Extreme Measures

So far throughout this No-Spend journey, I've contemplated several "extreme" swaps. I've looked for extreme ways of saving money like using coupons to turn our guest room downstairs into my "stock pile" and audition for Extreme Couponing (is that still a thing????) My friend has a sister who doesn't use trash bags. Like apparently she carries the smelly, stinky, oozing bin out to the outdoor can and dumps it, then rinses it and brings it back inside to fill up again? We literally fill our full size 13 gallon trash bag once a day. That's a lot of trash-can baths I would rather not give. So, that one got vetoed....I'll have to make my contribution to saving the planet another way. Alas, I have continued to buy plastic baggies and plastic forks to aid in convenience for my children's school lunches. But one thing I went to buy, and then thought twice about was.....cat litter. Yes, the material I clean and scoop and refill just so my pet happily relieves itself on a daily basis. 

So, this switch-out, is the first one that I would consider extreme. Not washing my car once a week, a close second. But this, this is saving me about $26.00/month. I know that doesn't sound like much, but this whole experiment was based on the idea of discovering how much money could be saved by not simply accepting a "want" as a "need" and not mindlessly spending money. I plan to be completely jaw-dropped by the amount of money saved by not spending the small amounts here and there....because lets face it, all those $1 diet cokes add up. 

Anyway, back to cat litter. So, when we adopted our cat in 2016, I found this fantastic cat litter from Pets Mart. A cat litter made from recycled newspaper. It's in little pellets so it doesn't fling all over your floor when your cat does his thing. Perfect. It was costing me about $13.00/bag and I would buy two every month. 

Just as the calendar switched to "January", I was reminded of what our vet had suggested we do several years ago after our first cat had his front paws declawed. The vet had suggest we use shredded paper as cat litter so the little grains of regular cat litter wouldn't get stuck in his wounds. Made sense. My mother-in-law had brought home garbage bags full of shredded paper from her office and that provided us enough litter to last till our poor little feline was completely healed. A little lightbulb went off in my head and I thought "if it was good enough then, what's wrong with using it now?" 

Well, I put it to the test. Literally the papers that come home from school (granted I save a few for their books from each grade) but lets face it we get A LOT of papers home from school on a daily basis, right? Well, I declared one particularly sturdy box the "RECYCLED PAPER" box and all returned homework, unwanted artwork, junk mail, ripped envelopes, and ads go into this box. I take a stack downstairs to the paper shredder, spend about 2 minutes shredding and voila! I have a full pan of cat litter. 

I have a full pan of cat litter that cost me NOTHING. It was completely free. FREE! Which, I mean it should be, considering it's sole purpose is to collect unmentionables. 

Now, I have had to be very consistent and change his litter more often than needed before. It also cannot be scooped out, and must be completely changed each time (I do every day or every other right now) because all the paper soaks up all the liquid, but there is no odor stopping power with plain old paper. 

My cat had literally zero issues switching from regular litter to this paper. He's a champ at no-spend year as well and should be included in the award speeches. 

So, my verdict on absolutely free, cost-me-nothing cat litter is that we are sticking with this extreme switch. What extreme things do you do to save money??? Share with me, because I plan to be testing several more options out soon! 

Awww....Here's my precious baby boy! He's worth all the work! 

The Why

It's been twenty days. 2-0. TWENTY. Twenty days since I've had restaurant food. Twenty days since I've stopped through the drive-through. Twenty days since my kids have captured the coveted happy meal toy only to lose interest by the time we hit the car. Twenty days since we've grabbed a Sonic happy hour drink. Twenty days since I've been inside Target. (gasp! yes, for real) Twenty days.

On the one hand, its not been difficult at all. We spend our weekends doing the normal weekend things like catching up on laundry, playing games together, doing the grocery shopping, trying to survive snow-apocalypse and snow-apocalypse the second. You get the idea. There isn't near as much temptation on the weekends as I thought there would be. The week though, that's another story. We're in the thick of it during the week. There's the meetings and the unexpected things that come up. There's the exhaustion that the work week brings. There's homework and activities and volunteer sign up lists and more meetings and somewhere in there, oh yea, we all have to eat. I almost did it. I almost caved. I was rushing from work to a meeting with one of my kids' teachers after school. This meeting lasted until twenty minutes before my next meeting, 10 miles away. I drove like Mario (abiding every safety law of course) to drop my kiddos off at home all the while knowing the easiest, best, fastest thing to do would be to stop by those blessed golden arches and grab myself some greasy french fries which were sure to make me calm down and be ultra productive at my next meeting. But, I didn't. I drove the kids home, my husband prepared them leftovers and I grabbed an apple and was on my way. I'm sure the entire room could hear my stomach complaining. Calling out to me in all its no-spend agony that it NEEDED those French fries I had avoided earlier. It needed the convenience and the accessibility. It needed the panic. It fed on the feeling of chaos. But, that's the thing. There doesn't have to be the panic and the chaos. Yes, there will certainly be the exhaustion, the unexpected, but I'm learning to deal with it differently. I'm learning to continue wise decision making in spite of unplanned events. I'm learning to not let circumstances control my life. There it is. The big "WHY". I'm in control, of the things I can control. I'm not in control of the length of meetings, or how many places I will be expected at during the week. I'm not in control of how much homework the kids will have or their mood when they arrive home. I'm not in control of how late my husband will work, or if he'll be called out in the middle of the night. I'm not in control of any of it. But I am in control of me, my actions, my decisions, what I put in my mouth, what I spend my money on. I'm in control of that. So, I'm learning to make better decisions with what I can control.

