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.

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.

This is a bathroom-themed post, so if that’s tmi, here’s your fair warning to mosey along now. 

For some time, we’ve been on a mission to reduce the amount of disposable stuff we use.  It’s cheaper and far more environmentally sound to go with reusable products, and we’ve found that it’s a lot easier than it seems.  Our son has been in homemade cloth diapers since he was born, and I barely even notice the extra loads of laundry.  Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess has a challenge on her site about ditching disposables – check it out if you’re looking for inspiration.

Anyway, I started thinking…  Why not make myself cloth wipes that I can use instead of toilet paper when I pee?  I wash diapers all the time – how hard would it be to toss in some little squares of cloth along with the diapers?  So I got out my sewing stuff and my recycled fabric.  Remember the flannel sheets that I got at a thrift store before our son was born?  Those sheets have definitely earned their keep around here.  Diapers, a sling, more diapers, and they’re still going strong.

I cut little rectangles of fabric from one of the sheets, about eight inches by four inches.  Then I folded them in half and sewed around the open edges, leaving a little space to turn them inside out.  Then I stitched up the open space… done and done.  It took me about 45 minutes to cut out and sew 20 little squares.  Now I have nice soft flannel double-thick squares of fabric, instead of toilet paper.  And I’m the only girl in the house, so they’re all mine.  I toss them in the diaper pail, and they use no extra resources at all, since I’m running the washing machine anyway, with or without them.  By the way, I’m a very well-hydrated girl, so those 20 squares last me two days – I was going through a lot of toilet paper.

(I should note that this is not an original idea.  My parents did this when I was a kid, long before “green” was the buzz word of the decade.)

That got me on a roll, and I started thinking again about all the tampons I’ve thrown away over the years.  I checked out some of the websites that sell cloth pads, and considered buying some.  But then I thought about what an awesome sense of satisfaction I get from making stuff myself.  And even though my sewing skills are nothing to brag about, I figured that if I could manage to make diapers, I could make a pad.  I read through the directions on the Tiny Birds Organic website (I got that link from Alissa, who sews beautifully and makes amazing-looking pads and diapers and all sorts of other stuff), and then I sat down to give it a try.  I’ve found that with diapers, I prefer pockets and inserts rather than having the soaker layer built into the diaper.  So I skipped the extra layer, and just cut out the front and back of the pad (the back is made of two overlapping pieces).  Other than that, I followed all the steps listed.  Then I made an insert using a layer of flannel from the sheet, a middle layer cut from an old towel, and a backing layer made from an old fleece sweatshirt that I had been using to make diaper liners.  The fleece provides some waterproofing, but you can also use wool.  I’m thrilled with how well it turned out, given that it’s my first try.  Here’s a picture of the pad and the liner:

And a picture of everything all put together, with the wings folded underneath:

I still need to figure out a snap.  I’m going into town tomorrow, so I’ll browse around at the craft store and see what they have in the way of snaps.  This project took me about 30 minutes, from start to finish.  My sewing machine is quite old and before I started making diapers last year, my previous sewing experience was limited to home ec class in 1990.  So trust me, if I can do this, anyone can.

I don’t particularly like cleaning.  I love to cook, do laundry, work in the garden… but cleaning is pretty far down on my list.  But I love living in a clean house, and having lots of wide open, clean space around me.  And therein lies the conundrum.  Lately I’ve been on a mission to purge stuff from our house, so that it’s easier to clean and less likely to get messed up ( if you don’t have it, you can’t mess it up, right?)  I’ve pretty much stopped going to thrift stores, as there really isn’t anything we need, and thrift stores tend to entice me to buy stuff just because it’s there and it’s a screamin’ deal.  So at least no new stuff is coming into the house.

In addition, I’ve been going through the house and really looking at our stuff.  Asking myself if we’ve used it lately, or if we could do without it.  The back of my car is full again with stuff to drop off at the thrift store next time I go to town, and it feels great.

Yesterday, I tackled a set of kitchen cabinets.  The cabinets where we store tea, coffee, some spices, baking stuff, random kitchen gadgets that rarely get used… sort of the catch-all cabinets.  I took everything out, and tossed the stuff that I never use.  There were spices that were more preservatives than spice – and that I knew I would never use again – but were somehow still lurking in the back of my cabinet.  There was a beautiful glass pitcher that we got as a wedding gift from friends of my in-laws and have used one time.  One time, and we’ve been married since 2003.  Regardless of how pretty the pitcher was, in our kitchen, it was taking up space.  Now it’s in my car to donate, and will hopefully end up in a home where it gets used often.  By the time I had finished, I had a large stack for the thrift store, and an equally large stack for the trash.  And my cabinet looks and feels SO much better.  I can find everything.  I know that everything in there is stuff that we regularly use.

