How does your garden grow?

Since we now have a house, complete with a yard, I have started a garden! Around here you can start a garden around mid March, some years sooner, and not have to worry about frost killing anything, so many people around here are already harvesting quite a bit. Since we didn't even move in until mid May, and our lives were chaotic for the first week living here, we got a very late start on our garden, but we're still trying. I figure the worst thing that could happen is this year could be a complete fail and I'll try again next year. I found some old lengths of metal sitting on the side of the house, so I used it as a garden border on the long ends, and put large rocks and broken brick that were lying in random places around the yard for the mall ends. In future years, I hope to have more garden beds, but you have to start somewhere! My worm compost got left open in the moving process, and I hadn't checked it for several days, so the worms got dried out and died. Sad day. This also left me in want of some garden amendments. So I have kind of been doing trench composting. Or maybe it's more like hole composting. Either way, when I have some food scraps to add to the garden, I dig a little hole with me 99 cent trowel and bury it in the more barren parts of the garden. The things I have planted, I have dug a hole deeper than I needed, put some kind of quickly decomposing organic matter, usually a banana peel, put some dirt over that, planted the seed(s), put dirt over that, and watered. I have planted watermelon, pumpkin, tomatoes, cucumber, and cantaloupe. Most of these won't be ready until around the time the baby is born, which works out great because I will be wanting fresh produce to feel good and help everything go back to where it's supposed to, and I won't want to go all the way to the store with a newborn and three little ones. Next year I hope to plant a lot more, but I will also have a lot more time to amend the soil beforehand to make that easier. I would like to grow most of the produce we eat (and we try to eat a lot) but I realize that gardens take a while to fix the soil how you like it, especially if you're not out at the store buying tons of amendments (which can get really pricey!)

Frugal House Buying

I'm sorry I've been such a slacker about this blog.  Although the reason for my slacking is a good one:  we finally got a house!  *happy dance* 
Now you may have read the title of this post and thought I much be crazy. there is nothing frugal about buying a house.  Well I agree, but there are places to cut costs and ways to compensate. 
Here are a few things we have done to save money in our house buying process:

1.  If one of you is a veteran, apply for a VA loan.  They are by far the least expensive I have seen or heard of.  However, make sure you talk to the VA themselves about eligibility.  Banks can do VA loans without the banker you are talking to knowing every finite detail of the eligibility requirements.  We had been pre-approved for a VA loan because I'm a veteran, but it turns out that I didn't have enough time in the service to be eligible, so check on that.

2.  If you can't get a VA loan, get an FHA loan.  This is what we ended up doing, and we got the same interest rate, but had to pay a 3.5% down payment (you don't have any with VA loans) and since we payed less than 20% down payment, we have to pay mortgage insurance (another thing that would have been nice about the VA loan).

**DISCLAMER:  It makes more sense financially to save at least 20% for a down payment, we did not have time to do this because we were in a two bedroom apartment and they have rules against having 6 people live in a residence with only two bedrooms (so we had to get out befoer the baby comes), plus when our lease expired, rent shot way up, so we needed to act before our money was all gone!  Also, I am just a person with an experince, not a financial advisor, take my advice at your own risk (hmm, I guess taking my advise at your awn risk applies to more than just financial things).**

3.  Time the house purchase for when you have some money, if you can.  For us, this time is always right after we file our taxes.  Yes, having three (soon to be four!) small children can get pricey, but the nice thing is that even when our income went up, we still got a healthy tax return.  This not only helps with the down payment and closing costs, but it also helps when the bank looks at your account to decide if you're worthy to owe them money for the next few decades, and pays for a home inspection, earnest money, options fee, not to mention gas to drive around a look at all those houses, and lunch because your brain hurts from looking at houses and making offers and getting your hopes up and all.  Then you of course need money to move, pay the fees to change your address on your car registration and drivers license, fees to have your utilities switched over, buy a lawn mower and a fridge, the list is endless!

