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18
Aug 2010

Cutting Expenses To Focus On What You Really Want

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I just came across the story of the house that two incomes built, and although it’s a couple years old, it’s still well worth sharing.  It continues with part 2, and the photographs are what make it particularly interesting, along with the description of the personal struggle involved with deciding whether to go back to work after the birth of a child.

Some parents would rather go back to work, and they feel more fulfilled with both a career and a child than they would staying home full time.  And the opposite side of that is the parents who know that they want to stay home and have planned for it long before their first child arrives.  In the middle are the parents who aren’t sure.  And the ones who would stay home with their kids if money were no object.

The money issue is tricky.  If you’re used to living on two incomes and have expanded your lifestyle to use up all or most of those two incomes, the option to have a parent stay home with a child will require more than just a letter of resignation.  It might mean getting rid of a car, cutting back on shopping trips and vacations, or even moving to a less expensive home.

I’m very fortunate to be in a situation where my husband and I both work from home.  We spent five years growing our business before we had our son, and purposely structured it so that we are both home most of the time.  The most important thing we’ve done though is to not inflate our lifestyle as our income grew over the years.  As a result, a good chunk of our income goes into savings and extra mortgage payments.  The future is never certain, but if our business were to stop making money, we could continue our current lifestyle on less than an average single income (obviously we wouldn’t be able to continue saving and paying off the mortgage at our current rate, but we’d be able to get by).  We could have bought a more expensive house or upgraded our cars, but that would have increased our monthly expenses and put us in a more precarious situation in terms of needing a higher income just to get by.

This isn’t about whether parents should stay home with their kids.  That’s a decision that has to be made by each family, and is a highly personal one.  But if you focus on keeping your expenses (especially for the biggies – housing and transportation) as low as possible, you give yourself more options than you have if you spend everything each month.

I wanted to share the story of the house that two incomes built because I find it inspiring to see people making drastic changes in their lives in order to focus on what they want most.  Obviously this sort of thing is not limited to staying home with children.  It could be about starting your own business or retiring early or setting out to travel the world.  What matters is that we actively choose our path and make decisions with our goals in mind, rather than falling victim to advertising and debt.

Would you move to a much less expensive home/area in order to be able to work part time, stay home with a child, focus on volunteering, travel, etc?

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Category: baby, Debt, family  17 Comments
13
Aug 2010

Cutting Back On Trips To Town

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Last night, I went grocery shopping for the first time in two weeks.  I love my new shopping schedule, and I also love the fact that my total bill for two weeks now is less than what it used to be for one week before our garden began producing so much of our food.   It took me a total of 20 minutes to get our groceries last night (plus driving time), and I won’t have to go back for another two weeks.  The grocery store is about 15 miles from here, so minimizing trips is a good thing.  And if I don’t have to go grocery shopping, there is pretty much no reason for me to have to go into town at all, for anything (I just registered to vote in our new county and renewed my drivers license, online, from my kitchen.  Life is good).  The little town where we live has a library, post office, bank, and basic grocery store, all within easy walking or biking distance.  I found a note in the glove box of my car from an oil change my husband did back in September of 2007, and the mileage he noted at the time was 10,000 miles under what it is now.  I knew that I didn’t drive much, but now I know the specifics – 10,000 miles in three years.  Not bad!  If I can keep up my twice a month shopping schedule, I can probably get that number even lower going forward.

I dropped off a couple more boxes at the thrift store last night when I was in town (my mom, who used to love thrift store shopping just as much as I did, referred to the thrift store yesterday as the “give away store” which is what it has become for both of us).  I ducked inside quickly looking for a flower pot for a plant that has outgrown it’s planter, but didn’t see anything suitable and left within about five minutes of walking in the door.  It’s amazing to me that I have been able to completely do away with my thrift store shopping habit, and how happy that makes me.  There are tons of resources on the internet about decluttering, and I started reading a lot of them a few months ago.  Apparently they had quite an impact, because I no longer have any desire to accumulate possessions or add “stuff” to our life.  Instead, I want to be able to spend time experimenting cooking in the kitchen, hanging out with my husband and son, going for walks, doing yoga, having “adventures” at the park (that’s how our son and I refer to our little trips to the playground).  Acquiring stuff has never really been fulfilling in the long term for anyone.  But for most of us (including my former self), it is quite fulfilling in the short term.  Then it wears off and we have to go hunting for new stuff in order to continue to be satisfied.  Thankfully, I always got my fix with used things, so the cash outlay was never very big.  But the clutter factor is there, regardless of whether the stuff comes from Neiman Marcus or a dumpster.  And I just don’t want the clutter anymore.

