Painless Penny Pinching

Last night A and I made an important career decision together.  It was one of those crystal times when I felt clearly that we were making an important, life-altering choice. Sort of a weighty, fork-in-the-road kind of a sensation. We're taking the left fork and things will be different from this time on. This is not only a your-life-will-never-be-the-same kind of choice but a hard-work-is-ahead, you're-playing-for-all the-marbles kind of choice. On the one hand, I love adventure and am a survivor so I believe in living on the edge so last night I felt pretty excited and motivated, but in the background is the pale and quaking me that hates change, feels secure in the known and believes contentment "the way." This morning I feel kind of wobbly and scared by the enormity and intimidating nature of making a big, scary choice like this.

We're on a new austerity plan now. Time to trim the needless waste in our life, time to live on less financially and make more happen with what we have already. I'm a person who walks this kind of line uneasily. On the one hand I'm not a high-roller, I kind of hate money and status items and I get a great deal of satisfaction from clever, frugal-living. On the other hand, I don't like stifling fun, rationing pleasure or forgoing enjoyment and I'm a bit lazy about doing everything myself to save a buck. Time to figure out not only how to save money objectively but how I will best and most happily save money. What things do I truly not need? What things can I change that will make me happier or just as happy and also thriftier? And what ways can I trim a little off the edge and still leave enough to make life feel pleasant? This whole discussion feel selfish and egotistical and entirely white-collar America. Argh. But you know, this year my theme is acceptance, this is part of it. This is where I honestly am psychologically about saving money and I know that if I plan a bleak, bread and water system for the next four years it will never work, I don't really believe in forced, purposeful, chosen deprivation and I'll never do it if that's what I attempt.

Last night I sat down and made up this list. Here's my current ideas for "Painless Penny Pinching"---the way I roll. Got anything to add? Books to suggest? Tweaks you think would help? Please contribute. We'll need all the help we can get.


•No more Amazon book buying (use up A's closet stash, inter-library loan, and
borrow from friends instead)
•Make our own cards for holidays and trim the list for who gets one
•Make birthday gifts for friends
• Grow our own veggies and freeze what we can for the winter
•Shop at Stop and Shop, Save Rite, Aldi, or Grade A and wave goodbye to Whole Foods or Fairway
•Borrow homeschool supplies or books from my circle of friends
•Limit dates to $20 dollars or less and get more creative
•Buy annuals in Michigan when we go this spring, prices are wayyy cheaper
•Shred newspapers or junk-mail for guinea pig bedding and feed them grass and weeds from our yard and scraps instead of buying bedding and pellets and hay from the pet store.
•Kill Netflix? (EEP!)  and instead watch YouTube stuff, and borrow movies from friends and the library
•Only go to single $ restaurants and limit frequency (once a month?)
•Unsubscribe to anything I am not using or don't need online and make sure that the menu planner I am using is the best deal financially.
•Use coupons and shop sales for food. Stock up on good deals.
•Get a new lid for my travel coffee cup and make myself coffee instead of buying it
•See if we can get better insurance rates
•Turn house temp down a touch, maybe even just at night?
•Only run the dishwasher when completely full.
•Wash clothes in cold water when possible.
•Weatherize the house.
•Keep an active inventory of what is in our freezer and pantry that is used in the coming week's menu plan.
•Menu plan every single meal...not just dinners.
•Get plant divisions from neighbors and dig wild instead of buying any new perennials.
•Buy special paleo foods online where I can get cheap prices.
•Get energy star appliance upgrades ASAP.
•Vacation close to home....maybe even at home
•Shop carefully for gas (even Carleen)
•Stop going to the extra Saturday yoga class and go to my studio more instead if
I want a weekend boost.
•Pack food for vacations and make a pact to stay out of stores while
driving to and fro and set a cap for any shopping we do at our destination.
•Shop ahead for holidays
•Make more easy clothes for the boys (simple knit pants from t-shirts?)
•Envelope budget for groceries for the week.
•Make our own cleaning supplies
•Carpool with friends
•Use the city bus
•Go to free classes at the library for kid-fun.
•Wash, vacuum and wax our own car instead of going to the car wash.
•Regularly freeze any food in the fridge that isn't getting eaten to reduce waste
•Shop clearance sales for kid clothes and also thrift shop when in Michigan when visiting family because prices are much cheaper.
•DIY for home repairs, teach myself what I need to know. I can do it!
•Make tangible financial goals and reward ourselves when we meet them!
•Save our change
•Review our utilities and be sure we are getting the best rates possible from our providers
•Line dry clothes, especially in warm weather
•Refinance our mortgage again.
•Use the local library passes for area activities.

