I Want it Now

Every time I think about consumerism, I think about Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  "I dont care how...I want it now!"

Todd and I watched a movie a few weeks back we hadn't heard of when it was out at the theaters entitled the Brass Teapot.  The premise of the movie is about a young broke couple who come upon this brass teapot.  Every time they hurt themselves, the teapot provides them with money.  The whole movie shows how far they would hurt themselves for money.  It gets to a point where they have to hurt themselves to pay for what's owed. (Sound familiar to anyone who is in debt and has to go to work to pay the bills?  *Raising my hand.*)

"Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale.” - Zig Ziglar

The reviews from the library showed that not many people enjoyed the movie; however, Todd and I both liked it.  Through the entire movie, we were talking about what we would do if we came upon a brass teapot.  Of course, the characters in the movie went overboard, and we swore we would never go to extremes as they had.  The more I thought about it, I thought that maybe we would be {somewhat} as frivolous as the characters in the movie. They paid off bills, bought a really expensive car, purchased a (huge) house, had great parties and threw money away on things that did not matter to them.

I've always said that I am too practical to spend an absurd amount of money; however, once I  truly considered the situation, I can completely see how this could happen to me and Todd if we had a large sum of money.  We would...

1. Pay off the mortgage
2. Tear down the house next door
3. Get new siding and gutters
4. Replace furnace and add air conditioning
5. Get a new (practical: inexpensive and high gas mileage) vehicle
6. Go on a vacation

As you can see, the list can continue on and on.  The "wants" continue to multiply when some of the most basic wants are met.

So for us, we will continue to save the $2 everyone wants us to contribute toward this month's MegaMillions Jackpot and put that money toward things that are important to us (such as the list above).  We are content with working hard to achieve our material* wants ...but in due time.

If you had a brass teapot that spewed out money, what would you do with it?

*I feel like everything on the list is exactly that: material.  We have a (sturdy) roof over our heads, food on the table, one another for support and need for absolutely nothing.  We are so much more fortunate than majority of people around the world.     

Horrible, Terrible, No Good Very Bad Day

(This is a rant on pessimists.  I know that not everyone would agree with me and that’s OK.  These feelings are purely my own.)

My husband is a serial pessimist.  He calls himself a realist.  When something goes wrong first thing in the morning, he is certain the rest of his day is going to be horrible.  I try to cheer him up and ask him to calm down and think positively but he says, “I’m POSITIVE it’s going to be a bad day!”  I have friends on FaceBook and in real life that act like every situation they go through in life could very well be the end of the world.

Unfortunately, I don’t have patience or apathy for serial pessimists.  Believe me, I wish I had just a little bit of apathy for them but I don’t: which makes me seem like an insensitive, heartless witch (with a capital B).  I keep my mouth shut as to not rock the boat, but inside, my thoughts run wild.  I try to ignore the negativity they spew out, but sometimes, I just want to shake them and tell them to open their eyes to all of the blessings around them!

We all have bad days and even bad situations that happen to us; however, I believe that a person chooses the way their day plays out.  If you believe your day is going to continue to be a horrible, terrible, no good very bad day (like the children’s book), then you are seeking all of the negatives that happen throughout the day instead of opening your eyes and heart to all of the greatness the day has to offer.  With every negativity my husband speaks about, I can name two (or more) positive things that have happened to him in the last 24 hours or things he can look forward to throughout the day.  In the whole scheme of things, this situation is but a blip on the radar.  It won’t be remembered a month from now let alone a year from now.  What difference does it make?

I enjoy looking for the little things to brighten my day.  They are simple things like the dogs not fighting me when it’s time to go outside while I go to work, sunshine through the clouds, fuzzy chicken butts, wind whipping through the trees, a dog enjoying the fresh air with it’s head out the window and its ears blowing in the wind, breakfast with my husband, a cat that wants to cuddle, my bi-weekly lunch out with a coworker, a phone conversation with my mom, a letter in the mail from our Compassion child, the sight of a hummingbird enjoying the nectar I put out for it, a conversation with my friend at work, pictures of everyone’s children on FaceBook and the fact that I made it one more day on this beautiful earth!

What are you thankful for today?

The Great Purge 2013

Over the past few weeks, I have really been inclined to stop talking about how much I dislike cleaning and actually do something about it.  While putting in the time to clean up our home little by little every day came the desire to de-clutter.  The first three days of my new-found cleaning routine, I realized how much clutter I did not want to continue dusting each and every week.  I started purging items from my bedside table and ended up with one whole box of items to donate as well as one plastic bag of trash. 

