Having a good weekend? Ours is once again blissfully unfilled, except for church, the gym, and a few odds and ends. Today we spent many hours outdoors at our local park enjoying the unseasonal warmth. Vivi met and became fast friends with a little boy while we happily chatted with some neighbors we’ve never met and one who I haven’t seen in a while due to her giving birth very recently. Oh boy do I love new babies! They make everything okay, you know? That is, when you only have to spend an hour with them.
In keeping with my birthday resolutions, I also met with a doula this morning to get the ball rolling on becoming a doula myself. She was so nice and helpful! I was pleased to hear that I can attend births prior to being certified because that means I can begin after my training workshop in March. I am cautiously optimistic that if my plan works, I will be able to avoid working full time for another year and instead work part-time as a doula.
The frugal living challenge began yesterday, and I came up with some goals I hope to start if not finish by the end of the month. My top 10 goals are:
1. Consolidate my driving trips down to one/day or less to save gas and time.
2. Find other forms of (free or cheap) entertainment besides TV. Cancel cable.
3. Learn how to make more food from scratch, like bread, chips & crackers (I can’t even pop popcorn!) for snacks, vanilla extract and seasoned salt.
4. Start using homemade remedies, toiletries, and cleaning products.
5. Learn how to make homemade toys to reuse items like plastic bottles and cereal boxes.
6. Compost.
7. Start planning our first spring vegetable garden and manage herb garden better this year.
8. Learn about conserving electricity, e.g. via water bottles in the fridge to eliminate fridge cutting on so often.
9. Find recipes to make large batches of food at once and store in our chest freezer, cutting costs and number of times I have to cook.
10. Learn how to can and buy necessary items like tongs and ball jars to begin canning.
What do you think? Have you ever tried living more frugally? I tried to put the goals requiring start-up costs toward the end, as truly living frugally is more about enjoying what you have than buying new things. So yesterday and today I’ve been focused on the first four. I’ll be back tomorrow with more about our progress.
Thanks for staying tuned through my odd-ball projects!
Love and hugs,
J