The Garden is Growing

Our spring garden has really been growing!  

I had many fears about gardening and, as I've mentioned, most of them went away as we started gardening in raised beds such as worrying that I'd step on a plant or a snake.  The fears I had left were being able to identify the plants that were coming up and telling the diference between a weed and a vegetable.  I'm getting much better at identifying the vegetables.

Here are some pictures that I captured recently. 

Radishes

Greens

Peas

Just a few carrots pine trees have come up and we rarely seem to have luck with carrots. Do you have a good way to grow carrots?

Our beets are not coming up as neatly as some of our other plants either.

How is your garden growing this year? 

Planting Grapes

Yesterday, we talked about moving one of our gardens that contained raised beds. After we moved the garden, we planted five grape plants. The FindOurWays have been very excited about planting grapes. These particular grapes were purchased from Sam’s Club and were actually of pretty good quality. MrLivingOurWay was very impressed with the root system they had.


Here are some pictures of the fun:

MrLivingOurWay smoothing out the area for the grapes with a garden rake.

Here MrLivingOurWay and the FindingOurWays are digging a hole for the first grape plant.  In the background, you can see the pieces of the garden we took apart waiting to be put back together.

MrLivingOurWay examining the root system on the grape plant.

MrLivingOurWay and a FindingOurWay planting the first grape plant.

Saving Dirt

A more appropriate name for this post might be “Poor Planning” but it just doesn’t have the same ring.


Yesterday, we began moving one of our gardens that contains many raised beds which we set up a year ago. We had a lot of really good reasons for changing our minds. The new area drains better, but besides that, we decided that we’d like to widen our drive way and plant grapes in the old location. In addition, when we “rebuild” the garden, we are going to make the beds twelve inches high rather than six as we’ve had better luck with beds that are twelve inches high.

We’ve had a garden there for a long time, but just put the raised beds in last year. We would put the chickens in there over the winter with a chicken tractor for shelter to make the dirt more fertile. One lady actually asked me if we had a “bird cage” beside our house because she’d seen it when she was driving by. She made it clear that she thought we were weird even after I explained that our chickens were fertilizing our garden. I promise it was only 5 chickens and the space was fairly large. I suppose that the next time she passes our house in her car, she will be happy to see it gone.

MrLivingOurWay taking down the fence that surrounded the garden.

The current bed that is 6 inches high.  This bed has been weeded so that we don't move a lot of weeds to the new location.









When it came time to move the beds, we were sure that we wanted to save the dirt that was in them. For these particular beds, we followed the instructions in the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew and that was some expensive dirt! If you read the book and purchase the materials, you will understand. Below is a picture of MrLivingOurWay with one of the pickle barrels we used to store the dirt.

Gluten Free: Flourless Cookies

I don't have a lot of time for fancy cooking, which is why all the recipes you will see me post are very, very simple.  This particular recipe is so simple that my youngest FindingOurWay and I made these when we were having some time at home by ourselves. Flourless recipes mean that I don't have to do a lot of thinking about which kinds of flours to blend together. We certainly can't keep a zillion different flours on hand (though we do keep some) just so that we will be guarenteed to make any recipe available.  Therefore, we generally have to think too much about flour recipes since we are still new to this diet.

For this recipe, you will need:

1 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of peanut butter

1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Beat all ingredients together in your electric mixer.  Roll into 24 small balls and then place in the over for 10-12 minutes.

With in minutes of MrLivingOurWay arriving home with our oldest FindingOurWay all cookies were gone and we didn't even mind promising a second batch because the recipe is so simple and clean up is so easy.

I got this recipe from: Incredibly Easy Gluten Free Recipes

A Strange Visitor On a Typical Afternoon

This afternoon, the youngest FindingOurWay and I were home alone. We stepped outside to for a little playtime and then had plans to water the garden. As I started down the back steps, I saw something running away from me out of the corner of my eye. At first, I was wondering how Butterscotch (our dog) got out. Then I realized that Butterscotch was in her pen and it was too furry to be a chicken. Upon closer look, I realized it was pink rather than tan and noticed it had a short little tail and floppy ears. A pig.

