Just curious who else is living super frugal

[Arielle]

Well all kinds of fish guts are getting buried in my garden this week. As I've been out fishing this week filling the freezer. Just another of things we do to get that garden to grow better.

LOL I would feed to the chickens first, then let them fertilize the garden later. lol. Ya, I've become VERY frugal. lol

 

[Arielle]

First batch of sprouted buckwheat was a success!!! Definitely need to rinse 2 times a day or more. I ate with ranch dressing and p lain to test the waters. Better plain. Oldest son added to his soup. Husband tried a few, and liked them too. Second batch is started.

Found vegie bags at grocery store to store apples etc. Easy to rinse and hang on a screw over dish drainer. Eager to try other seeds!! Bought Red Mill lentils to try. Not sure the quinoa is a good choice. . . . might decrease the protein levels but might be fun to find out how they taste.

 

[lazy gardener]

You're gonna like the lentils. I like to fry them up and put cheese on them. They're also nice and nutty flavored when eaten raw. Don't let them get much past the sprout phase, or they get tough and stringy. I like having fresh sprouts through the "non-garden" season.

Ok, so I have a question for all you Frugal Experts. Has anyone gone through a serious downsizing phase? I am inspired by tiny house living and although I don't necessarily want to move into a tiny home just yet (LOVE my farm), I would like to be less burdened by stuff. My house is not large by todays standards but it has good function. I have been slowly pairing down my family stuff over the years but I still feel stressed by all the stuff around here. If anyone has been there, how did you involve (ie convince

) your family. How did you go about doing it? Did you do it a little at a time or all at once? What was the hardest? The easiest? etc. What was the best way to handle "family heirlooms", etc.

Ideas?

I don't have any answers for you b/c I'm a horrid pack rat. But, I'd love to reduce my belongings. Problem is, I'm a "better hang on to that, b/c I might need that some day." person. I'm also a "buy the supplies for a project, and put them some place safe, and then forget where I put them..." person. I'd love to see you start a thread dealing specifically with this topic, as well as bright ideas for organization of space!

 

[LittleLakePhil]

LG Again I think we live in parallel universe I do the same thing so then I have to go out and buy the same stuff over again....haha now go out and get one of them Turkey's you were telling me about.

 

[Beekissed]

Ok, so I have a question for all you Frugal Experts. Has anyone gone through a serious downsizing phase? I am inspired by tiny house living and although I don't necessarily want to move into a tiny home just yet (LOVE my farm), I would like to be less burdened by stuff. My house is not large by todays standards but it has good function. I have been slowly pairing down my family stuff over the years but I still feel stressed by all the stuff around here.

Yep...twice! Now we make a habit of doing down sizing yearly to keep up with it. All my clothing can now fit into two duffel bags and I keep it that way...if I add anything, I make sure to take away something too. It's sort of like the oh, so infamous chicken math, except in my chicken math I don't forget to subtract as often as I add.

After my last big downsize, I moved in with my mother to care for her in her golden years and I inspired her to do the same....we had a huge clear out of the old machinery and items on her land, then we started on the outbuilding~we've done that twice now, finding more to eliminate each time we do it...possibly because we are more determined each time to finally pare things down to the bare necessities.

Then we moved onto her house and, finally, her "important papers", organizing and eliminating them, filing them neatly and buying her office supplies and a desk for her bedroom so that she can continue this trend. She's 81 and still has the first deed to her first home...and there have been many, many homes in her life...that tells you how many "important papers" she really had. We found out that many of them were no longer so important and this helps her to determine what new papers to keep as well.

Quote: We moved, was making a fresh start and it was going to be costly to move all the things I had accumulated and been collecting for years, so I decided to just keep my most cherished things and only what could fit into a 4x8 trailer and the back of the vehicle and the rest went to an auction house. That gave me more money for making the move and transition to a new home.

The second time I had a huge three day yard sale, with the determination that EVERYTHING would leave the property, so whatever price we had to take to accomplish that, we did. Then, anything left over was given away to a family who came with a big flat bed truck and made several trips to haul it away. After that big clean out I determined to never get to that point again with worldly possessions hanging around my neck like mill stones....and I never have.
What was the hardest? The hardest was the things I had accumulated for self sufficiency...then it became easy when God opened my eyes to the fact that there is no such thing, really, and that He desires us to be dependent upon Him for our needs, instead of our own power to sustain ourselves. Among other things that were the hardest were those things I had made, repurposed, refurbished, etc., or were collecting for growing or preserving foods.

The easiest? All of it, once I had set my heart and mind on it. God had inspired me to let go of material things I valued, carried around and accumulated through these verses: Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." Matt. 6: 19-20 Verses such as this and others let one know what is truly important in life .... and it isn't the things of this world that we carry around like so many little gods. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 John 2:15

What was the best way to handle "family heirlooms", etc. Just....let go. Think about all the family heirlooms of all the families since the beginning of the Earth and ask yourself how important they truly are when viewed from an eternal perspective. Think to yourself, "In a thousand years is this going to be important? To whom? In 100 years? In even 10 years? Why? What makes it so very important? If I had to pick up and make a quick move somewhere and could only take 10 items, besides my family, would this be one of them?" If so, would it help your family in some way to take it along? If not, it's not very important.

