Unemployment lessons

Last August, the government closed the bank/mortgage company my husband worked for. There was no notice, no severence package, they simply sent out an email announcing doors were closing at noon. That really sent us into a tailspin. We had some savings, a family of 6, and my teaching job. Now, let's be honest.... I make a decent living, but not enough to maintain our lifestyle. So, the cuts started that day.

Activities - The first thing to go were the kids activities. I allowed them (the older three) to stay in scouts because I run the troops, and the girls raise their own money through the endless cookie sales to participate in activities. Big Al played travel soccer, and her club gave her a scholarship - she was thankful. She also played school soccer which was free. T-Rex gave up archery (tough for her to do), but got to keep chorus (free). Blondie and Cheesie gave up Tennis.

Clothing - We bought no new clothes for the fall - this was really tough because T-Rex was growing, so I would buy her something new periodically, but the rest of the girls used the hand-me-downs we make use of anyway.

Obvious - We cut the obvious gym membership, etc. We never got as far as cutting the TV and internet, but I really thought the TV would just be great to get rid of anyway ( I think we would go through news withdrawl though, and if I had to choose between TV and internet, the TV would be out the door).

Electric-I started hanging my clothes to dry, and we layered through the winter. Bed linens were also layered, and no heat was used at night (in the south we get down to maybe 40 fahrenheit so it wasn't bad).

Shopping - I hate Walmart, but Brian bought groceries there as needed, but supplemented with produce from elsewhere. Christmas was on a serious shoestring, and we used a little savings for it, but it was on a much smaller scale than other years. I tried to do the coupon thing, but wasn't fanatic about it (and found that the bogo price at one supermarket was exactly the same as Walmart everyday - darn it-- I really hate that store). Last summer I had canned, and frozen a lot of fresh veggies, and stocked up on bogo meat sales, so that helped out for a long time.

Entertainment - Art museum is free on Sundays, state parks at $2.00 a car, while some hiking trails are free. We played board games, puzzles, went back to the library instead of buying books or movies, rediscovered our video games (which you can also get from the library).

So now, Brian has been back at work for about 6 weeks, and we are holding onto a lot of the changes. Ceiling fans are on instead of AC (although we are going to need to turn that on soon!), I still hang my clothes (why not? It was easy). I am about to have the long distance cut off (maybe even the whole landline). We still head for the library instead of buying books, I did join Netflix because we spend a bunch on the latest kid movies, and then end up keeping them "just-in-case" but I like the streaming movies, and it works off the Wii. I will be buying/ growing fresh fruit and veggies to can and freeze again, and will again stock up on meat for the longterm. If it had gone on much longer we may have had issues, but just as Brian's first round of Unemployment (a whopping 325 per week) ran out, he got his job. It did come with a noticable pay cut, so we aren't changing much of our habits.

We are still focused on paying off everything as fast as possible so we aren't in debt again. If we hadn't had two car payments, and a few other bills we would have been fine indefinitely. We were fans of Dave Ramsey before, but really are working toward the financial independence now. We continue to live as we did when he was out of work, and according to this article on the "new" frugality, we aren't alone. I think this was a good way for me to begin simplifying. When you have less money, you shop a lot less, and really we haven't missed much. We'll keep this up for awhile, and see how it goes.

Earth Day,and Wednesday

One of my colleagues had the idea to have our students give a gift of trees back to the school for their promotion gift. She thought fruit trees might be nice, and BOY did I jump on it. So the kids could bring in two dollars - one dollar to wear a hat on earth day when we planted the trees, and then second went for a homework pass. I bought the trees (four peach trees) and one of our students has a dad who is a horticulturalist and he donated 3 blueberry bushes.

The Dad came and spoke to all of the kids about his job. He sells plants/trees/bushes wholesale to other nurseries. He explained that if he wanted to sell 10,000 trees then he needed to have seedlings numbering around 14,000. The kids could NOT understand how he did it. He kept explaining, and they kept wanting to know if he got his seeds from Walmart or the local nursery. I would show pictures of the students planting all of them, but I just didn't think it ethical to post other people's children on the blog without permission, so you'll have to do with seeing the horticulturalist, and my daughter standing next to one of the peach trees. The interesting thing is that since then, the students all argue at lunch to see who gets to water the trees.

Now I have been trying to get grants to start a vegetable garden at school without luck, so I took the 4 trees and 3 bushes as the first of a lot of steps I/we would need to take to bring this to life at our school. My principal came to me and said Verizon wanted to make a donation to the school and send a group of volunteers to help us do "something green" and since she knew I was VERY interested in the garden idea she gave me $300.00 to start one. The local Home Depot gave us a generous discount, and I bought 3 raised garden beds, and all the soil/compost we needed, for under $300 and brought it back to school. This past Wednesday my morning math/science 5th graders built the beds with the volunteers, and the afternoon group mixed the bags of soil, conditioner, and compost. Both groups have already started bean and cucumber plants in school, but now they are thinking they want to take t hem home instead of putting them in the garden. Our summer kids (some are in a "daycare camp" at school while their parents work) will continue the garden, and harvest the peaches, whatever blueberries we can save from birds, and the garden veggies to donate them to our local foodbank. They will then start seeds for the fall veggies. All of this is planted right along the preschool/kindergarten fence, so as the little kids come out to play in their special playground they can watch the plants grow right there.

