Category: Intentional Spending

I’m adding this post to update my earlier post about the tshirts we were given yesterday.  I just got a call from the library branch we were at – my first thought was that I must have returned something without all of the cds.  But it was the lady who gave us the tshirts yesterday.  It seems that they had a staff meeting this morning and someone brought up  that it wasn’t right to give only two shirts to our family when we have eight kids.  So they all decided that they would give the other six kids tshirts, too! 

I told her that I didn’t feel right for one family to get 8 shirts when there are so many kids who didn’t get even one.  She told me all the staff agreed to it and it was ‘a done deal’; they were only calling me to find out the kids’ sizes, not to ask me what I thought of it.  🙂

I don’t know what to tell my kids when they ask why people do these things – I really don’t.  (They also wondered how the librarians knew our name and phone number, but that was easier to figure out.)  That’s because I just don’t know why.  Our kids dress nicely and certainly don’t look like they need clothes!  I think it must be because people have such good hearts and want to share good things with others, and maybe we just are in the right places at the right times.  But whatever the reason, wasn’t that nice?

Avivah

People always seem to wonder where everyone sleeps when we go camping.  In a family our size, it’s an understandable question. 🙂

We always take two tents.  This time, we felt very luxurious because we borrowed a very large tent from friends that had a divider down the center, making it two ‘rooms’.  The three oldest boys slept in one room, the three girls and the toddler in the other.  (He usually sleeps in the boys’ room when we’re at home, so the girls wanted to give their brothers a break.)

The smaller tent, 8 x8, was for my husband, me, and the baby.  When we first went camping as a family about six years ago, we had five children and our youngest was a year old.  We didn’t think packing a crib was necessary, but after a night of her screaming because she couldn’t settle down in new circumstances, we learned our lesson.  The port-a-crib comes with us on every trip now, and it makes keeping babies on a regular sleeping schedule a breeze.  My husband and I each have camping cots (the older kids get camping pads on the ground under their sleeping bags), which makes it more comfy for us.  We had plenty of room in our tent, and the kids had plenty of room in theirs.  Having a separate tent to put the baby and toddler in was nice, so they didn’t interfere with each other’s naptimes. 

The tents are pretty compact when they’re packed up, but the sleeping bags and pillows take up a good amount of space in the van.  We have a certain amount of basic equipment that we own, but borrow other things – it seems wasteful to buy camping supplies that we only use for a few days a year, and then have them taking up space the other 361 days of the year. 

Avivah

We got back from our camping trip late Friday afternoon – it was fantastic!  Everyone had an amazing time and would have loved it if we had stayed for longer – much, much longer. 🙂 

Several people have asked me what we do when we go camping.  We keep things very simple – my goal isn’t to entertain my kids, but to be with them.  We don’t go to commercialized campgrounds that have lots of extra activities, game rooms, etc, because that’s not the environment we want.  We also choose to go off season or midweek so we have the entire campground to ourselves; the privacy makes it much nicer. 

Firstly, we unpack all our supplies – the kids set up the tents and sleeping bags, pull out the camp chairs, and put their backpacks of clothing in their sleeping areas, while my husband and I organize the food area and just generally oversee things.  As soon as we finished getting things set up, everyone was hot and the kids asked if they could cool off with a swim at the beach, which was just a few minutes from the campsite.  It was especially nice this time since they remembered where everything was from three years ago, and kept saying, “Oh, I remember that!  Oh, I saw that last time!”  It added something nice to being there. 

The beach was empty, and the water on the cold side, so it was just our family.  I waded in and after watching tiny fish nibbling at my toes when I stood in one place more than a minute or two, sat on the beach to watch the kids.  They stayed in for a while and had lots of fun.  Finally I called everyone out, and we went back to our site. 

Everyone got dressed in dry clothes, then started collecting firewood and building a campfire.  That take a while, and is always a fun part of the experience.  We made dinner on the camp stove, and after eating, everyone sat around the fire and listened to me read from our read aloud.  Then we sang songs for a while, and finally everyone got to bed around 11 pm. 

