16
Feb 2012

Bringing Our Grocery Bill Under Control – At Least A Little Bit

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I recently came across Mr. Money Mustache in my internet wanderings.  If you haven’t already discovered his site, I highly recommend it.  He reminds me a lot of myself – he’s like a guy version of me with a few more rants and some colorful words sprinkled here and there.  Oh, and he’s retired too (we’re not there, but we’ve been working from home for a decade now, which is pretty awesome).   He also has a wife and a child, which makes him seem much more realistic from my perspective (since we have two children) than some of the ultra-frugal bloggers who don’t have children and live on next to nothing.

Anyway, I was browsing around his site and it got me thinking about our spending.  We already save about 40% of our after-tax income.  We put more than a full mortgage payment into our mortgage payoff/emergency fund each month.  We save for retirement.  We have an HSA that would cover several years of having to meet our health insurance deductible.  We’re saving for our boys’ education (not a lot, but we put $100/month into each 529 account).  All of our “stuff” comes from thrift stores and Craigslist.  We are frugal in just about every regard.

Ever regard except food.

Our food budget is very high.  My rough estimate is that it was running about $1000/month for the past year or so.  We don’t eat out (seriously – we’ve eaten out once since September, and that was to take a dear friend out to dinner for his 90th birthday), so there’s no dining-out expense at all.  But still, $1000/month on food is a bit crazy.

I’ve written several times about what we eat.  I refuse to compromise when it comes to what my family eats.  I cook nearly everything from scratch.  We don’t eat foods with long ingredient lists, preservatives, food coloring, artificial sweeteners (and avoid added sugar most of the time too – treats around here usually rely on the natural sweetness in fruit).  And almost everything we eat is organic.  That means that I almost never shop at the local grocery store here in town, because they carry very few organic items.  Instead, I drive into the larger town nearby to shop.  And for the past year or so, I’ve been pretty much making it a one-stop shop at the health food store.  That – combined with Costco every few months – has resulted in some pretty large grocery bills.  We’re squarely in the “liberal plan” on this USDA chart for a family of four.   Although I have to assume that most families have a dining-out budget that is higher than zero dollars per month.  So that helps me to justify our food bill a bit.  But still.  It could be much better.

While I’m extremely budget-conscious with pretty much every other aspect of our spending, I had let myself get lax when it came to groceries.  Although I would snap up things that were on sale, I would also buy pretty much whatever I wanted to cook, regardless of whether it was on sale or not.  I didn’t go online to look at the sale ads for the larger grocery stores in town (they have much larger organic selections than the small store here in our town, but obviously not as much as the health food store where I normally shop – but I should at least be looking to see what they have on sale each week).  I basically told myself that it didn’t matter how much we spent on food.  We’re very healthy, and I work very hard to keep it that way.  I’m convinced that diet is a huge factor in health, which is why I won’t compromise when it comes to our diet.

But I could be much more frugal and still not compromise.  I’ve known that for a while, but I’ve justified my lax grocery budget in lots of ways.

  • We can afford it (true, but we could save even more if I put more effort into keeping the grocery budget down).
  • We deserve to buy great food, since we eat all of our meals at home (also true, but why not focus on great meals that can be made without spending as much money?)
  • I love to cook, so a high grocery budget is ok.
  • I don’t have time to stop at multiple grocery stores with the boys in tow (I don’t want to drive all over town, but there’s a major grocery store about two blocks from the health food store where I normally shop.  Is it really that hard to make one more stop in the same general area?)
  • I love to browse food blogs and find new recipes to try, which often means adding new ingredients to the shopping list.
  • We’re very frugal in every other area of our lives, so it’s ok to spend a lot on food, which is what matters most to us (true, but if we can eat just as well while being a bit more budget-minded with food, doesn’t it make sense to do so?)

I thought about all of this, and decided to make some changes.  That was about three weeks ago, and so far, so great!

