So I braved Babies R Us a few days ago in search of a gift.  The only time I ever go there is if I’m looking for baby shower presents.  So I have no idea where anything is, and I find the whole place a bit overwhelming.  I’m firmly in the "less is more"  camp when it comes to baby gear (and most everything else these days) and that is definitely not the idea they are trying to convey.  But I digress.

As I was flipping through the registry, I saw one of those things you attach to a car seat or stroller to keep the baby warm, and it seemed like a good practical gift.  When I got to that section of the store, I noticed that they only had one left, and it was a bit bedraggled looking.  It was still in it’s package, but it had been taken out and stuffed back in without being folded.  I knew that could be easily fixed (the package had a zipper on it, so it could be opened, folded, and put back in without damaging anything), and as an added bonus, that one last cover had been marked down to half price.  Score!  Since it was so inexpensive, I was able to pick out another item from the registry and get them both for the same price that the cover was supposed to be.  (later that evening I rearranged the stroller cover in its packaging, and you’d never be able to tell that it was messed with at all – good as new.)

I then browsed through the shoes and socks section, looking for something cute to tie onto the outside of the package.  But everything I liked was $10 to $20, and I had already spent as much as I had budgeted for the shower.  So I decided to just get the gifts I had already purchased and call it good.

My next stop was Goodwill, as I’m still on a mission to find a hat for our scarecrow.  No luck with the hat, but I decided to take a peek at the baby shoes, just in case.  And I stumbled upon the cutest little pair of baby boots:

They’re soft and fuzzy on the inside, easy to put on and off, and will keep tiny toes warm in the winter.  They’re brand new, with their original hanger still attached, and I got them for two bucks.  I actually like them more than the $15 shoes I saw at babies R Us. 

That was all I bought at Goodwill.  It’s been over three months now since I vowed to de-clutter, stop buying clothes, and start donating more (a lot more) and shopping less (a lot less).  I never would have thought that my formerly thrift store addicted self would be content to not even glance at the clothing or housewares section in the thrift store, but that’s how it is.  A year ago, I would have left the store with at least a few new treasures, but all I bought was a small gift. 

I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.

But these days, I want less stuff, not more.

In the past, when someone gave me stuff like that, I would stash it all away, thrilled with the thought of free stuff.  But now, my first thought is to consider whether we really need the stuff in the first place.  My friend mentioned that she knew there was a ton of stuff in the bag and that we should just keep whatever we wanted and donate the rest.  Good advice, but not something I would have been likely to do in the past.

These days, I would rather have our son’s closet neat, organized, and not too full than have it overflowing with clothes.  And there is no possible scenario in which he needs eight sets of pajamas.  He usually wears the same pajamas several nights in a row, and I wash laundry several times a week.  So I kept a couple sets of non-flame resistant pajamas, and put the rest in a box to donate.  I did the same with shirts, shorts, and shoes.  Our son already has enough clothing, and just because I could add to his stash for free doesn’t mean that I should. In addition to donating a lot of the hand-me-downs, I also donated some of his current clothing and replaced it with nice hand-me-downs from my friend… nothing wrong with a little change of pace!

I know that I have often accepted anything offered for free (stuff set out at the curb, listed nearby on Craigslist, given by a friend, etc.) just because it was free.  And because I might need it someday.  But that leads to a cluttered house and the accumulation of a bunch of things we don’t need.  I no longer browse the Craigslist free section.  If there’s something we need for a project we’re working on, I’ll search specifically for that item.  But looking at a list of free things without any particular needs in mind is a good way to increase clutter and waste time.

Being frugal is great, but acquiring things just because they’re a bargain or free is a bit counter-productive.  We spend time gathering, sorting, cleaning, organizing… all for stuff that we really don’t need in the first place.  I’d much rather have just enough than too much, regardless of how great a deal something is.

I’ve found that the problem with comparing ourselves to others is that you’re usually comparing your strength to their weakness or vice versa. Either way, it’s not fair.

