Decorating and the Fulfillment Curve

This is not my living room, but I like it! Source

As I decorate my house I'm reminded about the fulfillment curve that I re-posted a few weeks.

It seems like the more I try to decorate my home, the more stores I go to, the more things I find, the more discontent I am with my home the way that it is.

However, if I do little projects around my house - it starts to feel "homey" without a lot of stress. I recently painted my door knobs black on a wood buffet. It made a HUGE difference. The cost was $1.00 for a can of spray paint and some of my time.

Although, I am writing about my home decorating issues, the fulfillment curve applies to many areas of your life.

If you haven't heard about the fulfillment curve, I strongly suggest that you read up on it.

Menu Plan



This is what I'll be doing ALL.DAY.LONG!

 I have NO idea what we'll be eating for dinner the next few days. We were in Denver over Thanksgiving and I have no money.

Well, that's not true. I have no money that I want to spend until after the 1st.

I know I have a lot of food in my freezer; Breakfast is taken care of and lunch for the kids will be either fried rice or beans and rice from the freezer along with an apple.

Good think I'm flexible with my menu plans!

Homemaking - 5 Minute Room Rescue

It looked like a tornado hit it. My poor kitchen.

Overwhelmed I just knew it was going to take forever to clean. Flylady's voice is in my head now...she whispers 5 Minutes...set your timer and GO!!!

Guess what?!?! 5 minutes later my kitchen looked amazing!

Try it - you'll like the results.

Oh how I love FLYLADY!!!

Check out 11th Heaven's Homemaking Haven for more homemaking tips!

Thankful!!!

Top 10 things I'm thankful for at the time of this writing:

1. Friends that are willing to stay at out house even though we're not here.
2. Family that we get to go and see.
3. Time off from work and school.
4. Brisk weather.
5. Scarves and cuddle duds to keep me warm.
6. Slippers (do you see a theme here! if you keep the temperature low enough in your house you too would be grateful!) hot tea, blankies, I could go on, but I better stop.
7. Food!!!
8. Job for my husband.
9. Husband supported "work" at home.
10. Our health.
11. Traditions - oh oops that's 11.

I don't usually talk about God on my blog, but I do have to say how thankful I am that I now understand what Jesus Christ did for me personally.

Off to have more food. Enjoy your day wherever you are!!!

Creating Time

Every time you pick up the phone, answer your cell phone or text, you have wasted an opportunity to do something else.

Are you always putting out fires taking care of the urgent things or are you using your time to do things that are a priority in your life?

Simple Suppers

When my husband was growing up, they had chili dogs every Friday night. Think of the advantages in serving the same thing on the same night every week.

• Same items on your grocery list.
• No brain power - you know what you are going to cook.
• Every person can prepare their own if needed. Except the babies of course

I love this idea. I would have to come up with something we all love or I think we'd get tired of it. We have the same breakfast available almost every day of the week: homemade sausage, frozen blueberries, yogurt and granola. Occasionally I'll make scrambled eggs or Baked PB oatmeal. Easy Easy Easy. I wish I would have done this sooner.

Now I need to think of something we all love for Supper or is it Dinner?

This post has been shared at:
11th Heaven's Homemaking Haven

Homemaking - Windows



Meet our dog Angel, affectionately known as "Stubby Nubby" because of her docked tail.

 Clean Windows

If you enjoy spending hours cleaning your windows, then this post is NOT for you. If you enjoy having a "clean enough" home, this tip is for you!

2 kids, 1 husband, 1 wife, 1 dog. I will NEVER have squeaky clean windows for more than 1 minute. In fact, if my dog is"helping me" then the window will not stay clean for more than 1 second.

Make the choice - enjoy your life or get stressed out about how clean your home is.

I frequently clean the lower part of my living room windows - the part of the window level with dog's nose.

I get one old cloth diaper damp and wet down the part that is dirty. If it's really bad I'll spray just a teeny tiny bit of my Amway cleaning spray on it.

I take another dry old cloth diaper and wipe off the "ick".

Definitely NOT how my mom would have done it, but it works for me!!!

Save time and frustration - only clean the part of the window that is dirty. This process takes about 3 minutes and my windows look much much better.

When I'm in my living room and dining room zones I clean the entire window, but I still use the same cleaning tools.

Beans Beans the Magical Fruit

Update December 20, 2010: 

After reading some of the awesome comments, I tried soaking the beans in salt water, rinsing well and then cooking forever.


Smooth and Creamy and YUMMY!!!

My original post:

I won't finish the song for you!!!

