Well, it’s happened – five more of our children have come down with chickenpox in the last 36 hours, two weeks after ds5 came down with it. 🙂
Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to alleviate the discomfort of chickenpox. I’ll start with homeopathy.
Homeopathy:
a) If you recognize the chickenpox early on, give aconite. This will bring it to an end very quickly, without compromising the immunity benefits of getting chickenpox. I learned about this over twelve years ago from a friend who used it at the first sign of chicken pox, and it was over in a day. I couldn’t find a local store that sells homeopathic remedies, was fortunate to find a friend in the area with a homeopathic kit from whom I was able to borrow the two remedies I needed, but not in time to give the aconite to ds12 and dd10, who broke out first. But I am giving it to ds2, ds4, and ds9, and their cases are (so far) significantly lighter than the two older kids or ds5.
b) Then there are some other remedies you can give, but the main one I’ll mention here is rhus tox. Rhus tox is good for alleviating the itching, and I’m giving the two older kids rhus tox 30x (3 times a day for 48 hours).
c) Chamomilla is a good remedy for soothing.
Baths:
Lots of people recommend Aveeno to relive the itchiness of chickenpox – but do you know what Aveeno is? Oatmeal! So open up your pantry and use the oatmeal you already have there, and it will be lots cheaper and just as effective. I put the oatmeal in a knee high nylon and knotted it at the end, to allow all the helpful substances in the oatmeal to seep out, while keeping the oats themselves out of the drain. Ds5 had a great time playing with this in his bath, and there was no mess at the end when I let the water out of the bath. The older kids didn’t play all day long in the bath like he did, but they also found it soothing.
I added some herbs to the oats to speed the healing: chamomile and comfrey. The chamomile is for soothing, and the comfrey is to help soothe the itching and heal the pox. (I was so glad I decided to bring my medicinal herbs along with me when I moved!) I used a tablespoon of each herb combined with a cup of rolled oats (I chopped the oats in a food processor but this isn’t necessary). Lavender is another good herb to include in the bath.
A couple of other things that can be helpful in baths are baking powder, and powdered ginger. With ds5, I sprinkled baking soda on the damp pox to alleviate itching. I didn’t bring along the large containers of powdered herbs that I used for cooking as well as for medicinal purposes (like mustard, cayenne, and ginger), so I didn’t use that.
Another herb that is soothing is slippery elm powder; it can be applied directly on wet pox.
Cool baths are more soothing that hot baths, which can exacerbate the discomfort of itching.
Herbs:
All of these herbs are good when brewed as tea: lemon balm, echinacea, St. John’s wort, ginger, pau d’arco, and burdock. I have most of these, but chose to make ds12 some tea with echinacea and cut stevia (the leaf) for some sweetness. All of these would be good added to the bath, as well.
Essential oils:
Before I moved eight weeks ago, I bartered fifty pounds of spelt berries and six pounds of natural beeswax for several small bottles of essential oils – lots easier to bring with me!! Naturally, of the four oils that I now have on hand, I didn’t have any oils that were of help in this situation.
Here’s a couple that can be diluted with a carrier oil or some chamomile tea and applied to the pox: tea tree oil and lavender oil. A few drops can also be added to bath water.
Vitamins:
When dealing with any cold or infection, it’s good to build up the body’s resources to aid it in fighting germs. Vitamin C, vitamin A, and vitamin D are always good for any kind of cold. (I posted guidelines for vitamin C dosing here.)
Vitamin E oil is great to apply on the pox to reduce scarring. Coconut oil can also be helpful when applied to the pox.
Nutrition:
Good nutrition is always important, especially when a child is under the weather. Now’s not the time to give them sugary treats to make them feel better; they’ll be happy for the moment but it will slow their healing. Lots of liquids are important to keep your child hydrated; I made a huge pot of chicken broth with garlic and astragalus that we’re going through quite quickly!
Some other external things that can be applied:
Calendula cream – helps to heal pox after they’ve scabbed. Witch hazel can also be applied to help dry the pox out.
What not to use:
I’ve always thought of calamine lotion in the same breath as chickenpox, but after learning that it’s suppressive, didn’t go out to buy any for this go around with chicken pox. While it dried up the lesions, it keeps the toxins from exiting the body through the skin like they need to – you always want to allow the disease to leave the body!
Similarly, I personally try to stay away from fever suppressing drugs – eg Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, aspirin, etc. I believe that fevers aid the body in healing, so when a child has a fever that spikes (like ds12 right now), I use sponge baths or a damp cool cloth on the forehead to relieve excess heat.
Have any of your children had chickenpox? What tips have you found helpful in alleviating their discomfort?
If peanut butter is a something you use a lot of, you might want to consider buying a bunch now and lock in the savings while prices are still low.
Wholesale peanut prices have more than doubled in the last year, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the major peanut butter manufacturers have announced their intent to raise prices from 24% – 40 % (Peter Pan is only going up 24%, Jif – 30%, Planters – 40%). These prices will go into effect by November. I haven’t seen any prediction regarding the prices of nut butters , but it’s very likely that since people already expect to pay more for those items (eg cashew, almond, sun butter), that manufacturers may decide to hike their prices and keep the gap between peanut butter and specialty butters in place.
Peanut butter can be stored for a long time without losing freshness, and by buying at today’s cheaper prices, it’s as if you’ve made 24% profit on your food dollars. With the pathetic savings rates right now (my bank is giving us a whopping .25 %), this is significant!
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating – by stocking up when prices are low, you’re making your money work for you. Using the information you see in the news can help you make informed purchases that will benefit your pantry. 🙂
Yesterday we had a fun pre-Rosh Hashana outing – pomegranate picking!
