We bought a new – to us – car.  Actually, we bought it a year ago, but we now have the title in hand, so it’s truly ours now.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I was a fan of my Honda Civic.  But at 20 years old and with 225,000 miles on it, and with our second baby on the way, we had decided it might be time to replace it.  So last year, just before our second son was born, we bought a 2009 Mazda5.  We had been shopping on Craigslist for about six months prior to making the purchase.  We had our “car account” at ING that we had been funding for over a year, and we had about $5000 in it at the time that we decided to replace our car.  We had additional savings that were not earmarked for a car, and we debated whether or not to dig into that account to pay for a new vehicle.

I wrote out a pros and cons sheet.  I like doing things like that.

I talked to our credit union to find out what sort of interest rate we’d get on a loan.  Then I calculated the total interest we’d pay over the life of the loan, and the total interest we’d pay if we paid off the loan in one year instead of three.  (I just used a mortgage calculator that lets you see how extra payments impact the life of the loan).

We had initially been looking at vehicles that cost $5000 or less, in order to just use the money in our car fund and be done with it.  But the more we talked about it, the more we decided maybe we wanted something a bit newer that was still under warranty.  We wanted something with room for our kids and dog and whatever gear we needed to haul, but we also wanted something that was good on gas.  The Mazda5 jumped out at us as the perfect compromise between a car and a minivan.  Sliding doors (awesome), seating for six, and lots of cargo space in the back if you’re only using the middle row of seats.  Plus, I’ve averaged over 30 mpg (city/highway combined) every single time I’ve filled the tank in the year that we’ve had the car (I focus on gas mileage when I drive, so my numbers are always better than what a car is rated for.  I go about 68 on the interstate, and in town I avoid hard braking and try to plan ahead to allow myself to coast up to lights as much as possible, etc. )

Anyway, we paid $14,000 for our car.  It was two years old and had about 40,000 miles on it.  It’s under warranty until 60,000 miles.  We’ve put 7,000 miles on it in the past 14 months, so we should have another two years of warranty coverage at this rate (That’s all of our driving – we still have my husband’s 22-year-old car, but we’ve probably put less than 200 miles on it in the past year.  We could get rid of it, but it’s a cheap backup vehicle that costs very little to register and insure).

So back to paying for the car.  After much research and discussion, we decided to finance $10,000 of the purchase price.  We took $4000 from our car account for a down payment.  We saved the other thousand in that account to use for registration, insurance – which we upgraded to full coverage for the first time ever – and to have just in case other miscellaneous expenses came up.  Then we financed the other $10,000 through our credit union at 4.5% interest (better than the dealership could offer us on a used vehicle).

Our plan was to pay off the loan in 12 months.  It ended up taking us 14 months, although the last couple payments were quite small, and the interest charge the final month was about two dollars.  Over the course of the loan, we paid $227 in interest.  Back when we were considering financing the vehicle, I had calculated roughly $215 in interest charges if we paid off the loan in a year, so it came pretty close to our expectations.

Once we had decided that we wanted to buy a newer vehicle that cost more than what we had in our car account, we figured we had three options.  One was to keep funding the car account and wait until we had the money to pay the whole price outright.  Two was to raid our other savings account and pay for the car outright, which would have cleaned out most of the account.  It’s much more robust these days since we’ve changed our mortgage payoff strategy, but that wasn’t the case a year ago.  The third option was to finance part of the purchase and pay off the loan as quickly as possible.  Once we calculated that it would cost us just north of $200 to finance the money for a year, we decided that was worth it to us.  It allowed us to have a newer, more reliable, safer vehicle before our baby arrived, and the additional interest wasn’t a budget-busting amount.

Once the loan balance got down to the last couple thousand dollars, the total monthly interest charges were very low.  So the last few months, we prioritized our municipal bond fund over the car loan – which is why it took a couple extra months to pay off the balance.  But it’s paid off now, and we have the title in hand.  That feels good.  And the $227?  Totally worth it.  I gotta say, after eight years of driving my old Honda, the Mazda might as well be a Mercedes as far as I’m concerned.  I know that it’s safer for our family, and I like that too.  We’re able to fit two additional people in our car now too, which has been nice when we’ve had out-of-town visitors (like my in-laws) who arrived by plane.  And all winter long, every time I went to town for groceries, I brought home 15 2x4s in our Mazda.  They fit just perfectly down the middle between the seats.  I probably brought home 200 2x4s that way, and my husband was able to finish framing our basement a few months ago.  The car has been a good little work-horse.