4.  Have a conversation with your utility companies.  I talked to ours about our options and found out that we could get our electricity rate lowered from 12.4 cents per kilowatt hour, to 8.8 cents per kilowatt hour, if we agreed to stay with their company for 24 months.  We're not going anywhere, so we made that switcheroo (very important since it's getting hotter and I know we want to run that AC!).  I also found out that we could get phone for the same price, but add caller i.d. and call waiting!  Bundling our internet with our phone made the internet bill go down by about $20 a month too!  We also got a discount on our car insurance for having home owners insurance with the same company! 

5.  Ask friends to help.  We put the word out in church that we needed help moving and we needed trucks.  Several people with pickups or suburbans came and loaded our big stuff up!  It was a very short distance move, so that might not go over a well in a cross country move!  We also had people at church who volunteered to watch our kids for free while we moved, which was an enormous help.  A good friend of ours came and made the repairs we needed in the apartment as long as we payed for materials.  Since I can't do any heavy lifting due to my motherly way, I was to gofer to get materials, pack and tape up last minute boxes, and direct movers what to do next.  My husband was also directing movers, but he was one of the heavy lifters so he wasn't in the apartment half the time.  

6. Go second hand.  When we moved in we needed a fridge.  Unfortunately we didn't have much money to spend.  We tried unsuccessfully to get a scratch and dent at the major home improvement stores (by the way, if you need customer assistance in the appliance section and no one you ask has the time to help you, start measuring the $1700 and up fridges.  Someone will be at your side in a jiffy!)  We tried second hand appliance places, they didn't have anything in our budget and they had horrible customer service!  So we finally found some on Craigslist.  I emailed everyone that had a fridge within our price range, except one, because I just got a strange feeling about it.  My husband said the ad gave him the same strange feeling (he told me this before I expressed mine) and in our experience, that is a sure sign to stay away.  We had to wait until payday to get the fridge, so we used a cooler filled with ice in the meantime.  Which is another thing to ask around about, it's amazing how many people have coolers, and bags of ice they're not using in the their freezer!  A friend from church helped my husband move the fridge, in a truck borrowed from another church friend, using a dolly borrowed from another church friend!  It's nice to have so many people around who are willing to help!  By the way, once you get settled, it's nice to have these friends over, which we are working on right now.

7.  Borrow 'till you can buy (may not apply to a fridge).  A lawn mower had stayed out of our budget, but my husband is a very friendly and talkative person, and has already talked to several of the neighbors, one of which let us use his lawn mower.  I have been checking out garage sales, Craigslist, and second hand stores (long shot, but I had to try) but no success yet.  A friend just told my about a place that fixes and sells used lawn mowers, so that is my next stop!

8.  Start the decorating with what you have.  I badly want to get lots of new nice things for our house, but that's just not practical right now.  We're using what we have and making the most of it.  It also helps that we get a better feel of living here and know exactly what we want to do or not do with it!

I will update you more as we do more with our new house!  Yay for being homeowners!