Pomegranates are one of the symbolic fruits traditionally served on Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year), and picking them was not only fun but very timely! We found several pomegranate trees in the vicinity on public land, and yesterday the kids picked a bunch for us to use.
Here’s the pickings, minus a couple of large ones that they shared when they got home.
Ds5 with the 'pickings'
I’ve always enjoyed pomegranates, but found them a pain in the neck to eat. They’re just so much work! But lo and behold, I’ve learned an easy and effective way to quickly deseed them, with hardly any juice stains – dd15 could hardly believe how easy it was when she tried it.
Rather than describe it for you,here’s a very short and clear video that I found very helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnujQquKCQY&NR=1. It really is as easy as he makes it look.
This was a fun, frugal, and fruitful (no pun intended!) outing! And after seeing us picking pomegranates yesterday, a teenage neighbor today told my daughter her family also picked some for Rosh Hashana – they had seen the trees but never thought of it before!
I’m thinking of picking more pomegranates to preserve – but I’m not sure what to do with them! I need ideas! What do you use pomegranates for (juice, concentrate, seeds)?
Since I’ve arrived in Israel, I’ve bought a huge amount of produce – it’s delicious and affordable. I choose to limit myself to the purchases of produce that is 3.99 shekel a kilo (about .60 lb) or less but right now just about everything is within ten shekels a kilo. We’ll see how the prices change as the season changes, but for now we’re enjoying lots of cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, onions, peppers (green, yellow, red, orange), cabbage, butternut squash, beets, and potatoes.
One vegetable that used to be a staple in our house that I haven’t been using here is yams. Priced at 6.99 or 7.99 a kilo, it’s about double my predetermined limit. However, on Thursday I was at a local store and saw yams for 2.99 a kilo. My stock up instinct kicked in but it was the end of the day and the supply was low, so I was only able to buy about 7 kilos.
Why were they so cheap? Because of this.
Large potato next to super large yam
The yams on sale were all huge, not the typical size that is going for full price. They might have been grown in the same field as the more expensive yams, and picked and harvested the same day, but because they aren’t standard, they aren’t seen as desirable. We’ve become so used to perfect looking produce that people feel that something is wrong with produce that doesn’t look exactly like what they’re used to seeing, when in fact what’s normal is that fruits and vegetables have lots of variation in size and shape. So that provided those of us willing to overlook what is considered cosmetically attractive the opportunity for a great deal!
For me, big yams like this aren’t an inconvenience, since when I get smaller ones I have to use lots more of them. There’s more work involved in peeling smaller ones, more work involved in cutting larger ones, so they pretty much even out in terms of effort. We enjoyed these for Shabbos in a sweet potato pie with crumb topping, and they were delicious!
Do you ever buy discounted imperfect produce? What kind of store do you find it in? What are the prices like?
Living here in Israel, my food buying habits have somewhat changed (I haven’t yet been able to find a bulk supplier and the stores here are obviously different), but overall my approach to shopping frugally has stayed the same.
One strategy that I consistently apply is to buy and use primarily what is on sale or cheap. This past week, I saw that chicken gizzards were on sale. In the US, gizzards were about $3.29 a pound, so they were always too expensive to buy. But here, I was able to buy a kilo (2.2 pounds) for 7 shekels, which at about a dollar a pound, is the least expensive meat option I’ve seen so far. So true to my pattern, I bought ten kilos (22 pounds); a few days before I had bought all they had left, just five kilos.
I brought them home and immediately put them all in a large pot to cook. Gizzards take a long time to cook – if they are undercooked, they are chewy and have a not quite pleasant consistency – but if they are well cooked, they are as soft as butter and really tasty. The key to cooking gizzards is to cook them long enough, until they are very soft. My kids love these, and told me it’s their favorite kind of meat now!
The other thing about gizzards is they tend to be salty. They become less salty with cooking, but still are saltier than your average cut of chicken. The way I deal with this is that I use less salt in the recipe when I’m using gizzards, and it balances out well.
It takes the same amount of gas to cook a small amount as a large amount, so it made sense to cook all that I had at one time. That helps keep fuel costs down. Also, cooked chicken takes up less space in the freezer than raw chicken, so it’s more space efficient as well.
Once they were all cooked well, I drained them out, saving the gravy to cook with. I chopped them up since I plan to use them in various dishes and that’s the size that will work best. Then I bagged them into one kilogram packages, and froze them.
Thirteen bags of cooked, chopped, and frozen chicken gizzards, ready to use!
What can you do with chicken gizzards? Well, once prepared like this, you can use them in the same way you would use chopped chicken. There are so many possibilities, and utilizing these inexpensive chicken parts has been a very frugal and delicious addition to our meals. And preparing them in this way means that I have a nice supply in the freezer for a number of meals, ready to go!
We aren’t yet finished furnishing our new home, but we’re getting close! Today I want to share with you what we bought, and how much we paid for each item. Initially I was shying away from sharing these details, but then I thought about those who would find it helpful to have hard figures to work with in estimating costs of used furniture in Israel, and general comments about ‘finding a good deal here’ or ‘much cheaper in America’ aren’t super helpful.
To get an idea of what we’d have to expect to pay for used furniture, I casually skimmed an excellent website called yad2 for about three months before moving – this is the Israeli equivalent of Craigs List, and it’s very, very helpful. The one caveat is that it’s in Hebrew. When I first looked at it, I couldn’t figure out how to use it, but once I did, I loved it!
