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?

It’s been a whirlwind few days around here, between all the house buying and selling, and then a visit from my husband’s parents.  But I thought I’d post an update on what is going on with our housing situation.

Everything is still looking good with the sale of our current house.  The inspection was last week, and we’re still waiting to hear what requests the buyer has based on the inspection results.  Right now the contract is for full asking price ($214,900), with no concessions on our part.  I’m sure that will change a bit once everything shakes out from the inspection, but hopefully there won’t be any major issues that come up.  The closing date is June 16th, and we have to be out of here by June 17th.

And… we found a new house!  We had been browsing houses online ever since January.  So we had a good idea of what was available and at what price.  We had found a house that stood out head and shoulders above the rest, but we had assumed that it would no longer be on the market by the time ours got under contract.  But our house was under contract three days after we put it on the market, and the house we were most interested in was still available.  Turns out, it had been on the market for nearly a year.  It’s a wonderful house, exactly what we were looking for.  The lot is more than 3/4 of an acre, and we think that’s probably why it’s been on the market for so long.  The house has been well taken care of, but the yard is mostly just weeds.  And it’s huge.  For most people, that probably just looks like WAY too much yard work.  And there are tons of other houses available that are just as nice, with much more manageable yards.  But for us, this one fit our needs exactly.  It backs to a park, and the elementary school is only about a 5 minute walk from the house.  The house is the exact same size as our current one, but it also has a full (unfinished) basement that will eventually double our living space.

The house was priced at $214,900 - exactly the same price as our current house and 0.08 acre lot!  Amazing what moving a few miles outside the city can do as far as house prices.  We offered $200,000 and expected a counter offer.  But they just rejected our offer outright.  In a year on the market, they had only dropped the price by $5000, and are apparently very un-motivated sellers.  So we offered full price, and they accepted.

Now we’re under contract to buy the new house, with a closing date of June 26th.  My brother has offered to let us stay with him for the 10 days that we’ll be homeless (Thanks bro!)  We’ll be paying about $16,000 in realtor fees, closing costs, and other fees.  But other than that, we’re trading our house for the new one, dollar for dollar.  We’re selling a 1320 square foot house with a back fence that is six feet from our house.  We’re buying a 2650 square foot house (including the unfinished basement) and 3/4 of an acre.  Both homes back to parks, and both have great elementary schools just a few minutes walk from the house.  We are thrilled with our find - this is definitely the best house we saw in all our months of looking online.  And the back yard - which likely kept the price down because it’s a negative for most buyers - is exactly what we want for our farming plans.

We are getting an inspection done next week on the new house, but it’s only 10 years old and we don’t anticipate any major problems.  We’ve got all sorts of plans for our new yard.  The hope is that within a few years we’ll be nearly self-sufficient as far as food.  We plan to put in an orchard of fruit trees, berry bushes, and lots of vegetable plots.  We’ll set up greenhouses for our hydroponics, and perhaps even get a few chickens.  (Only for eggs!  They will have names, and be treated as pets - no neck wringing will go on in the Frugal Babe household!)

We’ve made a few trips in the last couple weeks to the area where we’ll be moving.  It’s about an hour north of the city where we live now, and only about ten minutes outside of another city.  But it’s got a wonderful small-town feel that we both love.  Things seem slower and more relaxed there.  There’s no smog or pollution.  It’s perfect for the self-sufficient, laid back lifestyle that we’re seeking.  This whole moving thing has been quite the process, and I feel like I’ve done little else this year other than get our house ready for the market.  But when we visit our new town, and imagine the possibilities in our new back yard,  it all seems worth it.

I’ll keep you posted about how this whole process goes.  So far so good - hopefully by July I’ll be updating from the new Frugal Babe Farm!

Last night we were hanging out with a friend and he was showing us all of the cool things he can do with his new iPhone.  Yes, it’s a pretty cool phone, but he paid $200 for it, and another $90/month for service.  Our phone doesn’t do as many neat tricks (although it does have a camera and a mp3 player), but it cost $20 and we pay $45/month for service (we don’t have a landline - that’s our only phone).  He used his phone to show us a trailer for a movie that’s opening tomorrow, and asked if we were going to see it.  We said we might, but that we would wait until it came out on DVD so that we could get it from Redbox for a dollar.  We sat there trying to think of the last time we saw a movie in the theater, and decided that it was “The Longest Yard”, which was released in the fall of 2005.  He thought that was amazing.

Then my husband asked how much movie tickets cost these days, and our friend replied in an offhand manner that “it doesn’t matter”.  Now it was our turn to be amazed.  He and his wife just have regular jobs like us - they aren’t doctors or lawyers.  We assume they might have some family money, but we don’t know the specifics.  I suppose we’ve gotten so entrenched in our frugal ways that we just can’t imagine spending money without caring about prices or cheaper options.  For us, renting a movie for a dollar (or free if we get it from the library) is a far better value than going to the theater.  And if we watch a movie in our living room we can wear our pajamas, make our own snacks (much better for us than movie fare), and hit the pause button whenever we like.  And now that we have a baby, we only plan outings where he can go along.  So a movie theater isn’t really an option anyway.