Exactly!  That is so true, and a good reminder for the times when we start to compare ourselves – either favorably or unfavorably – with other people.  Focusing on how we can make ourselves better people compared with who we were a year or a month or a day ago is probably a much more effective way to make positive changes.

I made a big step in my purging process today.  Physically it was only one box, but mentally it was a big step in terms of letting go of things that are no longer useful, regardless of how much they cost or how much we once liked them.

About seven years ago, back in the very early days of our business, my husband and I purchased a multi-media business card package.  It was supposed to be an interactive DVD that we could send to our clients, and it was packaged in a fancy case with our pictures and lots of info about our business.  It took several months to complete the process of making them, as they were custom made for our business.  Sometime during the process, the company that made them ran into serious financial problems, and nearly declared bankruptcy before our order was finished.  To make a long story short (and boy was it ever a long story at the time, complete with lots of tears on my part), the “interactive DVD” part of the package turned into a generic DVD about our industry rather than one specific to our business.  Although we were disappointed with that change, we were generally pleased with the finished product, and sent lots of them to clients and prospective clients for the first few years after we got them.

We had signed up for a payment plan to finance the project, and it took quite a while to pay them off.  Our business wasn’t making much money back then, and we were making the minimum payments each month for a long time.  Eventually we were able to pay more than the minimum due, and I think we paid them off sometime in 2004 or early 2005… Funny how I can’t even remember now, given that I was so stressed out about it at the time (a lot of the stress came from not knowing if we would even get the finished product, even though we were on the hook with the financing company to pay for them either way).  Whatever happened, that money is long gone and forgotten – the proverbial water under the bridge.

Our business has become much more successful over the years.  And it has also morphed into something that we do entirely on-line and over the phone.  We never have to drive anywhere or send anything to clients by snail mail.  We’ve basically made our office paperless; I can’t even remember the last time we bought paper or envelopes or anything like that.  Times have changed, and we’ve changed with them.

And that brings us back to the multi-media business cards.  We still had a box full of them sitting in our basement.  It’s probably been two or three years since we sent any out to clients, and the last box had just been hanging out in the crawl space of our old house and the basement of our new house.  Were we ever going to go back to sending them out?  No.  We have much more efficient ways of communicating with clients now, and our marketing strategy is much more targeted and streamlined that it was in 2003.  So what was I going to do with the box that was taking up space in our basement?

I checked to see if the cases were recyclable… they were not.  I checked to see if our information could be taken out of them so that they could possibly be used by someone else (I was thinking of putting them on Craigs List for free if I could get our info out of them).  But that wasn’t possible, as our marketing material was permanently encased in the plastic.

So I threw them away.

It felt great.  The box actually sat on the kitchen counter top for about 24 hours before I got up the nerve to toss them.  I pondered all the money we had spent on them.  But then I thought about all the ones we had sent out to clients back in those early years, and all the good feedback we got.  The money hadn’t been wasted.  We had ordered the minimum number of cards possible, but we just didn’t need all of them.  We weren’t going to start going backwards in our marketing strategy just because we had leftover multi-media business cards.  And I was tired of seeing that box every time I went down to the basement.

Now the empty box is sitting in the garage waiting to be filled with stuff to donate to the thrift store, and my life feels just a little bit lighter.  Just because something cost a lot of money doesn’t mean we should hang onto it forever.  Once it’s no longer useful, it doesn’t matter what we spent to buy it, or how useful it was in the past.  We live in the present, and we might as well make sure that the things we surround ourselves with are helping to make that present as good as it can be.

The other take-away lesson here:  don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.  I wish I could go back in time and see the me who was crying over those business cards.  I’d tell her that she really doesn’t need to worry, and that seven years down the road she won’t remember how much they cost, when they arrived, or how long it took to pay them off.  Focusing and working hard to pay off debt or solve whatever problem is facing you is definitely worthwhile.  But stressing and freaking out about it are not – they don’t solve the problem any faster, and they take away from time we can be feeling happy instead.  Now I just have to focus on applying that lesson to my current life.  I’m much better about not stressing about things than I used to be, but it’s still a work in progress.