Until this past spring, my trips to town were pretty much a weekly thing, and just about always involved at least a half an hour (usually more) of browsing around the thrift store before heading to the grocery store.  Invariably, I would find at least a few treasures that I just had to have.  These days, I can go to town and back in less than an hour and half total, and not only do I not come home with stuff from the the thrift store, I also usually have at least one box that I donate while I’m in town.  Much better.

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Category: clutter, family, just my life  8 Comments
18
Jun 2010

Finding Inspiration In Tiny Houses

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Hope you’re all having a great Friday!  My de-cluttering is still going strong… I’ve even progressed to furniture!  Earlier this week I got rid of a desk by using the free section of Craigs List, and I’m hoping to get rid of a dresser today.  We decided that my husband and I can share a dresser for things like underwear and socks, and that way we’ll have more open floor space in our bedroom.  Once we get rid of the second dresser, all that will be in our bedroom is the bed and one dresser.  I did some more purging in our closet this week, and there’s nothing sitting on the floor at all now – it’s all hanging up or neatly folded (only one or two deep) on the shelves.  Much better!  I’m also starting to see a difference in terms of cleaning… the house is staying cleaner longer without much effort from us, and when it does need to be cleaned, it’s a faster process.  Having empty counters in the kitchen and bathroom means that I can wipe them down more often without having to move a bunch of stuff.  Having fewer toys in the living room means there isn’t as much to get tossed around.  Piles attract piles, so eliminating random piles of stuff in closets and on shelves means that we’re no longer likely to toss stuff in those spots.  I’m having so much fun getting rid of stuff that my desire to go shopping at the thrift stores for entertainment is completely gone!

One of the inspirations for my purging journey has been the Tiny House Blog, which is a fantastic resource and a wonderful read.  Even if you aren’t looking to move (we certainly aren’t!) it’s fun to look at all the absolutely fantastic little houses, and it’s a reminder that we don’t really need much in the way of stuff or extra space in order to be happy.  If you are considering moving, the Tiny House Blog might inspire you to look for a much smaller place than you originally had in mind.

My husband and I both work from home, and we have a toddler, which together presents a unique challenge in terms of housing… we have to have a place where my husband (who spends quite a bit of time on the phone with clients) can work without house/toddler noises in the background.  Having a basement has been perfect for us, and that’s where my husband spends a good chunk of his day.  If your work/family situation is like ours, a super tiny house might not work out, but chances are a smaller-than-average one would work just fine.  When we moved last year, our primary concern was the yard, as we had big plans for an orchard, berry patch, and huge veggie garden (all in place and growing now!).  We didn’t really care one way or another about the house, and ended up with a pretty average-size place (1350 sq feet plus a full unfinished basement).  We don’t plan to move again (ever!) but I do want to make our house easier to clean (less stuff is already having that effect) and make sure that it continues to feel spacious… no stuff creeping in around us to fill up the rooms.  So even for people who have no desire to actually move to a tiny house, reading about them can be motivating and rewarding.

On another note, I also wanted to share a fantastic blog post from Green And Crunchy.  There’s just no way you can scroll through all those awesome pictures and not be inspired to eat something tasty and nutritious.  I love how simple so much of their food is… lots of fruits and veggies just cut up – no need to spend hours slaving away in the kitchen.  And a huge congratulations to Mama Green And Crunchy, who is going to be a mama again!

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Category: family, real estate  Tags: , ,  14 Comments
25
Feb 2010

More Estate Planning

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Last month, I wrote about how my husband and I are starting the process of estate planning.  There were some great comments on that post – thanks for all your thoughts!  Although I must say, I was surprised at how unanimous the opinions were in terms of hiring a lawyer instead of using software to do it ourselves – usually my readers tend to be pretty split on issues like this.