We live in an area that is so heavy in commercialized farming that when my husband would mention wanting animals, people would immediately tell him which commercial companies were "building houses." From hearing people talk, this is the way it seems to work at the "houses". The pigs are packed into a shelter with four sides and a roof. Periodically throughout their lives they are loaded onto a truck and moved to another farm that specializes in older pigs. One of the jobs every day that these farmers have is to remove many dead pigs from the houses. My understanding is that the pigs die both from disease and other effects of overcrowding. This is not where my family prefers to get their food…although for now we do buy some pork from the store.

We have seen these pigs, before as we were walking and I remembered MrLivingOurWay telling me how dangerous they were. I called some farmers on our road to asked if the pig was theirs and if it was going to hurt our chickens or us. They told me the pig would leave the chickens alone but they didn't know what kind of diseases the pig might give the chickens. The first farmer told me that if MrLivingOurWay was home, he should shoot it because it would make good meat. I had our four year old at home so I wasn't going to pull out a gun on my own. He gave me the phone number of another farmer who told me that “his boys” would come and it get it if it was still around after a few hours. By “boys”, he meant employees.

The FindingOurWay and I went out to the back porch, sat on the swing and watched the pig run around the yard. It was rooting at everything and seemed to particularly like the wet spot at the edge of the property. The dog growled and the chickens were back in their little fenced in area.

After awhile, the pig left, the dog stopped growling, and the chickens were starting to float back into the yard. Everyone seemed relieved except that the FindingOurWay who is asking when the pig is going to come back. We went about our business of watering the garden. The FindingOurWay put on her swimsuit and I squirted her with the water hose every now and then to keep her entertained.

MrLivingOur way said that I should have found a way to keep the pig penned up until he got home so we could have kept it. Will the pigs come before the goats?

Daffodils, Guinea Fowl, and Peas!

A lone daffodil bloomed this past weekend.  The girls and I love daffodils. I think it might be the one thing we plant more of that we really can't eat or use in another way.

The peas are growing more every day!

Here is a picture of some of our guinea fowl.  I'm surprised they were still enough for me to get a picture. These birds are great about alerting us to people and animals that might come around and eating unwanted pests.  They do however, wander wherever they please.

More Veggies

Yesterday, I told you about planting blueberries this weekend.  We also added to our vegetable garden, filling up the rest of the four raised beds that are available (we have others that we are planning to move to a better spot).  We planted cabbage, lettuce, and broccoli. 

Here are the plants before we put them in the ground. We hope to start seeds in the future but this year we are going to use plants for the above vegetables.

MrLivingOurWay instructing the FindingOurWays on how to remove the plants from their containers and plant them in the ground.

Here you can see our newly planted vegetables.

Planting Blueberries

This weekend, we planted more blueberry bushes. We have been adding to our blueberry bushes for several years.  These particular bushes came from a box they were selling at Sam's Club and the quality ranged from poor to excellent.

Here is a picture of the FindingOurWays mixing compost and peat moss which will then be mixed with our dirt where we plant the blueberries.

Mr. LivingOurWay and a FindingOurWay planting a blueberry bush.

MrLivingOurWay read somewhere that picking the blooms off of the blueberry bushes for the first few years makes the root system strong so this is what we practice.  Because of this (and our chickens) we are not getting a lot of blueberries yet.

How do you plant and take care of your blueberries? Any tips to keep the chickens out of them?

Chicken Update

We are saying good bye to many chickens in our current flock. We sold a few last week to a friend and some more this week to a regular customer.  Wehave a few others who have inquired about purchasing. We also sell eggs if anyone is interested. We don’t really profit off of chicken and egg sales, it is more of a way for us to keep our costs down and still enjoy free range eggs and meat.

MrLivingOurWay is well into looking for some replacements for those chickens that were sold which will introduce some much needed new blood into our flock after 4 years. I’ll try to post pictures when they arrive.

We are getting about 20 eggs per day from the chickens. Those chickens that prefer to free range are hiding their eggs around the yard and the kids enjoy looking for them.

Save Up To $50 Per Month on Drinks

How much can a family save by drinking water?