This whole journey. This long-365 day journey is not an experiment in deprivation. I have yet to give up diet coke. Just saying. It is an experiment in better decision making. There are SO many activities we have inside our house that encourage family time. We don't need to be seeking family time entertainment elsewhere. We just don't. There are SO many wonderful, flavorful meals to be made at home. Laughing together around the Island, while we all belt out the lyrics to our favorite songs and working together to make dinner. We don't need Minskey's pizza to have family dinner. (I know, its shocking and I'm still trying to convince myself of this one) We have a closet full of board games, bookshelves packed full of books, we have Amazon Prime and Vudu filled with options to watch for family movie night. We have a school room/art room literally spilling with items to make crafts and cards and color while talking about our days. We have so much filling this house that I was purposeful in picking out. So many items within these walls that were purchased to encourage family time, so it's time to spend this year intentionally taking that family time and utilizing it as much as possible. Instead of filling my calendar with to-do's and then sitting back and wondering why we didn't have time for family games or reading this week, why the seven days sped past like a bullet train without me playing with the three precious humans I created. Instead of standing in the middle of the room watching life spin past me in a blur of feeling like I'm being pushed and pulled this way and that by the circumstances, I'm yelling out at the top of my lungs "STOP!" Desperately crying out to the blur to pause. Grasping at my kids, holding their faces between my hands and promising with every ounce of my being to be present. To be here. To be aware, to be WITH them. To be in control of what I can control. To teach them to slow down. To teach them to be in control, of their time, of their money, of their emotions. To create as part of their memories, family time, cooking dinner together, game nights, movie nights, coloring around the table chatting about anything and everything. I guess you could say our no-spend year has turned into a spend-everything year. No-spend on material things. No-spend money. No-spend on items we really don't need. But Spend my time. Spend my energy, spend my intentionality. Spend it all on them. Spend it on investing into my children. It will now forever be known as our Spend-all year.

STOP RIGHT NOW! Don't throw away your Christmas cards until you read this!

If you're like me, you received so many beautiful Christmas cards from friends and family.  We all know ordering and sending Christmas cards, especially with photos included are not cheap. Either we've gone through the whole ordeal ourselves or we've evaluated the cost and decided to invest in some other aspect of the holiday madness. Still, we all know how much time and money went into these cards. 

A few years ago while taking down my holiday decorations I was really saddened to throw all these gorgeous little mementos away, so I came up with an idea: 

Every year when we take down the Christmas decorations, I gather up all of the Christmas cards from their spot on this hanging wire, and make a little prayer book. We turn over a new card, one each day. We then pray for that person or family who sent us that card during our family devotion. You also could use it to be your inspiration and turn over a new card on a weekly basis and mail that person/family a real snail mail letter or encouraging card. The possibilities are endless!

It's super simple to make and it's something we've really enjoyed making each year with the new cards we receive. 

So, here's how to make yours:

Step one is to make two holes in your card along the folded edge using a hole punch. 

Next, you'll lay your first card on top of all the others and mark your holes to punch in the next card using a marker. Follow up with punching the holes you've marked on the rest of your Christmas cards. 

Next, using two loose leaf rings, you're going to feed one side of all the cards through the ring, hook the ring and then feed the other side of all the cards through the second ring. 

You can find some rings for pretty cheap on Amazon.

That's it! You're done! You've made a sweet little book of all your Christmas cards! 

How I Cut My Grocery Bill in HALF without using Coupons

The temptations begin.....

 First of all, we had family in town for Christmas until the 3rd of January. So, in the wake of starting back to work and school, in the wake of hard goodbyes, and piles of laundry spilling out of every hamper in the house, we entered no spend year. YAY.  The house looked like a Christmas and New Year Food Network show had been filmed in my kitchen. We had holiday food galore, and no real food to be found. It was Friday. I just had to make it through one normal day before I had the chance to get groceries....I literally poured out curdled milk onto my son's cheerios that very morning. The poor kid had to eat dry cereal and half a bottle of Gaterade for breakfast. That was all that was to be found. I sent him to school with pumpkin bread and yogurt for lunch. Of course, a sugar cookie with sprinkles thrown in there as well. So, my first Friday night exhausted mistake was deciding we had no food and we just had no other choice but to grab something easy out for dinner while we grocery shopped. My husband shot this down. "It will be fine," he said. "I'll grab milk on my way home from work so we have some for breakfast and we can go to the store tomorrow." 