One challenge when buying used furniture and not having a vehicle is you have to figure out how you’re going to get your purchase home. It took us almost two weeks to find a solution for this, and I’ll share what we paid for each item as well as how much we paid for delivery. Because we weren’t able to do this from the start, we ended up buying some things from a second hand store because he offered delivery, something I generally avoid.
In the US, our kids shared bedrooms, with two bunk beds in each bedroom (ie four children in a room), and one child sharing a third bedroom with the inventory from my nursing pillow business. When I talked to them about what kind of beds to buy, all of the older kids said they didn’t want bunk beds. When you get older it’s not fun or cool to climb up, and they wanted the open space above their heads rather than another bed. I still wanted to use the space well and have extra sleeping space for guests or possibly future children, so the below is what made all of us happy. 🙂
For the first girls’ bedroom, we bought matching twin beds with spring mattresses. Each bed has an additional bed frame (but not an additional mattress) that can be pulled out, in addition to two large storage drawers the size of the bed. We went to buy these with the intent that they’d be for dh and I, but when dh got there and saw the color of the drawers below (in the one picture I had seen they weren’t visible), he decided to go ahead with the purchase but that they’d be better for the girls. Dd15 and dd10 share this room and are very pleased with it.
Dh traveled to Akko to buy these beds, and paid 1000 shekels for both (they were asking 600 each but we got a lowered price since we bought both). We paid an additional 200 shekels for delivery. They are each 80 cm wide.
Now you can see the bed that pulls out
This is the four door closet for the girls’ room. The previous tenants had originally offered to sell this to us for 1000 shekels; I offered 500, which I felt was reasonable based on my yad2 browsing. They ended up leaving it behind after taking it apart and realizing it was too much work to get it down the spiral staircase from the upper bedroom. They told us they were leaving this (and some other items upstairs that were equally cumbersome to get downstairs) in exchange for the paint they should have paid for. It’s not exactly free but I think of it as if it was.
The next bedroom is our guest room that dd16 likes to call her room. I’m holding out on calling it hers as a matter of principle. 🙂
Four door clothing closet with four drawers at bottom
This next bed took a while to find, since I was trying to find something that matched the wood of the closet we had already purchased. (It’s not easy trying to match furniture just by the online pictures in the ads, since lighting affects the accuracy of the picture!) It’s easier to first buy the bed and then match the closet to it, but we bought what we did in the order that we found things.
This has an additional pullout bed, and two huge storage drawers (width and depth of bed) that also pull out. The bed is 80 cm wide. We bought this in Moran for 700 shekels, and paid 100 shekels for delivery.
Same bed with additional bed pulled out
On to the boys’ bedrooms.
Littles’ bunk bed
This is one of the things we bought at the second hand store on a second trip. The price and quality were actually decent, but it doesn’t look as good as what I usually look for (you can see the stickers on it which the littles actually were excited about!). It’s all wood, and is 70 cm wide – there are three standard twin sizes in Israel (70, 80, 90), and 70 is called a youth size bed. If you measure a standard American twin, you’ll begin to see how buying Israeli furniture allows you to use the space much better. If we had US twin mattresses, we’d lose a lot of the floor space in between the beds and the closets, and the rooms would be much more crowded.
This was 700 shekels.
With additional bed for ds2 pulled out below
Below this bed is a pull out storage drawer (narrower than the beds), and I had the seller throw in an extra mattress. I was ideally looking for a bunk bed that had a pullout bed and storage box included, but this is what I found, so I improvised. The storage box is only 60 cm wide, but I cut down the foam mattress mattress to size, then resewed the mattress cover all around so it fits perfectly now. I plan to replace this with a pullout that is 70 cm and to use the drawer for storage, since due to the narrowness I consider it a short term solution for ds2. The delivery was supposed to be included, but the store owner called me when they were on the way and said he had made a mistake in calculating the prices, so he told me to pay the delivery guys 100 shekels when they got there, and he would also pay them 100 shekels.
Five door closet for boys
Across from the bunk beds is a five door closet that all of the boys share. I measured the space in each bedroom and got the largest closet I could in order to maximize storage space. The boys’ bedrooms are upstairs and due to the slant of the ceiling that starts at about 5’8″ high on one side of the room, this is the only space in the two rooms where we could put a full size clothing closet without blocking windows. Our ceilings are high and you can see it goes almost to the top, so there’s loads of space.
We bought this from someone in Haifa, and paid 600 shekels. Combined delivery with the fridge we bought the same evening was 550 shekels – the price was higher than usual because the closet had to be dismantled, and a refrigerator is a more expensive item to move.
Now the older boys’ room, shared by ds9 and ds12.
Second boy’s bed (note additional bed peeking out at left corner)
This is a bed I bought at the same time as the bunk bed, because the wood colors matched perfectly and I got it for a reasonable price.
This bed has an additional bed that pulls out from underneath, and the drawer from the bunk bed actually goes to this bed, which is where it will be returned to when I replace the pullout bed of the bunk. I’m considering cutting the legs on this pullout bed down so it will fit under the bunk. It was a little rickety when we got it but dh strengthened it with a few well placed braces and now it’s very sturdy. 300 shekels.
Boy’s bed with three storage drawers and additional pullout bed (not shown)
Across from the above bed is this one. This has three pullout storage drawers that are the width and depth of the bed, and an additional pullout bed. I didn’t bother taking a picture of that since you can probably figure out how it works by now! The pullout of this bed is what ds18 will use when he comes home.
I bought this in Haifa, and paid 500 shekels for the bed (he was asking 600), and 300 for delivery (delivery also included a stop at Kiryat Motzkin, to pick up most of dd16’s belongings that she had left there over the summer). This bed also took some effort to find since I was trying for a close match of the first bed, which was difficult since the newer beds are a different shade. It’s not perfect but it’s quite close and the room looks nice.