Water is the cheapest beverage to drink so long as you are not buying it in a nice plastic bottle. Our family can easily go through one 2 liter bottle of soda per day or a bottle of juice. We usually buy soda on sale for an average of 70 cents a bottle (MrLivingOurWay loves his soda and purchases it occasionally but he really makes it last). If I multiply 70 cents times thirty, I get $21. Our filters will usually last two months and are about $17.30 each. We have a well rather than water service but I don’t imagine that the cost of drinking water is enough to calculate. Now let’s suppose we are drinking a bottle of juice a day. We buy juice for an average of $2.00 per bottle. That’s $60 per month!

For the first two years that I was married, I drank only water because we had a very small grocery budget and could not afford anything else. I was also the healthiest that I’d been for many years before that.

Our bodies need water for many functions including regulating body temperature, lubricating and cushioning joints, protecting the spinal cord and other tissues, and flushing wastes from your body. So just how much water does your body actually need? This varies from person to person. The most consistent statement seems to be eight 8 ounce glasses per day. Since this depends on your body size, physical activity, current health and other factors, one would assume that children needs less than the above amount and large adults need more. Remember, if your family is healthier, you are probably spending less money at the doctor.

In the recent years, there has been some negative publicity about water. Water contamination is one such story that has come out. We remedied this by purchasing relatively inexpensive water filters (ours go on our sink). Another story involves drinking TOO much water. As long as you are thirsty, you are not drinking too much.

What did we do to convince our household to start drinking more water?

1. Require one serving of water before other beverages can be consumed. If your children are used to drinking something sugared all the time, we recommend starting out with a smaller serving requirement and building up slowly over time. This rule is for adults in our house too, the kids were just harder to convert.

2. Water down juice. I have had people around here tell me that this is causing my children to “miss out on nutrients that they need.” We choose for our children to get their nutrition from food once they are beyond the bottle stage. Juice contains a lot of sugar and should be used sparingly anyway.

3. Remind everyone that thirst is quenched much better by water as opposed to other drink choices.

4.Water tastes much better when it is cold. We can’t seem to get ours cold enough coming out of the tap. We refrigerate our water in a pitcher or repurposed container if possible.

Water is good for both your health and your budget. In many cases, it can be “produced” on site making you more self sufficient.

I have been looking for other drinks that are just as cheap and unprocessed. What do you drink?
Sources:

http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/water.html

A Night Out With the Family!

Last night our family made our way to the city for The Little House on the Prairie Musical. We made some memories...some great...some not so great but it was definately a memorable experience.

I accidentally gave my husband the wrong directions to the theater which led to us walking a mile on foot. We finally called a friend who was already waiting at the theater for us to get the right directions.  Due to participating in advertising for the play, we were supposed to have the opportunity to meet the cast which included Melissa Gilbert. My family was really looking forward to meeting the cast, but we decided that catching a ride back to our car with friends was much more important for our safety.  We did not want to walk a mile in the dark in a city  we were not familiar with.  Not to mention we had one child asleep by the end of the play.

The peformance itself was wonderful. One of my favorite lines is when Laura tells Almanzo that she will not say the word "obey" in their wedding vows and he says "Then you should choose someone who will not tame you."  To me these are beautiful lines that show that Almanzo loves her for who she is.  MrLivingOurWay and I were discussing this particular line on the way home. He knew that I would bring it up since I am the wife who could not be tamed and he knew it when he married me.  I mentioned that I thought that was odd for back in those times and he told me he was sure that was a modern line that was thrown in.  A quick google this morning tells me that this was actually the way it was written in one of Laura's books.  The exact book is These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Garth Williams.   I'm sure there are some people who are cringing as I write this.  Everyone interprets that Bible differently. My interpretation is that a woman is to respect a man but a man is to love his wife.  To me, part of loving is respecting and therefore in my opinion a man is called to do more than simply respect.  Not obeying was part of who Laura was and Almanzo respected and loved her.

The children really enjoyed the play.  Our seven year old was capitvated by the entire performance.  Our four year old loved the play at first. She clapped her hands with  joy after after song.  However, half way through the first act she told us she was hungry and then that she was thirsty.  When neither of those things worked, she just outright asked when the play would be over and told us she wanted to go home.  This morning she did ask us if people really dressed like that back then so I know she did get something out of it but her attention span is not that long. Next time, we will take our seven year-old and find someone to watch our four year-old.