Alright fellow frugal folks, If you’re on Facebook, I have a group for you to join.  Amy at the Thrifty Chicks has started a petition for a USA National Thrift Store Month.  Here’s the Facebook url.  I love this idea.  Anything that can be done to erase the stigma that still exists among some people when it comes to buying used is a good thing.  And Amy makes a great point: if there’s such a thing as Noodle Month and Canned Food Month, surely we can have National Thrift Store Month?!

I got an email this week about National Thrift Week, which I’ll admit I had never heard of until I read the email and checked out the Bring Back Thrift Week website.  Apparently it was a strong tradition that lasted for half of the last century, but faded into history with the latter part of the 20th century.

My family has always been thrifty.  I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere.  We shopped at yardsales, ate homecooked meals, and I learned to drive on the same two cars that my parents had from the time I was a very small child (they still had those cars until about five years ago).  So thrifty ways are pretty much second nature to me. 

But I think that a lot of people who haven’t always been thrifty are heading in that direction now.  The rough economic waters are taking a toll on everyone, and for some, the obvious answer is to focus on spending less money and finding creative ways to enjoy life while sticking to a budget. 

I think that Thrift Week is a great idea.  A week of focusing on spending quality time rather than money, giving thanks for what you do have instead of coveting what you don’t have, and thinking of ways to fix, reuse, and otherwise make do that don’t involve mindless consumerism.

Check out the website.  There’s even a thrifty ideas essay contest (it’s limited to 50 word entries.  Even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer, you can put together 50 words, and you just might win a $100 savings bond for your efforts).

Thrift Week starts on Saturday, so get ready.  I think we’ll do our grocery shopping on Friday, and then my goal will be for us to have at least 6 no-spending days out of the 8 days of Thrift Week (they threw in an extra day for fun).  Now’s a great time to set some thrifty goals for next week.  Of course it’s even better if you can keep them going all year, but having a week dedicated to thrifty living is a great start.

We live in an area with very alkaline, clay soil.  It’s not exactly the fertile crescent around here.  We don’t use chemical fertilizers on our yard or garden - we rely on the compost we create both in our outdoor bins and our worm bins, and that works really well.  But anything we can do to make our soil a bit less alkaline will help the plants uptake the nutrients better.  Turns out evergreen trees are very acidic.  So we recycled our Christmas tree today.

My husband took it outside, shook off most of the needles into the grass, and then “attacked it with the lawn mower” (his words).  All that’s left is the main trunk of the tree.  The rest of it is in tiny pieces all over our lawn.  Now we just need a good heavy snow to help it soak in.

Free soil boosting, combined with an easy way to get rid of the Christmas tree.  I think my husband has been eyeballing the tree ever since the day we put it up, just waiting for the day he could make mincemeat of it and add it to our yard.   He also mowed several bags of leaves into the yard so that they can compost down over the winter.  Our neighbors bagged their leaves around Thanksgiving and put them out with the trash.  My husband couldn’t bear the thought of valuable leaf compost going into a landfill, so he snagged the leaves and stored them until we had a nice day.  Now they’re mulched into our grass along with the Christmas tree.

I hope that you’ve all had a good week, and are doing some relaxing and exhaling this weekend now that the hustle and bustle are over.  We had a very mellow Christmas with my family.  There were 11 of us here, lots of food, and of course lots of snuggles for the baby.  We went to a white elephant party last night, and then hung out with another group of friends tonight.  We’re normally homebodies, so this has been a busy week.

The house we were at tonight is beautiful.  We’ve known these people for several years, but this was the first time we were at their house.  They’re in their early 20s, but have a house much larger and fancier than ours.  And they have all sorts of great stuff - a treadmill, beautiful furniture, flat screen tvs…

Even though I love being frugal, and love our simple life, I’ll admit to a bit of coveting now and then.  Tonight I was loving the couch (a beautiful chocolate brown wrap around sectional), the treadmill, and the huge master suite.  For a minute, I found myself wanting those things too.  Then I reminded myself that I wrote a check today to pay and additional $2000 towards our mortgage in January.  I suppose we could have a new couch and a bigger house if we wanted, but we’ve decided that we’d rather own our house as quickly as possible.  That means that we’ll just keep on living the way we always have, buying only what we need, shopping in thrift stores, and keeping our expenses to the bare minimum in order to be able to put as much money as we can towards the principal on our mortgage.