Worm compost

One thing I'm really looking forward to in owning a house is having a garden.  We have been renting our entire marriage and haven't very much success in the little gardening we have tried.  When we lived in a duplex we got a good sprout in our little veggie patch that grew and grew, but then was completely trampled by the neighbor kids (and dogs) before anything was ready to be harvested.  If you haven't guessed, it wasn't fenced off.  The only garden success we've enjoying in our marriage has been when we were living with my parents, and my mom had already done the parts of soil prep and planting, so we "helped" harvest, consume and make freezer jam (which we later helped consume).  If everything works out with the house we're in the process of buying now, then we'll be moving in in early May.  Kind of later in the spring than I'd like for garden starting, but you're supposed to start small anyway, right? Since I am a tightwad and sometimes a big of a tree-hugger, I am a big compost advocate.  It's wonderful for soil, prevents things from going in landfills, and it's FREE!  The drawback here is that it does take a little while for compost to form, so it'd be nice to have some already ready when we move in to get the garden going. As I was mulling over this in my mind, I was also thinking about what we should cover next for homeschool.  After a little research, pondering, and a few internet searches, I decided to go ahead and give worm composting a try.  I checked the bait shop at Walmart, and they only had Canadian night crawlers, which I had read a lot about and they're not a very good composting worm. So I ordered some online, from amazon.com.  This was the least expensive I could find.  And the kind to look for is red wigglers, sometimes just called composting worms.  In the mean time, I went to the library and picked up some non-fiction children's books about worms. 
While we were waiting for the worms to arrive, I looked up home made worm composters  (since the store bought ones are insanely expensive!) and got a small storage bin with a lid (opaque), and a dishpan to go under it and catch the "worm tea" that it wonderful for gardens).  To make holes for air and drainage, I took a nail, and held it with a rag (so as not to burn myself) then heated the tip of the nail with a match (a candle would work better, but ours are all wickless so I improvised!) then I poked the headed tip in the big to make small holes.  I did this in the lid, around the top of the sides, and a few in the bottom.  I had to re-heat the nail a few times, which is why a candle works better, but I got it done. Then we added shredded newspaper and cardboard and eggshells and produce scraps.

The kids were so excited when the worms arrived in the mail!  WE added them to our bin right away and gave them lots of water (they get kind of died out during shipping).  The bigger kids thought the worms were cute, my youngest kept growling at them!

 The worms come packed in peat moss to keep them from getting banged up in the shipping process.  You can see them starting to move around right after we added them to our bin.

 The worms were in this bag, tied shut, in a box labeled "live worms"

Here is a shot of our bin from a little farther away, before we put the lid on of course.

I am surprised by how fast the worms have been eating our regular household compost, and I'm very excited that we'll at least have one really good thing to improve our soil when we move in to a house! 

"Cloth" is Not a Four Letter Word (as in diapers), part 4

Daily Use and Care

I mentioned some of the daily use and care in part 3, but I thought I'd elaborate a little.
I wash the diapers every day. Most people wash every other day (beyond that and you get a lot of problems with stink and stains), but I wash every day because I don't have enough diapers to last for two!

To further reduce the cost, I hang dry them in our room on a drying rack.

For my wash routine:
1) In the even of a poopy diaper, I just shake the stuff into the toilet, no spraying or dunking here.
2)Every evening when I wash the diapers: dump diaper pail contents into washing machine
3)Put a little water in pail and swish around to get anything out of there, then dump that water in the washing machine (a lot of people have a washable pail liner in a lidded garbage can, which works great, I'm just using what I have)
4) Do a cold rinse to remove poo still on the diapers
5) Do a hot wash with about 1/4 the recommended amount of detergent
6) Do an extra cold rinse, chicking on the agitation to see if there are a lot of bubbles (indicating that I added too much laundry detergent before) and if there are a lot of suds I'll do another rinse.
7) Hand diapers, covers and wipes up to dry on drying rack.  In the morning is they're still wet I'll put them in the dryer for a few minutes (NO DRYER SHEETS!) and they're ready to go!

So that's what's been working for us.  Sometimes it would be nice to have enough diapers to wash every other day, but we're building up to that and I can use swagbucks to slowly build up a few more.

This is the only picture that's not blurry from him running around, as you can see, the best bottom diapers are very trim for a cloth diaper!

part 1 journey into cloth diapers
part 2 choosing a style and brand
part 3 frugally building up a stash
part 4 daily use and care

"Cloth" is Not a Four Letter Word (as in diapers), part 3

Frugally Building Up A Stash

Since I used swagbucks I only paid bout $14 for the first four cloth diapers, whereas if I had not used swagbucks it would have been about $50!  Figuring that each disposable (of the generic variety) is about $0.19 (at least) and using four cloth diapers a day in replacement of disposables, my purchase paid for itself in about 18 and a half days.