An Afternoon Together

Mondays usually come with a fairly heavy workload from our outside employment that usually leaves us for very little time for our own.  Yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised to finish our work early and decided to work in the garden and spend an afternoon together as a family.

In the garden, the FindingOurWays and I weeded the beds that were planted with peas last week and another bed that we planted today, while MrLivingOurWay got right to work planting vegetables according to the plan he'd already drawn out on paper.  The peas are already sprouting! Here is a picture to the right. Today, we planted carrots, cabbage, radishes, beets and lettuce. Below is a picture of MrLivingOurWay and a FindingOurWay planting the carrots. Our onion patch in the picture on the right side.

Once we were done working in the garden, we took off for a walk with the dog on our "back five".  This area is a place where the dog can run free for now without us worrying about her harming the chickens and is also a place where we dream of orchards and a pasture for goats. Lots of work needs to take place before those dreams become a reality and we are still thinking about how we want to accomplish those goals.

Today on our walk, we saw many interesting creatures.  Below is a picture of MrLivingOurWay showing the FindingOurWays a salamander.

                        

Right: Picture of a slug that we found under a log we moved. Below: MrLivingOurWay with our dog, Butterscotch

Our Winter Garden Survived!

We planted our winter garden in October. It is the first time we’ve attempted a winter garden, but that was the advantage to MrLivingOurWay being at home. We would have more time for projects such as a winter garden. We planted broccoli and cabbage collards. The FindingOurWays actually planted the broccoli themselves. The garden was planted and we were very busy so not as much attention was paid to the garden as we would have liked. There were lots of times when MrLivingOurWay said “Well, I guess we can give up on the broccoli and the collards.” Then he would change his mind and say “It looks like the broccoli and collards might be coming back. Let’s leave it in there and see what it does.” We are not currently using cold frames or anything to protect from the frost though it has been discussed.


The other day, the FindingOurWays came in with the above cabbage collards. They were cooked up for lunch with butter and salt and they were pretty good. This is coming from a woman who really doesn’t care much for collards. It does appear that the broccoli will be harvested next.

Gluten Free Quick Pizza

We are two parents who telecommute, homeschool, and take care of projects around the house.  We are busy people.  There are days when we panic realizing that lunch needs to be served and fast!  It's difficult for us to just run through the McDonald's drive thru when we are running short on time.  We've quickly realized we can't go pick up a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store either. We live an hour from any store that would sell gluten free frozen meals if we suddenly needed them in a pinch.  If you ask me, this diet has been good for us. There is less money being wasted on unhealthy food.

Our most recent quick meal was taken from a post on the Celiac.com forums.  I didn't think about reading it until I we picked up some corn tortillas at our local grocery store yesterday. As MrLivingOurWay was checking to make sure they were gluten free....I remembered!

Here is what you will need for everyone to have their own "personal pan" pizza.

2 corn tortillas for each pizza
Pizza sauce of some sort (I put pesto sauce on mine)
Shredded cheese

1. Melt some shredded cheese between the tortillas (microwave or frying pan is fine).
2. Spread your sauce over the now melted together tortillas
3.Sprinkle with cheese and toppings
4. Either microwave or put in oven until cheese on top melts.

We put ours in the oven on 350 degrees for 5 minutes.

Here is a picture of the pizzas the FindingOurWays made themselves (minus the cheese melting and the oven which we did for them)

Bringing Dad Home

My husband has always complained about his job. Honestly, I don’t think it was the work he didn’t like. He loved his work but he didn’t like being relied upon for family income and getting up early when he is clearly not an early bird.


Unlike many married couples, who start dating after there is a job to support the family or when there are restrictions about how often they can see each other, we met in college and spent almost every moment we weren’t in classes together. When we got married and got jobs, we became part of the rat race and saw each other very little. This led to growing apart and many disagreements. We loved each other when we could spend every minute together but the stress in our lives was stressing our love for each other.

With me doing well with my part time jobs, having fewer expenses, and emergency savings, we felt comfortable bringing my husband home to work too. He also got a part time job and we’ve lived fairly comfortably.

Having the entire family at home has brought many benefits including:

 No one is stressed about carrying the entire burden of supporting our family.

 Flexibility for trips and family activities.

 More attention for the children in schoolwork and play.