"oh.....that will work". 

So we did just that, I came up with some leftover chicken wings cut up onto lettuce to make some salads, and more sugar cookies for dinner and we managed with our one leftover egg and more cheerios for breakfast. We entered Saturday in a much better position for  good decision making while grocery shopping. 

I looked over the sale ads for all the local grocery stores, which I had honestly not ever done before (ain't nobody got time for that!) but it was really interesting. Between the half a bag of leftover baking potatoes from Christmas and the ads, I was actually able to put together some decent meal ideas for the week. I wrote out all the items I found at a killer deal, what store they were located at and we were off. I started with Aldi. I compared their prices to the deals I had written down from HyVee, Sprouts and Price Chopper. I ended up scratching a few items off that were cheaper at Aldi than the competitors sale ads, but decided I would still go to HyVee and Price chopper for a few things. I ended up spending a total of $145.00 on Saturday. This is insane. I would typically spend about $120.00/week at Aldi alone, somewhere between $75.00-$100.00 at Target on "essentials". Followed by filling the truck up with gas, getting a car wash, grabbing lunch somewhere etc. A normal Saturday of errands could cost me around $400-500. Without even really feeling like I splurged on anything. I had felt like I was doing a fairly good job at being frugal. WELL.....
Saturday I spent $43.00 at Aldi on regular weekly grocery items, coffee creamer, some fruit, veggies, orange juice, school lunch items, etc. I spent $13.00 at HyVee buying yogurt that was on sale for .29 cents a container, instant oatmeal on sale for .99cents/box and laundry detergent on sale for $1.99/bottle. I then filled up with gas at HyVee and was able to fill the truck for $40.00. What????
Then I skipped the car wash....this one is REALLLY bugging me. Like, every day when I walk to my truck. I'm one of those people who wash the truck usually once a week. Well, I used to be. Now I'll be known as the lady with the filthy Dodge. That's catchy.  Next I went to Walmart to get baby wipes, and medicine. Honestly this did me in. I would have been so much better off on my spending this week if every single family member didn't have a cold. So, $15.00 in medicine later, I was limping to the cash register trying to decide whether my husband really needed the Nyquil (or you know the off brand because we are saving money after all). But, since I love the man, we bought the meds and the kids' meds and the cough drops, and everyone is feeling much better today, so it was worth it! Anyway, Walmart cost a bit more because of medicine, but hey, that's real life. Got out of Walmart for $32.00 and followed it up with Price Chopper because lunch meat was on a killer sale. So I spent $15.00 at Price chopper on lunch meat for the week and some extra for next and my husbands crazy expensive gluten free bread. (but again, I love the man, so you know).

This is such an exciting revelation. I didn't have to use a bunch of coupons, I didn't have to download a bunch of apps and scan a bunch of things at checkout. I simply looked at the ads that are mailed to my house every dang week anyway and used some creativity to build my menu off of the ads. That was all it took to literally take the grocery part of my spending this week to $62.00. Instead of $120+ I seriously cannot get over how easy this was and how ridiculous it is that its taken me 10 years of cooking dinner to figure this out. I cut my grocery bill in HALF you guys. By not just walking through the store and grabbing the same stuff every week, or buying everything convenient. I let the sales tell me what we would eat this week and the results are unbelievable!!!!

Who's going to try this next week????

For those that are curious....here's what we ate this week to pull this off:

Friday Night: We cut leftover chicken wings up, peeled off the chicken and put it on salads and enjoyed some chips with it for an easy quick dinner.

Saturday Lunch: Used leftover tortillas from Tacos the week before to make cheese quesadillas. We ate them with chips and salsa and taco fixings also leftover.

Saturday night: We LOVE movie night at our house. We pop a big bowl of air popped popcorn, cut up about 4-5 apples and sometimes we enjoy summer sausage and cheese with it. We literally eat this for dinner. Its perfect! Easy, simple and cheap!

Sunday lunch: We made ham and swiss panini inspired sandwiches using tortillas.

Sunday dinner: Breakfast for dinner, egg sandwiches, leftover bacon from the holidays and oranges.

Kids lunches this week have been:
ham and swiss spinach tortilla wraps, instant mac and cheese packed in a thermos, hot dogs in a thermos, sun butter and jelly sandwich and one repeat. All of these are packed with the .29cent yogurt, carrot sticks, oranges, blueberries, chips, etc as sides.