A while ago, I started saving plain glass jars when they were empty, instead of putting them in the recycle bin.  Yesterday I cleaned off all of the labels, and transferred all of the stuff that was in plastic bags in my cabinet to the jars.  Cocoa, dried coconut, spices… all of the stuff that our health food store sells in bulk bags.  Now it’s all in pretty jars instead.  I made labels out of scrap paper and black ink and glued them to the jars.  I love how it looks with all the different jars, and it’s easy to tell if I’m running low on something.  And with the cabinet all cleaned out, I can see all of the jars at a glance.

Ah, kitchen decluttering.  Perfect activity for a cold, snowy weekend.  And it’s free, which is always a bonus in my book.

I got a blog award last week, and in the process I discovered a new blog.  Kristina writes at Growing A Better Me, and has all sorts of interesting things to share.  Thanks for the award Kristina!  As far as passing it on goes, the blogs on my blogroll are my favorites, and I highly recommend them all!

While I was browsing Kristina’s blog, I found this recipe that she shared for spinach burgers.  I didn’t have any cheese (we’re mostly vegan these days) so I made cashew cheese by blending cashews, water, garlic salt, apple cider vinegar, and some spices.  It turned out creamy and wonderful, and I added it to the spinach mixture in place of cheese.  The dish was fantastic, and smelled great while it was baking.  I didn’t have bread either, so I whipped up a batch of tortillas, and we had spinach burritos.  Very yummy – thanks for the inspiration Kristina!

I also came across this article last week, with 100 ways to recycle a t-shirt.  My favorite?  The diaper, of course!

My husband is hard at work in the backyard right now, building two more mini-greenhouses to put over our other garden beds.  We’ve had to cover them with tarps for the last couple nights, as it’s been below freezing.  So it will be nice to have them covered now as we head into the cold season.  He’s using a lot of scrap lumber that we got for free from a lumber yard (check around, if there’s one in your area, they might let you come in and pick up offcuts).  We had to buy several long 2×4s, but all of the shorter pieces were free.

We’re starting to wrap up our list of outdoor chores.  I’ve been moving gravel in the front yard for the last few weeks, and finally finished this week.  We have a huge front yard, and it was all grass when we got here (well, sort of – it hadn’t been watered or mowed in a very long time… but it was supposed to be grass).  We didn’t want to be watering and maintaining all of that grass, and decided to xeriscape a chunk of the yard instead.  The previous owners had purchased gravel to go along the driveway and between the street and the sidewalk.  They had also put gravel back by the fence, and had apparently over-ordered.  The excess was in the area by the fence, which was over a foot deep in places.  So I got out the wheelbarrow and shovel, and started moving gravel.  We bought weedblocker to put down under the gravel, and I’ve filled in roughly 400 square feet of yard with xeriscaping.  We planted a few low-water plants and grasses, and I put in a wavy edge along the gravel using some old bricks that the previous owners left.  Even the plants were mostly free – a neighbor didn’t want them any more, and offered them to us if we’d come over and dig them out of her yard.  I love our new front yard.  It’s still mostly grass, but not as much as it was before, and we paid almost nothing for the new landscaping.  I also got lots of good workouts by shoveling gravel, which was an extra bonus.

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

Remember last year, when we built a little greenhouse to go in our side yard? 

When we moved, we had to cut it in half, and we just got it put back together this week.  Here it is in our new yard, protecting one of our garden beds:

See why we had to move?

That green patch around the patio is a lawn that my husband planted from seed a month ago.  He rented a tiller ($36) and spent about $20 on grass seed.  The rest of the yard is really nasty weeds, and he wanted a little area off of the patio where our son could play without getting poked by gnarly weeds.  So now we have a little patch of lawn.  It’s only taking up a small area of our yard – it looks bigger in the picture than it really is.  Most of our yard is devoted to fruit trees and berry bushes, but the area that you can see beyond the grass in the picture will eventually be filled in with garden beds.  For now, there are only three, but there are many more to come!

I promised a long time ago that I’d post a picture of the orchard we planted.  Here it is, under a rainbow:

It’s hard to see all of the trees, because they are still pretty small.  Check back in a few years and it should be a more impressive sight!  In all, we have 14 fruit trees in our orchard.  We’re expecting a bit of trial and error with this process.  We’re only going to let about half the trees fruit next year, leaving the other half to focus on growing strong roots.  The following year we’ll switch it up, and let the ones that already fruited work on their roots.  Getting fruit will depend on when we get our last frost too, so I expect that some years will be better than others.  But we’re really excited about having fruit trees – it’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time.

I also wanted to share a picture of the pepper plants we’re growing on our patio in a container my husband built:

And, better late than never… check out the Festival of Frugality that Green Panda Treehouse hosted last week.  I had an article in the FOF, and enjoyed many of the other articles too. 