  • I’m limiting my grocery trips to three times a month instead of once per week (in the summer, I always cut down to about every other week, because our garden gives us so much fresh produce.  But in the winter, I’ve typically always shopped every week).  To facilitate this, I’ve scheduled my grocery trips on the calendar.  I have a visual reminder every day of when my next shopping trip is, and can plan our meals accordingly.  I had found that even going every week, I was still spending a lot at each trip.
  • I’ve unsubscribed from the food blogs that I used to read every day.  I can still go to their sites when I want, but the emails aren’t in my in-box every day, tempting me to try new recipes.  This is good in a few ways.  First, it keeps me from always adding new ingredients to the shopping list.  Second, it saves time in the kitchen because I’m mostly cooking meals that I’ve prepared before.  And third, it cuts down on my computer time, which is a good thing.  Don’t get me wrong – I love food blogs.  But I was spending too much time on them.  I already have a Google Docs file with several pages of recipes that the whole family loves – I could cook them every day for a month and not repeat myself at all.  There comes a point when enough is enough.  For now, I’ve reached that point.  I’ll just continue to make the meals I’ve already perfected, and – mostly – avoid new recipes for a while.
  • I’ve started preparing meals for the crock pot and freezing them.  This has been a huge success.  I just bought ingredients to make several more bags, which I’ll be prepping tomorrow or Saturday and stashing in the freezer.  The soups and veggie concoctions I prepare are relatively inexpensive (even though all the ingredients are organic) because they mostly rely on root veggies, beans, and lentils.  The bullion I had been using was relatively pricey, but I tried making my own and it worked perfectly – for about a quarter the price.
  • No more exotic superfoods. (or at least a drastic reduction in how much we buy)  Gogi berries are great.  But do we really need them?  Pecans are delicious, but almonds are a third the price and work just as well – we can save pecans for a rare treat instead of tossing them in the cart every time we shop.  Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds can be substituted for a portion of the nuts in many of the nut-based recipes I like, and they’re dramatically less expensive than nuts.
  • The money we’re saving is already accounted for – automatically.  We upped the contribution to our mortgage payoff/emergency fund by $300/month, because that’s what I’m estimating we can save on groceries.  That means the money won’t be burning a hole in our pockets.  If it’s not there, we won’t spend it.
  • I’ve started looking at the sale flyer for the major grocery store in the area of town where I normally go shopping.  It paid off in a big way this week – they had vitamin supplements on sale buy one, get one free.  So I stocked up on all of the supplements we already use.  For the rest of the year, we’ll be shopping in our pantry for supplements instead of adding them to the grocery list.  The vast majority of the stuff in the sale flyer is never going to make it into my cart, since most of it is processed food.  But I found a great deal on organic potatoes and apples in addition to the supplements.  Definitely worth the extra trip (I spent $167 and the savings total on my receipt was $118 – not bad).
  • I’m being much more selective with our produce.  Although I only buy organic, I’m focusing on the items that are on sale, and basing our menus around those, rather than creating menus and then just buying the food that I need to make the meals I’ve planned.
  • I’ve always shopped with a grocery list, and I’m good at sticking to it – no impulse buys.  But I’m usually pretty lax about what I put on the list, and I don’t usually worry about what’s on sale when I’m making the list.  I just add things to the list as we run out of them, and I also add things to the list when I come across a recipe that includes a new ingredient.  These days, I’m being much more careful about what I put on the grocery list.  I’m looking at sales and I’m also questioning whether we really need to replenish each thing we use up.

Basically, I’m getting back to basics a bit more.  I will still only buy organic.  And I’ll still have a grocery bill that is higher than average (which I think is fine, given that we never eat out).  But I’m getting back on track with applying my frugal skills to the grocery budget – just like I do with every other aspect of our spending.

I’m feeling very good about all of this.  An extra few hundred dollars a month that we can put towards our goal of paying off the mortgage, and we’ll still be just as healthy and well-fed.  It takes a bit more planning and I can’t just throw whatever I want into the grocery cart, but that’s ok.  I’ve always justified the higher food bill with the fact that all of our other bills are so low.  We do all of our other shopping at thrift stores so that we can afford to buy our food at the health food store – but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  I can still buy very high quality food without spending quite so much money.

Many thanks to Mr. Money Mustache for the reminder.

What’s your budget soft spot – if you have one?  Do you justify high spending in one area by being frugal in other areas?  Have you thought about ways you could still honor the importance of that aspect of your life but spend a little less money on it?  And of course I’d love to hear your ideas for saving money on nutritious groceries.

Category: food, just my life  20 Comments
12
Feb 2012

Milk Donation – A Unique (And Frugal!) Volunteer Opportunity For New Moms

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Tomorrow morning when I go into town to run errands with the boys, we’ll be stopping at the local hospital to drop of 17 bags of breast milk that I’m donating.  It will be pasteurized and combined with milk from other donors, and then distributed to sick infants in NICUs across the country.  I’m going through an HMBANA Milk Bank – even though there isn’t an HMBANA location very close to us, they have a drop-off depot in the town where I normally go to shop, so it’s very convenient.

I started thinking about donating milk a few months ago.  I read about the process and where the milk goes, and I found this article to be particularly helpful when I was figuring it all out (if you’re thinking about donating, definitely read that article – lots of good info).  I knew that I didn’t want my milk to be sold to a pharmaceutical company that would turn around and make a profit from it, so I double checked that the local milk collection depot was part of the HMBANA Milk Bank program.  I had several good conversations by email and phone with the lady who runs the Milk Bank, and felt very comfortable with her and with the program.

I never pump for our son, since I’m with him all the time – he just nurses.  But I had a little mini-electric pump that my sister-in-law gave me before our first son was born.  So I tried it out, and it worked just fine.  The milk bank sent me paperwork to complete, release forms that needed to be signed by my midwife and our baby’s doctor, and milk storage bags.  They also sent a bag that I can use to sterilize the pump parts in the microwave after each use so that I don’t have to boil them every time I use them.  In addition to the paperwork, I had to stop by the lab at the local hospital and have some blood drawn, just to make sure that I don’t have any illnesses that would prevent me from donating.