Anyway, now we’re back to having only a mortgage on the debt side of the account balance.  I definitely like it better that way.  But I’m glad we got our car when we did, and I consider the interest payments well worth the benefit we’ve had from having the car over the past year.  I had always been opposed to the idea of financing any depreciating asset, but when I wrote out my pros/cons sheet on this one, I was convinced that this was the way to go.  Of course a big part of the strategy was to pay off the loan as quickly as possible, especially in the early months when the outstanding balance was highest (the first month, our interest payment was around $35).

We plan to keep this car for a very long time.  Given the fact that we had our 20-year-old Honda until it hit 225,000 miles, and how little we drive, I’d say we’ll still have the Mazda when our boys get to high school.  The Honda had 182,000 miles on it when we bought it, and we kept it for eight years.  Given that our Mazda was practically brand new (40,000 miles – I had never had a car with only five digits on the odometer!), I think it will serve us well for many years.

Have you ever financed a car?  Would you in the future?  If you had asked me that two years ago, I’d have said no on both counts.  But this ended up working out very well for us.  I doubt we’ll ever finance another car, given that we’re still contributing automatically to our car savings account and  are probably many years out from needing to buy a car again.  But this experience did make me consider loans in a slightly different light.  Rather than my usual “all debt is bad and I’m allergic to interest payments” attitude, our car-buying process made me think of the interest payments as the price we paid for having our car a year earlier than we would have if we had waited until we could pay for it outright.  To us, it was worth it.

A few days ago, I got an email from a reader named Katie who had this to say:

I was wondering if you would be interested in a post for us with kids or soon to be kids as in my case.  I am currently 32 weeks pregnant and agree with a lot of things you do/believe when it comes to child rearing.  I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about life in a couple of months and would love to hear more of your thoughts on things.  Maybe  a post about “What I wish I could have told myself when I was pregnant” from what you have learned now or even a summary of what you did that worked well or wouldn’t do again.  I hope that makes sense.  I fight a lot of the consumerism that is thrown at you, but still  feel like I am getting too much of what I don’t need and maybe not enough of what I do need. 

Also, what did you do for toys for your boys their first year?  I firmly believe in no noise making, lights flashing toys as they just over stimulate. I am going to load up on books and other simple toys.

Thanks in advance! I don’t always do the things you do, but really appreciate your ideas and putting yourself out there.  As I have simplified my life, it has been really wonderful reading about what others do for ideas and overall support!

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.

I got the following email from Connie in response to my post asking you what you wanted me to write about:

It feels like many of the decisions you have made came about as a result of both your values and preparing yourselves and your home for children. How might your decisions have changed if you hadn’t been planning to have children? I find that some priorities, like eating good quality foods and staying healthy are easy for me to implement now, but others are more difficult, in part because I am not planning to have children. I don’t have as much of a reason to settle down in one place, grow a garden, etc. I definitely want to do those things, but they get pushed to the backburner so much more easily when there are new adventures in new places to be had. I am preparing to move to CA, and there have been several discussions about whether to rent, buy, or buy a larger plot (terribly expensive) to accomplish some of those personal goals.

My instinctive reaction is to say that everything in our life would be different if we didn’t have children, since they’re such a huge part of our life.  But when I thought about it a bit more, I realized that isn’t the case at all.  It is difficult to imagine my life without children, but I can remember our life before our children arrived, and we have kept much of it the same.

My husband and I moved into our first apartment together nearly seven years before our first child was born.  We knew that we wanted children eventually, but we had a lot of stuff we wanted to do first.  We traveled at least once a year to relatively far-flung places.  We bought a house.  We started a business that would allow us to work from home.  Having our own business and working from home has been hugely beneficial in terms of parenting, but it’s something that we would have done regardless of our plans to have children.  It allows us a lot of flexibility and freedom, and we took advantage of that for several years before we had children.