What do you do to save money without feeling sorry for yourself?

When in Doubt, Copy Your Sister!

Look what I did today! Woohoo!!!!

I've been wanting an area rug for the dining room for a long time. Rugs have such a great way of completing a room and designating spaces and making everything look all legitimate. They are perhaps my greatest interior decorating discovery yet. (Yes, I am in the early stages.) But, yes, let's do be honest, shall we? My dining room floor is horrific...not even sort of the place for a rug. I am wretched about cleaning up the floors after meals. They really get gross. I don't know how I'd ever manage in a house with carpet under the dining room table. My mother-in-law is awe-inspiring in this category...all busily down there on her hands and knees picking up each crumb my kids tossed overboard during the meal.

Right. So, after I established that there was no way a rug was happening...I mourned it and lived with the room feeling bareish for about a year. But did I give up? No! I hatched a somewhat crazy plan. See, my kid sister, Foxy had done this wonderful floor stencil in her dining room and it made my jaw drop. A "rug" that was stenciled onto fairly unfinished wood floors that we have for which there are no terribly concrete plans regarding their shining refinished future. Heh. It's pretty cheap and brilliantly simple. I had a can of white paint around for painting all the trim the house and I just dipped into that. It took hardly any volume to paint this pattern. I bought one plastic stencil on Etsy, I picked a somewhat complicated damask design which meant that I could cherry pick it apart and selectively stencil little bits here and there to make the rug design look more diverse.

And I love it! I know it will get grubby and eventually fade and be scuffed and scratched but as you can see by I'm not really going for a perfect look, I am thinking more old farmhouse, romantic/rustic than upscale. And eventually I expect we'll sand it off in favor of those shining floors and then I'll be back to the same old problem.

But for now...I love my new lacy rug.

Related articles

• Painted Faux Rugs: Salvaging Old Floors & Your Budget (apartmenttherapy.com)

Cook Ahead Cape Cod

It is high summer and we are headed to Cape Cod for a small weekend away, (Ah, blissful place!) but we're also looking to save money. (Haha! On Cape Cod!) We have a motel room with a little refrigerator and a microwave, should something need re-heating, and I'm planning to do all the ahead cooking I can to save the restaurant bills and snacking stops one inevitably makes on these trips.

I want to be like Ma Ingalls, Mrs. Appleyard the Gilbreth Family...women in days of yore when they never left on a trip without a bursting hamper, full of all manner of good things for munching. That has to be doable, right?

I need ideas! What can I make ahead and pack in our cooler and then serve my family between dips in the sea? So far I've thought of:

• Peach turnovers (we picked peaches this past weekend and THEN got peaches from our CSA)
• Hard boiled eggs
• A wedge of nice cheese
• Carrot sticks
• Peanut butter and honey sandwiches, sliced in little squares for snack or meals for little hands.
• Steamed green beans from our garden, tossed with a little soy sauce
• (your idea here)
• (your idea here)
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• (your idea here)
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• (your idea here)

So, what ya'll got? Throw me a brainstorm! I'm waiting, in my kitchen, wooden spoon in hand!

Kitchen Spiff-Up!

I've been working on the kitchen and I had to share the results.
Kitchen Before:



I never remember to take decent Before shots when I am starting a new project. It's so much more exciting to get going!