For detergent I got the generic free and clear detergent from Albertson's because every other kind of free and clear had brighteners or enzymes, which can cause rashes (another thing I didn't know the first time around).

For wipes I use the flats, moistened.  I have been cutting them into fourths and hand stitching over the loose edges so they don't fray.  This size is a little more manageable. On rare occasions, I may use disposable wipes, but only if it's REALLY nasty!

I cleaned it out really well first so it doesn't get residue on the diapers

For a diaper pail I have a bucket for laundry detergent (the regular kind) that has been used up.

My grandma sent us some money for Christmas, and I talked to my husband about building up the rest of our stash with that.  He said since it was from my grandma, do whatever I want with it.  Don't have to tell me twice.  So I went online and bought two more Best Bottom diaper shells and six more inserts (that came to about $57.84 so it will pay for itself in a little over a month and a half).  A few days later I had enough from swagbucks to get another bumgenius diaper and some wetbags.  If you're wondering what wetbags are, let me explain: When you're out and about with cloth diapers and your little one needs a diaper change, you need somewhere to put said diaper so it doesn't smear diaper contents all over everything else in your diaper bag.  And it needs to be water proof so wet diapers don't saturate anything else.  Hence the need for a wetbag!

Wetbags

Closed with drawstring closure

closed next to a baby foot

In a pinch, I have also put a folded flat diaper and just laid it in the cover.  It does scrunch, but it's better than nothing!

part 1 journey into cloth diapers
part 2 choosing a style and brand
part 3 frugally building up a stash
part 4 daily use and care

"Cloth" is Not a Four Letter Word (as in diapers), part 2

Choosing a style and brand

Once I started really looking into cloth diapers I started to get overwhelmed.  It makes me think of when my daughter was a newborn (she's the oldest grand baby on my side) my parents, uncles and grandma commented several times "Wow, disposables sure have come a long way!"  I secretly thought to myself that this was further proof that disposables were better than cloth because cloth was still just flats and prefolds with pins and plastic pants.

How wrong I was.....

Anyone who's looked into the more modern cloth diapers has likely had their head spin from all the choices!  Disposables may have come a long way but man, I think cloth has come even farther!  There are still flats and prefolds and pins and plastic pants, and I'd seen a friend use a snappi, but there are also pocket diapers, and all in twos and all in ones, and hybrids, and stay dry inserts, and flush-able inserts, and hybrid diapers, and snap closures and hook and loop closures, and sized and one size and.......and.....and....oh it just makes my head spin!
The most economic way to go is still a prefold with a cover, but now they have covers that look more like disposables with either snap or hook and look closure, and a snappi is a stretchy band with hooks on it, kind of like the old ace bandages so you don't have to use pins.  I thought about doing that again, and it's a great way to get started, but I also knew that I wouldn't want to stick with it very long since we had done flats before, and I wanted to get something that I wouldn't have to soon replace with something I liked better, if that makes any sense.  So I needed something EASY.
All in ones are easy, they're just like a disposable, only you wash them.  The downside is that they are hard to get all the way clean, and the take a long time to dry, plus they are the most expensive kind (at least $25 per diaper!).  So I kept looking.  I needed some thing easy AND affordable AND that would get all the way clean!
Another thing I wanted was something that didn't hold moisture against by baby's skin.  All in ones had a ticking feature, but so did many other kinds.
Hybrids don't make any sense to me.  It's like a cloth diaper but with a disposable insert instead of cloth.  The inserts can get quite pricey, so it didn't make sense as an economical option.  Although some people use the term hybrid and all in two interchangeably, it's my understanding that hybrid is meant to mean a combination of disposables and cloth.  Though you could say it's a hybrid of prefolds and pockets, but that's really not the point.

So my search led me to either pockets of all in twos.  A pocket diaper has a waterproof outside and fleece or suede moisture wicking layer on the inside.