Our current house with its huge backyard is excellent for children (what kid wouldn’t love a half acre to run around in?), but we were attracted to the backyard primarily for gardening purposes rather than as a play area for our children.  My husband and I are both devoted to healthy eating, and we both love growing our own food.  Although it’s hard to imagine my life without children now that I have them, I think that my husband and I would have been drawn towards a home with a sizable yard even if we hadn’t had children (or planned to have them).  We might have looked for a smaller house if it had been just the two of us, but I think that we would have ended up buying (rather than renting) and seeking out a place with a big yard where we could have our fruit trees and garden beds.  In addition, we both love dogs and will probably always have one.  Having a house with a yard is a big plus for the dog too – it’s a place where she can run around sans leash and chase a frisbee to her heart’s content.

Although our life does revolve around our children much of the time now (it sort of has to, given that they’re still so little), we’ve managed to fit our children into the lifestyle that we already enjoyed before they were born.  We don’t like rigid schedules (so we’ve avoided many of the over-scheduling problems that plague many parents of little children), we like being outdoors, we like being at home, we love gardening, we like finding free entertainment and enjoying the little things in life… those are all things that we have kept the same.

There’s no one-size-fits-all path in life.  Whether you’re planning to have children or not, you should seek out a path that makes you happy.  If that’s renting apartments for short stints so that you can travel the world, so be it.  If it’s settling down in a fixer-upper house with a yard and a garden and projects to last the next 30 years, so be it.  Or anywhere in between.  If you are planning to have children, you can focus on following your own desires and wishes and avoiding the “you should be doing xyz” traps that are perpetuated by advertising designed to separate your from your money.  You can raise happy, well-adjusted children in all sorts of unconventional settings, and you don’t need a ton of money, stuff, or a white picket fence to do so.  If you’re planning to not have children, you do have some more flexibility in terms of doing whatever you want, since nobody will be depending on you for food, shelter, and years of guidance.  Either way, focusing on your own goals will work much better than trying to keep up with what everybody else is doing, or what advertising tells you that you should be doing.

Connie, thanks for the question, and best of luck with your move to California!

We’ve all heard how expensive children are.  And there are definitely some expenses that are tough to avoid.  We’re paying about $270/month for health insurance for our two boys, and there’s not really a way around that expense (we have a high deductible health insurance policy already, so that cost is on the low end of the scale).  We’re also putting $100/month into each of their college accounts.  Technically that money is still ours, and growing.  College accounts are not a necessity, but they’re something that we feel will be a worthwhile investment years in the future.

Other than health insurance and the college accounts, we have very little in the way of expenses for our boys.  We’re only three years into the whole parenting adventure, but we’ve managed to avoid a lot of the expenses that tend to go along with having very young children.  I still shop exclusively at Goodwill for our older son’s clothes, and our younger son is just wearing hand-me-downs.  We wanted to give our son a bike for his third birthday, and we found one on Craigslist for $20.  It needed a bit of work, and my husband spent a couple hours fixing it up before we gave it to our son.  But for $20, we ended up with a perfect birthday present that our son loves.

Our son adores trips to the library and the local parks.  He likes going for bike rides and feeding ducks.  He spends his days playing in the backyard, “cooking” in the living room with all of my pots and pans and utensils, drawing, and “crafting” with stuff like pipe cleaners and return address stickers that come in the mail.  It’s rare for us to spend money on stuff to entertain him (although we did spend $75 on a used train table earlier this year, and he’s had lots of hours of fun with it).  He mostly uses his very active imagination and the wealth of stuff that he finds in the house and out in the yard.  His clothing costs us next to nothing.  We did spend quite a bit of money on his mattress, but that’s something he’ll use for a long time, and we felt that it was worth the cost.

