A Blissful, Simple Life

Every morning, I assemble two lunches. The lunch sack containing a sandwich and chips isn't glamorous, but it saves my husband and I $3,000 a year. (Two $6 fast-food lunches, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year)

In the evening, we snuggle in and watch a TV episode on DVD, or show on Hulu. We can't join the conversation about the latest Office or American Idol, but for over $700 a year for the basic cable channels, I'm OK with being out of the loop.

The cars we drive may have around 100,000 miles on them, but they are paid for. No debt on the cars, no debt on the credit cards, no debt on the school loans- interest on what we owe works against us, and I avoid it like the plague.

In our home, only our desk and our nightstands were bought new- every other piece of furniture was bought second-hand, handed down to us, or hand-made. Our guests are none the wiser.

On the weekends, a home improvement project often consumes our time- whether it's painting or re-flooring or siding or something else on a huge list. We could hire out the work, but my husband enjoys working with his hands and taking care of our home (and he does a great job!).

Rather than vacationing during the summer, we're busy in our yard. The backyard garden provides produce that continues to feed us throughout the year. Green beans, applesauce, herbs, potatoes, pears, peaches, pickles- all these things I haven't had to buy since they were last in season, and probably won't have to for a while.

Why live like this? If I can afford to buy a new car or furniture or processed food, why not go the easier route? Because I believe in living mindfully- Mindful of what we consume. Mindful of being a good steward of what we have. Mindful of being in debt to no one. Mindful of our impact on the earth.

Thanks to this mindfulness, and living below our means, we can ride out the ups and downs of life. When a refrigerator started leaking, we were able to save up and get a new one fairly quickly. When a car was caught in a bad hail storm beyond repair, we were able to incur no debt to replace it. A pipe burst in our home, and the panic was only due to the water pouring out of the hole in the wall, not how we were going to afford a repair. This year, we were able to give more than ever to those less fortunate than ourselves, and that was thrilling. Life is good. Blissful, even.

This is my entry into Inexpensively.com's contest for a Blissdom '10 ticket. I'd love it if you popped over there between the 14th and 20th and gave me a vote. Also, Heather's site is a huge help while working to live this blissful, simple life. Go check it out.

Eating seasonally out of season

I've mentioned before the cost associated with eating foods out of season- a watermelon in the winter is shipped from a different hemisphere, vastly increasing the carbon footprint of that snack. So what are we to do when nothing is growing? Eat dried leaves? Not at all!

I made a local, seasonal pumpkin pie this weekend that got rave reviews- and I'm nowhere near any pumpkins ready to harvest. How is this possible? Last year, when I did harvest a pumpkin, I cut it up, roasted it, pureed it, and stuck it in my freezer. The pumpkin puree was grown locally (my backyard!) and frozen in time (literally). When I thawed it out, it hadn't traveled anywhere, though there was energy expended to keep it usable all this time (the electricity the freezer used).

Eating foods out of season always requires some kind of energy expenditure- whether it is flying tomatoes in from China or running a freezer or boiling a pot of water. My favorite way to preserve food is to can it- I like the convenience and the consistency from a jar. Freezing is way easier than canning, though, and is better for some foods. Dehydrating is a preservation strategy I haven't tried, but many people enjoy.

Mostly, I like that my garden produce can stretch across the year, and I can  grow enough to feed my family for months after the garden has stopped producing. It would be awesome to reach a point where all of our vegetables for the year are grown and preserved on our property, but we're not there- yet. Last year, I got from summer through the winter  without buying potatoes or green beans- our most-used vegetables. This year, we'll see if I can make it even further.

Do you grow your own food or buy it locally? What do you do to preserve the harvest?

DIY: Invisible Fence

I got this question in my email today in response to a request on Freecycle for an Invisible Fence sign for our yard:

I was hoping you could share your do it yourself experience with me. That is our top priority for projects this spring.

I, of course, was delighted to share our experience!

For us, the invisible fence was our top project to get done before this winter to avoid having to walk the dog in the snow!