I started out trying to save money by buying canned beans. BIG BIG mistake. For the past bazillion years I've been trying to make my home cooked beans taste like canned beans. Honestly I think I'd have to pressure cook them in order to get the same texture.

However, last time I made them, I tried the crock pot (again!) and I cooked them FOREVER and a day. They were much better!  Here are my tips so far. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Cooking Dried Beans

Ingredients:
1 bag of beans (I believe it's 1 pound - I haven't found a lot of savings by buying a huge bag)
Water
Crock pot

1. Empty bag of beans into a colander looking for dirt clumps. Yes, I've seen a few.
2. Rinse the beans.
3. Put the beans in a pan and add a LOT of cold water (see directions on the bag). Soak overnight.
4. Drain beans. Repeat Step #3 (supposed to help with digestion - for years I only soaked one night and we are still alive).
5. Drain beans.
6. Put beans in a big ole crock pot and cover with cold water.
7. DO NOT ADD SALT!!!
8. Let cook on high for a few hours, low for a lot more hours. Don't you love my directions?
9. When beans are really soft you can add seasonings. I usually dump out some of the water and add a lot of salt.

Truly my point to this whole post is this: If you have tried cooking dried beans, but haven't liked them in the past, put them in a crock pot and cook a lot longer than you think you need to.

Here's a Chicken and Bean recipe and a Refried Bean recipe.

This amazing :-) recipe has been linked to the Grocery Cart Challenge.

Tightwad Tuesday Tip - The Fulfillment Curve

I wrote this post in September 2009. Apparently, I *NEED* to read this and apply it in my life. It's ironic that I write things some times and then completely and totally forget all about it. Perfect timing right before the holidays.

Needs, wants, luxuries...where to draw the line? This weekend we went on a trip. I asked my husband, "Do we need (*NEED*) anything at the store besides candy for our trip back home?" He about fell over laughing. Yeah - we really *NEED* candy. In my defense I knew that it wasn't a need - I knew we would survive if we didn't have it, but I knew that we would buy it at the gas station for twice as much money compared to Target. So it ended up being a different kind of need.

Where do we draw the line between needs, wants and luxuries?

Here are some examples of needs vs. wants vs. luxuries:
In our town, because of where we live, we need a car. If we had chosen to live downtown we might not have needed one. However, we want our children to participate in sports so we need a car to get them to their activities. It's a small spread out town and there isn't public transportation.

Do we need two cars? Probably not. I know that we could get by with one. It makes our life easier to have two cars. Do we need a third vehicle. Absolutely not. Even though our suburban is 19 years old and is dying I would still consider it be a luxury. It is nice to have a four wheel drive vehicle when we get four feet of snow and to have a vehicle with eight seats in it when we have company. In this example I would say:

• 1 car = need
• 1 car = need and 1 car = want
• 1 car = need, 1 car = want, 1 19 year old suburban = luxury

You could make this same argument with the food that we serve our family. Food is supposed to give our body energy so we can survive.

• beans and rice = nourishment/need
• burger, beans, rice, tomatoes, cheese = nourishment/want
• steak, baked potato, salad, fresh bread, glass of wine, etc = nourishment/luxury

If we had steak every single night for dinner we would not be able to appreciate all that we have been given to us in the form of simple food. Having steak once a year helps us to appreciate it even more.

Have you ever thought "it would sure be nice to go out for all my meals like Mr. and Mrs. XXX". Then you go on vacation, eat out every meal, come home and all you want to have is a simple meal at home. You are so tired of eating out all of the time. Funny how that works! We have got to realize and separate our true needs from wants from luxuries. It's fine to indulge but overindulging won't help us to appreciate the life that we have.

In "The Complete Tightwad Gazette" by Amy Dacyczyn on page 79 and 80 she wrote about the fulfillment curve.

The basic idea is that when we spend more and more and more money we THINK we'll feel happier or more fulfilled. That is often not the case. It seems to me that the more I get the more I seem to want. The more time I spend at the mall or grocery store, the more "wanty" I become. I often think the "if only's". If only, I had more money to decorate my house I'd like it more, if only, I could spend more money on clothes I would dress nicer, if only, blah blah blah.

The next time I start to think if only, I am going to focus my mind on being content and thankful for everything I already have.

Another favorite book of mine "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez has a lot more information about this as well. Check out The New Road Map website for more information.

This works for me!!!

Check out more tips at We are THAT Family.

Saving Time

I mentioned last week that I have been reading the series about Time Management over at Money Saving Mom.

The big question is this: After you determine where you want all of your "envelopes of time" to go, how are you going to make that happen? What changes are you going to make?