We don’t make trips to Target or Babies R Us.  We use cloth diapers exclusively, and have never purchased formula or baby food (our son eats what we eat, and has from the time he started eating solid foods, thanks to an inexpensive baby food grinder).  We try to keep clutter to a minimum, and that includes “kid clutter”.  We’ve found that we just don’t need most of the stuff that is marketed to new parents.  We kept all of the stuff we did use with our first son when he was smaller, and that means we literally need nothing at all for our second son.  I’ll probably look for a double jogging stroller sometime this summer once our baby is old enough to sit in one, but they are pretty easy to find on Craigslist.  Other than that, I can’t think of anything we need for our baby that we don’t already have.  I know that hand-me-downs won’t work forever, since we’re starting to get into the stage where our older son will be wearing out his clothes before he grows out of them.  But we have “free” clothes for our baby for at least the first three years.

One huge bonus that we have is that we don’t pay for child care.  We’re lucky, but we also put a lot of effort into establishing a home-based business several years before we had children.  My husband works full time at our business, and I work very part-time (about two hours a day right now) so that I can mostly be a stay at home mom to our boys.  Child-care is definitely a huge expense if you have to have it, but I know a lot of families have found that with a little creativity they can either switch to living on one income or two part-time incomes, or rearrange work schedules so that both parents can take turns being at home with the children.

Even though we’ve kept our child-related expenses to a minimum, just the health insurance and college accounts comes to nearly $500/month.  But there’s a flip side to the expenses that come with having children.  There are a lot of things that we aren’t spending money on anymore, that we probably would be if we didn’t have children.   Before we had kids, we usually took at least one vacation a year, usually to a relatively far-away destination.  We had more shopping trips, and weekend get-aways to little resort towns.  We went out to eat and to the movies…  These days, we much prefer to take our sons to the park or to the library.  Our younger son doesn’t care where he is as long as he can nurse whenever he likes and get snuggled most of the day.  Our older son is just as happy at a lake with a pail and a shovel as he would be at a beach on a tropical island.  We tend to focus our entertainment activities around things that are fun for a three-year old, and we’ve found that most of those things are free or very low cost.  We spent Mother’s Day at a huge park about ten miles from our house.  Our son’s best friend was there too, and the kids had a blast feeding ducks, riding their bikes, and playing on the playground.  Total cost:  $3 for the bread we got for the ducks.

So although we’ve found that there are definitely unavoidable expenses that go along with having kids, we’ve also found lots of areas where our expenses have dropped in the last few years, specifically because we have children.  I know that this won’t always be the case.  Ten years from now, I know I’ll be making a whole lot more food than I am now (leftovers might be a thing of the past!) and we’ll have more expenses for our boys as they approach young adulthood than we do now when they are little.  But I think that we’ll be able to stay pretty frugal with two kids as the years go by.  What do you think?  If you have kids, do you think you’re spending more or less overall than you were before you had kids?

Thanks for all the congratulations and well-wishes on the birth of our second little guy!  We’re doing great.  We’re settling into life with two boys, and so far, it’s awesome.  As far as frugality goes, we’re keeping on with our usual path.  One nice thing about having two boys is that we have boat loads of hand-me-downs from our older son that will be perfect for our new little guy.  I had planned to re-use a lot of the clothes even if we had a girl, but now we can re-use everything.  Several people have asked us what we need for the baby, and I honestly can’t think of anything at all.  The stuff that we used with our son went into the basement when he outgrew it, and we also learned with him that we didn’t need nearly as much stuff as the baby stores would like us to believe.

Our son is 11 days old now, and I noticed today that our credit card statement shows almost no activity at all over the last 11 days.  Having a newborn is a nice excuse to stay home, cuddle with your babies, and not go anywhere.  Which means no spending money, and that’s a nice bonus.

Last year, one of my friends decided to try cloth diapers, and bought a gently used set of all-in-one cloth diapers that she found on Craigslist.  She tried them for a few days, but decided she preferred disposables after all.  Then, being the awesome friend she is, she gave me the whole bag when I got pregnant!  We bought one package of disposables to use for the first few days after our son was born.  We wanted to keep things as simple and easy as we could at first, and delaying washing diapers for a few days made sense.  But by the time we used up the disposables, I was itching to get back to cloth.  We noticed that the disposables leaked a lot, which doesn’t happen with our cloth diapers.  And I hated seeing the garbage can fill up with diapers.  So now we’re back in the world of diaper washing, and we’re loving the all-in-one diapers.  They grow with the baby, so they should work for a good long while.