 We are more understanding of the things that happens to each of us during the day

 We have time to take care of ourselves more with better diets

 We have time for the things we love

 Living expenses are considerably lower

 Everyone is much happier!

Our Chickens

We raise chickens for meat and eggs.  They are really MrLivingOurWay's project and he actually does most of the work with them.  However, during the spring and summer our chickens usually become a family affair as we all jump in to feed, water, and gather eggs.

 We keep the following roosters: Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington, and Barred Rock.  We currently have some Buff Orphington and Barred Rock hens along with a lot of crosses. We are going to thin the flock this spring to introduce some new blood to the gene pool.  If anyone wants to buy laying or almost laying hens, now is a good time.

Most of our chickens are free range.  We have a coop with both inside nestboxes and outside nestboxes under a shelter.  We have a large fenced in area for them to run.  The majority of the chickens have the ability to fly out anytime they want and go where they please though we do encourage them to stay in our yard.

We also have a flock of guinea fowl that roam much farther and we are are working on solutions for containing them on our property.They tend to get in the road a little too often and we frequently see them visiting our neighbors as unwelcome guests. Any suggestions?

Here are some pictures which are actually just over a year old. They are easier to take pictures of when they are contained and near their food source.  I will try to post more recent ones soon.

Why did we choose to stay at home?

My husband has always wanted to home school our children. I hadn’t been so sure. After all, I had gone through public school and I turned out okay. My oldest daughter was bored out of her mind in kindergarten where her favorite subjects were lunch, recess, and PE. She needed to be able to move at her own pace and the one size fits all method used in most schools just wasn’t engaging her mind which started out much further ahead than her classmates. My youngest daughter had never liked being separated from us to go to daycare where many parenting decisions were made for me and when I complained, I was assured that the best interest of my child was in mind. What about my decisions as a parent? Didn’t they count? The answer was “no”. Not as long as I was allowing someone else to raise my children. One day after much prayer and Bible reading, we decided that I needed to be at home.


Even with two part time jobs and finding myself extremely ill for the next year, I found a lot of benefits to being at home with my two daughters who were 3 and 6 at the time. My children became much calmer and more helpful around the house. They would copy me as I did laundry and cleaned the house. Eventually, they were listening to me the first time I asked them to do something. It occurred to me that it hadn’t been good for them to have two teachers at school, two parents, and at times church members and grandparents telling them what to do. All of these people had different outlooks on life and my daughters were completely confused as to how they should behave in front of whom. On top of that, they were just worn out from all of the shuffling around we’d been doing in the years past. I loved being at home and snuggling with my girls even as I worked and I’ve found that they have more confidence now that they are always with people who truly love them.

Spring Garden

Until last year, MrLivingOurWay did all of the gardening. He was brought up helping his parents in their garden and he has to have everything just so. However, last year we embarked on a new gardening adventure and decided to plant in raised beds using the square foot method. We spent so much of his time when he was at home on the weekends mixing soil and putting beds together that I actually got the privilege of planting first. I chose to plant snow peas which I remembered my mom using to keep us out of her way while she was working in our garden growing up. I planted 29 square feet last year which was not quite one whole raised bed.


They were a hit. The kids were actually enjoying eating something green! Most of them didn't make it out of the garden, but that's ok, I was just happy they were enjoying something healthy.

Yesterday, MrLivingOurWay and the FindingOurWays got started on our garden. I unfortunately missed it due to having to make up time for my job due to being sick over part of the last week. They planted two whole raised beds full of snow peas.

In the coming days we will also be planting carrots, beets, radishes, lettuce and more.  Here is a picture the girls helping me plant the garden last year.

The Little House on The Prairie Musical

One of the goals that my family has is to live on as little as we can and still be comfortable. We want to spend as little money and use as little electricity and expend as little effort as possible. Yes, we know that the last goal won’t always be compatible with the first two goals but we do know that we don’t want to waste our time.


Many of the blogs that I read have the same goals. The Little Homestead in the City often compares them selves to The Little House On the Prairie. My family is very excited that we are going to get the chance to go see the play The Little House on the Prairie in Raleigh, NC. I attended a lot of local plays in the small town where I grew up and I’m excited to take my children to one. As part of homeschooling, I feel that it is important to take advantage of these opportunities when they arise.