The other thing that keeps jumping out at me while reading this series, is the fact that we're talking about creating routines, NOT strict schedules.

Homemaking is an art, not a science. No two homemakers will do the same thing or have the exact same priorities or routines.

I'm a visual learner. I'm tempted to put all of my time literally down on paper and into envelopes. What do I hope to accomplish by doing this? Get my priorities in order.

I realized that I need to spend more time "working my home" and less time on other things. When I "work" my home, several things happen:

• Our home is less chaotic
• I save money
• I personally have more time to spend with my family, instead of doing things for my family
• Less stress for everyone - meals are planned, the basketball uniform is washed, time has been spent proactively working on the science fair project

By reading this series and actually making changes in my life, I hope to create routines that allow me to meet my personal goals.

$400 Grocery Budget

Currently I have a food budget of $400 per month. When we ate a grain based diet I had our budget down to $260 per month, but I'm all messed now for several reasons:

• I have a freezer full of beef and pork from local ranchers
• I buy local honey and chickens when I can
• I buy farm fresh eggs from the local Lock Shop
• I get apples, butter and frozen blueberries from Azure Standard
• I pick up frozen veggies, peanuts, canned tomatoes and other items from Sam's club monthly
• I changed the focus of our diet from grains, but put too much emphasis on meat instead of veggies

Last year after finding and reading Gayle's blog "The Grocery Cart Challenge" I changed how I bought groceries for my family. Using cash, I started going grocery shopping one time per week.

I started with $75 per week and eventually went down to $60 per week. I was able to buy all of our needs and a lot of our wants. I don't want to go back to weekly shopping because I don't want to give up supporting our local ranchers and farmers or my monthly shopping trips.

Breakdown the Budget

$400 per month is about $13.00 per day

Breakfast $3.00 per day (we eat sausage almost every day for breakfast, but I've been serving too much - one small patty is enough protein when served with yogurt or an egg)
Lunch $2.00 per day (I'm finding ways to lower this!)
Dinner  $7.00 per day
Misc $1.00 per day (coffee, tea, peanuts, etc)
This week I've been adding up the cost of my meals to see where I'm off balance. I've been serving too much meat! We all need protein to live, but not nearly as much as I have been serving. We need meat in the morning, but we don't need as much protein in the evening.

Where to Start?
I'm starting with supper/dinner/the evening meal.

$7.00 per day is a lot of money. If I can get that down to $6.00 per day for half of the month then I can save about $15 per month or $180 per year.

Homemade chicken and veggie soup anyone??? How about Egg Drop Soup???

This post is linked to:
 Frugal Fridays at Life as Mom
Homemaker Monday at 11th Heaven's Homemaking Haven.
Super Saturday Savings at Money Saving Mom

Homemaking - Zone

The Zone...yet another Flylady concept.

On your calendar write down one zone (area of your house) per week that you want to work on (or make it easy on yourself and follow flylady's advice).

As you notice things that need to be done around your house, do NOT stop what you are doing to work on those things. On your calendar under the correct zone, list what you need to work on and then forget about it!

For example, I noticed that the drawer under my stove was getting dirty. I added that to my calendar under zone 2 the week of November 17th.
Click on over to my homemaking page see more tips.

Grocery Shopping - Newbie Tip

Newbie Tip:

Decide if a grocery store warehouse like Sam's Club or Costco is worth the cost of the membership.

I was reading a blog the other day where someone said "I'm not going to shop at a store where I have to pay for the privilege to shop there."

I used to feel the same way! Until I discovered the cost of dog food and dog treats. The savings alone for these two items pays our annual membership fee. There are several items that I want to buy at Sam's Club anyway, but I can't justify paying the annual fee just for those few items.
The trick:

USE CASH

If you decide that using cash doesn't work for your family, this is one place you need to use it! There are very few people who can go into one of these stores and not make any impulse purchases. My cash budget for Sam's Club for food is $50 per month. That's it. You can't pick up an extra item or two and still make your budget when you use cash.

I bought the following food items:

• green beans, peas and broccoli about $17.00
•  2 1/2 pounds Tillamook cheese $6.64
• 3 lbs 4oz peanuts $5.78
• 1 quart whipping cream (no extra junk! Yeah! This is a new item at our Sam's) $3.58
• this has to last us the month - I'm freezing part of it for smoothies later on in the month (once you freeze it, you can no longer use it to make whipped cream)
• 8 cans diced tomatoes $5.98
• 5 lbs sweet potato $3.88

I also bought fish oil pills and dog biscuits.

The items in the picture above rounded out what I had in my pantry, fridge and freezer. You can see what we're eating from my post on Monday.