I just bagged up all my maternity clothes to give to my friend who gave us the diapers, since she’s hoping to have another child eventually.  I swapped them for all of the regular clothes that I hadn’t worn since last summer, and it felt like I was getting all new stuff – no shopping needed

It is nice to start out this time with some of the baby stuff that we didn’t get until our first son was older.  The Moby Wrap has already come in very handy, as has the ring sling that my mother and I made a few years ago.  Carrying our first son in a sling worked great, and I did  it until he was nearly two.  So this time around, I started right from the start, and our baby seems to like it as much as his big brother did.

I hope you’re all having a good week.  And while we’re on the topic of babies, let’s all send lots of good birthing vibes to Gina – aka the feminist Breeder – who is anxiously awaiting the birth of her baby girl.

Our second son arrived on Friday, and we’ve been enjoying a blissful few days of getting to know him. His birth was dramatically easier and faster than our first son’s, and I’m feeling great. We had another homebirth, and this time the baby arrived 20 minutes after the midwife did – there was barely time for her to set up her supplies. Our almost-three-year-old is thrilled to be a big brother, and my husband and I are equally thrilled to be parents to such great little guys.

When our son was born, we bought an organic crib mattress for him.  He slept in our bed for a few months, and still comes in from time to time to sleep with us during the night, but most of the time he sleeps on his crib mattress.  Last year, we got a wooden toddler bed and moved the mattress into that, which had been working perfectly.  But with another baby on the way, we knew we needed either another crib mattress for the baby, or a twin mattress for our son so that we could take his little mattress and put it back in the crib for the baby.

My first thought was to just get another crib mattress.  The organic ones are available for a couple hundred dollars, and we’ve been very happy with the one we have.  But I knew that would be a relatively short-term solution.  Our son is going to outgrow the toddler bed and the extreme firmness of a crib mattress before we know it.  So although they are a lot more expensive, I started looking at organic twin mattresses. 

Given that a standard twin mattress can be bought for a couple hundred dollars, the price tags on the organic mattresses were a bit hard to swallow.  But I reminded myself that we’re frugal for a reason.  It’s not so that we can hoard money and just save it aimlessly.  Instead, we want to make sure that we use our money mindfully, on things that really matter to us.  There’s a lot of controversy about mattresses and the chemicals that are in them.  I don’t claim to know everything about the issue, but my gut instinct is to err on the side of caution when it comes to exposure to synthetic chemicals.  That’s why the only cleaning products that make their way into our home are baking soda, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, soap nuts, and Dr. Bronner’s soap.  It’s why we don’t use any synthetic chemicals on our lawn or garden.  It’s why we buy organic food. 

In general, I try to balance my desire for a toxin-free home with both our budget and with our efforts to be as environmentally-friendly as possible.  That means that we’re not going to replace stuff we have that is still in good shape (like our living room furniture, for example), just to get toxin-free versions.  But when we need to replace something or get something new, we try to choose the most environmentally-friendly and toxin-free version we can afford.

And that brings us back to searching for a mattress.  We wanted to get something that would last our son for a long time.  We looked at mattresses at a local organic bedding store, and of course the solid latex ones were divine.  They were also $1500 for a twin size.  We decided to go with an innerspring instead, and add a latex topper to it in a few years when our son is heavier and needs a softer bed.  The Green Baby Guide has addressed the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of choices available for reasonably-priced twin mattresses, and I agree.  I looked at both of the ones they mentioned, but didn’t buy either one.  The $600 Naturepedic is waterproof and from what I read, it’s just about as firm as the hard-as-a-rock crib mattress our son already has.  I know that’s perfect for babies and small children, but not as likely to be a good long-term solution.  While I liked the price tag on the $400 Natura Kidz mattress, it looks like soy-based polyfoam isn’t really that much of an improvement over regular polyurethane foam, and to get a truly “organic” mattress from natura Kidz bumps the price tag up to $1100.