There’s something about sleeping outside that causes everyone to sleep soundly.  Even the baby slept through the night two of the three nights, which he doesn’t usually do.  What I love most about camping is the atmosphere of the forest, the inner quiet and serenity that fills you.  Camping allows you to temporarily halt the daily rush and just enjoy being.   It allows you to breathe deeply, get away from all the noise, and slow down enough to hear the quiet of the forest, and the quiet inside of you. 

The first person up in the mornings gets to build the morning campfire, and I buy packets of hot cocoa for our trips (I don’t buy this during the year so it’s special for our trip).  They warm up with the cocoa and packets of instant oatmeal (something else I don’t usually buy).  At least one or two children are usually busy collecting firewood to keep the fire going during this time.

The cooking and clean up is part of the camping experience, and that takes time before and after each meal.  The time for activities is between breakfast and lunch, then between lunch and dinner – they did fishing, hiking, swimming and sunning at the beach, and boating.  Since each of those activities filled an entire morning or afternoon, and could easily be repeated from one day to another without it getting boring, they were busy all day long, every day we were there.  

This was the first year that we were able to let the kids explore and do things on their own.  In the past, my husband has planned hikes or swims with them, but the payoff of the years of doing it with them is that now they are very competent and can do these things independently.  Sometimes we joined them for part of their activities, sometimes for all, sometimes not at all.  When the two little ones (25 mo. and 8.5 mo) were napping, I took advantage of the quiet of the campsite, where I spent time reading inspirational literature, did some journalling, and had time for reflection. 

One of the afternoons, my husband took several of the younger kids boating, while the older three fished, and I stayed with the sleeping baby.  When he woke up, I strapped him into the baby backpack and hiked two or three miles around the lake.  Hiking backpacks are a great invention.  The baby enjoyed hanging out and watching everything, and I enjoyed the exercise and the time by myself. 

On the last day, the toddler wanted to go with his older siblings, but they were taking a hike that would have been too long for him.  Though I kept him busy so he wouldn’t see them leave, he saw them from a distance several minutes later and tried to run through the forest to get to them.  He stopped and excitedly called to me, “I found a river!”  He found a beautiful little stream, and we sat together on the grassy bank next to it for 20 minutes before he wanted to move again.  The sound of the water bubbling over the rocks was so calming.  Then I let him play in the stream, which was only a few inches deep – he threw pebbles in the water, climbed up and down the bank, and played for another 1.5 hours until it was time to go back.  My husband joined me with the baby after about a half hour, so we had some quiet time watching the 2 yo play. 

Camping to me isn’t exciting – it’s more about being deeply fulfilling.  My kids all have this same feeling.  That’s not to say they don’t have fun – they absolutely love it and have a great time all day long.  What I mean is that it’s not exciting like an amusement park.  It’s not a vacation filled with artificial thrills or manmade activities.  It’s time spent doing concrete things with each other, and it feels meaningful and significant. 

Avivah

Has everyone else noticed how food prices have been skyrocketing in the last few months?  I’m very concerned for the general public, knowing that many of those who were already feeling stretched to the max won’t be able to stretch any further. 

To stay within the food budget of a year ago seems almost impossible without sacrificing quality or quantity, but I’ve found it doable by making discount grocery stores part of my regular shopping.  Discount grocery stores vary in terms of quality and pricing, but the general idea is they sell the overstocks or slightly damaged groceries that supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell.  Things like: the outer box rips but the inner box is intact, an expiration date that is almost here, packaging in a foreign language, or excess inventory that a store had to get rid of to make room for new inventory are all reasons that these perfectly good foods get passed on.   I couldn’t find a single one in my state, but I kept searching, knowing there had to be something relatively near by, and over time have found several of them in a neighboring state.  Yes, I do have to drive  over 1.5 hours to get there, but I only do it every 6 – 8 weeks, and the savings more than justify the time and gas spent. 

