Archive for March, 2005

March 31st, 2005 - Food cravings

Why do we crave junk food? I ate an oatmeal creme pie yesterday and immediately wanted another one. I had a chocolate egg this morning and with the taste still in my mouth, I’m thinking of the next one. But when I eat an apple or a banana, fruits I love just as much as the junk food, I rarely think “Oh, I can’t wait. I have to have another one right away.” What’s the difference?

In SuperSize Me, the guy mentioned that he craved more McD’s food, too. But there wasn’t a discussion of why (that I recall).

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March 31st, 2005 - Saving money?

I wrote a few days ago about how I’m saving about half of my allowance each month and sending it off to a DRiP account. I’m trying to decide whether to continue to do that or to save it for shorter-term items. Ever since we heard about them, we’ve wanted a Dyson vacuum. Our current vac works just fine, however, and we can’t justify spending around $500 on a vac. (We’d get the Animal, as we have four pets!) But if I saved my $50 for a year, I’d have enough for it. Or for the patio furniture we dream about every summer. (I’d buy it at the end of the summer on sale!)

I can’t figure out which one to do. We can get along without these items, but it would be fun to save my money towards something specific that we’ve long wanted. Both things would certainly get a LOT of use. (We vacuum about once a week, and we’d sit outside a lot more if we had something other than 2 plastic chairs.) But we do not NEED either item. We’ve gotten along for years without them and can continue to get along without them. What’s the balance for us? ::sigh::

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March 29th, 2005 - Walking to work

When we moved here nearly 6 years ago, we happened to find an apartment that was about 8 blocks from work. I fell in love with walking! No way was I going to drive 8 blocks, no matter what the weather. And in bad weather, a bus stopped one block away and delivered a block from work. (I never took it, however.)

Two years later when we began looking for a house, one requirement was that it be within 2 miles of work or else a block from a bus route. That covered most of Oshkosh as the bus routes are pretty good. All except one large development–the “best” one. Houses were too expensive there anyway. We found a house about 10 blocks from work (we moved about 6 blocks!) and I continue to walk.

I dream of a house in the country, with trees and water and open fields for the dogs. Except I can’t imagine a commute by car! I love walking to work. It takes me about 20-25 minutes from the time I start putting on my coat and boots (in the winter) till I’m in my office and have the computer on. I could probably do it faster…but I don’t want to.

Except when it’s nice enough to bike. Just bought it at the end of August, so still not used to the idea. But I loved that last summer before it got too cold. It’s a short enough ride that I can come home for lunch. Which I will want to do even more now that we have our baby!

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March 25th, 2005 - Food thoughts

Over the last few days, I’ve run into descriptions of the food industry that have really turned my stomach. I’m reading a book, In Praise of Slowness, and we watched the documentary SuperSize Me. Somehow, my husband was able to actually buy Mcdonald’s food and watch the movie while eating. The next day, we ate out at Culver’s then I watched the end of it (he had finished it after I went to bed). I felt sick to my stomach.

And Culver’s, I think, isn’t as bad as the national chains. It’s locally founded and I actually know the founder (he’s an alum of the university for which I work). Their food doesn’t appear to be as fat-filled as McDonald’s and BK, but I’m not actually certain. Their burger’s certainly look better and fresher! I rarely have a burger, anyway.

Anyway, the combination of these two influences has convinced me to try organic meat, and maybe other products as well. I don’t really like meat much and wouldn’t eat it at all if I had to cook it. But my husband is willing to cook it–he’d be a carnivore I think if we let him. But I shy away from buying meat because of the high prices. Now that I know a bit more about where it comes from as well…I think I’ll have an even harder time buying it at Pick ‘n’ Save or Festival.

BUT, I’ve long had an interest in a local farm, Cattleana Ranch, that sells grass fed Galloway beef (they also carry pork, eggs, and chicken). It’s far more expensive than the grocery store, so we’ve never tried it. But this Saturday, we’re going up to the natural food store in Neenah, which carries their products. You can also go to the Ranch, but it’s only open one Saturday a month. I like local, small farms, so I think I can feel good about this meat. It should also taste better!

I noticed organic/cageless eggs the other day at the store; we commented on them, but they cost 3x as much. And we usually go thru 12-24 eggs in a week. I think today’s purchase of 24 (buy 1/get 1 free) may be the last regular eggs, too.

Cost is a huge factor to me, but so is environmental impact. Now I have to figure out their relative worth. At the moment, I’m leaning towards spending more on groceries to have better food.

Posted in Food | 3 Comments »

March 25th, 2005 - Programmable thermostat

We have a programmable thermostat. Got it free with our new furnace a few years back. For most people, these are supposed to save money. But we don’t program it and we’re saving money.