There’s also a small two door cabinet with two shelves and two drawers that was also left behind by the previous tenant that is a perfect match to the above bed that’s in this room. This allows the older two boys to keep a nice amount of their things in their room, though the closet is really just a few steps away.
Now back downstairs to the salon (living room/dining room).
Dining room set with eight chairs
Finding a suitable dining room set wasn’t easy. Most sets have just 6 chairs, so I was trying to match up different dining room sets from totally different areas, just by looking at the pictures online, so that we’d have twelve chairs. I was trying to keep in my mind over two hundred sets and went back and forth between sets, looking at the wood shades, counting the wood backing strips of the chairs to get a close match…I was getting a big headache from this. Since the sets were sold with tables and chairs, I would end up with two tables, and I planned to put one table in the kitchen, though I didn’t really want more than one table, total.
Finally, I decided to just look for one with eight chairs, and to supplement with folding or stacking chairs as needed. There weren’t many sets available that had eight chairs, and when combined with the size table I was looking for and the price range I wanted to stay in, it took some looking. I was pleased when I came across this set, which is solid wood and very well made.
We bought this in Kfar Tavor, and it was 2000 shekels. We paid 200 shekels for delivery of this, which included delivery of the oven the same evening. I was pleasantly surprised when dh got home to see how heavy the table and chairs were. There are two leaves of half a meter each that are added to each end (not pictured), which brings the table to a total length of 2.9 meters, large enough to comfortably seat 12. We can manage to fit around here for regular dinners without putting the leaves in, by seating two people at each end.
Couch on left
We bought our couches from the second hand store on our first trip there. Ds18 was with us and thought they looked decent, and since at that time we had no furniture, I expected the other kids to be excited when the couches arrived since we’d finally have a place to sit and relax. They hated them! Dd16 even told me they’re so ugly that she’ll be embarrassed to bring her friends over; I won’t share the more graphic comments about how ugly they were. It’s more of a European style (which makes sense, since they were made in Italy), but they prefer American style couches. They aren’t perfect, but I think they’re nice. And the kids have gotten used to them by now. (Sorry the picture isn’t so good; I took it for an intended post to show you the set up of the apartment.)
It’s a set of three couches, medium brown leather with solid wood frames. In the picture you can see the big couch on the left; in the foreground is the edge of the matching chair, and across from that is a loveseat. The way this second hand place is, things are stacked on top of one another and you can’t fully see what you’re getting, unless you insist that the owner take out every single item, which isn’t such a small thing to ask. I asked him to take down the loveseat for me, and sat on it to see how comfortable it was; it looked good. The two larger couches were in fine condition, but the matching chair looks significantly more used, which I didn’t realize until they arrived. They were 900 shekels.
On to the kitchen. I already wrote about the challenges of our fridge and stove, but these problems actually were the catalyst for a much better working solution for our appliances. So I’m really glad that we didn’t have things that worked okay to start with, since we would have settled for them and it would have continually crimped my ability to function effectively in the kitchen.
After trying to use the standard size Israeli stove that was left behind (which only had one rack that was kashered), I realized that part of the problem we were having, is that we cook such large quantities that we simply needed something bigger. I had planned initially to keep this stove and make do, but this realization got me thinking in a different direction.
I was up late one evening when I saw this oven come up for sale, and though I hadn’t specifically been looking for something like this, as soon as I saw it I knew that’s what would be perfect for our needs. But I didn’t know if it would still be available by the time I was able to call about it in the morning.
This is the space intended for the fridge and the oven
I’ve rarely seen ovens this large for sale second hand, probably because Israeli kitchens aren’t sized to allow for something this large; it is 90 cm wide. But when looking at the space in my kitchen, I realized I could put the oven where the fridge and oven were supposed to be, and then put the fridge across from that where the table would be (if we had one).
I was delighted when I learned it was available, then less delighted when I learned that although he advertised it being in Karmiel, it was actually located in a different town. (This was only the second item I was buying directly from a seller, and I wasn’t yet comfortable with the idea of paying someone to travel there to get it, regardless of if I’d end up getting it or not. I got used to buying something based on skimpy pictures followed by a phone conversation with the seller, rather than seeing it in person, pretty quickly.) After speaking to him, I decided to send dh together with the delivery guy to go buy it. Dd15 and dd16 had been very frustrated when trying to cook for Shabbos, and I didn’t mention to them that we were getting this, since I wanted to surprise them when it arrived. They love it and so do I! Cooking for our family got so much simpler with this purchase, and though it was more money than I could have gotten a perfectly good stove for, I feel it was a very, very worthwhile purchase and an effective use of our kitchen space.
And we did get an excellent price – we bought it from a seller in Rakefet for 1000 shekels. As I mentioned above, we paid 200 shekels delivery including the dining room set.
Finally, our fridge.
Our wonderful new fridge
I’ll detail in another post how I decided on this model, but this has a good capacity (I think 568 liters, but I might be wrong on that) and I liked the setup of it. The seller was asking 1900 shekels, and said he was slightly flexible on the price, so we paid 1800. I know, not exactly major savings. 🙂 This is lots more than I initially planned to pay for a fridge (my original budget was 1000 shekels), but after our first fridge fiasco that ended up costing us 1400 shekels, I decided to get something newer that would hopefully last us for a long time. The delivery cost was listed above, 550 shekels for this and the five door closet.
If you’re wondering what we’re doing with the old fridge, I found a solution!