I mentioned recently that I’ve been making lots of small changes in my life, and one of them has been to be less judgmental in general.  I’m also feeling very grateful for all the good luck that has brought me to where I am today.  Just a few years ago I’d have scoffed at the idea of luck being a factor.  I hated the idea that I had ever been lucky – I preferred to think that it was all a result of hard work and dedication.  But that’s just not true.  Fact is, I was born to two well educated parents who wanted me and loved me from the very beginning.  That alone is a pretty lucky start.  And then I was encouraged to get a good education of my own, to eat well, to exercise, to value nature, to live without debt… and the list goes on.  Yes, I believe my husband and I have worked very hard to get where we are today, but I’d be a fool if I said that luck wasn’t involved.  I really like this quote from Barry Switzer:

“Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”

I was definitely born on third base, but I don’t want to go through life thinking I hit a triple.  I want to be grateful for what I have, and to not judge other people who see things in a different way than I do.  I truly believe that living within one’s means is a pretty important aspect of happiness, but it’s up to each of us to decide how to do that.  For my own family, saving a good chunk of our income is very important.  But that isn’t better or worse than another family who spends a bigger chunk of their income – as long as they are happy and content with their life, and living within their means (and hopefully doing the best they can to take good care of this little planet that we all share).

Personal finance is just that – personal.  Don’t let things you read on blogs make you feel guilty about the way you spend your money – it’s your own money after all.  If something about your life – financial or otherwise – is making you feel bad, then change it.  But don’t change it just because it’s what someone else is doing.  We’re all different, and we all want different things.  Just keep your focus on what you want most, and you’ll be fine.   There will always be people who are smarter, richer, happier, more frugal, etc.  Be inspired, but don’t feel guilty.  I’ve found that the less I judge others, the happier I am.  Hopefully it works for you too.

Once our son is old enough to appreciate and enjoy trips, we’ll start going on them again.  But for now, they’re on hold.  But as much as I enjoy traveling to new places, I am not sitting here thinking about all the places I’d like to visit five years from now.  Instead, we’re actively working to create a life from which we don’t need or want to get away.  I think that for a lot of people, vacations are as much about getting away from normal life as they are about seeing new places.  Most people get two or three weeks of vacation time each year.  Do you really want to have two or three great weeks per year, during which you try to get away from whatever it is you do with your time the other 49 or 50 weeks?  I would rather have 52 great weeks and no desire to escape from my life.  If we get the urge to see some new, exciting place once our son is a little older, that would be great.  But I don’t ever want vacation to feel like escape, or to be something that I look forward to with so much anticipation that I forget to appreciate all the regular life days that lead up to it.

Some people are in situations (for example, being a full-time caregiver to a person with Alzheimer’s) that probably require some form of regular "escape" no matter how they tweak their life to make it as enjoyable as possible.  But for many of us, the things we’re trying to escape from are self-imposed stresses.  Tons of extra-curricular activities for our kids is one example.  Kids do not need to be enrolled in six different kinds of lessons throughout their entire childhood in order to grow up to be good, talented people.  Another example is the vehicles we drive.  We don’t need to be spending a good chunk of our income each year (which translates into a good chunk of our time) buying, insuring, and maintaining cars.  Old, paid-for cars are great, and so are bicycles.

The money we earn can be used for so many things, but most of us are using it to pay for houses, cars, stuff to fill up the houses, and two weeks of vacation each year to escape from our lives.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  What if we started to really focus on how we can create a life that we never want to leave?  Travel could still be a part of that life (if that’s what makes you happy) but it could be for the adventure rather than as an escape.