Once all that was finished, I was cleared to start donating.  I’ve been pumping a 4 – 5 ounce bag of milk approximately every other day, and tomorrow I’ll be dropping off the milk I’ve collected and frozen over the past month.

It feels great.  It only takes me 10 – 15 minutes to fill a bag and stick it in the freezer.  It’s a unique and special way to “give back”.  I’m providing something very valuable, but it’s very easy and convenient for me.  I don’t have to go anywhere, and I can pump anytime I want.  I’m planning to drop off milk once a month, and the hospital isn’t really that far from where I normally go in town when we’re running errands.  I didn’t get involved with this program until our son was 9 months old, and they only accept milk until the donor’s baby turns one.  So I only have a couple more months of pumping and donating.  But at my current pace, I’ll be able to donate somewhere around 220 – 250 ounces of milk.  That feels good.

Obviously this isn’t something a mom should do if she’s overwhelmed with other stuff, or if she’s having difficulty nursing her own baby or producing enough milk for her own baby.  But for those of us with a plentiful supply and well-established nursing relationships with our babies, donating milk is a pretty cool volunteer opportunity for new moms.  And it’s a very frugal way to “give back”  too.  You might not have money to donate to causes that are close to your heart.  And you might not be able to fit volunteering into your schedule (especially with a new baby!).  But you can donate milk.  It doesn’t cost anything except a little bit of time for pumping and a few extra snacks here and there to keep up with the additional milk-production demand.  All in all, it’s a pretty great volunteer opportunity for new moms.

I’m sharing this to spread the word about milk donation.  If you’re a nursing mom (or will be someday), it might be something you’d like to try.  After going through the enrollment process and pumping for a month, I definitely give it two thumbs up.

Category: baby, just my life  11 Comments
08
Feb 2012

Netflix And Movies – Is The Library A Better Option?

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I wanted to share a couple of good links with you today.  Minimalist Mom is always a great source of info, and her most recent post included a link to this free e-book to help you cut down on your “digital overwhelm”.  If you feel like you spend too much time online or using digital devices, this book might be a very helpful read.  I especially love that all you have to do is click on it and it appears on your screen – no need to sign up for a newsletter or provide your email address.

Angela of Oh She Glows (who has a cookbook deal worked out – congratulations Angela!!) is one of my favorite food bloggers – I make stuff from her site a couple times a week and it almost always gets two thumbs up from my guys.  I made these crackers last week, and they are awesome!  I didn’t have any sesame seeds, so I used hemp seeds instead (I get those auto-shipped in bulk from Amazon every three months, and our new supply just arrived) and they turned out great.  I also used the dehydrator instead of the oven, which made them especially easy to make – no need to check on them to make sure they’re not burning.  But I love that Angela provides recipes that use simple appliances (like an oven) that everybody has, instead of complicated ones that require specialized equipment and gadgets.  I had a dehydrator on my wish list for about three years before I bought it, and we saved in advance to pay for it.  So I love to use it.  But if you follow the directions in the recipe, all you need for these crackers is your oven.  Enjoy!  They are perfect snack food for munching on while you watch a movie.  We ate them while watching the last couple episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix.  (Such a good show, if you haven’t seen it yet.)

Speaking of Netflix, I’m curious as to what my readers did when Netflix announced that the streaming and DVD-by-mail were becoming two separate programs.  We had been using Netflix for about two years when that change occurred.  We don’t have a TV or any TV service, but we do have cable internet (necessary for our online, home-based business).  So Netflix has been a perfect solution for us.  A few nights a week, we set the laptop on the coffee table after the boys go to bed, and watch an episode of a TV show or a movie.  The price was right and we were quite happy with the selection.  More often than not, we opted for streaming content rather than DVDs.  We probably averaged three or four DVDs a month with the old plan.  So when they announced that we were going to have to pay extra to keep getting DVDs, we opted to just have streaming Netflix.

We rarely watch movies anymore, because they’re just too long.  By the time we get the boys in bed, play a game of chess, clean up the house, etc., we might have time for a 42 minute episode of a TV show (hour-long shows are only 42 minutes if you’re watching them on a service like Netflix with no commercials).  But watching a movie requires planning ahead to fit it in, or else we end up breaking it into chunks and watching it over two days (I know, we’re old and lame.  But that’s ok).  Recently, however, I went searching on Netflix to try to find a few newer movies that friends had recommended.  And all of them are only available on the DVD-by-mail program rather than streaming.  Bummer.  It made me wonder for a second if it would be worth adding the DVD program, but then I reminded myself that it’s pretty easy to put the movies on hold at the library and check them out for free.  Basically, the streaming Netflix is great for TV shows, but not so great for movies.  Out of these five classic casino movies, only one (Croupier, from 1998) is available on Netflix as a streaming movie.  The other four all require that you have the DVD program.  And out of the top ten movies on this list of best comedies, none are available via Netflix streaming (and those aren’t just new movies – Hitch is from 2005 and Knocked Up is from 2007).