I have loved clothes for as long as I can remember.  I’ve always purchased them second-hand (even as a child, since my family only shopped at yard sales and thrift stores), but it always gave me a thrill to get new clothes.  Not so long ago, I would relish a quiet afternoon in one of the thrift stores by our house, perusing the clothing racks with an eagle eye.  I can’t point to any specific thing that has changed, but I find that I’m no longer interested in shopping for clothes.  Or shopping for anything really, except food.  I love spending time in the local health food store, but buying “stuff” that isn’t consumable really doesn’t do much for me anymore.

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.

Recently I got an email from a long-time reader, asking me if we still keep track of our monthly expenses.  I guess the answer is both yes and no.  We do pay close attention to what we are spending, and I check our bank balances and credit card transactions on a daily basis.  But we no longer keep track of every penny, nor do we break our spending down by category anymore.

We paid off the last of our non-mortgage debt in 2007.  Our income has slowly increased over the years without an increase in our living expenses (actually, as we paid off debt, our expenses went down).  And neither of us liked keeping every receipt for every purchase.  It was interesting to keep track of our expenses, and it did provide some motivation for keeping our spending down.  But we’re pretty far along on our frugal journey at this point.  Frugality is second nature around our house, and we never spend money mindlessly.  We ponder our purchases, buy used whenever possible, and avoid buying much of the time.  We use homemade cloth diapers, prepare pretty much all of our food from scratch, ride our bikes instead of driving, read books from the library, and we don’t even have a TV anymore.  Our cars are nearly 20 years old (no payments, and very inexpensive insurance and registration fees), and everything we wear comes from thrift stores.  We’re spending so much time trying to turn our little plot of land into a mini farm that we don’t have time to go out and spend money (we have spent money on things like fruit trees and berry bushes, but we planned for those expenses).

So we stopped keeping track of every penny spend quite a while ago.  Instead, we use a pay-ourselves-first approach that we like better.  Our only debt is our mortgage.  That means that each month our bills amount to current living expenses plus the mortgage.  In addition to that, we’ve created “bills” for several savings accounts.  Some are automated, some are not, but they are all priorities.  We have our son’s 529 plan, our HSA, our IRAs, and our emergency fund.  We also pay an additional amount towards our mortgage principal each month (it varies, but we try to make sure that each month we pay a little more than we did the month before).  Once we pay all of those “bills” we can use whatever is left over for current living expenses.  If there is a higher-than-usual amount left over, we tend to stash it in one of our savings accounts – we don’t spend it just because it’s there, but that’s probably a result of being frugal for so long that the habits are ingrained.

This is what works for us.  It guarantees that we keep making progress with our savings goals, but it also allows us some flexibility with how we spend our money.  Now that our checking account is paying more interest than our on-line savings accounts, we’ll be keeping more money in checking.  This means that we’ll have to do a little more keeping track, since money that is in our checking account will technically count as savings, and thus be untouchable for day to day expenses.  I do like having our savings in a separate place (out of sight, out of mind), but the extra interest in the checking account is enticing, and we’ll make it work.

What about you?  Do you prefer to keep track of every penny? (my mother started doing that in the early 70s, and still does to this day, even though she and my dad don’t need to anymore)  Do you use the pay yourself first method?  Do you have a budget at all?  Have you started keeping more careful track of your money since the economy headed south last year?  I’m curious to hear what other frugalites (and not-so-frugalites!) do.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’m not fond of toxic chemicals in our house or yard.  We grow all of our veggies using organic methods, clean the house with baking soda and vinegar, and avoid food additives like preservatives and food colorings.  So it should come as no surprise that we don’t want our son wearing pajamas treated with flame retardant chemicals.

I know other parents who feel the same way, and their solution has been to go out and buy new cotton pajamas that say “wear snug f’itting – not flame resistant” on the tag.  I have found a few pairs of these at thrift stores, and our son has been wearing them this summer.  But he’s starting to outgrow them now, and winter is coming.  I know that I could go back to the thrift stores and search through the pajamas to find more that aren’t treated with flame retardants.  But I’m trying to avoid shopping in general – we already have too much stuff, and I don’t want to add anything else.  I’ve been sorting through our stuff and weeding out clutter, and it feels great.  We live ten miles from the thrift stores now, as opposed to where we used to live, which was half a mile from two great thrift stores.  This is great for my efforts to save money, get by with less, and avoid consumerism in all its forms – including buying used stuff that we really don’t need.

So our son is now wearing sweatpants and sweatshirts to bed.  We have several that will fit him all winter.  They were hand me downs and items that I purchased at thrift stores before we moved, and they make perfect pajamas.  I pair them with warm socks, and he’s all set for the night.  Thrift stores are frugal, but making do with what we already have is even more frugal, and it serves a secondary purpose of keeping the clutter in our house to a minimum.