Why? Because if we programmed it, the heat would go up to 63 at 4:30am so the house was warmer by the time I get up at 5am. It’d probably go up to 65 around 6 or 7 am, after my husband (6) and daughter (between 6 and 7) are up. Then it would go up to 67 or 68 at 5pm (during winter, it’s dark as early as 4:30 around here). Then it would go down to 60 overnight, probably at midnight.

Instead, I don’t turn the heat up to 63 until I’m downstairs in the morning. Sometimes, that’s before 5 am, but often it’s a bit later. So the heat is off longer at night. The rest of the day, we only turn the temp up when we feed too cold. Some days, that’s early in the morning. Some days, it stays at 63 until evening! Even if it’s put up to 65 during the day, we wait until I head into the living room for the evening to turn it up to 67. Often, that’s not until after 6, sometimes not till 7. All in all, I believe we use less energy/money by not programming our thermostat than by doing so.

Posted in General, Money | 1 Comment »

March 23rd, 2005 - Stay at home husband makes life more simple

I’m appreciating my stat-at-home-husband more and more. It’s definitely part of what helps me lead a more simple life. No rushing to and from daycare. No taking time off work for appointments (except by choice). And the best part os not worrying about Maggie during the day.

Yes, we have a lower income than if he worked. But it’s so nice to come home to him. I felt this way even before Maggie. I am, however, jealous of him. During maternity leave, I discovered that I really enjoyed being home all the time! (Hoping for that lottery win…..)

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March 23rd, 2005 - Not so big houses

Sarah Susanka has written a series of books, the first of which is The Not So Big House. I just read the most recent one, which is about how to renovate or add on to existing houses. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting, although it did give me some impetus to work on our pantry. Anyway, I love these books and would recommend them to anyone building a house. The philosophy is to build a house that serves your needs and desires, not just one that is bigger and better. Now, when we win the lottery, I can’t wait to build this kind of house!

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March 17th, 2005 - Pickle Jar

A few months ago, my Mom sent me a story about a man who’s Dad saved change in a pickle jar for his college fund. For years, I’ve been putting change into a blue bottle. I’d do various things with the money–something special or send it to the DRiP account for the future or just put it into the bnak as the slush fund. It wasn’t usually very much, less than $100 a year. We used credit cards as much as possible (paid off every month of course) because I hate dealing with cash. But whenever I did pay cash, the coins went in the bottle. (I’d also use the change during the summer for garage saling!)

I though the pickle jar idea was pretty cool, so bought a jar of pickles, which we’re still eating, last fall. Put the pickles in a smaller jar in January, and delightedly started to fill up the pickle jar. I decided to also put in any refunds we get (they come after I entered the original amount paid into Quicken and I bet we can meet the budget without the refund, so why not?), Discover cashback bonus awards, and other miscellaneous income.

But then I had a change of opinion about saving for college. Talked it over with Eric, and we decided to make the pickle jar our trip to Alaska fund. We went there for our honeymoon and always talk about going back. But we’ve never put it into our budget because it’s an overwhelming expense. (We did a cruise which we adored and would do again. Or, we’d like to spend more time in the state and be in the mountains, and go north of the Arctic Circle. Either way, we’re talking 1000s of dollars.) We’re both excited about putting money into the pickle jar now! Even if it’s only a penny that I found on the sidewalk, I’m just delighted to add it to the jar.

I wonder how long it will take to get $6000 dollars? 10 years? More?

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March 17th, 2005 - Savings

One ofthe books I read last fall–perhaps one of the Your Money or Life books–talked about saving half of your income (or half of theirs, whoever the story was about). Now, I don’t think I could convince my husband to save that much, but I realized I could save half of my money. We each have our own spending money (aka allowance) in the budget. So I started saving half of my allowance. It nicely coincided with the baby, so it was pretty easy those first couple months to not spend much–I didn’t go anywhere to spend it! Then we reconfigured the budget and the spending money jumped a bit. So I have even more to save, which thrills me! I actually was not enthused about increasing our spending money, since it had to come from somewhere else in our fairly well-thought-out budget. I was much more settled about it when I realized I could put most of it into savings. I’m enjoying sending off a check each month to my Pepsi DRIP account!

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March 16th, 2005 - Mulch

I have grand plans for my garden this summer. One thing I’m missing is mulch. Growing up, we always used grass clippings from our fairly substantial yard to mulch around plants. It’s a great idea and I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it. You only have to weed a little bit if you mulch promptly!

But we have dogs, so we can’t use grass clippings from our yard. We also have a mluching lawn mower, so my husband really doesn’t want the hassle of collecting the clippings from the front yard (which is fairly small, and will be getting smaller as I develop part of into a fruit garden). I don’t know anyone who collects their clippings, and I’d have to make sure they didn’t use chemicals (or have dogs). My Dad gave me the solution: shredded paper!