Here is the information in case any of you would like to go as well.

You loved it as a child. You still love it today for your children. Little House on the Prairie, the Musical with Melissa Gilbert as “Ma” is coming to Raleigh, March 16 – 21, 2010 at the Progress Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh Memorial Auditorium.

Through story, song and dance in a live theater setting, this wonderful family entertainment event celebrates the pioneering spirit and the core values on which this country was founded – a spirit that still resonates within each of us today. Little House on the Prairie, the Musical is based on the beloved Laura Ingalls Wilder series of classic American books and is the perfect musical for the entire family (children ages 4+)!

“A lovely, elegant and heartwarming adaptation of the classic Laura


Ingalls Wilder novels. A moving production, which had moments of laughter as well as tears.”


- The New York Times


As a reader of Curve Life, be sure and use our promotional ticket price code listed below to get a special discount on your musical tickets:

Tickets starting as low as $21.00*

*20% off Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 8:00 p.m. performances for Orchestra, Mezzanine and Front Balcony Seating use discount code: FAITH

30% for the Thursday, 2:00 p.m. Matinee for Orchestra, Mezzanine and Front Balcony Seating use discount code: FAITH30

For tickets: littlehousethemusical.com , broadwayseriessouth.com,

call 800-745-3000 or at the Box Office.

Road Trip!

Sometimes, I worry about when we get all the livestock that MrLivingOurWay is planning. Currently, we have chickens, but they are okay for a day or two with enough feed. I worry that we’ll be so tied to home that we won’t ever be able to leave because the animals will need to be fed daily and possibly even milked. Yesterday, I realized that we don’t have to give up day trips. We can get up, do our chores, leave early, and still be back in time to do it again.


Yesterday, we had the best day. As planned, the eldest FindingOurWay doubled up on a couple of school subjects the day before the trip and doubled up the rest when we get home. We took a trip to the state capital of a whole different state just four hours from our house. We left a little after seven in the morning and arrived around eleven thirty just before lunch. We have a four year old and a seven year old, so there were plenty of bathroom breaks on the way. We had lunch at a very accommodating deli which used romaine lettuce leaves as buns rather than bread. We visited the capital building and then took the kids to see Alvin and the Chipmunks in the theater. The girls had never been to a movie before and had a ball. After the movie, we took the girls to a special restaurant that served gluten free pizza. We have been avoiding gluten in our house due to food sensitivities for months and although we’ve made some homemade pizza once in a while, going out was definitely a treat. I managed to luck out and also get a tomato free pizza. We could have been home by nine o’clock the same evening, but chose an inexpensive hotel a couple of hours from home instead so that we could get some work done without being exhausted when we got home. I tend to work in the car but someone has to drive.

Of course, we don’t do day trips that are that long often. It’s just nice to know that when I need an escape, I can have one.

10 Ways to Cut Your Monthly Expenses as A Stay At Home Mom

When we decided that I would stay at home, we didn’t know if my part-time work from home would pan out. All we really had was peace from God that this was where I needed to be. In our second guessing before the “big sign” hit, we did lots of calculations. Here are some ways to cut your monthly bills:

1. No/Low Childcare Costs: If you are at home, you will probably be able to watch your own children. I have found that even working at home, I can interact with my children more and make them happier than they were at daycare.

2. Less Gas: It will depend on how far you are driving for this one and how high the gas prices are. We found that for me to drive 70 miles round trip, it was costing us about $500/month. My husband was only driving 30 miles round trip, but it still saved about $100/month for him to stay at home with us.

3. Less Dining Out: If you are at home to make dinner, you will not want to eat out as much and when you do, you can take advantage of the cheaper lunch prices as opposed to going out for dinner. You also aren't going out for lunch every day to meet with colleagues.

4. Less Processed Foods: You will have time to make more meals from scratch. Not only do processed foods cost more, but you will most likely find that you are visiting the doctor less as you are eating healthier foods.

5. Pay off Debt: If possible it is a good idea to pay off debt before deciding to stay at home on a budget. This will give you more breathing room. I had a part-time job for a little over a year before we decided I should stay at home. We used this money to pay way ahead on our student loans and the loan we had on our land. This took our monthly expenses down quite a bit. We also have no car payment which helped tremendously.