An expensive ‘lemon’, but a decent cooler
The fridge itself actually looks nice (unlike the first one, which was not a bit attractive), but the fridge part is like a cooler and the freezer part is like a fridge. I decided to keep it to store the fresh fruits and vegetables in, which I buy in such large quantity each week that I really don’t have room in one fridge. Before this I couldn’t buy enough in one trip to last for a week. This also works well since it’s not opened as often as a regular fridge, so it keep the cold better than it did when we needed to open it often. It’s next to the good fridge, in the kitchen, in the space that would have accomodated a kitchen table.
I didn’t take a picture of our washing machine, which I think is the only thing left. We paid 900 shekels at the used furniture place, which was too much and I knew that when I bought it, but I needed something and I hadn’t yet figured out a way to buy directly from sellers. Thank G-d it works and as long as it continues to work, it will be fine. At the point in the (I hope, distant) future that I need to replace it, I’ll look for a ten kg model. This is supposedly a 7 kg model, but I say supposedly because that’s what I wanted so that’s what the seller said it was. I can’t find it written anywhere to say how much it actually holds, and since the veracity of his words has been repeatedly been shown to be questionable, I’m not assuming in this case he actually said the truth.
We still need to buy beds for dh and I, a clothing closet for our room, and eventually will need some bookshelves when the twelve boxes of books we’re sending on someone’s lift will arrive. You might be getting caught up in how much more cheaply all of these things could be purchased in the US, and you’d be right. But when you take into account how much it would cost to ship the items here, it changes the picture quite a lot.
These were all good buys, but if just getting basic furniture was my goal, I could have spent much less. For example, someone offered us a free, wobbly table, and someone else offered us a fridge that doesn’t seal well. That could have been fine. However, this was my chance to furnish our home, and I was willing to spend more to get what I wanted and felt good about, while staying in my budget. If I would have gotten things given to me, or bought very cheaply, the total spent would have been less but my home would be mismatched; I would have ended up keeping it because it basically worked even if it didn’t look great.
I’m a visual person and seeing nice looking things around me makes me happy, and seeing things that look junky doesn’t bring a smile to my face. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but I want what I buy to be good quality and stand up to the heavy usage it gets in our home. To me, bring frugal doesn’t mean that you do without things that are important to you because you must get everything for the least possible amount of money, but about having the quality of life you want within the financial constraints of your budget.
Even so, you can see that the total (if you’re doing the math), though not small, even including the extra delivery costs, is still far less than the approximately $6000 to send a 20 foot lift, or $10,000 (36,000 shekels) to send a 40 foot lift (which is the size that would be big enough to have brought all the things we needed to buy). (And I would have had to buy furniture to bring with us on a lift, so we had to take that into account, as well!)
We’re really happy to have bought the furniture we did here; not only was it a more affordable option, but equally important, it uses the space well and the apartment feels nice and spacious!
Yesterday I had a super full and tiring day – as I wrote that, I thought to myself that lately, I could start most of my posts like that! – I went to do some thrift store type clothing shopping.
Firstly, dd10 needs uniform skirts for school. The school has uniforms available for purchase, but only had very little girls’ sizes remaining. I went to someone locally who sells uniform skirts as well as some used items, but she was also out of that size. (I did get ds9 and ds2 nice vests for Rosh Hashana, though.) Then I went to someone hosting a private sale in her home, and her prices were high, way more than I wanted to spend on a school skirt. I also needed to buy a uniform shirt for ds9.
I took stock of my choices. Karmiel is a predominantly secular city, so there aren’t stores that sell modest clothing. So buying something brand new locally wasn’t an option (though someone did tell me she saw one skirt in one store that might be suitable). I was told that in Tzfat (Safed) I’d be able to buy skirts that would be comfortable and modest for about 40 shekels each, and so I decided to go there.
However, before buying something at brand new prices, I always try to start with less expensive options. I learned about a used clothing exchange in Tzfat, and planned to go on Weds. If I didn’t find what I wanted at the used clothing exchange, I’d buy something new while in Tzfat. Then on Tuesday evening I spoke to a friend who made aliyah just two weeks after me. She had a less pleasant and much more frazzled departure than I did, and ended up taking her winter clothes but not summer clothes to Israel with her. So she got here and found she didn’t have much to wear!
The family she was staying with for Shabbos in Ramat Beit Shemesh (RBS) told her there was a used clothing exchange where clothing could be very inexpensively purchased in the building next to them, and she was able to get a number of nice things for a small amount of money. She told me the prices were 3 shekels for women’s clothing, 2 shekels for children’s clothing, and since this was less than the clothing exchange prices in Tzfat (I think I was told 5 – 10 shekels per item), I determined that it would be worth my while to make a trip to Jerusalem the next day.
There are only three buses a day to Jerusalem from Karmiel, and I was on the first one, at 6 am. It’s a three hour bus ride, and I knew I’d have to work to maximize my time to get everything done in time for one of the two buses back to Karmiel later in the day. Firstly, I met ds18 at his yeshiva in Jerusalem and exchanged the stuff I brought him for an empty suitcase with wheels (the lovely one I got as a goodbye present from my dear homeschooling friends before I left), which I thought would be helpful for me to transport the clothing I anticipated buying, home. He is really, really happy with his yeshiva, and it was not only nice to see him, but to see where he’s learning and living.
From there I got the bus back to the central bus station, then got a bus to RBS. That was a drive of almost an hour, and I’ll spare you the difficulties of getting off at the wrong stop and trying to figure out where I was (since there was no one out and about at that time of day to ask). I finally found where I needed to go, and was pleasantly surprised to see the huge amount of clothes at the clothing exchange. (A nice side surprise was when two minutes after I walked in, the woman who used to be my backup doula walked in – I had last seen her several years ago in the States, and she is now living in RBS!)