My husband and I have made the happy discovery that we both love working in the garden, with our son and our dog playing in the yard nearby.  We both love digging in the dirt, tending our little plants, adding beautiful flowers and trees to our little oasis, and seeing new sprouts and buds each day.  We’ve been harvesting radishes now for a week or so, and the kale and chard are exploding.  We will have zucchini ready next week, and we’ve been eating spinach salads every day lately.  Our dream is becoming a reality, and it feels amazing.  It took a lot of effort to get here.  We had to make some major changes – realizing that what we really wanted (a huge garden) was not compatible with where we were living, and then going through the process of selling our house and buying another one.  Our 3/4 acre yard was a blank (but weedy!) canvas when we first saw it a year ago, and now it has an orchard, a berry patch, and 27 vegetable beds.  It also has ten new flowering trees (each about a foot tall), lots of new evergreens (also about a foot tall), some new shade trees, and lots of flowering perennials that we found for free on the sidewalk down the street last fall.

But although it has taken much effort to get to this point, we have enjoyed every minute of that effort.  We have found something that we both love doing, and it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like we’re on vacation every day.  Yes, we still have to work to keep our business running, but we get to do that from our own home, and hang out with our son at the same time.  And every afternoon/evening, we get to go out and play in the yard. 

What it takes to feel like you’re on vacation every day is obviously going to be different from one person to the next.  But the important part is to figure out what it means for you.  And what it doesn’t mean.  And then take a close look to see if what you’re spending your time and money on is really what matters to you.  If it isn’t, start making changes.  It’s that simple, but putting it into practice isn’t easy.  Really, major changes rarely are, because we are creatures of inertia.  It’s easier to stay in a rut, even if that rut isn’t making us happy.  But the effort required to get out of our ruts is truly worth it.

For a little more inspiration, check out today’s article on Far Beyond The Stars.  Everett has some great ideas there for ways that you can cut expenses (and thus the money needed to sustain your lifestyle) and free up time and money to pursue the things that really matter to you.

I’ll leave you with some pictures from around our yard this morning.  This is our potato bed, freshly covered with a new layer of compost and hay:

And here is our son’s sandbox, which he loves.  We ended up lining the hole with weed blocking fabric to create a barrier between the clay and the sand, and our little guy has been having a blast out there.

And some beautiful surprise irises that popped up this spring:

Happy Wednesday!  Enjoy pondering what you can do to start creating a life from which you never want to escape.

The most recent change I’ve made was to start appreciating the idea of living with less stuff.  We have a 1320 square foot house (plus a full unfinished basement).  Three people, a cat, and a dog, and somehow we had managed to fill not only the house but the basement as well.  Just about everything we own was purchased used, so we didn’t have a huge financial investment in any of it, but our stuff was taking up way too much time and space.  So I started purging.  I’ve taken three full car-loads to the thrift store recently (I have a station wagon, so that’s a lot of stuff) and have avoided going into the store when I dropped stuff off.

I just checked out credit card statement, and so far this month, all that we’ve bought is food and irrigation supplies for our garden (my husband got the irrigation set up last week, and so far it’s working great).  No toys, clothes, shoes, etc.  Financially, skipping the thrift stores doesn’t make much of a difference.  I would say that in an average month I used to spend somewhere between $20 and $30 at the thrift stores.  I never shop at the mall, really the only place I shopped other than thrift stores was the grocery store.  But while there’s not much of an impact on our budget, I can already see the impact in our house.  Rooms are starting to look emptier, and take less time to clean (bare surfaces are a lot easier to clean than surfaces with a bunch of stuff on them).  My craft area in the basement is much neater, as I cleared out about five boxes of material and supplies that I didn’t really need.  It’s easier in general to find things in the basement now, as there’s a lot less stuff down there.  Nothing is safe from my purging right now… if it hasn’t been used in the last year or so, it’s out.  Decorative items are mostly out, except for a few things that we truly love.  I’m finding that it’s much easier to get rid of things now than it was when I started.  Things that I debated about a month ago are easy to toss now.  I have empty space in the linen closet and our clothes closet.  My sock drawer closes easily, and even the kitchen cupboards are emptier.