Ideas? Start with clothing...that's an easy place to start. Realistically look at what you wear and what you do not wear often or even never, then reduce your clothing and shoes to what you absolutely need to do your daily life. No extras. Not even if they are really pretty or really cute or you just can't find anything like that anymore, etc. My rule of thumb is always...if I have not worn it in a year's time, I will never truly need it. Be ruthless and very practical. It's a good place to start practicing that practicality~you will need it to get through the masses of stuff in the house, the outbuildings, etc.

Then stop buying things. Stop even going to that section of the store unless you absolutely have to do so to replenish a piece of your wardrobe due to it being worn out. We stopped even shopping retail and started getting almost everything we buy at Good Will...that place is a real eye opener, especially when you find an item that still has its original store tag on it and you realize that someone bought those shoes for $84 and never wore them even one day...then they wound up on a shelf for $2.99. And that's what they truly are worth...just $3...but to those people they weren't worth anything or they wouldn't have given them away.

Once you realize that, you'll hardly ever buy anything retail again because you realize that this world is smothering in material goods and most items will be bought, hardly~if ever~used, because they were bought on a whim, then they are given away as if they are worth nothing to the original purchaser.


Then, if you have to buy something to wear, determine you will remove an equal number of items of clothing from your closet that very day and sack them up to take to Salvation Army or Good Will, if they are still decent for wearing and to the trash or rag bag if they are not. Don't wait until you have time to do it, either...if you had time to buy a piece of clothing, you have time to remove one from a hanger and place it right into the store bag you have in your hand in preparation for taking it away.

After that, you can apply that mindset to each and every room in your house...I'll warn you, the kitchen will be the hardest and so will the outbuildings~tools, hardware, stored things to be used "someday if we need it", etc. But, if you truly want to streamline your life and, ultimately, live a more simple, easy life, then you'll stick with it until it's all done.




The benefits for all that hard work and those hard decisions? Enormous and many!!!! All the sudden we could focus on what was truly important and our new lifestyle of not accumulating, and eliminating each season/year those things we had absent-mindedly accumulated, has become a challenge and a fun game. We had more money to give to others that needed it more than us, we had more space, our home and storage areas looked cleaner and gave us much pleasure when we entered them, we could suddenly find things more easily, get our work done more quickly, had more times to help others, more time for study on things that were truly important, time to fix things, start new projects to improve on the place and experiment with new things.

It was like being let out of jail, so every year we do it again, though it's a lot easier and less time consuming as each year passes. At the same time, we were decluttering our minds and hearts spiritually, so we could grow in faith, focus more on God's will for our lives, learn more, do more, love more because we were not weighed down like the rest of the world, chained to their worldly goods. Smothering in things and stuff. We are more joyful, more carefree, more willing to explore, try new things, learn new things...we are enjoying the freedom of simple, basic living.

This letting go of things really changed how we think and how easily we are prepared to let go of many things, any thing, everything that is not important in God's eyes.

 

[jas humbert]

Ok, so I have a question for all you Frugal Experts. Has anyone gone through a serious downsizing phase? I am inspired by tiny house living and although I don't necessarily want to move into a tiny home just yet (LOVE my farm), I would like to be less burdened by stuff. My house is not large by todays standards but it has good function. I have been slowly pairing down my family stuff over the years but I still feel stressed by all the stuff around here. If anyone has been there, how did you involve (ie convince

) your family. How did you go about doing it? Did you do it a little at a time or all at once? What was the hardest? The easiest? etc. What was the best way to handle "family heirlooms", etc.

Ideas?

It is an ongoing battle (I don't collect anything but chickens- my hobby is trying to throw things away) but one thing that helps me with sentimental items and family heirlooms is to scrapbook. For me it is more about the memories and less about the physical items so I photograph the item, journal a page where I talk about what it means to me and the memories it evokes. I may include a photo of the family member who gave it to me or tell a family story about a time it was used. Then I let it go if I really don't have a use for it. I find I enjoy looking at the scrapbooks as much as I enjoyed looking at the real item and it sure takes up a lot less space. Your grown kids have different taste and probably won't want much of your old stuff anyway. Some family members/ kids can be invited to do this with you and make quality time as you tell family stories- other will only whine and derail any attempts to get rid of the item.

The other thing is to find a use. My grandmother's old treadle sewing machine is my nightstand. The baby quilt my mother embroidered for my daughter is hung on a wall. I like an uncluttered home and will get rid of things that don't have a place. It is much more relaxing and serene to have an uncrowded home regardless of size of the house. I have put boxes of stuff in the basement to see if I will really miss the stuff (it gets you over the hump if you are on the fence) and I will toss or donate the box unopened if I haven't missed it after so many months. It only works for me if I write the date on the box- the pitch-by date- and DO NOT OPEN IT AGAIN just to look at it before getting rid of it. I have occasionally done this with kids items too and they rarely even notice they are gone. I feel guilty to do it too often but it is still there if they really want it.

 

[Beekissed]

http://premeditatedleftovers.com/naturally-frugal-living/7-ways-to-let-go-of-clutter/

 

[LittleLakePhil]

I know I've been fairly impressed with what I've gotten this year with reclaimed wood and nails.....several house repairs and work in the ducks barn...Just making do with less.

 

[donrae]

Talk about doing a Momma's heart proud....I overheard my 14 year old DS talking to a friend about a potential purchase the other day. The friend was complaining about being broke..... Sugar Monkey said " I'm not broke, I'm cheap. And it's cause I'm cheap that I'm not broke". This momma was doing the happy dance!

 

[lazy gardener]

You should be dancing. You've taught him well!!!