I liked what I read about Naturepedic mattresses and their non-toxic fire protection system (another alternative to toxic fire retardants is wool, which is naturally fire resistant, but adds a lot more to the cost of the mattress).  Eventually I settled on their quilted organic cotton deluxe mattress for $700.  I felt that would give us a mattress that could be used long-term (with the addition of a latex topper as our son gets older) and was a good compromise in terms of price.  I ordered it from The Clean Bedroom because they offer a ten percent discount if you become a fan on Facebook.  That allowed me to get an organic waterproof mattress pad ($79) essentially for free.  There was also no tax and no shipping charge.

Since we were spending so much money on the mattress, I wanted to find a good deal on a bed frame.  We wanted a bed with a solid support under the mattress (so that we wouldn’t need a box spring) and we were looking for something with drawers so that we could move our son’s dresser into the baby’s room.  I also wanted something made of solid wood instead of particle board and veneer.  Happily, Craigslist rarely lets me down.  After a few weeks of searching the listings, I came across a bed that was exactly what we wanted.  Solid wood, drawers underneath, a solid platform for the mattress, and in excellent condition.  We got it for $160.  It looks a little odd right now, because we have the crib mattress on it while we wait for the new mattress to be delivered:

We moved our son’s dresser into the baby’s room, and all of his clothes are now under his bed.  In addition, the big middle drawer holds all of his stuffed animals, so they aren’t crowded all over the bed anymore.

All in all, I’d say we did pretty well.  We ended up with a solid wood bed/dresser, an organic mattress that should last a long time, and an organic waterproof mattress pad, for a total of $860.  The mattress should be arriving any day now, and our son is very excited about his big boy bed.  The price was more than we usually spend on stuff like this, but in the nearly three years since our son was born, we’ve spent very little money on supplies for him.  And I feel good knowing that he’ll continue to sleep on a toxin-free mattress. 

The only thing that bothers me about this whole process is how unaffordable non-toxic mattresses are for a lot of people.  We’re thrifty and careful with our money, which helps us budget for larger purchases.  But we’re also fortunate to earn a good income and be able to afford something like this if we want.  For many families, a $700 mattress for a child is out of the question, no matter how carefully they budget.  It shouldn’t be that difficult to get non-toxic products.  I do feel like the tide is turning a bit in terms of people understanding that “better living through chemistry” might not be better after all.  Hopefully as time goes by, non-toxic products will start to be the norm rather than the expensive exception to the rule.

We’ve been in our home for more than a year and a half now, and have finally decided to tackle the basement.  We kept going back and forth on whether we wanted to put money into the basement now, or wait until we have the mortgage paid off.  Eventually we decided that it would be nice to have the finished space downstairs, even if it means our extra mortgage payments will be reduced for a while.  We’re still making extra mortgage payments, and at our current pace should have the house paid off in 2016.  Once we finish the basement, we should be able to bump up those payments again and hopefully pay off the mortgage in 2015 instead.

Three years ago, when we remodeled the kitchen in our old house, we opened a Home Depot credit card.  We used it to buy supplies for that project, and paid everything off within the no-interest time frame.  Since then, we haven’t used the card, and although we had kept the account open, we had long ago cut up the card.  But we noticed last week when we went to start looking at basement supplies that Home Depot was running another 12 month no interest program on their credit card.  Although we could have taken money out of savings to pay for everything up front, we decided we’d rather take 12 months to pay it off instead, and let our money continue to earn interest during that time instead.  We feel comfortable with no-interest financing deals as long as we do technically have the money on hand to pay off the entire balance  from the get-go.