I was already shredding receipts and financial papers. Now, instead of putting them out for the recyclers, I’m recycling them! I’ve saving all of my office paper and junk mail that isn’t glossy and shredding. I think it will take a lot of paper for this to work. So far, I have three garbage partially full. It’s hard to fill them up because the paper flies out very easily! Now that I’m back at work, I’m saving my recycled paper here as well.

And under the shredded paper, I’ll place newspaper. We did thiswhen I was a kid, too. It doesn’t work on it’s own because it’s too easily caught by the wind. But it’s a fantastic layer under mulch. It doesn’t last the whole summer, usually, but a fair while. A second layer can always be placed when the first layer and mulch disintegrates. Mulch is also a great way to add additional nutrients to the garden soil. I’m not sure that paper is the best for this–but my soil is so poor anything added to it in the way of bio-material has to improve it!

Posted in Childhood, Garden | 1 Comment »

March 14th, 2005 - Heating

Growing up, my family turned the heat nearly off at night. I think it was down to 50 or 55, and rarely did the house actually cool off that much. During the day, the thermostat was set to 68 or so. Some days it never came on–we had a passive solar home that had wonderful southern windows. During the day, vents were closed in the bedrooms (we were gone to school after all). The vent in the extra room was only opened when we wanted to work in there (it was the sewing/prayer/guest room). I got up around the same time Dad did, and he turned on the heat in the morning. So I got used to sleeping in a very cool room!

Unfortunately, our house has only one southern window–in our baby’s room. Makes for a lovely, sunny room. But doesn’t help heat the rest of the house on sunny winter days. Two bedrooms (ours and the guest) have no vent in them. Regardless, the upstairs rarely heats or cools efficiently. We’d love to redo the heating system, but I don’t think there’s an easy way to put in new vents! (We have one other room in the house that is also unheated, although it does have an intake vent–one of THREE in the downstairs.) Eric has always preferred a much warmer house than I. But this year, he was willing to turn it down, sometimes cooler than I wanted! Woohoo! For the most part, we turn it down to 60 overnight (knowing it will be colder than that upstairs). We start out at 63-65 during the morning/afternoon. By evening, we usually have it up to 67 or 68. When we’re sick, it might go as high as 70, but I can recall doing that only once this winter. When I was home with the baby, I usually had it at 67 all day long.

The past couple days, I’ve been turning it up to 63 when I get up for the nighttime feeding (between 3 and 4 am). I’d thought that would take the chill off of getting up at 5am. But it doesn’t really seem to make a difference in the bathroom in an hour or two. So I’m going to stop doing it.

Two summers ago, we outfitted every window with cellular shades (mostly double-celled). That made an enormous difference in the temperature. We also temporarily caulked the windows–last winter just downstairs; this winter all the windows. That made a difference in cutting drafts! The caulk cost only 99 cents per container; it took two, including some major caulking in the basement. I can’t say our heating costs reduced–gas prices went up this year so our bills have been about the same. But imagine how high they may have been had we not made these changes?

Posted in Daily life, Childhood | No Comments »

March 9th, 2005 - Recycling clothes

As a child, we always handed down our outgrown clothes to my cousins. My brother and I were the oldest by 5+ years than anyone else on that side. My cousins on my Dad’s side were both older and we often got handmedowns from them. I wonder if I will carry on this tradition with my cousins? (I have only one neice and she’s 10. A little too old for her to hand down to M.!) The second great-granddaughter will be born in June. Perhaps we’ll do it!

For now, M’s outgrown clothes are being given to St. Vincent’s. The things she’s been given that she doesn’t need will be given to The ChristChild Society (for which I am a volunteer–we make layettes for needy infants). I can’t believe the number of outfits she’s been given for these first 6 months! Far too many clothes to store and use. We’re trying to keep it to about 7 outfits, altho she needs more at the 3-6 mo size since we straddle winter and spring. I wish more people had included gift receipts! Oh well, another baby/mother will be delighted in them instead. We have plenty and I get joy from blessing others.

Posted in Childhood, Kids | No Comments »

March 9th, 2005 - Oh well to cloth diapers

We were a bit (understatement) overwhelmed when M. was first here and have ended up not using cloth diapers. Part of it was that the first ones I got didn’t fit right. By the time I ordered new ones and felt more capable of taking the time for them, she was 2 pounds from out growing them. That made them very expensive diapers. My husband wasn’t too into the idea in the first place, and now he’s the stay-at-home Dad. Without his use of them during the day, the cost if way too prohibitive. We are at least using inexpensive store-brand (Target) diapers and I tear wipes in half before using them. (One of these days, I’ll try homemade wipes. I have the ingredients. Maternity leave just disappeared so quickly!)

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March 8th, 2005 - Back?

Now that my maternity leave is almost over (I’m back part time for a week or two), I’m going to try to get back to this blog. My goal is one post per day.

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My Adventures in Simple Living