We haven’t decided what we will ultimately do, but for now, we’re working through the process ourselves.  Just as with our taxes, we want to really understand the whole plan, rather than just hand it over to a lawyer.  The first step we took was to pay $14 for the Suze Orman protection package, which is teaching us a lot.  We’ve already used it to do my healthcare power of attorney and advance directive (still need to get it witnessed and notarized), and will do my husband’s this weekend.  That alone is worth more than the $14 we paid for the program.  We’ll go through the whole program, paying attention to the details and figuring out what questions we need to ask ourselves, and what the answers will be.  We may end up using a lawyer for the will and/or trust paperwork, but I want to understand all of the details before we show up in the law office – if we do at all.

One of the issues to which we hadn’t ever given much thought was inheritance in general.  I guess we had both just assumed we’d leave our estate to our son, but we hadn’t thought about it beyond that.  Once we started to consider it, we decided that we don’t like that idea at all.  In general, we’re both relatively opposed to the idea of people inheriting large sums of money.  Right now, our net worth isn’t much.  But it’s growing at a fairly good pace, and ten or fifteen years from now (to say nothing of fifty), it could be a considerable sum.  We have known several people who are aware that they stand to inherit large estates, and to be perfectly honest, we feel that the knowledge of the future inheritance has had a negative impact on those people.  Some even get irritated when their parents spend money, as they feel entitled to the money (?!?!)  Some don’t put much effort into saving or planning for the future, as they are simply counting on the inheritance to fund their retirements.  To each their own, but our opinion is that large inheritances are often more of a curse than a blessing.

We want to give our son the tools he’ll need to be successful in life.  We’re saving to help pay for his college education, but only $100/month, and we have no plans to fully fund his education – we want him to take an active part in that process too.   In general, we want to give our son the things that money can’t buy.  We want to teach him the value of money, and how to manage it responsibly, but we want him to earn his own money and make his own way in the world.  As soon as we had a conversation about this, it was an a-ha moment for both of us.  We didn’t want a will or trust that simply left everything to our son.

For now, our son is not even two yet.  If we both die, he’ll need a guardian, and he’s also the contingent beneficiary on our life insurance policies.  The guardian we’ve picked is just as frugal as we are, and the life insurance money would be more than enough to raise our son to adulthood and pay for college.  But what about the rest of our estate?  These are the questions we’re looking at now, and there are no easy answers.

We did take a first step earlier this week when we opened our SEP IRA accounts.  We each listed each other an our primary beneficiaries, but rather than listing our son as the secondary beneficiary, we each picked a favorite charity.  The nice thing about retirement accounts is that beneficiary designations make it very simple to transfer assets without a will.  The Vanguard forms we filled out just required us to check a box and list the charity of our choice – couldn’t have been easier.

Hopefully we’ll both live to be 110 and spend our last dime the day before we die.  But just in case, we’re working our way through this process.  I gotta say, I’ll be glad when we’re no longer pondering our mortality!

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Category: family, just my life, savings  12 Comments
30
Jan 2010

Wills And Other Unpleasant Topics

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My husband and I each bought life insurance policies several years before our son was born.  We put them in a drawer and pretty much forgot about them ever since.  The payments are automatically deducted from our bank account, and there isn’t really anything else to think about.  And now that our son is almost 21 months old, we’ve finally gotten around to adding him as the contingent beneficiary on our policies.  Yes, I know… 21 months.  We are especially on top of things.

Anyway, now that we’ve checked that task off of the to-do list, we’re thinking that it’s high time we wrote wills and appointed a guardian for our son in case both of us were to die.  Not the most pleasant thing to ponder, but I know we should do it.  A friend of mine is pregnant at the moment, and she and her husband are in the process of doing the same thing, before the baby is even born.  Her super-responsible habits are inspiring me.

My husband and I are both close to our families, and there’s no drama or issues on either side.  I know that we don’t have to worry about things like wills being contested or anything like that.  But I suppose we should actually get it all down on paper, just to be sure.  Our situation isn’t particularly complicated – we own a home, have IRAs and a few other savings accounts.  But we also own our own business, which I guess could complicate things a bit.

I’m wondering if any of you have ever used will software?  I know that we could get a lawyer to do it for us, but my frugal nature (combined with the fact that I am 100% sure that all of our family would support our wishes, even if they were written on a napkin) means that I’m looking into less expensive options too.  Any thoughts are appreciated!