Back when Netflix included both DVDs and streaming in one package, it was easy to add movies to either queue and just wait for the ones that had to come in the mail.  These days, we don’t use Netflix as much as we used to.  Part of that is just because we’re busier (two kids instead of one, a basement that is requiring many many hours to finish, work that seems to be busier than ever…), but part of it is that there just aren’t that many movies we want to see on the streaming program.  What do you think?  Did you opt to have both packages, did you keep just one, or did you ditch Netflix all together?  Are you happy with your choice?  I haven’t really used our local library for movies since we moved to our current town, mainly because it was so easy to get movies via Netflix.  But I think I might start using the library again for movies, at least until we’ve seen the ones that are currently on our “want to see” list.

Category: just my life  16 Comments
03
Feb 2012

Mocha Chip Muffins

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Last week, I was browsing through a food magazine and saw a recipe for coffee-flavored muffins.  Although I’m not a big fan of coffee, I love coffee-flavored food (especially if chocolate chips are thrown into the mix!).  I used to be hesitant to even tweak recipes for baked goods, and I never would have thought I could come up with a recipe of my own.  I think I was convinced that there was some sort of baking magic that went on in the oven and that any deviation from the recipe would have very bad results.  Now that I’ve been cooking and baking for several years, I’m much more confident in the kitchen.  So I sat down and came up with my own recipe.  I was thrilled with how they turned out, especially given that this was really my first attempt at creating a baking recipe on my own.  I used an egg, since my parents have been providing us with amazing eggs from their backyard chickens lately.  But you could just as easily make a flax egg, so I included that option in the recipe.  I used coffee extract because I like coffee-flavored things.  If you prefer another flavor, you could probably substitute something else instead of the coffee extract.

These are relatively dense muffins.  I’ve found that most of the stuff I bake using almond flour and coconut flour is usually a bit more dense than stuff made with wheat flour.  But that’s just fine, because that’s how I like my muffins.  If you prefer light fluffy muffins though, these might not be your favorites.

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Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a muffin pan (this recipe makes 12 muffins) or line with muffin papers.

Dry Ingredients:

  • 1 cup almonds, ground in food processor
  • 1/2 cup coconut flour
  • 1/2 cup oats ground in the food processor (use gluten-free oats if you’re sensitive to gluten)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp powdered stevia (I just buy the loose ground herb from the bulk section)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1.5 Tbsp ground flax seed
  • pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients:

  • 1 cup almond milk (or whatever milk you like)
  • 1 egg or a flax egg (I make flax eggs without heating them – works just as well as far as I’m concerned)
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (I made my own in the food processor)
  • 1 Tbsp coconut oil
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 Tbsp coffee extract

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another.  Then mix them together and fold in:

  • 1/3 cup miniature dark chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

The batter will be relatively thick and on the dry-ish side.  Spoon into 12 muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

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Enjoy!  These freeze quite well too.

Category: food  7 Comments
03
Feb 2012

Kitchen Success!

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Yesterday I cooked one of the soups that I had “crockpot ready” in the freezer.  It turned out fantastic!  It’s one of our favorite soups (the French lentil soup in the bottom left corner of this page), and none of us could tell the difference between the one I make fresh and the one I made by dumping a bag of frozen ingredients into the crock pot.  Definitely a winner! 

So this morning, I spent somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours (I had to help our son with his couch cushion fort in the middle of it, and change a diaper, so exact times are hard to come by) and made five double batches of it for the freezer.  I always double that soup recipe so that it fills up the whole crock pot.  That lasts us two full meals and part of another meal.  So today’s chopping and blanching session should give us at least 12 or 13 meals.  They’ll be perfect for busy mornings when I don’t have time to chop up all the ingredients for soup – all I have to do is dump a bag into the crock pot, add 12 cups of water, and let it cook all day.  Hard to beat that.

I blanched the carrots and potatoes before I added them to the soup bag, and they had the same taste and texture that they usually do when I cooked the soup.  Not sure if it would work if they went in the freezer raw, and I decided to go ahead and blanch the carrots and potatoes for today’s prep session too – it was worth the extra few minutes that it took.

In another kitchen adventure, yesterday I made my own veggie bullion! 