I wished that dd15 could have come with me, since it’s nice not only for the company, but to have another opinion when choosing clothing for the girls. I was able to find dd10 two very nice uniform shirts, and several navy skirts for school. Additionally, I found a skirt, shirt, and top for Rosh Hashana for her, and a few other non uniform skirts (a total of ten skirts just for dd10 alone!). I found some shirts and vests for the littles for Rosh Hashana, five pairs of shoes and three backpacks, several long sleeve solid color shirts for dd15 and dd16 to wear under their uniform shirts (has to be black, white, or beige), and some other miscellaneous items – the whopping sum for all of these things was 77 shekels.
When I had initially entered this building, I noticed a sign for a two day sale of new and used clothing, which I made a note of. So I got directions to that house, which became my next stop. It was a hot day and by now the suitcase was full and pretty heavy. As I passed a couple of women speaking on the sidewalk, I glanced back to make sure I didn’t bump them with the suitcase, and surprise! – one of the women was the director of the Baltimore camp dd15 and dd16 had gone to when they were younger; she lives in RBS during the year and goes to the States to run the camp in the summer. So I chatted with her a bit before continuing on my way.
At the next sale I found a couple of new skirts with tags for dd15 for ten shekels each, a skirt for me for 5 shekels, a pair of shoes for ds12, and then nine other items for 3 shekels. (She had a few boxes of less desirable items that were three for a shekel, things that had some kind of flaw or she felt wouldn’t sell as quickly for some other reason.) I was able to find a couple of things that I could easily put a stitch into to make as good as new, and for the price it was worth my effort! (Most of what I got wasn’t damaged, though.) Another 33 shekels.
Then I went to one more clothing exchange, and this one was really a challenge since it was down a lot of steps and I had this heavy suitcase to deal with. If I had known how many stairs there were when I first started going down, I don’t think I would have done it. Because what goes up must come down and getting back up all those flights of stairs was a very intimidating thought.
Anyway, this place was very well organized (not to imply the others weren’t – they were) and had nice quality items, but with higher but still reasonable prices: 5 – 10 shekels for children’s items, 10 – 20 for ladies clothing. Though I always try to start at the least expensive places and work my way up, I had never been to any of these places, and was glad it worked out in my favor this time!
At this place I found a uniform shirt for ds9 and a regular shirt for him (which I needed since I ruined his favorite shirt soon after arriving by attempting to clean it using something I didn’t realize was bleach until I saw the results!). I also found a skirt for me, but as I was paying, asked the time and learned it was much later than I thought. I had to leave right that minute if I hoped to make the bus, and didn’t there wasn’t time to wait for change for the skirt, I paid for the two shirts for ds9 since I had exact change for that and left the skirt behind.
I then attempted to race up the stairs with my hugely heavy suitcase – my legs were buckling when I finally got to the top and a couple of times on the way up I had to grab the handrail to keep from falling- and I raced to the bus stop. And learned the bus to Jerusalem has just passed two minutes before. 🙁 I needed to get the last bus back to Karmiel, which left the Jerusalem central bus station at 4:15. It would take an hour to get to Jerusalem from RBS, and another bus wasn’t scheduled for another twenty minutes, which wouldn’t get me there in time.
I was really feeling anxious when I thought to myself, “I’m where I’m supposed to be right now, and if I’m meant to get on the bus to Karmiel, I will. If I don’t, I’ll travel to a different city in the north and get a connecting bus from one of those places. But somehow, I’ll get home tonight.”
Amazingly, a bus pulled up 11 minutes later, and continuing to think the above thoughts kept me from tapping my foot in impatience every time people got on the bus. I got to the central bus station with just enough time to very quickly buy something to eat – it was already after 4 pm and I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before – and got on my bus four minutes before it pulled out. It was so nice to sit, take a deep breath, and for the first time that day, eat and relax.
Why did I feel it was worthwhile to spend so much time going to Jerusalem to buy these things? It cost me approximately 110 shekels for my travel expenses. I spent approximately 120 shekels on clothing, which included about 16 skirts, three uniform shirts, several ladies tops, a number of children’s vests and dress shirts, and six pairs of shoes. Total: 250 shekels.
If I had to purchase just two uniform skirts for dd10, I would have had to pay at least 80 shekels plus the cost of a bus ticket to Tzfat (approximately 110 shekels). I knew that if I found just two skirts for her at the clothing exchange, the cost of my travel to Jerusalem would be comparable, and if I bought anything else, I’d be coming out ahead. Even assuming I could have found comparable items to what I bought that day in the Tzfat used clothing exchange (I don’t know how likely a scenario that would be), I would have paid at least double for just about every single item I bought, bringing the clothing cost itself to at least 240 shekels, possibly up to 360.
Although my trip was fruitful, I don’t anticipate making this a regular event. I went yesterday because dh is home and able to pick up the littles from kindergarten if I’m not available. In the future, that wouldn’t be the case and this trip wouldn’t be realistic. And it was a very long and fatiguing day. However, because there were things I really needed for the kids for school, I wanted to go where the likelihood was highest of getting most of those things in one day, which is how it worked out.
A trip to the used clothing exchange in Tzfat can be squeezed in between the time the littles leave to school and need to be picked up, and because in a family our size, there’s always someone who needs something, that’s a trip I hope to make next week!
“But why aren’t your fridge and stove working properly?”