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Category: baby, family  18 Comments
26
Jan 2010

Stretching Our Food

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I love grocery shopping.  I have no interest at all in going to the mall, but I can happily spend an hour or so wandering around a grocery store.   We almost never eat out, and I cook just about all of our food from scratch, which helps to keep our total food costs reasonable.  According to our credit card spending report, we’ve average just under $600/month for the last 12 months at grocery stores.  In addition, we usually spend about $150/month at Costco, most of which is for food.  After housing, food is definitely our largest expense.

I usually go into town and do my grocery shopping once a week.  But it’s been 11 days now since I went shopping, and we’re still going strong.  I decided to see how long I could go without shopping, and it’s working great.  We have a pantry and freezer full of food, but I tend to focus on the fresh produce first, forget about the stored food, and then go back to the grocery store when I run out of fresh produce.  This time, I’m focusing on using up what we have before I go shopping again.  We have lots of dried legumes in the pantry, so we had lentil soup yesterday and we’re having black bean chili this evening.  I have been using greens from our cold frames for green smoothies, and combining them with dried greens that I have on hand (spirulina, several kinds of seaweed, wheat grass powder, and dried mint leaves).  I’m using up frozen veggies and bulk dried items.  We eat oats for breakfast every day, and since we buy our oats in 50 pound bags, we rarely have to replenish our supply.

Since we live in a small town now, we spend almost no money unless we go into the big town 10 miles from here.  That’s where the grocery store and thrift stores are, as well as most of the other places where we buy things; we try to combine trips, and schedule all of our errands to coincide with a grocery run.  So if we aren’t grocery shopping, we pretty much aren’t spending money at all.  We’re more than half way through our current credit card billing cycle, and we’ve had a total of 12 transactions so far.

I’m loving this challenge of making nutritious meals for my family just using what I already have on hand.  I’m finding that a little creativity goes a long way, and I’m hoping to make it to the weekend before I have to shop again.

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Category: family, food  11 Comments
10
Nov 2009

Homemade Ornaments From Recycled Cards

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Every year, I make Christmas ornaments for our five nieces.  I love making them, and the girls tell me they love putting their own ornaments on the tree.  Some years I’m stumped for ideas, but last week I came up with an idea that I really like, and I’ve made three ornaments so far.  Here’s a picture of the first two:

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In my craft stash, I had kept a pile of old Christmas cards (this goes against my new clutter-free lifestyle, but my craft corner is exempt).  To make these ornaments, I cut squares and rectangles out of the cards, used a needle to punch small holes all around the edges, and then stitched them together with embroidery floss.  Each one took me about an hour to make, and they are a thoroughly enjoyable project. 

Overall, we’re planning to skip Christmas this year.  Our son is only 18 months old, and gets just as much pleasure out of a drawer full of wooden spoons as he would from a tree piled with presents.  So we plan to skip the tree and all the craziness this year.  But the ornaments for my nieces is a tradition that I enjoy, it’s stress-free, fun, and in this case, turns old Christmas cards into something new and pretty. 

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Category: family, gifts, hobbies  14 Comments
05
Nov 2009

Entertaining Our Toddler

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I got an email from a reader today, asking what sort of things our toddler does with his time, particularly since we don’t have a TV.  I thought I’d share some of what we do, in case other readers are looking for ways to occupy a small child without TV or expensive toys.

I’m very lucky in that my husband and both work from home.  When our son was born, I cut back to only about three or four hours of work for our business each day – the rest of my time is devoted to our son and our household.  My husband has his office set up in our basement, and we keep the stairs blocked off so that our son stays on the main level with me during the day.  We have childproofed the kitchen/living room/dining room area, and put childproof covers on the doorknobs leading into the other rooms.  That way he’s always in the same area with me during the day.  When I go outside to water the garden or hang up laundry, he goes with me, and entertains himself by playing in the dirt, gathering stones, stacking flower pots… we have a 3/4 acre backyard, so there’s always plenty for him to do out there.