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I got the idea from a reader (thanks Kay!) and decided it was worth trying.  I used this recipe.  The units are all in ounces, so I used our postage scale to weigh stuff before adding it to the food processor.  I didn’t have enough salt (9 ounces is a lot!) so I ended up using about half as much as the recipe calls for.  It’s still very salty and has enough salt in it to keep it from turning solid in the freezer.  So I was able to scoop it out into the bags of soup I was prepping this morning.  By my estimates (based on 1 tsp homemade bullion per cup of water to make broth), the batch of bullion I made yesterday is roughly equivalent to 10 boxes of the bullion cubes that I normally buy for $2.50 per box.  I don’t know how much my ingredients cost, but I would guess somewhere around $8 – $10 (all organic).  And of course the stuff I have in the freezer now doesn’t have yeast extract (MSG) in it.  When I made my soup bags today for the freezer, I replaced half the store-bought bullion with my homemade stuff.  We’ll see how it turns out.  For now, I’m quite excited about it.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Category: Debt  3 Comments
30
Jan 2012

Freezer To Crockpot Cooking

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I had finally caved in an visited Pinterest, and wasn’t sure if it was going to be awesome or a total time sink.  I’ve since found that it cuts way down on the number of tabs I have open in my browser at any one time.  Instead of just leaving tabs open, I’ve been pinning them onto boards on my Pinterest page so that I can come back to them when I need them.  Whenever I come across ideas I like (anywhere on the web, not just on Pinterest), I add them to my Pinterest page in the appropriate category.  It’s like a visual to-do list and idea page.  I’m definitely liking that aspect of it. 

I’ve found that I don’t spend too much time browsing Pinterest, but when I do, it’s nice.  I can sit here and nurse our little guy while I scroll through ideas for bathroom tile (since we’re going to be putting a bathroom in our basement soon).  And I can easily save the ones I want to show my husband later on – without leaving eight new tabs open in my browser.  Good all around.

A few days ago, I was browsing around Pinterest and came upon this genius idea:  Freezer-to-crockpot meals.  Yes!  I can do this.  I love my crockpot and use it several times a week.  I also love the idea of just dumping a bag into the crock pot, adding some water, and letting it do its thing.  She’s got a ton of other freezer cooking recipes on her site too. 

I wasn’t sure about the idea of just putting the veggies into the freezer raw, since I know a lot of stuff needs to be blanched first.  Plenty of comments on the site indicated that people had no problems with it, but I decided to blanch some stuff first.  I read that potatoes can turn black if you freeze them raw, and I wasn’t sure about carrots.  So I chopped up a ton of potatoes and carrots and blanched them for a couple minutes before I prepped the freezer bags.  It only added a few minutes to the total prep time, and I was doing several meals at once – not a big deal.  If you try this and don’t blanch anything, let me know how it goes!

Here are my first two meals:

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The recipe came from the Costco magazine (bottom left corner), and everyone I’ve ever made it for has raved about it.  I make it at least twice a month, and always make a double batch (which fills my crock pot right to the brim).  Instead of broth, I use water and veggie bullion cubes, so I added the bullion to the bag along with the lentils (rinsed), brown rice, raw onions, garlic and celery, and blanched carrots and potatoes.  A double batch fits nicely in a one-gallon ziplock bag.  All I have to do when I cook it is add 12 cups of water plus one bag to the crockpot.  And it was pretty easy to make a second double batch at the same time. 

This would make a great gift for a family with a new baby or anything else that makes cooking more of a chore than usual.  It would also be a good idea for a get-together with friends.  Each person could bring some ingredients and you could all chop stuff up, blanch whatever needs it, and then stuff a bunch of bags.  Everybody goes home with lots of different ready-for-the-crockpot meals.  Sounds like a winner to me.

I also roasted a bunch of onions and garlic so that I could prep this amazing tomato soup (I cook that one at least twice a month too).  I already have lots of roasted tomatoes in the freezer from last summer’s garden.  So I just combined the spices with some bullion (in place of broth) and the roasted onion and garlic and stashed that in jars in the freezer.  Now all I have to do when I want to make that soup is dump the onion/garlic/spice jar into a pot with a jar of tomatoes and a can of coconut milk and some water.  Couldn’t be much easier than that.  Roasting onions and garlic is easy, but it’s time consuming.  This way I don’t have to think as far in advance about dinner, since everything is already roasted and in the freezer. 

I also prepped the Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken recipe from the original site that I found on Pinterest (link is at the start of this post).  I left out the chicken though, so mine will be BBQ veggies.  I might add tofu or something like that after I cook it, but I’m sure it will be good either way.

I really love this idea.  It makes batch cooking for the freezer seem a lot more do-able.  I spent about 90 minutes putting together enough food to fill the crock pot six times (a full crock pot lasts us at least two meals), and I had a three-year-old helper the whole time.  Definitely not as challenging as spending the entire day in the kitchen for once-a-month cooking, but it will make my crockpot days a lot easier!

If you have links to other sites that have recipes and ideas for prepping crockpot meals ahead of time, please share them in the comments. 

Category: food, health  15 Comments
22
Jan 2012

More Improvised Exercise Equipment

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Remember when I told you about the walker I started using as a dip station for my Bodyrock workouts?  Well, I have another inexpensive, DIY piece of workout equipment to share with you.