We are all very excited to watch this project unfold, and I'm hoping I can turn more kids on to gardening this way, and reinforce that plants make their own seeds, and you don't have to go to a store to get them.

Volunteer tomatoes

We put up the netting around the 3 veggie beds last weekend, but I've been bad about blogging on this site. It isn't because I've been outside working....no, no.... it's because I'm a teacher, and I'm SWAMPED at the moment.

I still need to plant the beans in with the corn, and get the rest of the peppers and cucumbers in the ground - maybe tomorrow.

I have very happy lettuce (and basil for that matter). The corn seems to have taken a growing break this week....

The tomatoes though, are my focus this weekend. I planted these great little plants that I started from seeds, and they don't seem to be doing too well.... BUT if you look closely at the picture below you'll see all of the HAPPY little tomato seeds from last year coming up in the bed where I planted them last year. I had to explain to Cheesie, and the girl next door, that when we didn't pick the yucky fruit last year, or the tomatoes that the birds ate, left seeds behind, and they have been waiting for a year to grow -and they are.... like weeds.... I'll let them go a bit longer and then transplant them, or thin them out. The girls had to think about that a bit because they got stuck on the idea that people had to plant the seeds - I didn't overwhelm them with a seed dispersion theory because they were running across the different backyards today, but I will be talking to Cheesie about it again - kids should understand this stuff. It is hard to see in this picture, but the soil on the bottom side of the picture is covered in tiny tomato plants.

Forever ago

I know it has been ages since I posted on this blog, but I was feeling like my efforts weren't really blog worthy, and then I wrestled with the possibility of just putting all of this on my family blog, but it didn't seem to fit. Thankfully Brian began work in March after 8 months of unemployment. We are lucky that we get to stay here, and don't have to try to sell the house in this economy, but he was looking EVERYWHERE. I will share a post on how we managed a few things at a later date, but right now our goal is to continue living as we have been, and use Brian's paycheck to pay down a few more bills in case this happens again.

Spring is in SC, and now is the time to work on the yard. One of our goals is to expand the garden. Last weekend Brian had finished cleaning up a lot of the general yard debris, and moved the buttefly garden over to another part of the yard. Then we went out and bought some temporary fencing for the garden to try to keep the rabbits and possible deer from eating more of our garden than we do (like last year). My uncle loaned us a tiller, and Brian got busy on the former butterfly garden. We may expand it even more.

We have planted our seeds, and my little lemon tree has bloomed and is trying to now produce lemons (see the tiny little green things developing --- my future lemons). Our peach tree has new growth on it, and one little bloom. We plan on growing, lettuce, beans (bush and pole), tomatoes, peppers, okra, corn, basil and oregano at the moment, we'll have to see how this progresses.Hopefully we can keep the animals from eating before we harvest things, and enjoy more of our garden this year.

Groceries

An old friend of mine IM'd me to see how the job search was going for Brian. That led to a discussion of the things we had cut back on. We talked about the gym, goals of not buying anything new, etc. I mentioned to her that I had managed to feed my family of 6 this week on a budget of less than 125.00. She asked how, and I told her I used to browse my circulars for their adds, but now I use http://www.southernsavers.com/ . It works for me, I live in the south. I plan my menu (NEVER did that before) and have easily cut 300.00 a week for groceries down to 125 or less, AND managed to make the girls stop and think about snacks before they just randomly eat out of boredom. I wasn't convinced that printing coupons was worth the time, until I saved 84.00 one week on groceries. I'm not a woman carrying a binder in the grocery store yet, but give me time, I may join those ranks yet. This week's budget went toward dinner items, school lunch stuff, and fruits and veggies.

One thing I've noticed about this whole coupon thing though is how much I DON'T buy anymore. I'm really trying to stick to the idea of cooking from scratch as much as possible, and considering packaging when I buy so many of the coupons are not what I am buying, but I managed to find a few things every week, and then max out on printing them.

One thing I wished my grocery stores here did that I used to use in Washington were the dry bins. I used to shop at Poulsbo Market, in Poulsbo Washington. I LOVED that store. I could bring in my own bag, and get as much dry good as I needed. It might be pasta, or flour, or beans, or whatever. It made sense to do it that way, and with my determination to cut down on packaging, I'm bummed that none of the stores around here do that . I've also cut back on plastic containers in the pantry - I use mostly glass, and try to get everything out of cardboard as fast as possible (we get moths otherwise).