To give you a sense of what I was able to buy for the month, here’s a list of what I bought today, from several stores.  You can see that some of the prices are super, and some are just okay, but it made for a very full van coming home:

– 57 quarts of plain yogurt (organic) – 50 cents each

– 100 lb potatoes – $24

– 40 lb yams – $13.50

– 30 lb onions – $6

– 50 lb apples – $15

– 20 lb bananas – .19 lb

– 30 lb rolled oats – .59 lb

– 15 lb quick oats – .59 lb

– approx 25 lb beans – .29 lb

– 34 dozen eggs – bought 28 dozen for 1.49, found them for a bit less at the next store

– 30 lb ricotta cheese – 3 lb container each 1.99

– 3 lb. whipped cream cheese – 8 oz container each .50

– 12 lb butter – 1.49 lb

– 10 lb sugar (because I didn’t know if I’d be able to get sucanat) – 1.99/5 lb

– 25 lb raw sugar (this was as close to sucanat as I could find) – .79 lb

– 12 lb honey – $30

– 4 lb baking yeast – 3.25 ea 2 lb package

– 25 lg. cans of tomato products (sauce, paste, diced, whole/peeled) – 3/$1

– 20 cans green beans – .29 ea

– 4 lb baby carrots (for lunching on while out shopping) – .99 ea, 5 lb carrots – 1.99

– 8 lb frozen mixed veg – 2.25 for 2 lb bag

– 5 lb frozen corn – 2.99 for 2.5 lb bag

– 6 boxes herbal tea – .99 ea

Then there were all the odds and ends – some packaged cocoa and instant oatmeal for our camping trip next week, orange juice concentrate, spices, pie filling, coconut milk, ketchup, baking soda, vaccum packed salmon (for my lunch while we were out today) etc.  Some of these things were regular prices, nothing to get excited about, but most of them were significantly less than the average grocery.  All of this came to a total of $345, and leaves me with $170 for the rest of the month.  That will be enough to buy a case of chicken, and make two trips to the veggie store on alternating weeks to keep us supplied.  I also need to pick up a 20 lb. bag of brown rice; I’m out and forgot to get some today. 

I also bought 16 gallons of raw milk, and 50 lb of hard white wheat (talk about pricey 🙁 ), for which I budget an extra $25 a month (I spend $515 monthly for regular groceries, and the extra $25 brings the monthly total to $540).  I realized that wheat prices were jumping fast about six months ago, well before the media was covering it- it’s very obvious when you buy in bulk the way I do.  I spoke to those doing the ordering for the couple of places I bought the wheat to understand what was going and leading to the price increases, which was my first inkling that this isn’t a short term situation.  (The big supermarkets were artificially holding down prices for a while, so the general public didn’t start to feel it until recently.)  A year ago, when I first started buying wheat berries, a 50 pound bag of wheat was $12.  Several months ago, it was up to $18, and today, it was $30.  That is serious inflation.  Fortunately for me, I decided to limit the kids’ gluten intake for health reasons, which means that I use much less flour than I did previously, so it doesn’t impact me as much as it would have.  Then again, all the other grains that I buy instead are even more expensive than wheat, so maybe it’s not so fortunate, after all! 

When I shop, I purposely buy more than what I’ll need for the month.  I don’t know what will be on sale next month, and I stock up when the prices are right.  So it may look like we have lots less variety than we do, because I don’t buy every ingredient I need each month.  Remember my pantry principle post?  I’m always buying to fill my pantry, and then my menus are based on what I have.  For example, I bought over 40 pounds of buckwheat last month, so I still have plenty of that on hand;  I also got 15 pounds of sliced almonds when they were on sale for 1.49 a pound (at the same discount store today, they were 4.59 lb), and have plenty of that left.  So I wouldn’t need to buy more of those things.