Pocket diaper and insert

Opening

Stuffing the insert into the diaper

Insert in the diaper, I keep the tag in the back so I can grab it to remove the insert and not touch too much yucky stuff.

This pocket opening folds down so the insert doesn't work it's way loose

Ready for a baby!

There is an opening (or pocket) in either the front or back or both for you to slide an absorbent insert.  You can customize the absorbency, you take the insert out to wash it so it gets nice an clean and dries in a reasonable amount of time.

All in twos are very similar, but instead of a pocket, and all in two has the moisture wicking part sewn on top of the absorbent part into one insert that lays or snaps into a cover.

All in two insert and cover

You can barely see the snap in the back of the insert.

Snap it in on one end

Then snap in the other end

All it needs now is a baby!

Then you just change the insert during a diaper change, unless it's a tyrannosaurus poopy that gets everywhere, then you wash the shell too.
So you can see how this would save money since you only need a few shells and then lots of inserts.  I really like this, but I figured that if I left the baby with my hubby, he would want something that was exactly like a disposable, and if we left him (the baby, not the hubby) with a babysitter, we would definitely need something that did not require much explaining.  So I decided on all in twos for most of the time, and pockets for when he's with someone besides me, or when I run out of all in two covers.  Possible overnight too, since I can more easily add more absorbent layers, until I get the overnight inserts for the all in twos.


*side note: my husband turned out to like the all-in-twos better, go figure!*

Even narrowing things down that much still left me overwhelmed.  But here's how I decided:

All in twos: I knew my baby is a busy active little guy, so the inserts that just lay in might not be the best idea, which means I needed a snap in insert, and I wanted a cover that was wipe-able and could contain messes, despite the fact that he's a little on the skinny side. I came across the Best Bottom Diaper and fell in love.  Wipeable cover, easy to snap in, double leg gussets to contain all the mess, works well with skinny babies or chubbier babies, stay dry inserts, really cute covers, one size covers so we can use them whenever we have another baby!  Yep, that looks like the one for me.

Really small setting and large setting (it gets even wider but this is what he's on right now)

Double leg gussets to hold in the mess!

Pockets: Again I wanted one size, and I wanted something that was simple to change between sizes, snaps to adjust the size are good (also in the Best Bottoms)...but there are a lot of diapers that meet those criteria, how do I decide?  I read lots of reviews and looked at diagrams of the diapers, many of the pockets just have an opening in the back to put the insert into, and many reviews reported that these inserts would work their way up out of the diaper a little on active babies, causing moisture wicking onto their clothes, so I went with the Bumgenius 4.0 pocket diaper.  The pocket opening has a little flap that keeps the insert in, it had great reviews, and of the diapers with awesome reviews, it was the most affordable (though still a little hefty in the price tag).

micro-suede folds over to keep insert in

I also knew that I needed to try them out before buying too many, in case they didn't meet my expectations.  I used swagbucks for amazon gift cards and a mom4life gift card, plus a coupon code at mom4life to get one best bottom cover and three inserts and one bumgenius pocket diaper (about $50 worth of stuff) for $14!

I'm happy to say that I have not been disappointed!  Not only are they cute and contain the messes that disposables didn't always, but my son had been getting diaper rash regularly with disposables, at least once or twice a week.  Since we've replaced 4 diapers a day with cloth, he hasn't gotten any diaper rash!  Yay for exceeding expectations!