In the house, we keep it pretty simple, which means he gets ample time to use his imagination.  He loves to play with my pots and pans.  He will entertain himself for long stretches to time by taking every pan and lid out of the cupboard, and carrying them one by one into the living room, where he sets them on the coffee table.  Then he gathers whatever containers he can find, and pretends to pour or shake “ingredients” into the pans.  Then he gets some utensils (I let him have save ones like spatulas and wooden spoons) and stirs his imaginary soup.  I guess he’s spent plenty of time watching me cook!

We have a fairly large collection of board books, thanks to my friends at the library where I used to work (they had a book shower for me before our son was born).  He likes to climb up into the recliner and “read” his books.  He’s always thrilled if we join him, but he’s also happy to just flip the pages and look at the pictures.

Every day, unless the weather is really horrendous, I take our son and our dog for a walk, usually for about an hour.  Sometimes we use the stroller, sometimes the Moby Wrap.  Our son loves to point out cars and dogs and airplanes – pretty much anything that moves.  We also go to the playground if the weather is nice.

We keep a box of toys in the living room, and he likes to dump them out and make up games to play.  They are all simple toys, mostly gifts from his grandparents, and a few wooden toys that we’ve picked up at thrift stores.  We also made a play area down in the basement in my husband’s office, using one of those super long sectional baby gate/cage things (my husband found it in a dumpster, and it’s in perfect shape).  We keep another box of toys down there, and in the evenings while I do yoga, my husband takes our son down to his play area in the basement, and they hang out together.  They are both happy for long periods of time just tossing a ball back and forth, so they do that a lot.

We keep a third box of naptime toys in our son’s room, in the closet.  Every day, when I put him down for his nap, I put the naptime toys in the crib with him.  He plays with them for a few minutes before he falls asleep.  Since we started this trick a few months ago, we haven’t had any fuss at all during naptime (he used to cry or need to be nursed to sleep for his nap).  The naptime toys are just toys that I gathered up from his other boxes – nothing special, but because he doesn’t see them all day, he’s interested in them when he does see them.

Our son has never watched TV.  We had one until he was about 11 months old, but we never turned it on while he was awake, so as far as he knew, it was just a black box.  Now that we don’t have one at all, his days are automatically taken up with other things.   He’s never seen commercials, so there’s no desire on his part to have any new toys or gizmos. Nothing we have is fancy, but our son is happy pretty much all of the time.  Thus, we’re going on the “if it ain’t broke…” theory.

We don’t have our son enrolled in any sort of programs or structured activities.  We go to the library, but I haven’t enrolled him in story time yet, mainly because we go at different times every week, whenever I can fit it in around the rest of my schedule.  We see other kids at the playground, and I get together every now and then with a friend who has a toddler, for a playdate.  My honest opinion is that kids just need love, lots of laughter, toys that let them use their imagination (stuff from the recycle bin works just fine), and a secure environment.  I’m not a fan of structured activities for preschool age kids.  I also like to keep our life as low-stress as possible, and not trying to juggle a bunch of  outside commitments for a toddler helps to keep it that way.

That’s our life with our son.  It’s simple, very inexpensive (mostly free), low-stress, and lots of fun.  I often find myself on the floor, driving “cars” (blocks) around the carpet, making vroom-vroom sounds, and realizing that nothing could make me or my son any happier.

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Category: baby, family, the simple life  16 Comments
29
Oct 2009

Frugal, Simple, Clean. Three Of My Favorite Words.

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I’ve mentioned before that we use one credit card for pretty much all of our spending.  We get 1% cash back on the card, and it’s an easy way to keep track of our spending, since it’s all listed in one place on the statement.  Our billing cycle starts and ends around the 10th of each month.  This morning, I noticed that we’ve spent a total of $835 so far in this cycle, and we’re already 2/3 of the way through it.  And that includes plane tickets to go visit my husband’s parents in the spring ($280 for two tickets – our son will still be under two, and flying for free at that point), and $110 to have all of our locks and deadbolts changed (something we had been meaning to do ever since we moved in, but only got around to doing a few weeks ago).  That means we’ve only spent $445 on everything else so far, and we only have about another eleven days in this billing period.

Most of that money was for food and home repair stuff, with a few other random things here and there.  Basically, we’re living well below our means, and loving it.