Now that I’m back home in our comfy little house, I’m perfectly happy with our thrift store furniture and cozy rooms.  I like knowing that our house will be ours a lot sooner than it would be if we spent our money on things to put inside it.   And when I look at our son, I’m reminded that the best things in life aren’t things, nor can they be bought.  All we really want to do is be able to spend our time with him.  For us, that’s a huge motivating factor to live frugally, since it means that we don’t have to spend as much of our time earning money to pay for our lifestyle.  And it feels really good to know that we’ve managed to nearly triple our mortgage payment for January.  It required some scrimping, but it’s done.  Now to just repeat that process 11 more times next year, and avoid being tempted by wonderful couches…

It is a cold snowy Sunday here today.  Perfect for sitting on the couch sewing felted wool sweaters into diaper covers.  Later on we’ll head to the gym, but other than that we’ll be staying indoors today.  I’ve been using my Moby Wrap to exercise with our son lately, and it’s working great.  Our gym has an indoor track and a set of stairs with 28 steps going down to the level below the track.  I put the baby in his wrap, grab two 9 lb weights, and hit the track.  I just walk laps, and I go down the stairs and back up on each lap.  I carry the weights while I walk, doing all sorts of bicep curls, tricep kickbacks, military press, etc.  We’re usually there for about 90 minutes, and by the end of that, I’ve had a great workout.  Nothing fancier than walking, stairs, carrying the baby and some light weights.  But it works well.  When it’s nice outside, we do the same sort of thing outdoors.  But today is a good day for the gym.  I love being able to get in a workout and snuggle my baby at the same time.  And it’s all free, since my job at the library includes a free gym pass.  Even though I’m just a sub at the library now, I still get the free gym pass. 

I’m getting much better at making wool diaper covers.  After I blogged about the one I made last week, Alissa left a comment with a link to a very simple wool cover pattern (thanks Alissa!)  I tried that pattern and I’ve made two covers this weekend.  I’m sewing them by hand with thick crochet cotton, and they’re turning out great.  It’s very relaxing to sit on the couch and sew by hand.  And the combination of the wool and the thick cotton thread means that they come together really fast.  I’d say it took me about an hour to make each cover.  Here’s a picture of the one I just finished this morning:

I’m still using old sweaters that a friend felted when she was making covers for her son.  I have two sweaters that I haven’t cut up yet, which should make four more covers.  That ought to do us for a while.  And I can also make long wool pants using the arms of the sweaters, so I probably have enough wool to make diaper covers to last until our son is out of diapers.

Last night I went shopping with a friend, and we ended up at the thrift store near our house.  I bought an extra-large men’s fleece sweatshirt that I’m going to make into diapers.  I’ve found that fleece is a great fabric for the inside of the diapers, since it’s soft and doesn’t stain the way knit cotton does.  I got the shirt for $2.50, and should be able to get at least four or five diaper liners out of it.

Around the Frugal Blog Network,

The Tight Fisted Miser writes about how he and his girlfriend divide their expenses.  She’s not as frugal as he is, but they’ve both compromised a bit, and it works for them, which is all that really matters.

Almost Frugal has written about her guilty pleasures.  We all have them, and frankly (unless your guilty pleasure is a Ferrari) I think they’re worth it.

The Frugal Duchess has a post about some of the financial schemes to which people are particularly vulnerable during bad economic times.

Frugal Zeitgeist has a very helpful post about getting promoted.  Any tips that lead to a promotion or a raise are good right now, considering how tough the job market is.

Not Made Of Money has details about some things you might not know about your credit score. 

Obviously I’m not on top of my feedreader and checking in on all the sites I enjoy, because I just came across this post from Dawn at Frugal For Life today, and it’s dated Sept 27.  After nearly four years of blogging about frugality, Dawn is calling it quits, although she’s leaving her website up (which is good, because it’s an amazingly complete resource for aspiring frugalites).  Thanks for all the tips and ideas Dawn, and good luck with whatever comes next!

But I also read this post from Frugal Trenches, and was cheered by her determination and spirit.  She’s living in London and spending a lot of money to be surrounded by concrete.  And her downshifted, environmentally-friendly, frugal lifestyle is calling her to a simpler place to live.  Keep checking back to see where she ends up.  I have a feeling it will be somewhere wonderful.

My husband and I have been batting around the idea of a place in the country someday.  Specifically a straw bale house in the country.  For now (and for many years to come), we love where we live.  We love that the elementary school is about 300 yards from our back door.  We love that we can bike to the grocery store, library, and post office.  We love all the conveniences of living in the suburbs (especially since we both work at home, so we don’t have to commute anywhere).  And our neighborhood is very quiet and secluded; especially our home, which backs up to open space.  We live on a horseshoe shaped street that doesn’t lead anywhere else - sometimes an hour will go by without a single car passing our house.  But who knows what we’ll be doing 20 years from now?  I love the idea of a straw bale house, and I’m fascinated by the pictures and descriptions of the building process that I find online.  Now I’m picturing Frugal Trenches building herself a straw bale house out in the English countryside, and it makes me smile.

By popular demand (n = 3) I took pictures of the diapers I made yesterday.  The Cat in the Hat one has the soaker layer sewn into the middle of it, like the ones we made last spring.  The Wyoming diaper (my husband went to school there; that diaper is made of a pair of his old pajamas that he wasn’t wearing anymore) is a pocket diaper, with just an inner and outer layer sewn together, and a few inches left open at the front.  I made a soaker insert from old t-shirts and flannel, and it just slips in between the two layers of the diaper.  Then when we change him, we’ll just pull the soaker insert out and put it in the diaper pail separately.  I washed the diapers last night and the pocket diaper is already nearly dry (it normally takes about two days for most of my diapers to dry).  So I think I’ll be making all of my diapers this way from now on.