Just so you don't think I'm skimping on meals, here is what we are having this week:
Sunday: beef veggie soup (my lunch for the rest of the week - some veggies from the farmer's market), and homemade bread
Monday: big salad night, deviled eggs
Tuesday: roasted chicken, rice, and broccoli (again, stocked up with b1g1 deals from the past)
Wednesday: spaghetti (easy, stock up on pasta, and sauce attempted from this summer)
Thursday: pork chops, mashed potatoes (both b1g1 free deals) and corn from my summer stash
Friday: leftovers

These are practical tips as well, if you're interested: http://www.owlhaven.net/2009/10/03/living-where-grocery-costs-are-high/

Owlhaven also just published a new book called family feasts on 75.00 a week, and if she can do that with 10 kids, I can get my bill down with 4. Pop over there and check her out. www.owlhaven.net

Christmas thoughts

YES! Christmas. I have always loved the big Christmas' we have had in the past. My favorite Christmas EVER was at my grandmother's house (I was 17) and my great grandmother, mom, sisters, brother, cousins, aunts and uncles and I even think Brian as my boyfriend was there too (although he may not have been there Christmas day). My grandmother had a formal living room with a grand piano in the corner, and very high ceilings, and we had a pretty tall tree that year. I remember staying up and putting together my sister's wooden dollhouse that year (we worked every night after she went to bed for weeks). Mostly I remember the fires in the fireplaces, and the people walking around talking, and activity in every room of the house.

I've always worked throughout the year to buy things for the girls, and save as much as I could because we aren't incredibly extravagant during the year, but we tend to have one BIG Christmas. After the kids open their gifts we gather at someone's house for brunch, and family gifts, and then we head either home, or to another house gathering for dinner.

This year, with Brian out of work, I've been thinking about the skills I have. Turns out I know how to do a LOT of things. I can knit (blankets, sweaters, scarves - want to learn socks) sew (felt food, tote bags, quilts, ornaments), I can crosstitch (ornaments), and I've been kicking around some ides for altered art presents. I can also make earrings and bracelets, hairbows, etc. Doesn't that sound like a big part of Christmas? Last year Big Al made playdoh for the little girls, T-Rex made jewelry, etc. Brian and my mom also took gorgeous portraits of the girls today, and I'm thinking some people may find those, or incorporate his art and my sewing together, under their tree too. Obviously I can't post my absolute ideas here because someone may stumble upon it, but those are my thoughts at the moment.

Are you making anything wonderful this year? Leave a comment, and help inspire me - we only have 11 weeks left.

I'm still here

At some point last year I decided to split my blog into 3 different blogs. Now I'm not so sure that was a good idea, because instead of simplifying I have created more work - which I really don't need. I like the idea of keeping all of my entries about changing how we live, so maybe it will benefit someone else.

If you look at my main blog dawsondiaries.blogspot.com you will see that I am a typical suburban American mom with 4 kids. I think though I am starting to live my "inner tree hugger" life, and little by little introduce my kids to it. This past August my husband's mortgage company closed, and now we are supporting a family of 6 on a teacher's income. It has definitely been challenging, but now when I make changes people think I'm doing it because of financial reasons and not the simplifying/greener living reasons.



Planting: I am planting my new fall garden with broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce again. It has to be on the deck though because I can't fence in my garden plot. It must be fenced because the deer LOVED by spring/summer garden, and we got very little of it. Fencing would be the financial choice, growing my food is my simple choice. I want healthier food, so that is how I'm choosing to spend my money.

New Skills: Brian has actually become quite skilled at making homemade bread - although the kids aren't using it to take to school yet. School lunches are going to be my next crusade. We are still slowly making in roads into eating healthier "whole" foods. I did can the pears from my grandparents trees at the lake house.

Purchased: I purchased a drying rack for clothes. Our financial choice because of job loss is to only do one load of laundry a day. My simpler choice is to hang all of our clothes now. I have always hung my own up to dry because I don't like to have things shrink in the dryer, but now I'm thinking that to cut out the dryer entirely may not be too difficult and so far it doesn't seem to create a time drain. I toss all of the clothes from the wash into a basket, and I hang them up in about 10 minutes. Big Al looked at me today and said, "This whole drying rack thing seems to be working pretty well, who knew it wasn't a big deal to hang clothes up to dry." I worked very hard not to roll my eyes at the obvious, but maybe it is something she will carry with her. Unfortunately we can't put up clotheslines in our neighborhood, so I just keep my clothes on the deck or the screened porch. I can always move it to my bathroom in the winter time too. Yes, you need extra fabric softener in your wash so your towels aren't stiff.

Planning: Handmade Christmas presents - wish I could post my ideas here, but you'll have to wait until the day after Christmas to see them, I'm also going to make some little fabric/vinyl wraps for lunch boxes to cover sandwiches - not because I'm worried about the price of ziploc bags, but because of the trash and the war on plastic I'm quietly waging. I found a pattern at one of the blogs I read about sustainability, so I think I'll give it a go.

If you can pop over to Towards Sustainability and read her post about her efforts seeming so small compared to events where she still sees so much waste out there. I'm also concerned about our political environment, and joined http://www.asamom.org/ which is fairly conservative, but there are so many things to take a stand on right now that I think everyone needs to examine their beliefs and stand up.