They use sandbags as weights on Bodyrock all the time.  The one they use sells for about $100.  Of course there was no way I was going to spend that sort of money on one.  So I’ve been using the dumbbells that we’ve had for years, and they work ok most of the time.  But heavy metal dumbbells aren’t the most comfortable thing to have stuck behind your neck while doing lunges and squats.  They’re meant to be held in one hand, so it’s a bit awkward and uncomfortable to hold them by the ends.  I use a 30 lb dumbbell for squats, and I have to wrap a sweatshirt around my shoulders to keep the weight from digging into my neck.  Not to mention the fact that it’s hard to get a good grip on a dumbbell if you’re holding it with two hands – and I don’t like the idea of possibly dropping a 30 lb weight on my head or toes.

So I thought about that sandbag some more.  And then I made one.

I went to Goodwill and found a sturdy duffle bag that has handles on the top and both sides.  It was $4.

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Next, I raided my fabric stash and found an old flannel sheet.  I cut five rectangles of flannel to make into bags, and I sewed around the edges twice to make them nice and strong.  I also had a couple of fabric bags that had once contained soap nuts – perfect, since all I had to do with those two was sew them shut once they were filled.

We have a pea-gravel driveway in our side yard, and I used our postage scale to weigh some gravel.  6.25 cups of gravel weighed five pounds.  So after I had seven open-top fabric bags, I filled each one with 6.25 cups of pea gravel.  Then I sewed the tops shut.  Easiest sewing project ever.  I triple stitched the tops closed, folding over the hemmed edges before sewing over them to contain loose ends.

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I put a sandbag (gravel bag?) in the zippered compartment on each end of the duffle bag to help keep them from all clumping together in the middle.  Then the other five go in the main compartment.  That gives me a 35 pound sandbag, and I can reduce the weight in five pound increments as needed.

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I used it yesterday for my workout, and it’s so much better than the dumbbells.  I was able to hold it behind my neck without it digging in, and it was easy to keep a good grip on the handles.  I love it!  The whole thing cost me $4, since the gravel and fabric for the bags were stuff I already had.  Even if you had to purchase the fabric and gravel, it wouldn’t be expensive.  The Goodwill store near here has 99 cent jeans days when all the jeans in the store are on sale for 99 cents.  You could buy a pair of jeans and chop the legs into sections to use as sandbags – all you’d have to do is sew the top and bottom shut.  And it doesn’t have to be pretty – you don’t even have to turn over the rough hems if you don’t want to.  Pea gravel and sand are both pretty inexpensive too.

This whole project took me about an hour, although that was with two kids “helping” me.  I’m guessing it would take less than 45 minutes if you were uninterrupted.

Hooray!  I now have a dip station and a sandbag!  They aren’t as pretty as the fancy ones, but they’re functional and that’s really all that matters – especially when they cost a fraction of what the fancy ones do.

EDIT:  For any of you who are also fans of Bodyrock – Zuzana has her own YouTube channel now, and is posting new workouts: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZuzkaLight?feature=watch  You can also follow her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ZuzkaLight  I think she’s great, but I’m also happy with the new team at Bodyrock.tv.  So I’ll be mixing it up with workouts from both of them.

Category: health, just my life, the simple life  3 Comments
18
Jan 2012

Too Much Inspiration

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EDIT – just discovered the fitness and food sections on Pinterest.  I might have to up my time limit from five minutes to fifteen.

I have been purposely avoiding Pinterest for quite some time.  From what I had heard, I knew that it could be the sort of site that could suck me in and turn into a major time waster, so I just avoiding going there in the first place.  I don’t remember what convinced me to finally go check it out a few weeks ago, but I did.  And sure enough, half an hour later I was still browsing around.  Damn you, Pinterest.

I loved looking at wide-open, clutter-free rooms and clean kitchen counters.  I got some good ideas for food storage, toy storage and garage organization.  And seeing all of those neat spaces inspired me to get up and clean my own kitchen.  So I did.  After half an hour on Pinterest, I spent the next half hour making my kitchen sparkle and (sort of) look like the immaculate, minimalist kitchens that I had been eyeballing online.

But the next time I went to Pinterest, I found myself looking at all sorts of other stuff – crafty things like altered t-shirt dresses and refinished furniture and handmade birthday wall hangings.  They all looked cute and crafty, but – yikes!  I was over-inspired.  If that’s not already a word, I’m coining it now.  Inspiration is a great thing – if we put it to use and it makes our life (or someone else’s) better.  But over-inspiration seems like it could just lead to… nothing at all except more browsing around online once our crafty DIY to-do list gets too long and becomes paralyzing.

Simplicity is awesome.  But sometimes we tackle a DIY project in the name of simplicity and it ends up being way more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive (and maybe not as enjoyable) as we had planned.  If it’s something you truly love doing, then by all means – do it.  But if you’re forcing yourself to do crafty things because you think you should or because your friends are doing it, or because (fill in the blank)… you might want to ask whether you’d be better off without it in the first place, or looking on Craigslist or at a thrift store to see if you can find a used version of whatever it is.  If you love quilting, make a quilt.  If you just think you want to love quilting but actually hate it, go buy a quilt at a garage sale – if you actually need a quilt (that post is worth reading no matter what you think about quilts – and it’s funny!).  Otherwise, carry on without a quilt.