6. Eliminate bills: Are there any bills you can eliminate? Can you make a choice between your land line and cell phone? Find other entertainment that doesn't involve cable TV? We only have cell phones and we just watch PBS and in the past have had a much cheaper membership to an online movie service. In the last two years, the number our bills have gone down. I was amazed at the number of bills I could delete from our budget this year. It hardly seemed worth the fancy spreadsheet I had.

7. Hanging Clothes on the line: Admittedly this has only cut our electric bill by about $10/month. However, every little bit helps and reducing dependence on electricity is very good practice.

8. Gardening: There are times in the summer months when I can go to the grocery store and spend $30 for the month and know that is all we will spend. It is a great feeling. If we raised enough food to can, then I would probably only spend that much in the winter too, but the truth is that we aren't there yet. Another reason to have your own garden is that the food is generally much better for you than food bought in the grocery store.

9. Lower Clothing Costs: I've never been one to really care about clothing costs anyway but I'm not the norm. When you aren't heading out to work every day, you can get by without purchasing clothes and shoes for work. You can get by with jeans and t-shirts and even purchase them from thrift stores and consignment shops.

10. Fire Your House Keeper: We've also never had someone clean our house but I know a lot of working women who do. When you are home, this becomes less of a need. I've noticed this year particularly, that since we are all at home, it's not as much of a problem to clean up after ourselves and do little things around the house since this is where we spend most of our time.


Look at your budgets. If you don't have one, you should consider making one. How much money would you save if you were able to do all of these things? How long would it take for you to pay down your debt enough to be at home?

What ways do you save money?

Save $10/Month on Electricity (For Busy People)

Originally published in another blog of mine in 2008:

MrLivingOurWay was on my case about hanging the family clothes on the line to dry since we married. I had many reasons that I did not want to do this which included time, effort, and allergies. A year and a half ago, working two jobs (full time outside of the home) and having two kids at home, I finally gave in. We were having trouble making ends meet and we were going to have to cut back on our electricity usage.


MrLivingOurWay was more than happy to put to clothes lines on our screened in back porch. I found that it really didn’t take that much time and effort to hang clothes on the line as I thought it would. Here is how we did it with busy lives.

I sort as I remove clothes from the washing machine:

• Shirts and dresses are hung on hangers and then on the line.

•socks, underwear, wash cloths, dish towels, and infant clothes go on a drying rack sitting in close proximity to the washing machine.

•Pants, shorts, towels, sheets, and blankets are hung directly on the line.

Putting clothes away goes much quicker due to the above sorting system. Think about it. Shirts are already hung up and then you put the pants on hangers and hang them all. Socks and underwear are pretty much already separated and ready to go in drawers. Sheets and blankets are ready to be folded as they are taken down from the line.

I always did one or two loads of laundry per day. All laundry was done after the kids were in bed and hung out to dry until the next evening. We can fit two loads on our clothes line at a time; expecially if I hang undies, socks, dishtowels, and infant clothes inside on the drying rack.

The last time we timed ourselves, it took 8-10 minutes to hang clothes on the line. This is not counting the time we save putting clothes away using our sorting method. Hanging clothes to dry saves 50-55 cents per load. This method is only worth about $3.85/hour (60/8=7; 7*.55=3.85) or up to $10/month for the family. However, every little bit adds up and it can be peaceful to hang clothes at night.

How did we grow up?

We had always wanted to live a simpler life but there were all kinds of things getting in the way even though my husband and I had both always lived in the country. In fact, we both grew up in houses that couldn’t be seen from the road.

I grew up on 26 acres of pure woods with old logging trails running through it and a creek bottom which provided memories of sledding down the steep logging trail and hanging out in the creek bottom with friends until I got older and was able to drive. My family frequently went camping over school breaks and it was something that I enjoyed though I usually stayed my tent and read a book while everyone else went fishing. Even with all described, I did a lot of activities and wanted to be involved in everything.

My husband remembers visiting his grandparents’ farm which he tells me tales of hanging ham, eating farm raised beef, and getting up hay. Eventually his father raised dairy goats and meat rabbits. He remembers that with such fondness that he wants his own goats and rabbits one day.