This post has been linked to:
Money Saving Mom
Grocery Cart Challenge

Don't Let Circumstances Determine Your Habits

Are you letting your circumstances determine how often you eat fast food or go to a restaurant?

Have you tried menu planning and find it overwhelming? Check out what I wrote in my post on Monday about menu planning and see if that will help you out.

Babysteps here people.

If you want to make a change you need to have a plan. A plan can seem overwhelming and time consuming. It is time well spent though and you'll have a happier wallet and waistline.

If you go out to eat one time per week because of lack of planning, try to cut that back to once every two weeks.

If you grab fast food five times per week make it a goal to only go out three times per week.

Even if you buy frozen food at the store, at least you'll be in the habit of planning ahead and eating at home. You might even buy some fruit or veggies to go with your frozen food!

We used to go out to eat a LOT. Pizza and Chinese were delivered frequently. When I decided I want to be a stay at home mom, eventually our eating habits changed. I will admit though, that in the beginning I stole borrowed change from my husband's coin stash so I could grab some fast food at Wendy's. I was desperate! I hated to cook and plan a menu! I had little ones and I worked full time. Excuses excuses I know.

Fast forward many many years, when we go out to eat we take the cash from our entertainment envelope, not because I don't want to cook.

If I don't want to cook, that's just too bad. I'd rather eat peanut butter on a banana for dinner than go and get a job!!!

By the way, sometimes emergencies happen where you need to grab a quick dinner. Having children in sports is not an "emergency". You know they have late practice or late games so you have to plan around that!

This tip has been posted at We are THAT Family.

Saving Time

 

Note: Some experts belive that this isn't safe...thanks @Ang for bringing this to my attention (see comments).

Saving Time
Garlic is extremely good for you and adds a lot of flavor to food. Up until the last few years I always bought garlic in a jar that was preserved in:
 "asdfj;lasdjfoiwjerkjn234982374kjg;lakhgjdf" BLAH BLAH BLAH (yes, ingredients I couldn't pronounce).

I received a garlic press as a gift and I love it! After a few years of using a garlic press,  I've figured something out....washing the garlic press is a pain.

Recently I changed my methods, here's what I've been doing instead:

1. Peel the garlic.
2. Using the garlic press, press it into a small container filled with olive oil.
3. Put the garlic in the fridge and use as needed. Although - do you think I really need to put it in the fridge?
4. Clean the garlic press using a vegetable brush. I only have to do this once a week now instead of daily.

It's true,  I'm only saving a few minutes of my time. However, just like pennies, minutes add up! One more benefit of having fresh garlic available is that I use it more often.

Check out other tips at:
We are THAT Family

Menu Plan Monday

Menu Plans
Menu plans have never worked for me in the past. In fact, if you search my blog you might even find some amazing plan that I found, tried it for a while and then decided that that "style" of menu planning wouldn't work for our family. I believe that these haven't worked for us because:

1. The plan still takes too long to create.
2. I get bored.
3. I spend too much time in the kitchen for these fabulous plans that I make.

My latest and greatest style of menu planning is working. Almost.

Family Favorites
I made a list of 20 meals that my family loves. Not likes, loves. Meals that they want to have OFTEN. Some of the meals I don't care for, but I will still eat them. Some of the meals take longer than others to prepare. Some of the meals cost a lot more to make.

Every week I can choose to cook the meals from that weeks' plan or I can throw it out the window if need be (ie. don't have any money for groceries or my freezer/fridge/pantry need to be cleaned out).

What I won't let myself do, is take a family favorite from "week a" and cook it on "week c". Otherwise I find that I start spending more money and cooking the same kinds of meals all the time. Mexican - my default meal!

I say the plan is *ALMOST* working because I have been lax about figuring out the cost of each meal. Now that I've been working on that, I need to change a few of the menu plans.

This week we'll be eating off of "menu plan A". For my open days I'm cooking:

1. refried beans (cheap!)
2. steak (from our beef) over salad

For more information click on over to menu plan A.

Check out orgjunkie.com for a lot more meal planning ideas.

Time

Have you read the article over at Money Saving Mom that discusses time and your goals/priorities?

Since I love the cash envelope system for our budget, I am LOVING the idea that you can put your time into "envelopes" as well. I'm such a visual person this is helping me tremendously!