Well, this is part of the fun of our move. 🙂
First of all, the background. I had been perusing the online Israeli classifieds for months to get a sense of what a good price for the items I would be needing would be. Before we left, I wrote down some phone numbers of things so we could call about them as soon as we got there. That was very good foresight, and would have worked if we had a way to transport the items we bought home. I assumed since so many people here don’t have vehicles, that we could hire someone to help us move something, or rent a vehicle to move something ourselves. Logical assumption, don’t you think? Well, that may have been logical, but it wasn’t the way it worked out.
When we arrived here, we found on the second floor of our apartment that a number of pieces of furniture had been left behind. The real estate agent told us the tenant wanted to leave it in exchange for the cost of paint for the part of the apartment they hadn’t gotten to. Now, a couple of months before, the tenant had offered to sell me most of these pieces at extremely high rates. (I told you, I was checking the classifieds regularly so I would be able to recognize a bargain or a rip off.) I passed along a message that I’d pay half the price she was charging, or buy the things I needed on my own. No response, which was fine with me. I’m not a stupid, rich, or desperate American.
So when I got there and saw these items, I already knew these were things she didn’t want. Also, it was clear that they started taking the furniture apart and then it was too much work for them to take it all down the spiral staircase, so they just left it all there. The clothes closet was totally taken apart, but no screws or clothing rods were left behind; the bookshelf of the desk had the backing ripped off and they took it with them, the bed was old and nothing I wanted for even a day in our home….and they left behind a stove.
The stove ended up being helpful, since we had no appliances, had arrived Thursday afternoon, and had no way to cook for our first Shabbos. The stove top was cleaned and kashered, and dd16 was then able to cook our first Shabbos meal here. However, the oven was very, very dirty – extremely. It took another two weeks of scrubbing and cleaning before we could kasher and use it. Once we kashered it, we learned that the door doesn’t close fully (stays about 1/4 inch open when baking). We propped something against it to keep the heat in, which was a workable solution, but it was too small for a family our size, and trying to maximize the cooking space in it to suit our needs resulted in foods that were either burnt or undercooked. (This wouldn’t be an issue for someone content to use just one or two shelves at a time.)
Back to our first few days here – I wanted to buy through the online classifieds, but was stymied because we had no way to transport anything home. Dh called a couple of people who did moving, and said it would be between 200 – 400 shekels to bring something from someone else’s home ten minutes away, even if we did all the moving work ourselves.
So when someone recommended a second hand store to us, we decided to look into it. I have a lot of experience and a high level of confidence in buying used furniture and appliances, but only buy directly from the person who used it. I like to see not only the item, but get a sense of the person selling it, why they are selling it – particularly with used appliances that I don’t have a way to know how well they work when I buy them – I buy only if I trust the person. I’ve never had a problem, except with a used vehicle when I put my better judgement aside.
The sole appeal of this store was that we could see what he had, and have it home that day – and at a time when we had no way how to get anywhere to view things, and no way to bring things home even if we could view them, this was definitely a huge appeal. The quality of his things weren’t the kind of thing I usually look for, and because he had about six different storage rooms with things piled haphazardly on top of one another, it was hard to really see what he had.
We ended up buying a fridge, washer, couches, a clothing closet, bunk bed, and another kids bed from this seller. I felt the furniture was a decent price, though I could get much better quality for the same price from a seller directly, but the fridge and washer seemed to me to be very overpriced for what it was. Dh said his priority was to get a fridge that day, and since we needed something, so we bought it.
When we got home, we learned the fridge didn’t close fully, and didn’t cool down well. A mid size bottle of water after twelve hours in the freezer still wouldn’t be frozen. When the food we cooked on Thursday night was spoiled when we served it for Shabbos, because the fridge couldn’t keep it cold enough, I told dh we couldn’t keep hoping the fridge would be usable, since it clearly was a problem. Before we bought the fridge I had asked the seller what would happen if there was a problem with the fridge, and he said he would take care of it (definitely vague about what that meant). So dh told him the fridge hardly cooled anything and we wanted a refund. (He still had made plenty of money off of us with our other purchases.)
Instead, he came to our house to fix the fridge, and the next morning, it was worse. All the food that had been frozen was now defrosted. So dh spoke to him again. The store owner told him to come in and pick out another fridge, but when I got there later in the day after spending hours that morning taking care of school enrollments and going to the Ministry of Absorption, he was grumpy and irritated with me because I hadn’t come sooner. I didn’t get to choose a fridge – he told me which fridge we could take – it was smaller than the one we had bought, too small – but insisted that’s what we could have and he was losing money because of his generosity to us. Right. All we had to do was pay another 200 shekels for delivery, and the delivery guys would bring it over and take the broken one out.
Well, at this point I wasn’t sure I wanted anything else to do with this guy, but hoped that the replacement fridge would be better than the first, even if it was small. It definitely looked a lot nicer, and the seal on the fridge was good so the door actually fully closed. An improvement. We had already spent 1200 shekels and I thought another 200 might be more ‘spilled milk’, but it also might redeem the money already spent. Unfortunately, this fridge also didn’t work too well, and the vegetables we bought on Thursday to last us for the week already look like they’re at the end of their life span, just three days later.
Several days ago I met a retired Israeli policewoman who took a liking to me, and we spent quite a bit of time together one afternoon, going through things she was selling/giving away. She’s a warm and good hearted person, but when I mentioned we were going to be looking for a fridge because I bought one at a second hand store, her demeanor changed as she said, “Don’t tell me you bought from David? That disgusting, dishonest, horrible person!” I told her that dh and I assumed he must be honest or he couldn’t still be in business in Karmiel after so many years. She told me all the locals know to stay away from him (interestingly, even someone I asked directions from today for a different second hand store mentioned his store, and when I said he wasn’t honest, told me he was well aware of that already), that they know his stuff is overpriced, he pushes things on people, and the fridge will break within a week of getting it. She was so upset about our experience, though it seems like it’s typical for at least a good number of his customers.