After being able to see the wood surface of my bedside table and having next to nothing in the drawers, I was motivated to continue de-cluttering throughout the house.  After three days of my husband watching me clean, purge and enjoy my hard work, something in him changed.  His mentality of “more” was morphing into the realization that we have too much!  He realized that he did not enjoy living with the stuff that littered nearly every flat surface of our home.  The best part of this change is that I did not have to say a single word about it: he discovered this himself (which in my mind, leads to long-term change).

The purging process is going to take (a lot of) time and I’m sure it will never really be complete but I love that we are finally moving in the right direction.  After just a couple of weeks, we have been watching our possessions leave our home and it does not bother us one bit.  I am very nostalgic which is one reason we have so much, and that will probably never change, but it is getting better.

My husband brought up a good point: I have my hand in too many pots.  It is time to focus on just one or two activities.  I have always wanted to be able to maintain our home, spend quality time with family, have a huge (productive) garden, love on our (6) fur-babies, raise chickens, grow fruit, compost and keep up with my new-found love of getting lost in books.  Oh, and lets not forget about having to work 42.5 hours a week with a 10 hour commute..  The issue is that I am trying to do too much and I am not doing any of it well!  Case in point: this year’sgarden.

My focus right now is going to be on:

1. Quality time with family
2. Taking care of the fur-babies
3. Maintaining a clean home

That’s it.  Nothing more. These are the three areas of my life that I am focusing on.  The garden is done this year, so I don’t have to worry about that. I have some things to do with the fruit trees, bushes and vines but it is not very time consuming (not to mention I have 2 months to do it in).  Everything else is being put aside for now.  I am even contemplating selling the flock to someone who wants to raise their own chickens.  There are several people in our area selling free-range brown eggs for $2/dozen.  It is much easier to pick up eggs twice a month versus the time to clean the chicken coop, feed them and count heads twice a day to make sure none were taken by a predator!

I am learning that purging leads to simplicity, and that is what we are aiming for in life.

Less stress, more time together and with family, and contentment with our possessions.

Have you been de-cluttering lately?

What tips or suggestions do you have for this newbie?

Garden Status: Big Hopes – No Follow-Through

I am awful at following through: especially with the garden.  I plan the garden all fall and winter long, I am meticulous about getting all the seeds in the ground, but when the weeds start coming up alongside the plants, I lose all motivation to continue with the garden.  This happens every year.

Case in point, this is what our garden looks like right now.

What a mess.  I am extremely embarrassed at what I have allowed the garden to become.

Todd was helping me this year by tilling the ground and planting seeds with me.  He even put weed block in two rows but never got around to putting it in between the other 12 rows.  I cannot blame him – I’m just as bad.  Other things came up that took up nearly every weekend of our spring and early summer.  We had an anniversary (which I am not sorry for neglecting the garden for a weekend get-away with my husband), two out of town weddings within 5 weeks, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, 4^th of July, adjusting to a newmember of the family and trying to maintain our home to name just a few.  Not to mention we have had so much rain here, the weeds are thriving.

I enjoy planning and planting the garden.  I don’t enjoy the weeding and maintenance.

Solution: Mow it down and plan for next year.  Yes, it kills me to think about all of the time and work we have wasted, but this large garden is just too much for us.  We learned a very valuable lesson this year.

I already have a plan for next year’s garden.  I can guarantee you that it will be one word: simple!  There will be very few “fu-fu” plants going into the ground and the seeds that we purchase will all be heirloom seeds.  We will grow only what we eat an abundance of:  the three sisters (corn, green beans and squash), cucumbers and tomatoes (in pots). We are looking to maximize produce in the space we have.  Depending on how our melon does this year, we may decide to plant one variety of annual fruit.  Just the thought of planting and sowing these 5 vegetables eases my mind because I know how to plant and harvest each variety and I know the abundance each of these vegetables provides.

I found a great resource of teachable moments for little ones that explains about the three sisters and gives many learning opportunities for children to prepare soil, plant seeds, grow and sow the vegetables, save seeds and start again the next year.  I will be using this source myself next year! 

For now, we are focusing on weeding the red raspberry patch as well as watching our grape vines grow beautifully over the trellis (and even producing clusters of grapes!)  By weeding the red raspberry patch, I am hoping to focus my time and energy on keeping the beetles away, watching the berries begin to form and harvest an abundant crop in the upcoming months.  I also have plans to get our blueberry bushes (which look like twigs right now), pear trees, cherry trees and plum trees mulched and ready for the cooler months ahead.  I want to make sure these fruits trees stay healthy so that we get fruit on them next year!

For anyone interested in learning about gardening, please read this post from New Life on a Homestead which covers the basics of gardening and how to start!  It has a wealth of information!! 

How is your garden doing this year?