I’ve been back to Pinterest a few times since then.  I set a five minute time limit for myself, which keeps me from browsing around for ages (Why is it that time goes by so fast when we’re online?  Why does it not go by that fast when we’re stuck in traffic?  Questions to ponder…).  And I focus on areas that can help me organize and simplify the life I already have/want.  For example, I’m looking for good ways to organize toys in our playroom.  We don’t have any furniture or shelving in there, so everything is on the floor.  There has to be a better way.  And of course, knowing me, it will have to be something I can buy used that won’t cost a lot of money.

But the problem with browsing around and looking at toy storage ideas is that it can easily lead to browsing around and looking at all sorts of other home improvements.  Which can lead to jealousy or a desire to upgrade things that really don’t need to be upgraded.  As an example – my kitchen is fine.  It’s clean and orderly (and no longer contains a yeast packet that expired 8 years ago).  My counters are clear (well, most of the time anyway) and I have ample space to work.  My counters are laminate and my cabinets are plain light-colored wood.  My stove has metal coil burners, and while I prefered the glass-top stove that we put in our old house, the one I have now works just fine.  Nothing in my kitchen is fancy, but I’m able to cook all sorts of awesome food there, and everything works just the way it should.  I could spend a ton of money making my kitchen look like something from a magazine.  Or I could spend a ton of hours replacing the fronts of my cabinet doors with old barn wood and painting our dining room table to give it a crafty “distressed” look.  But I’m not going to.  Because I would rather spend that money and time doing something else.

So while I think it’s awesome to see all the crafty, amazing things people have done on sites like Pinterest and BetterAfter, I think it’s just as important to remind ourselves to be grateful for what we have and to allow ourselves to stop improving when everything is fine the way it is.  So instead of browsing Craigslist to find a dresser that I can turn into a craft storage area, I’ll read this post and remind myself that my house feels much better with less furniture in it – even if it’s impossibly cute, crafty furniture.  And I’ll keep getting rid of clutter instead of trying to organize it. And I’ll find some second-hand shelves that will work just fine to store toys in the playroom.  They probably won’t be amazing or worthy of being featured on a home-improvement website, but they will get the toys up off the floor, and that’s really all that I’m looking for.

I know a lot of my readers are big DIYers and into crafty stuff.  So tell me.  Do sites like Pinterest inspire you?  Or do they just make you look around at your own stuff and feel like you need to change/upgrade everything in sight?

As an aside, I found this cookie recipe yesterday on Pinterest.  They are amazing.  They took five minutes.  And our son loved squishing them with a fork to make the lines on them.  I subbed walnuts instead of peanuts and used sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter, because that’s what we had on hand.  They turned out fantastic.

Category: home improvement, just my life, minimalism, other bloggers  27 Comments
16
Jan 2012

Give New Life To Empty Glass Jars

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Several years ago, I got rid of nearly all of my plastic food storage containers.  I have several pyrex dishes with lids and lidded casserole dishes that I use to store large quantities of leftovers.  But most of the time, I use empty glass jars. 

My freezer is full of repurposed glass jars holding things like flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp protein.  I order stuff like that online in bulk and it comes in big plastic bags that can be a bit unwieldy.  So when it arrives, I dump the bags into several jars and stash them in the freezer.  Much easier to dump chia seeds out of a one-quart jar than a five pound bag. 

My fridge is also full of glass jars.  I buy nuts and seeds from the bulk section of our grocery store, and store them in the fridge in glass jars.  When I make salad dressings and smoothies and soups, they get stored in glass jars (if they make it as far as the leftover stage!).

I use empty glass jars to store stuff in my pantry too. 

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Remove the labels, wash out the jars, and glue on new labels.  Easy and free and much better for keeping track of everything than it would be if I kept them in the bulk bags from the store. 

Jars are also a great way to shake up protein supplements or any other powdered drinks.  I mix things like powdered greens, probiotics, spirulina, protein, etc. with water every day.  I use my blender for smoothies, but when the ingredients are powdered, shaking everything together in a jar is a quick and easy solution.  Much faster and more effective than stirring them in a glass with a fork (always ends up chunky.  Spirulina chunks?  Yuck.) and less expensive than one of those purpose-made “shaker jars” that some of the protein powder companies sell.

Another way I love to use empty glass jars is for giving edible gifts.  I enjoy cooking and baking, and food is always a welcome gift.  I don’t ever want to give people food in containers that they feel they need to return.  And I don’t like the idea of buying disposable food storage containers just for the purpose of giving food to someone – seems like a waste of money and resources.  So instead, I save the nicest of my empty glass jars for this purpose.  Large, wide mouth jars make great containers for soup.  Smaller jars – especially if they have interesting shapes – look great filled with bite size cookies (or dough balls!) or spiced nuts.  Fill jars with layered ingredients for “soup in a jar” or “cookies in a jar”.  Use your imagination!  spruce them up with some pretty fabric glued to the lid.  Tie a ribbon around the top with the recipe attached.