I often hesitate to share the specifics of what I do, because I’ve had the experience of someone implying that I was lying about what I spend, or just negating the value of anything I’ve said by telling me, “We don’t have prices like that around here.”  To which my response is, we don’t have prices like that around here either.  Don’t assume I’m so lucky to live in a cheap state.  I’m not, and I don’t.  You have to look for good deals, and know prices so well that when you see something, you can snap it up right away when you have the opportunity.  But just because you have to look beyond your average supermarket (where I also often get great deals) doesn’t mean that the deals can’t be found!  I spend half of what a frugal similarly sized family spends (and a 1/4 of what the unfrugal spend :)) because of the various strategies that I use, not by walking into a supermarket and buying what strikes my fancy that day. 

You probably also noticed that I don’t buy lots of processed foods.  I buy ingredients, not prepared food, and cook our meals from scratch.  Discount stores are filled mostly with foods I wouldn’t eat even if they were free, because they are so unhealthy. 

Hope some of this long post gives you some hope for getting your food costs under control!

Avivah

Almost two weeks ago when I challenged myself to use the food we had in the house without spending any money outside of my allotted food budget, I had a little less than $3.40 remaining in my food budget to get us through without compromising the quantity of nutritional quality of our meals, plus my in-house groceries were much less varied than usual.  But we did it, with 51 cents remaining!! 

My oldest son kept commenting on how well we were eating while spending so little; it really didn’t feel like deprivation.  It just took more creativity to plan meals with different ingredients than I was used to working with.  Actually, our meals were nicer because they were planned out in advance, versus some weeks when I take it day by day and it isn’t as organized. 

We did get some unexpected assistance from outside sources, though we would have managed fine without it.  One source was a friend of my husband who works in a supermarket – he asked him if he wanted several loaves of whole grain bread, so my husband said, sure, why not.  It seems that once a week, there is a pickup for whatever packaged bread hasn’t been sold in a week from all the stores in the area, and the bread truck driver offered to give it to this friend of my husband, who couldn’t use it but figured with our size family, we could.  So we got twelve loaves of excellent quality bread, in an assortment of flavors.  This friend has been working there for years, and had this opportunity every week for all that time, and never thought of it until now.  And today he had the chance again, and forgot about it until it was too late.  Isn’t it amazing that this particular week was the one that he happened to think about it?  This made lunchtimes very simple for the last week.  Of course, I had the ingredients to bake the bread myself,  which is what I was planning, but it was nice that I didn’t have to.

To finish off the last meal of the challenge (tonight’s dinner), we had a couple of pizza pies.  My mother in law volunteered for a community social event last night, and though eight pies were ordered for the kids at the event to eat from the local pizza store, they were virtually untouched.  So the volunteers afterwards split them up amongst themselves and took them home.  My mother in law thought the kids would appreciate them (she was right!) and brought them over today.  Wasn’t that timely?  She didn’t even know about my pantry challenge!

I always start the new food budget of the month on the 15th, which is tomorrow, and I have to be honest and say I’m really, really looking forward to stocking up.  I’m not comfortable watching my food reserves in the house go down.  I haven’t increased my food budget in quite some time, so with the recent surge in grocery costs, I’ve had to be even more careful to squeeze out a lot of value when I buy groceries.  I’m trying to not only buy appropriate amounts for our monthly needs, but to simultaneously build up our reserves.   I’m enjoying the challenge, though there are times like this month that I feel like it’s one step forward, one step back.  Overall, though, I look at it as a challenge to be enjoyed, and I’m looking forward to finding some wonderful deals tomorrow!

Avivah

 I found out about this offer (and ordered it) and thought some other moms would appreciate hearing about it.  The EPA is giving away free copies of The Magic School Bus Gets Cleaned Up. 

Call the EPA National Service Center for Environmental Publications at 1-800-490-9198 to order, or order online.

If you order online, it just takes a couple of minutes, but can be a little tricky.  Here’s what you do: after clicking on the above link, enter “Magic School Bus” in the search field.  Then click on the shopping cart icon on the far right for the first item in the list.  Finally, click on “Select All”, then “Order Publications” to get to the form to enter your mailing address.

Enjoy!

Avivah