In addition to all the supplies we were able to fit in our vehicle and trailer, we also ordered flooring for the entire basement, which we’ll be able to go back and pick up on the weekend.  We’re going with click-together laminate flooring again, as we really liked what we installed in our old house, and we’ve been very happy with the Pergo floor in our current dining/kitchen area.  We found a cherry laminate that we both really liked, and we’re really excited to transform our basement floors from concrete to something pretty.  Of course we’ve got a bit of work to do before we get to the floors…

Not only are we starting to work on the basement, we’re also installing a 10 x 12 outbuilding in the corner of our backyard, to give my husband another place to work, outside the house (away from the noise of our soon-to-be pair of children!).  We toyed with the idea of starting from scratch with it, but between running our business, me being seven months pregnant, taking care of a toddler, and beginning work on the basement, we decided to order a pre-fab shed and then just do the finish work ourselves.  We looked at a few places in town that would build us a shed, and found that our best deal was with Home Depot – a bonus, since we were able to put the cost on the HD credit card and can now spread that expense out over the whole year too.  The shed should be in place next Tuesday, and then we can paint it, put in insulation, drywall, interior paint, and the same flooring that we’re using for the basement.

So lots of projects going on around here right now!  When we renovated the kitchen in our old house, I was also seven months pregnant.  Maybe I’m just an extreme nester?  Stay tuned for updates… we’re planning a trip to the Habitat for Humanity Restore soon to look for doors, and we’ll see what other supplies we stumble upon while we’re there.

As promised, here’s another chance for you to win a great book about raising a baby without breaking the bank – or the environment.  Rebecca and Joy of Green Baby Guide are the authors of The Eco-Nomical Baby Guide, and they kindly sent me a copy.  I loved it, and knew that a lot of my readers would too.  So I’m passing my copy on to one lucky reader.  Since this is a paper copy rather than an e-book, I can only send it to a US address – sorry!  In order to enter to win the book, just leave a comment on this post, and I’ll be drawing a winner next Friday, November 5th.

The Eco-Nomical Baby Guide is a beautifully written, nicely packaged summary of most of the ways that my husband and I have been raising our son for the last two and a half years.  And how we’ll be raising our new little one.  Rebecca and Joy have a very similar approach to parenting and the environment as I do, and it’s great to see other parents raising their children without spending a ton of money or buying a bunch of chunks of plastic that will eventually sit in landfills for hundreds of years.

Although I was already doing a lot of the things that the book describes, I did make one big change after reading it.  Ever since our son was born, he’s been wearing home-made cloth diapers.  The diapers cost very little to make, and were extra eco-friendly as we used recycled fabric. We don’t own a dryer, so they have always been dried on the clothes line or an indoor rack.  But until I read The Eco-Nomical Baby Guide, I always washed them in hot water.  Since our son turned one, we have had a front loading washing machine, which uses a lot less water than our old machine.  But still, two or three times a week, I was using energy to heat the water to wash diapers.  I wash everything else in cold water, but for some reason I felt that I should be washing diapers in hot water.  And I always added an extra rinse cycle.  Our son is only in diapers at night now, and occasionally if we’re going to be out and about for a long time, so I’m only washing diapers about once a week now.  But the last two times I’ve washed them, I’ve used cold water, no extra rinse cycle, and I’ve added 1/4 cup of hydrogen peroxide to the wash.  The diapers are just as clean as ever, and the hydrogen peroxide is doing a better job of disinfecting the diapers than hot water ever was.  As Joy and Rebecca pointed out, hot water isn’t sanitizing diapers unless it’s boiling.  I wish I had thought of this two years ago, but better late than never.  Especially since our diaper washing days are going to start all over again in the spring…

The Eco-Nomical Baby Guide provides all sorts of great ideas for what baby gear really matters, how to find safe used items, and recommendations about eco-friendly supplies that might be best purchased new.  If you’re skipping most of the non-essential baby gear out there, you can better afford to buy the stuff that you really want for your child.  In addition, the book is packed with detailed info on cloth diapering (one of the best resources I’ve ever seen on the subject, actually), making your own baby food, green day care options, and ways you can put your craft skills to use and make things for your baby (as an fyi, I didn’t think I had any sewing skills what so ever, and yet our son has been wearing diapers I made for him ever since he was born – if I can do it, anyone can do it!).  Joy and Rebecca’s book would make a great read for anyone who has a baby or is planning to have one in the future.  It would also make a great gift for an expectant parent.  If you’d like to enter to win a copy, just leave a comment.  Good luck!