I used to go to the thrift stores just for fun.  I would call my sister or my parents and ask if they wanted to meet me at Goodwill, and we’d just wander around for a while.  Now I can call them and see if they want to meet us for a walk on the trail instead.

Never sacrifice what you want most for what you want right now.

This really resonated with me, as I think it can be applied to just about anything in life… money, exercise, diet, personal relationships, jobs, etc.  We all have things that are on our list of what we want most.  But we often let what we want now get in the way.  For myself, my own list of what I want most looks something like this (in no particular order):

• To always have a strong relationship with my husband and son and with our extended family and friends
• To still be active and healthy when I’m 100
• To own our home free and clear as soon as possible
• To be able to weather whatever financial storms life might send our way

Since these are my priorities, I try to make them a part of my life every day.  I spend time with my husband and son, and make sure that I keep in close contact with the rest of my family and friends.  I exercise every day, and make sure that pretty much every bite of food that passes my lips is increasing my chances of reaching that 100 year mark.  We put extra money towards our mortgage every month.  We set aside a good chunk of our income each month into various savings accounts, continuing to keep our lifestyle pretty much the way it was when we were earning very little money.  By doing these things, we’re keeping our focus on what we want most, rather than on what we might want at the moment.

Over the years, I’ve found that focusing on what we want most has become a habit.  So much so that what we want right now and what we want most are almost always the same thing.  I derive much more satisfaction from sending extra money towards our mortgage than I would from spending that money on a pair of shoes, for example.  And I much prefer an apple to a piece of cake – seriously! (that took a while… I used to have a raging sweet tooth)

The thing I love most about the little piece of wisdom at the top of the post is how it applies to anyone, no matter how different our goals might be.  One person’s strongest wish might be to become president of her company, while another person’s greatest desire might be to climb Mount Everest.  It doesn’t matter what we want… what matters is that we each know what we want, and focus on it, without letting day to day distractions and fleeting desires get in the way.

I found this quote inspiring, and I hope some of you do too.  If it inspires you to write down the things that you want most, and figure out strategies for getting them, even better!

This year, I made ornaments for our nieces (something I do every year, and our nieces really like their homemade ornaments).  I also made some blocks for a friend’s daughter, and a small scrapbook for my mother in law.  The week before Christmas we went to visit an elderly friend who is in a rehab facility following a broken hip.  We spend some time just sitting and talking with him, and it seemed to bring him a lot of happiness.  We put together a basket of food for him, including some homemade soup that we took to his house and stashed in the freezer so it would be there when he got out of the rehab facility.  On Christmas day, we went to my parents’ house for dinner with the whole family, and took along some homemade treats.

That’s all that we did for Christmas, and it was wonderful.  No decorations, no shopping, no hoping that UPS would get a last-minute gift somewhere on time.  No holiday craziness at all.  We opened our gifts from my husband’s parents on December 23rd (my brother and sister visited on the 24th, and we were at my parents’ on the 25th, so the 23rd made sense).  In true toddler fashion, our son enjoyed the wrapping paper most of all, and a pair of dad-sized gloves.

I know a lot of people get a bit bummed after Christmas is over.  It makes sense if you think about it… there’s so much build up and anticipation surrounding the holiday.  People shop for weeks (and months!), make all sorts of plans, wrap presents, count down the days of December… and then it’s over.  Advent calendars always seem a bit odd to me – aren’t the first 24 days of December just as good as the 25th?  Why would we want to bypass them and count them down?  It’s like wishing your life away with a fancy, decorated calendar.  And of course there’s the financial stress that so often comes after Christmas is over, when all the credit card bills roll in.

For us, Christmas was just like any other day, except we got to go have dinner with my parents and siblings.  We didn’t spend any more money in December than we do in any other month, and we didn’t have any holiday stress.  If you truly love the commercial celebration of Christmas, then by all means, have at it.  But so often I hear people talking about how much they hate the commercialization and stress that go along with Christmas.  If that’s the case, you don’t have to keep doing it the same way you’ve done it in the past.  Make the holidays a time to relax and enjoy your friends and family instead of a time to spend money and stress yourself out.  It can be done, and my own experience is that it’s a whole lot better this way.