Kitchen After:

Tada!!!! It's bright green, I know, really, really bright...but I love it! The color is Sherwin Williams, Direct Green. I think it will be an inspiring place to cook in, and that that peppy shade will carry us through winter well. There are still a few little minor details to finish like the ugly faux wood switch-plate on the wall next to the door..and the chic seventies hammered copper door cupboard handles which I am switching out as soon as my Ebay purchase replacements get here! 

And look at all that new counter space!!! I'm psyched! We have doubled when we had when we moved in by adding that pale green section over the dishwasher and then (and this is the latest touch of genius) moving the microwave off the countertop. Hooray for space!

Here's the stove area "Before." I took all those spices down from the cluttery arrangement above the stove and I think the new occupants of the space look a lot nicer. You can't see it in the Before shot but there is a cupboard above the stove and I took the doors off of it to open the space a bit and display some of my prettier dishware that we use all the time. (i.e. things that aren't in the china cabinet but are still nice to look at)

So, this is how it looks now. A good bit better. 

You can just barely see where I ripped off the wallpaper above the cupboard, I still need to remove the bottom bits of it and paint it clean white. Am considering some sort of scalloped colored painted border at the top (maybe cobalt?).

Here are the other bits of the new kitchen arrangement.

The spice corner, near the stove. :) The hanging rack with pretty jars of spices, then more spices in baskets on top of the fridge, and believe it or not, there are even more that are lesser used in a tiny drawer on the other side of the kitchen.  And my stone mortar and pestle on the tiny island counter.

Here's the window now, I need a little suction cup hook or a bit of chain to make that suncatcher hang a little lower but the colors make me happy. There is a kid-reachable spot for hanging  a couple of aprons on the left of the window-frame, a big chalkboard that I painted on the wall for quotes, notes to each other and jotting down grocery items, and then on the right hand side of the window I hung one of my paintings! Hooray!

Now you can see where the microwave migrated too. See it on top of the refrigerator? I know that's a little silly but it works well for us because of the steps which give easy access. I love having all our countertops free and it's kind of cool to use the top of the fridge for something more than just clutter collection. It isn't the prettiest arrangement but you never know, a way to make it look nicer may occur to me. It isn't bad.

Here's some close-ups here and there so that you can get a feeling for the fun details. The only thing I bought was the paint, and the aforementioned cupboard handles (a dollar a piece!) and the rest of the goods were just shopped from my own storage stash and wherever else throughought the house I hunted and found something I thought would work. The yellow gingham on the window was in my fabric stash, the baskets the spices are in were storing something else inffectively, etc.

Yay redecorating! Next on the docket is the dining room and further spiffing in the living room, and then I really roll up my sleeves with the playroom/homeschool room. I'm also working a bit on the pantry after a bout with the dreaded pantry moth. Will put all the dry-goods into glass jars or bust! Argh!

Anyone have any tips for how to store cereal? I would like to keep it in glass, no plastic in some sort of space-efficient system but in jars large enough to hold a whole box-full.  

Related articles

• Creating a Little Extra Workspace in a Small Kitchen (apartmenttherapy.com)
• Easy Ways to Renovating Your Kitchen (allhome-improve.com)
• Rescue Your Kitchen Along With Spice Racks (mydecorarticles.com)
• 2 Must-Have Designs For a Small Kitchen (casasugar.com)
• Jenniffer's Small Yet Luxurious Kitchen Small Cool Kitchens 2011 (thekitchn.com)
• Before and After: A Fresh and Bright Kitchen (casasugar.com)
• 10 Things We Learned from Small Cool Kitchens 2011 (thekitchn.com)
• Kelly's Bright Double Green Kitchen Small Cool Kitchens 2011 (thekitchn.com)
• Kathleen's Super-Bright, Super-Happy Kitchen Small Cool Kitchens 2011 (thekitchn.com)