarily. This coin operated washer and dryer are provided by the landlord. We share with the neighbor on the ground floor, the other two neighbors upstairs have the similar setup.

Another room next to the laundry room. Look nice and neat outside.

That’s how it looks inside, quite a mess! The landlord provides and maintains the water softener.

The Kitchen.

Kitchen cabinets are boons for disorganized messy people, all the “stuffs” are tucked away in the cabinets, what you don’t see.

The hallway. Master bedroom and bathroom on the right, second bedroom, linen closet and storage closets on the left.

The bathroom.

Laundry supplies stash under the bathroom sink.

Paper products stash in the storage closets.

The walk-in closet inside the master bedroom.

Did I tell you I love this closets that keep the mess concealed behind the closed doors?

More pictures are coming………..

]]> http://www.smalltownsonata.com/virtual-tour-of-our-apartment/feed/ 1 http://www.smalltownsonata.com/free-groceries-courtesy-of-liquor-manufacturers/ http://www.smalltownsonata.com/free-groceries-courtesy-of-liquor-manufacturers/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:33:14 +0000 LFS http://smalltownsonata.com/?p=385 In playing the grocery game, one of the biggest aids in getting free groceries are the coupons put out by the liquor companies. They are tear pads found at the wine department or tags hang on the wine bottles, which give you $ off produce, meat, fruit, cheese, seafood, juices, etc.

The tags for instant may say “Save $6 on groceries when you buy 2 bottles of xxx brand of Wine 750 ml or larger”. But the wonderful thing about this tags is: the liquor law in IL prohibited coupon redemption for the purchase of hard liquor, so there will be a “No alcohol/wine purchase is required” in the fine print!!

Some of the “NO ALCOHOL PURCHASE REQUIRED” tags that I have found and used in the last few months!

Most of this tags are specific about what products you can use them on, but some are open to interpretation!

What is a mixer? The cashiers or store managers may not always agree with me, my interpretation: mixer is anything that you can mix with liquor! So, Coke, milk, orange juice, coffee drink, are all mixers!

What is a produce? Are eggs and frozen vegetables included?

I was able to find tons of the tear pads and hang tags (most people don’t pay attention to them, unless they do coupons) and used them to get seafood, produce, meat, cheese for FREE. Our fridge is now well stocked with fruits like Kiwi, strawberries and mangoes we otherwise won’t buy as they are expensive. We have frozen shrimps, chicken, pork, ham and sausages to last us for at least 3 months!

Our refrigerator has limited freezer space, so when the store has a FREE freezer deal in the winter, we got one with coupons!

Having a chest freezer has allowed us to store all the meat and shrimps we got for FREE.

]]> http://www.smalltownsonata.com/free-groceries-courtesy-of-liquor-manufacturers/feed/ 1 http://www.smalltownsonata.com/we-bought-a-2002-kia-sedona-mini-van/ http://www.smalltownsonata.com/we-bought-a-2002-kia-sedona-mini-van/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:42:37 +0000 LFS http://smalltownsonata.com/?p=380

We found this mini van on craiglist.com, it’s a site just like Ebay, but it’s FREE to list items for sale and to search the site. The seller lives at Oak Park near Chicago about 50 miles from where we live. We drove down there to view last Wed and were happy with what we saw. So, we made arragnement tor  the mechanic to do an inspection to make sure there is no evident problem with the car. After T signed the papers and paid the seller with a cashier check. I drove the Toyota Camry and T drove this baby home!

Since it’s a bigger car that runs at 18 MPG (miles per gallon) or 7-8 km per liter, its oil consumption is not that fantastic. We know Kia is not known for good mileage with gas. But, we aren’t willing to pay double or triple for a Honda, Nissan or Toyota of similar age! Gasoline is at about $2.50 per gallon right now,  we plan to use it mainly for hauling goods to flea markets and for me to run around town. We will still be using the Toyota Camry as our main car for commuting and going out of town.

Used cars are rather inexpensive here in America, we paid $3K+ for this 7 years old mini van with 80k mileage. The previous owner is a woman who lives across the street from where she works and her children’ school. It’s their second family car. She is selling this to get a smaller car with better gas mileage as her children are grown up and she no longer needs a mini van to drive them to school.