I hope you’re all having a great holiday season, and that the things you do to celebrate truly bring you peace and joy.

I bought my glasses from Zenni Optical (and no, they aren’t paying me to write this).  My mother had tried them earlier this fall, and was very pleased with the results.  She wears bifocals, and got a new pair for $32 (compared with about $200 if she had bought them at her eye doctor’s office).  She was so happy with that pair that she decided to order another pair just for reading.  They arrived this week, but had been caught in a post office machine and smashed.  When my mother called Zenni Optical to see about a replacement pair, they offered to start making a new pair immediately, and within 24 hours she had received three emails from the company, detailing the status of her replacement order (and there is no charge for the new glasses).  So not only do they provide good glasses for rock bottom prices (as low as eight dollars a pair), but they also have great customer service.

My new glasses arrived today (not smashed!) and I love them.  At my current every-eight-years rate of replacement, the $200 that I would have spent on an exam and glasses will last me until I need bifocals of my own.

One thing to note, you’ll need to know the distance between your pupils in order to place an order online for glasses.  Eye doctors measure this distance, but often don’t write it on the prescription.  I didn’t find this out until after I had my exam, and sure enough, that space on my prescription form (listed as PD) was blank.  My husband measured it for me (the website gives detailed instructions for how to do this if you need to), and it worked out just fine.  But if you want to get an eye exam and then order your glasses online, it’s probably easiest to just ask the doctor to make sure that space is filled in on the prescription.

We have a 1300 square food house (plus a basement) that is filled with stuff.  We have everything we need.  Obviously our son will continue to outgrow his clothes for a while, but my husband and I are the same size  we’ve been since high school.  Our closet is full of clothes.  If I had to guess, I’d say we each have more than 30 or 40 shirts and 20 pairs of pants/shorts.  Sure, it was all purchased for probably about three bucks per item, but does anyone really need that much clothing?

Since we moved to our new house, going to the thrift stores is no longer something I can do on a whim.  The stores are in another town, about ten miles away.  When we go into town, we try to be as efficient as possible, fitting as many errands into the trip as we can.  We usually don’t have time to go to the thrift stores, and that’s been fine with us.

I’ve been reading a book called Clutter Busting – the author’s blog is here – and finding myself inspired to get rid of stuff.  We’ve all heard the advice that we shouldn’t love anything that can’t love us back, but most of us don’t really put that into practice.  I sometimes find myself feeling very attached to things – things that obviously can’t love me back.  Things that are part of my past, or things that I think I might need in the future.  I felt inspired the whole time I was reading the book.  It reminded me that clutter (both “stuff” and mental clutter) only slows us down and impedes our ability to enjoy life.  I’ve taken a car load of stuff to the thrift store, and have my car nearly full for a second trip.  I didn’t even go in the store when I dropped off the last load.  There just isn’t anything I need.

Our son will need new clothes routinely, but I’m keeping it in perspective.  He doesn’t need 30 outfits.  A few shirts, a few pairs of pants, a jacket, a pair of shoes, and some socks.  A couple drawers in a dresser would suffice.  I imagine that $20 or so in the thrift store every six months should do it.

I like when our house feels open and airy, and that’s not possible when we cram stuff into every nook and cranny.  So I’m getting rid of things that don’t actively contribute to our life right now.  And not buying more stuff.  It’s the ultimate frugal tactic – just making do with what we have, and realizing that we don’t really need most of what we already have, say nothing of things we haven’t purchased yet.  It’s better for our budget and for the earth, and honestly it makes me happier to not go shopping.  I’d rather hang out here and work on our little farm, or spend time with my husband and son.  I’m glad we’ve moved away from the thrift stores.  Funny, because that was something I thought I was going to miss.