Tip:  If you're looking for more information about the Best Bottom diapers and you want to do an internet search of a search on youtube for video reviews, make sure you type "best bottom diaper" not just "best bottom" or you may get something less than family friendly, I with that I didn't know this from experience!


part 1 journey into cloth diapers
part 2 choosing a style and brand
part 3 frugally building up a stash
part 4 daily use and care

"Cloth" is not a four letter word (as in diapers), part 1

Journey to Cloth Diapering:

It may be nerdy, but I'm the kind of person who perks up and my eyes widen and I may start to salivate when someone mentions a method of truly saving money on necessities! However, when I was pregnant with my first and someone would mention saving money, my interest only peeked until they said those yucky words: cloth diapers!  Eww, I don't want to wash poop! I would think.  Turns out even mothers of disposable diapered babies wash a fair amount of poop out of their babies' clothes and of the mommy's clothes, babies just explode sometimes!  My siblings and I were all cloth diapered and we all survived to adulthood, but the thought of folding and pinning and touching the wet stuff and finagling the plastic pants just did not sound fun to me in any way shape, or form.

Fast forward a few years: my husband had been laid off from a job that provided us with housing, so we moved in with my parents.  My husband got another job for a few months and then was laid off from that job too.  We had two kids in diapers, we had long since exhausted any emergency fund, and it was almost a month before my husband found work again, then two more weeks before he got paid.  So during this time we came to a crossroad, we needed diapers for two kids, for and indeterminate amount of time, and only had $10 to put towards it.  So we knew we had to cloth diaper for a while.  We had lots of flats that we'd received when my oldest was born to use and burp clothes, and my mom had some extra flats that she hadn't used that she had gotten for the moulage class she teaches, and she donated that to the cause.

A flat cloth diaper, just a square of fabric that you fold and fasten to the baby and then cover with something waterproof.

We just needed pins, diaper covers and something to wash them.  It's amazing how hard it is to find cloth diapers sometimes!  We found borax, which is what my mom had used when we were babies, though I cringed at spending $3 of our $10 budget! At one store my dad noticed and pointed out that there was a cloth diaper that was just like a disposable, you just wash it.  Wow, cool concept, but one diaper was well over our budget.  We went for the vinyl pants and diaper pins at babies R us, and I think my parents even had to help us with that.  My mom had an old bucket with a lit that she said we could use as a diaper pail and we were ready to go.  Diaper changes took a lot longer when we were folding and trying to get it just right, and my little baby boy....something about too much fresh air made a lot of little fountains.
After about a month it really didn't seem that bad to be using cloth, and the whole time my husband helped out and changed cloth diapers, complete with pins, what a trooper.  I made sure I did the laundry though, and stayed on top of it.  It was still a lot more work to be using cloth and both kids were getting diaper rash.  I had been told long before my oldest was born that babies in cloth get more diaper rash.  I later learned that sometimes this is due to the moisture against their skin, or soap build up on the diapers.
So when we had steady income for a while we went back to full time disposables.  To my surprise, my husband had some hesitation, because he liked not having to fork over an arm and a leg for diapers every week!  I saved the cloth diapers when we moved, hoping we would never have to go back to using them.  We went through many hard times, but no longer had access to a washer and dryer, and were often doing what laundry we could with our bare hands, and neither my husband nor I wanted to wash cloth diapers by hand.  By then we only had one in diapers and were getting a good amount of people donating diapers to us, so we didn't go back to cloth, even after our third baby was born and we were diapering two again.  While we were living in our last apartment (with no washer of dryer) I started researching more modern cloth diapers.  I needed to find something more convenient and still cost effective.  I inwardly told myself that once we had a washer and dryer I would use cloth diapers again to save money.  Well I forgot about that when we moved, until a few months later I started researching it again.  I had briefly mentioned it to my husband, but for whatever reason, he didn't like the idea. As time went on I would research pocket diapers and leave the info and diagram up when he got on the computer, to which he said "That'd be cool, then it'd be just like a disposable." So I knew that I was on the right track.  When I found some pockets on sale I asked him what he thought about buying them and he didn't like the idea of spending over  $150 in one big chunk, and didn't think it made much sense to get just one.  I asked him what he thought if I could get them for free or almost free, with swagbucks, and he gave a non-commital head nod/bob.  So I started my money-saving mission to get free or almost free diapers.  I researched and read and did all I could to use swagbucks, and eventually talked him into trying it, as long as we started small and didn't spend much more than $20 right out the gate.
I got a best bottom cover and three inserts and one bum genius pocket diaper with swagbucks and started using those during and day and doing a load every day after the baby had gone through those.