Homemaking Habits

Habits will make your home run much more smoothly. Here's what I've been doing for the past month:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Put 1 load of laundry in the washing machine. While that is going:

1. 15 minutes: sweep and mop one section of the main floor (middles only, no obsessing)
2. 15 minutes in my zone (I obsess as much as I want)

30 minutes later the laundry is done - I hang it up to dry in my basement store room

My kids are not home when I do this, but if they were around I would have them do a certain chore in their room while I swept and mopped. They would read while I worked in my zone for 15 minutes. We'd hang laundry together. We've done something similar in the past and it worked out great. Your timer is your best friend so you don't get sidetracked.

Grocery Shopping - Frugal Tip

 Are store brand items as good as brand name items?

Possibly. Some store brand items that I've bought taste as good or taste better than brand name items. For example, I would rather have Shurfine (store brand) boneless skinless chicken breasts as opposed to Tyson brand.

Since I've been checking labels more frequently, I've noticed that some times brand name items don't have as many fillers in them as store brand items do. If you look at Daisy brand sour cream vs. store brand sour cream, you may see "extra" ingredients in the store brand.

I've also noticed that brand name canned tomatoes taste significantly better than store brand tomatoes. It's worth it to try the store brand after you've checked the label to make sure they contain the same ingredients and do not contain a lot of filler ingredients.

Newbie Frugal Tip:

If you can save an average of $4.00 per week buying store brand items instead of name brand items, you'll save $208.00 per year.

This post has been linked to:
Life as Mom
Money Saving Mom

Money - Your Money or Your Life

The book, "Your Money or Your Life" (YMOYL) completely and totally changed my life. Actually I read the book "Getting a Life" first which shows the lives of people that were transformed by following the advice in YMOYL.

Over the next few weeks I plan to outline some of the changes in my life that happened while reading these books.

I can't remember if the following quote was in that book or not. It came to mind though when I decided to write this series so I thought I'd share it.

"Are you trading what you want most for what you want at the moment?" 

I'm not sure who the original author of that quote is because when I google it, I see that it's posted everywhere on the Internet.

What do you want most?

• Do you want that steak dinner again or do you really want to stay home with your kids?
• Do you want that new outfit or do you really want to go on a vacation?
• Do you want that boat or do you really want to give money to the poor?
• Do you want the show home or do you want to quit your job and write a book?

Every time we spend money we take away an opportunity. What opportunities are you giving up?

I'll leave you with this thought:

When you change your way of thinking, you change your future.

This thought is posted at:
Works for me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.

Homemaking - TIME

Random thoughts this morning after reading a book about a family where one of their children died at the age of 11. I keep asking myself, what I would do differently if I knew my one of my family members or close friends would die earlier than expected. I'm not trying to be morbid, instead I'm trying to align my goals, priorities and values with my actions.

My Family = My Priority
I would tell you that the biggest priority in my life is to make sure my family knows that they are loved. I read a section of the book, The 5 love languages, almost every night before bed to try to accomplish this goal. What would my family say my biggest priority in life is?

I try to get as much work done during the week day so I am free to be around my family when they come home from school/work and on the weekends.

When my son walks in the door after riding the bus home from school, if I'm sitting on the couch drinking tea, you know what he does? He comes over and sits with me. He tells me about his day.

If I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off, he doesn't get a chance to tell me about his day. He is constantly in my way trying to get my attention to tell me a story. In my way? That's certainly not one of my goals/values.

Sometimes life happens and I don't get everything done. Other times I haven't used my time wisely. I try to stop whatever it is I'm working on at 3:25 and wait for him to come in the door at 3:40. This gives me time to relax by myself and I can switch gears to "Momma" again.

My Job = Saving Money
I spend a significant part of my day trying to save money. That's my "work". In my opinion, that's how I earn my keep! The pennies I save turn into dollars.

For example, I try to figure out the best meal to serve my family - healthwise and dollarwise. It's time consuming to figure out if scrambled eggs and fruit is as good of a breakfast as sausage and fruit (it's not protein wise - but what if I mixed scrambled eggs with sausage and served it with fruit...) you get the idea.

It takes TIME to do my JOB.

When I spend time making homemade food, figuring out the cost of our meals and planning less expensive alternatives, my food budget ($400.00 )works out great. When I lose sight of this goal, I see our food budget going higher and higher.

Where is the balance? The balance between my job, my family, my friends, my volunteer commitments?

Is your spending (money and time) in alignment your goals, priorities and values? What do your actions tell you? What would other people tell you?

Menu Plan Monday

I'm using "Week E" of our menu plan. For the open slots we're having:

1. 4B's Tomato Soup
2. Hamburgers and milkshakes
3. Not sure yet. Possibly leftovers or something I'll dig out of the freezer! We have a bunch of ribs from our beef, maybe that?

This menu plan has been linked to orgjunkie.com. Get more meal planning inspiration over there!