One caveat.  Please don’t use this as an excuse to have 100 empty jars cluttering up your shelves!  I have a lot of jars in use in my pantry, freezer and fridge.  But that means I don’t really need any more.  I save the nicest ones these days to use for food gifts, but I make liberal use of the recycling bin for most jars we get these days.  Save the jars you can use right now or in the immediate future.  Recycle the rest.  And enjoy your recycled, frugal, plastic-free food storage!

I know you guys have plenty of other ideas for repurposing glass jars around the house.  Please share!

Category: clutter, just my life, organic living  18 Comments
10
Jan 2012

Saying No – So That You Can Say Yes To What Matters

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I’m a people pleaser.  Always have been, probably always will be.  I want to make people around me happy, and that means that saying no is not my strong suit.  If people ask me to do something or go somewhere or help them with something, I usually say yes.  That’s fine most of the time, but sometimes I’d prefer to say no.  And that’s harder than it sounds.

My husband is very good at saying no, and very good at putting his family first above all else.  If something is going to interfere with his time with us, he says no, and it doesn’t bother him at all.  But for me, I find myself saying yes more often than I’d like, in order to avoid the guilt that sometimes goes along with saying no.

I’ve always been able to say no to things like girl scout cookies and the guy who comes to the door selling magazines to pay for his spring break trip to Mazatlan.  But it’s much harder when it’s someone I know.

I’ve been getting some practice with saying no lately, and although it’s still not easy, it feels much better afterwards, knowing that I’ve stayed true to myself and the people who matter most to me.

One of our neighbors brought over some cookies at Christmas with a note saying that she was starting a monthly ladies card game night at her house, and was inviting all the ladies in the neighborhood.  Her husband passed away last year, and I can definitely understand where she’s coming from.  But I’m in a very different situation.  My husband and I both work (from home, but we’re still working), and we have two little boys.  We’re also in the middle of finishing our basement and the yard is an ongoing project.  When I have free time, I want to spend it with my husband and our boys, or with our extended family and a few close friends.  I don’t want to make new friends right now.  That might sound selfish or odd, but I just don’t have space in my life to add anyone else right now.  Give me a few years, and things will likely be different.  The boys will be in school, our basement will be finished – by then, I might have room for new friendships.  But for now, nurturing the relationships I already have is my priority.

Anyway, I opted to not attend the first get-together, and figured that was the end of it.  Then a couple weeks ago, the lady who was organizing the whole thing stopped by our house to ask me again if I wanted to join.  I politely told her that we were just too busy with the boys and the basement, and thanked her for inviting me.

A few days later, another lady stopped by with her pre-teen daughter and said that the first lady had mentioned that we’re too busy with the boys and she was offering her daughter as a babysitter so that I would be able to attend the card nights.  Again, I politely said thanks, but no thanks.

Then yesterday, another lady from down the street contacted me to see if I was aware of the ladies night plans and would I like to come along?  My husband said I must be the coolest lady on the block, since everyone is trying to talk me into joining the card game.  He’s sweet.

Anyway, I told the third lady that I’m just not taking on any more commitments right now, and thanked her for contacting me.

In all three cases, I used strategies that my husband and I learned a long time ago when we read The Power of a Positive No – definitely a good book if you have a hard time saying no.  Add it to your library list!

And in all three cases, even though it was a bit uncomfortable for me to say no at the time, I felt good about myself afterwards.  If I had said yes in order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling, I would have been bummed afterwards, thinking “what did I get myself into?!”  I respected myself and my own desires and my commitment to my family and friends.  I avoided spreading myself too thin.  Even though the card game night would only be once a month, it’s easy for once a month things to spawn other commitments too – especially when lots of people are involved.  One of the ladies sells candles at house parties, which means that there would likely have been more uncomfortable moments of feeling obligated to do or buy something in the future if I had become part of that group.  Which would have been a bummer, especially since it’s not really a group that I want to be part of in the first place.

Anyway, I’m feeling good about saying no.  For some of you, this might be second nature.  But I know that there are plenty of you out there who have the same struggles I do when it comes to saying no.  It’s definitely a skill worth building though.  Remind yourself to be true to what really matters rather than what’s right in front of you at the moment.  Make a list of what’s important to you and tape it to your bathroom mirror as a daily reminder.  And then focus on those things.  Don’t sacrifice them in order to please other people or avoid temporary discomfort.

Leo Babauta wrote a post recently about making room for a new year, and the second item on his list involves clearing his schedule as much as possible, which he noted often means saying no to people.  His list is great, and I would add to it a reminder that January 1 is a very arbitrary day to make changes in your life.  You can make changes any day – any hour of any day, really.  And an uncluttered schedule is a beautiful thing.

Before I go, I want to share this DIY post with you.  Three pieces of homemade furniture from one piece of plywood.  Pretty awesome.

 

 

Category: family, goals, just my life  8 Comments
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