We were lucky to get the installation kit off of craigslist for much less than it was being sold for in stores. Even if you do get the kit in the store, the whole do-it-yourself project will be less expensive than having the service install it for you!

Planning where the fence would go, figuring out how to get it across the driveway, and finding a climate controlled place for the base unit were probably some of the hardest parts about the project. Once you have a rough idea of where you want the wire loop to be, you lay out the wire and test the configuration with the collar to see that the range is what you expected. We used a garden edger we borrowed to dig the shallow trench for the wire once we figured out where it would go. The "hard work" is getting down on hands and knees and stuffing the wire into the trench. We bought white flags at Menards and marked the edge of the fence range. Training was straightforward, though I may have been less diligent than the instructions say. Our dog did break the fence a few times to chase our neighbor's car in their driveway, but he finally got the idea & hasn't done that for months. Just yesterday we pulled up the rest of the flags (we were supposed to pull them up a long while ago)

Some considerations:

• We had to make sure the wire was nowhere near where we would be digging in the future (ie our garden). If we cut through it in the future, it would be a pain to re-lay the wire. 
  
• I think my husband had to use a electric saw to get the wire buried across our gravel driveway. With a concrete driveway, I think you have to lay it in one of the seams, but I'm not sure how that works. 
  
• We also had to be aware how close the wire got to the house- the signal will come through the wall and shock the dog in the house near windows, if the wire is too close.
  

Hope this helps! Probably way too much information, but good luck with the project! For us, it was worth it.

Snowed In

Last night, with the inches of snow we got yesterday, our evening was found to be unusually empty.

Because of the length of time it took me to get home from work, I considered calling my husband on his way home & asking him to pick up take-out on his way, because I wasn't going to have as much time to cook as usual. Instead, I decided to do a simple dinner and forgo eating out, saving $15-$20.

Piano lessons were canceled, so we unexpectedly had free time, and talked about renting a movie. Instead, we watched movies we already owned, and saved a trip out as well as $1-$5 renting a movie.

I forget sometimes that staying in can be just as enjoyable as being busy and being out. I have to force myself to stay put, and when I do, I appreciate the stillness.

"Staying put" works for me !

Washing for pennies

Part of saving money around the house often means making or doing things yourself, rather than paying for a processed version of the product or paying someone else to do the work. This applies to a whole host of things: cooking at home rather than eating out, making from scratch instead of from frozen meals, doing your own home repair, doing your own yard work... the list goes on. Before starting to read money-saving blogs, however, I never thought of replacing my store-bought laundry detergent with a homemade version!

Since I started doing my own laundry, in college, I've not really known what brand to buy. I didn't think about it too much, and defaulted to whatever I saw at home that I didn't think I would have an adverse reaction to. Fast forward 5 years, and I'm tired of buying laundry detergent.


Liquid laundry detergent:
To make this, you'll have to some hunting at your local supermarket. In the laundry aisle, pick up three ingredients:
Borax (probably Mule Team brand)
Washing Soda (probably Arm & Hammer brand- and be sure to get WASHING soda, not BAKING soda)
Laundry Bar Soap (I use Fels-Naptha. Zote brand is mentioned in other recipes)

These ingredients will be good for many, many gallons of laundry detergent, so you'll be set for a while.

Use:
1/2 cup Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax
1/3 bar soap (grated- use a food processor or box grater to accomplish this)

Heat 6 cups of water on the stove. Add the grated bar soap and stir until melted. Then add the washing soda and borax. Stir until powder is dissolved, then remove from heat.

In a 5 gallon bucket, pour 4 cups of hot water and add the heated soap mixture. Top pail with cold water and stir well with a wooden paint stirrer. Let sit for at least 24 hours. The mixture may separate- stir then add to smaller, more manageable containers than the 5-gallon bucket. As you can see, I've used vegetable oil bottles, milk gallons, and any plastic container that's easy to pour.

Shake container before using and use 1/3-1/2 cup per load.

I haven't done a cost savings breakdown, but others around the web come up with 1 cent or less per load, vastly better than store-bought alternatives. We've been using this soap for about a year and have been happy with our clean clothes!