Last night, after dinner, we sat around the living room and my husband made funny noises at the cat.  Every time he did, she would open her eyes very wide, and stick her ears straight up.  I was laughing so hard that it hurt, and our son couldn’t stop laughing either.  And it hit me – this is what it’s all about.  Having fun, laughing, enjoying my family… we really don’t need anything else.  There is nothing that I could have bought that would have given me more pleasure than just laughing with my two favorite guys.  (Ok, so I guess we did buy the cat – the adoption fee was $85 at the animal shelter, and we do have to feed her.  But she’s obviously worth it.)

Lately, I’ve been noticing more and more that I am really happy, nearly all of the time.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my happiness seems to have increased as we’ve been actively trying to simplify our life.  I have mentioned before that I don’t particularly like to clean.  As a result, our house was often chaotic and messy, but I brushed it off by telling myself that I was just a creative cook, or too busy to clean.  A couple months ago, I decided to change this aspect of myself.  I started by making the bed every morning.  For two months now, I’ve been making the bed as soon as we get up, every morning.  At this point, I can’t imagine not making the bed – even though I only used to make it once or twice a week.  After I got in the habit of making the bed, I decided to tackle the kitchen.  First, I decluttered in a big way.  Then I committed to cleaning up the kitchen after every meal.  I cook from scratch pretty much all the time, and used to only clean the kitchen after it got really messy.  But for the last month, I’ve been cleaning as I cook, and cleaning thoroughly after each meal.  I cannot even describe the difference this had made in the state of our kitchen, and in my own mental wellbeing.  I love walking through our house now, and seeing lots of wide open spaces and clean counters.  Just as with making the bed, I now cannot imagine leaving a mess in the kitchen after a meal.  Frugal Trenches, one of my favorite bloggers, keeps her house 5 minutes from ready.  We have a toddler, so I’m shooting for 15 minutes from ready – still a big improvement over what it used to be.

I know this post seems a bit disjointed, but I’m hoping to convey the feeling of peace and calm that I have nearly all of the time now.  We don’t even have to try to not spend money anymore, because we’ve just gotten in the habit of doing things that don’t cost money.  We don’t know what the future holds as far as our income, and by not spending the money we’re earning now, we’re giving ourselves a cushion against future lulls in our income.  And if that doesn’t happen?  Well, early retirement sounds good to me.  Living simply and frugally, combined with decluttering, organizing, and keeping our living space clean and simple has all contributed to greatly reducing the stress and worry that I used to carry around with me.

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Category: family, food, just my life, the simple life  12 Comments
14
Jun 2009

A New Washing Machine… Thrift Stores Rule!

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Our new house doesn’t have a washer and dryer.  Well, it does now, but they aren’t included with the house.  I knew that I wanted to get a front loading washing machine once we moved.  I love that they use far less water, and the ones I’ve used (at friends’ houses) seem to spin things out much better than my top loader, so that clothes don’t take as long to dry.

I had been checking out Craigs List, but the few front loaders that I found were usually at least $500.  New, they typically start at $800, although I sometimes see sales where they get down around $600.  Still a lot to pay, but I was considering it.

A couple days ago, my parents were in their local Habitat for Humanity thrift store, and called me to say that they had found a front loading washing machine for $250.  The manufacture date on it was September 2003, and it came with a pedestal that raises it up off the floor.  The washer is now in my parents’ garage, and they have tested it to make sure that it works.

Just on a whim, I went to the appliance section at Home Depot yesterday to see what the pedestals that go under washing machines cost.  $219.  I couldn’t believe it – I actually went and asked an associate if I was understanding the sign correctly, and he assured me that I was.  That makes our $250 washer even more of a steal, since it came with the pedestal.

There was a matching dryer at the thrift store, also for $250.  But we’re going to try not having a dryer, and see how it goes.  I can’t remember the last time I used our dryer, and I think that we’ll be just fine without one.  We’ll be installing a clothesline right away, and we have our drying racks to use indoors if the weather is bad.  I stopped using our dryer about two years ago, and have made it through two winters without using it (summers are easy).  And that’s in a 1300 square food home where I have to set the drying racks in the dining room and bedrooms.  In our new house, I can set them in the basement where they’re out of the way.  So overall, I’m thinking we can get by just fine without a dryer.

Have any of you given up your dryer to the point of not having one?

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Category: family, the simple life, thrift stores  22 Comments
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