By the way, remember those rashed my kids had been getting? I "stripped" the flat diapers, meaning I did a hot wash without adding any soap, and even after two years there were suds from detergent residue like you wouldn't believe!  Oops.

part 1 journey into cloth diapers
part 2 choosing a style and brand
part 3 frugally building up a stash
part 4 daily use and care

Cheap or Free Dates

As a college student, everyone I knew would diligently seek out cheap or free dates, when my husband and I got married, we continued that trend.  However, nine months and one week after we got married, the entire aspect of dating shifted.  Yes, that's when our first child was born.  At first we'd just take her with us.  She was small and portable and was perfectly content to be held all the time.  As she got bigger, this got more and more difficult, and we couldn't just go out as easily anymore.  Luckily, many of the cheap dates we'd done before could be done at home.  We still go out together, but have also found ways to still spend time together at home.  Here are a few ideas:


-board games with just the two of you or another couple
-make something.  When my husband worked construction he'd sometimes bring home some of the scrap lumber that would have been in the trash (he asked his boss first) and we used it to make signs for our house, or a little bookshelf and we'd sand, paint and finish it together. It was a lot of fun!
-watch a movie
-make a treat
-do laundry by hand.  Okay, this wasn't the most exciting date, but we didn't have money to go to the laundry mat and we had a lot of laundry so we did it together in the bathtub, and since that was such a great workout, we'd do things like sit ups and jumping jacks while the water was draining.  What a workout!
-picnic

Out of the house ideas:
Finding a babysitter
-find a free babysitter.  In our last ward (congregation) we knew a lady whose children were all grown up and grandchildren we really far away and she LOVES kids, so she not only watched our kids for free, but if it had been a while she would find us a church and ask how soon she could babysit them.  I guess it helps to teach your kids manners and respect so people WANT to watch them!
-exchange babysitting, there are lots of families with kids that would be more than willing to watch your kids one week so you could watch theirs the next.  Talk to friends, especially if they have children close to your children's age(s) because then they all entertain themselves and it's a lot less work!
-grandparents (we used sparingly when we lived with them since they were already helping us so much, but if you don't like with them, they would likely love the chance to spoil their grand-babies!)

 Cheap or free activities:
-temple
-coupons in phone book and other places.  You can find a lot of buy one get one free deals to things like miniature golf, rock climbing, go kart racing, and other fun things that are easier (and cheaper) with just the two of you
-window shop.  This can be fun shortly before birthdays, Christmas, Mother's/Father's Day, anniversary or any other time when you need an idea of what kind of present your spouse likes.  Plus it sometimes leads to interesting conversations.
-free samples.  Costco is the best one for this, if you go at lunch time, but other large stores like Walmart and some grocery stores will have several free samples, and it's fun to walk around and see what they have and get some food that you likely wouldn't pay money for.
-drive in the country.  This may not be fun for everyone, but my husband and I were raised in rural areas, and living in a big metropolitan area has us feeling claustrophobic and busting at the seams!  It's nice to escape that every once in a while, plus we like to see if there are areas that we'd like to live whenever we buy a house.  It's good to share a dream with your spouse.
-walk around mall and laugh at novelty t-shirts and all the bogus stuff they have there.  We only do this on rare occasions because we're not big on malls (too expensive!) but it can be really fun when you don't spend money!
-cannery. It's not only good for food storage, it's fun to see each other in hair nets!  Plus the long drive gives us lots of time to talk.
-walk or hike.  There aren't too many uphill hikes around here (go figure) but there are a lot of trails and outdoor areas that are fun to go for a nice long walk in!

What other free or cheap dates do you do with your spouse?