Monday dinner: Monday's are family nights, so my brother and sister who live in town come over and enjoy dinner and the evening with us. This is one of the highlights of our week. I made chicken enchiladas for dinner this week. All the ingredients came from my Aldi grocery budget. Except I had the flour tortillas leftover. I also made a delicious chocolate chip cookie cake to have for dessert! Maybe I should do a recipe share post soon?

Tuesday dinner: easy philly cheesesteak sandwiches, chips and apple slices. (I used the roast beef I got on sale at Price Chopper)

Wednesday night: shrimp, leftover asparagus and rice.

Thursday dinner: Loaded baked potatoes (again leftover baked potatoes from last week)

Friday dinner: a pot roast from the freezer with the leftover potatoes and some carrots

Saturday dinner: leftover roast made into beef and noodles.

A No-Spend Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year are gone and done. Its January 6th. The newness of the new year is almost a week old already. It feels worn in like a good pair of jeans. Back to a rhythm, back to habits, back to the normal. Except one BIG FAT GIANT thing. We made the mother of all new years resolutions. We are attempting no, we will do it. I'm sure of it. It's just not going to be easy. We are entering into a year of minimal spending. By minimal, I mean nothing extra. Nothing.
How on earth? Well, here's the deal. I'm not good at balance. I'm not good at manageable. I dive head first into everything I'm involved in. Which means, if I decide to homeschool, (true story) I dive in, create a homeschool room loaded with as many hands on manipulatives, matching totes, coordinating colors. You get the idea. I go overboard. If I decide to buy a fixer-upper house and renovate it over time, we dive right in and have the entire first floor done in 12 days. We paint, put in new floors, re configure the kitchen, pick out, order and put in ourselves, countertops, tile, and grout until we can't hardly move. We go all in. (also true story) and If we decide to cut spending, manage our budget more carefully, know exactly where every dollar goes, we do it in one big production. NO SPENDING. zilch, nada, zippo, nothing.

So here we are on January 6th. Only 6 days in to the big decision. There have already been serious temptations.
 But that is another story for another day...

Lets talk logistics. How are we going to accomplish this massive goal??

Well we talked through what we know are going to be the really hard things, birthdays, holidays, vacation season. Here's what we've come up with.

Normal day to day living expenses such as deodorant, toothpaste, shampoo etc. are all allowed. This isn't an experiment in pioneer living, only an experiment in reducing our spending. Now, I may choose cheaper brands than I have in the past, but its not necessary.

Groceries is where we will try to cut a lot of money. Not buying what we want every single week. Not drinking lots of extra drinks and sticking to water. Not eating expensive things like pizza, processed foods etc. Sticking to the fruits that are on sale, the veggies on sale, and generally only items in the sale ad.

Birthdays for our own children, we will make special in their own way. The child will get a birthday cake and maybe one special gift. No parties this year, nothing extravagant. We will probably invite one special friend over to play.

Birthdays for other kids is where we're a bit torn on what to do. Probably for the kids' closest friends we will allow them to attend the birthday party and choose a minimal gift to give that includes an experience and doesn't feed into consumerism. As far as attending every party for every kid in their class and shelling out $20-25 per gift. We probably will not be doing that this year.

Holidays will be focused on giving not getting. We will not participate in gift exchanges and we will not expect any gifts to be given. We will however have those close to us over to our home to enjoy a meal and time with them.

In preparation for this experiment we have given up one of our vehicles. We did it as an experiment starting in August and took the insurance off of our second car and it has been parked in the driveway ever since. We have only really truly missed it a handful of times and so we have decided we will soon try to sell our second car and live off of the one for this year.

Vacation is also what we're not quite sure about. We may consider driving somewhere and camping as a minimal vacation. Or we may not go at all. This is still up for discussion.

Here's a list of what doesn't make the cut, what won't be allowed. Drive-through runs. Ouch. Quick Trip drink stops. AHHH! Eating out at restaurants. oh mercy. No leisurely shopping trips, no browsing the thrift store, no amazon clicking, no fab kids cuteness, no buying anything I don't absolutely and completely 100 % need. No spring break trip to Pioneer Woman Mercantile. seriously. I  might die this year. 

So here we go, crazy as ever. We decided since we've yet to stick to an exercise routine, diet or eating plan, budget ever before, or even finished a tv series lately, we might as well jump right in and tackle a completely new way of life and determine to do it for the entirety of 365 days.
Our hope is this, our family will be drawn closer together and experience things that truly matter. We will discover it's possible to be happy, to experience joy and to be content without wanting more or apprehending something we desire. We also have lofty dreams of all the money we will be able to save this year and have big goals of being debt free and starting to think and prepare seriously for our children's futures. So here it goes, here's to our big exciting, unbelievably difficult, ultra strange New years resolution: Here's to our No-Spend Year.