So we’ve now spent 1400 skekels and still don’t have a fridge that works properly; right now it’s kind of like a cooler. If something is cool, it will keep it cool. And overnight, when no one is opening the fridge, things can actually get cold and in the freezer, frozen. Maybe we can keep it as a backup fridge. I’m working on getting new (used) appliances, but in the meantime, this is what I have!
My house is emptying of furniture, and in the last two days, all of my shelving that comprises my bulk storage system has been purchased. As most of you know if you’ve been reading for a while, I try to buy as much as possible in bulk for the convenience and economy factors. I’ve described how I store foods in square 40 lb buckets or round 50 lb buckets, but the question remains for people how do I store all of those buckets!
So before I move on and totally forget to share about this :), here’s what I’ve done. My system has evolved with time – I began by stacking buckets about three high on a pallet in my laundry room, but as I had more and more foods I was buying in bulk, I didn’t have room. I was delighted when I found these extremely heavy duty shelving units for sale – 6 feet high by 4 feet wide, and 18″ deep. They allowed me to put two rows of buckets on each shelf, which could manage this kind of weight since each shelf has a capacity of 350 pounds.
My bulk food storage system
I had two of these heavy duty shelves in addition to two smaller heavy duty shelves, and then a small storage room lined with metal shelving units (good but not anywhere as close to as strong) where I stored the hundreds of canning jars I had.
Well, the canning jars are just about all sold, and most of the bulk food is sold or used up by now, but I thought you’d still appreciate the pictures anyway. 🙂 (I don’t usually take pictures but dd took them so I could post them for sale, and I asked her to take an additional photo of one loaded so I could share it here with you.) Usually it looked neater (ie all labels lined up to the front, same size buckets together, etc), but everything was transferred from one unit to another to take the pictures, so it was messier than usual.
This is a strategy that I don’t know if I’ll be able to pursue once I move to Israel, certainly not to the degree that I’ve done here – for starters, I won’t have a car and since we’ll be living in an apartment, our space will be more limited. But I hope that this is helpful in giving you an idea of how a large amount of food can be stored efficiently in a small amount of space!
A couple of weeks ago, I placed our family eye glass order with Zenni, and yesterday we received them. I’m trying to make sure everyone has the most predictable of the things they’ll need in the near future, and almost everyone was due for new glasses now anyway. I ordered a backup pair for each of us – ds18, dd16,dh and me.
Dh got his first eye exam in years, and needs some progressive lenses – his close range eyesight has gotten better which happens as people get older, but he needs a slightly different prescription for distance. Do you know how much progressive lenses cost??? (Progressive lenses are bifocals that don’t have the line in the middle and look like normal glasses.) $320 just for the lenses. You didn’t think I would pay that, would you? Nope, definitely not. It took me a bit of figuring out to work out how to enter all the different information for his prescription, but by buying online at zenni.com, it was just $32 per pair including the frames. Those were the most expensive glasses of the 8 pairs I got; including his two pairs it was around $150 for the entire order.
A note about ordering glasses online. You need to have your prescription, and it must include the PD (pupillary distance). If you go to an eye doctor like mine who jealously guards this information and insists it’s for your own benefit because you might hurt yourself by ordering your own glasses using her prescription information, you’ll need to find someone else. I suggest before you make an appointment for an eye exam, tell them that you want the PD measurement and be sure they’re willing to give it to you. If they won’t, move on to the next name and number in the phone book. Dh did this and it was super easy. Otherwise, you can have the fun experience of trying to pry out information that should be freely given to you (this is what I had to do, and I don’t find it especially enjoyable to repeatedly insist I’m allowed to look at my own children’s files). If I was staying here longer, I would switch to another eye doctor because the resistance and extreme difficulty in getting this from our optometrist was ridiculous.
Then I ordered contacts for my dd who wears them – naturally, a nice supply so I won’t have to worry about this anytime soon after our move. I ordered with Discount Contact Lenses; dd16 sent me a link to this site; I relied on her and didn’t research this at all. I can say that the brand of lenses she ordered through our optometrist is available at this site, and even at the discounted price, is still almost double what the less expensive lenses I bought for her are. (I’m positive her name brand lenses are cheaper here than at our optometrist, but since they were covered by insurance last year, I don’t know how much they cost.)
The order for her was about $100 for six boxes of lenses (ie, 3 boxes for the right eye and three boxes for the left). She only wears them on Shabbos, and one box lasted her almost a year. Now she can wear them more often, if she chooses.
Now a note about ordering lenses online. The law requires that the online sellers verify that your prescription is accurate with your optometrist. I had checked with our optometrist before placing this order and told them I’d be ordering online, and was dismayed to find out a couple of days later that when the verification was requested, the optometrist refused it and said dd’s prescription is out of date. I had to call and inquire how long after an eye exam the prescription is valid (one year), and then ask why they vetoed her order when it’s been less than a year and they told me it would be no problem just a day before. They claimed the company never submitted the verification. Right. They don’t exactly have a good track record in this regard, but I told them I would have the approval request resubmitted to specifically the person I spoke to in order to avoid confusion (or passing the buck :)). Once the approval went through, I had the lenses within less than a week.
It’s so freeing to know that you can affordably and responsibly purchase eyewear on your own. I’ve found online ordering extremely easy, much easier than trying on glasses in person (I ‘try them on’ the digital picture provided), and so far we’ve been happy with all of the pairs I’ve purchased as well as how they fit/look (14 pairs so far).