Downsizing Our Home

Our home is too big for us and I have written a post in the past about it in length. When we bought our home, it was the best bang for our buck.  It was inexpensive, it needed redone inside and out, and Todd was willing to do all the work himself to make this home into what we wanted.  When we purchased the home, we were living in a 1100 sq ft home in the city.  This 1890 sq ft on ½ an acre seemed like it was exactly what we wanted at the time.

Now, we want to downsize.

We talked about building a tiny home on the property wepurchased next to our home and renting out our home.  Though I liked the thought, we had put so much time and hard work into our home to make it what it was (with more work still needing done to complete the home.)  Then it came to us on a 2 hour drive home from my mom’s house one weekend.

As you can see on the Auditor’s schematic above, our home is in an “L” shape and has a very large footprint.  We mainly use one “wing” of the house and the other “wing” goes unused.  We have been working on paying off our mortgage so that we can then save up to build Todd a workshop as a separate building from the main house.  While we were talking aloud on our way home from my mom’s house, we decided that it would be best to make our home smaller so that we use all the living spaces.

There is one room next to the garage (Yellow Box D above) that is currently being used as storage and to keep the cats litter boxes and food.  The size is 280 sq ft.  Enter great idea.  Todd will be knocking down the wall between the room and the garage.  This area will be Todd’s workshop area that will be completely open to the garage.  Todd’s workshop will keep his welding equipment, tool boxes, work stations, etc.  Right now, everything is crammed (literally) into the garage along with two vehicles.  This will free up a lot of space in the garage as well as give Todd some much needed space to work on projects.  By knocking out this wall, we will save upwards to the effect of $15,000 for a new workshop that we were planning on building on the property.  The workshop will need to be insulated to keep the cold from the main part of the house, but otherwise, needs nothing but a good scrubbing and ample lighting (all of which Todd can do himself).

The great part of turning this extra bedroom into an extension to the garage is that it will not require heat.  The heat will be forced to the wing of the house that we currently use which will allow us to have a smaller, more efficient furnace (yet another savings factor).

The 100 sq. ft purple area on the schematic (Box C above) is a hallway that we never use.  This will be turned into a space for the furnace, and for our stackable washer and dryer and storage.  At the moment, our furnace is a low-efficiency furnace that is located outside.  When we save up the money, we would like the furnace to be inside and we may even splurge for air conditioning as well (I never though I’d agree to having A/C in the house, but after this year’s heat and humidity, our floors were literally sweating.  By having A/C, it will keep the house from expanding in the heat and will keep the house dry and comfortable.)

Our family room is enormous (400+ sq ft).  We could host a party with 25 people and everyone would have a place to sit and mingle.  The catch is, we don’t ever host parties of 25 people (nor do we want to), so what’ the point of having a room this large?  We are talking about building a wall smack dab in the middle of the room and making this a master suite.  Todd would also install a separate bathroom in the suite. Sliding glass doors would be replaced with french doors (that we already have) and we would have our own personal deck with sitting area.  One great thing about cutting our family room in half is that we will still have the fireplace that I love and a much cozier space to sit and relax with my husband and guests.

Of course, all of these are just plans.  Nothing has been started nor will be started for a couple more years.  But with a few simple changes (and a little bit of extra plumbing), we are downsizing our livable area by over 400 sq ft.  The goal is to make the home smaller and all the rooms to be utilized.  We would still have 1512 sq ft with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, family room, kitchen and dining room.  This is still more than enough room for us and would be plenty even if we had another set of feet running around the house one day.

Do you feel like you need more room or that you would like to downsize your living space?

Three Weeks without a Cell Phone

In our home, we don’t own many new or extremely nice items because we (a-hem, my husband) are really hard on everything that we own.  Not only are we hard on what we own, things get lost  misplaced all.the.time.  It is extremely frustrating to me, but it is what it is.

At any rate, several weeks back, Todd and I went to WalMart to pick up oil filters and oil for our vehicles.  Todd set down his phone (a new to us Windows phone from my mom that Todd loved and planned on keeping for many years) to look up an oil filter number, and when he found it, we walked away to get the next item on our list.  15 minutes later when we realized he forgot his phone on the shelf, it was gone.  I had faith that the cell phone would still be there when we went back to get it.  Todd on the other hand had no faith that his phone would still be there.  Sure enough – it was gone (I blame his negative attitude on this).  We checked with the automotive desk and customer service for three days after the phone went missing, called our carrier and reported it stolen, had it blocked and went on our merry way.

Todd was addicted to his phone.  He is the only one who has internet on his phone: I just have calls and texting.  He loved going online while he was at work and on the days we both worked, we texted back and forth all day long.  We texted about stupid piddly stuff, and we called each other when we were on our way to work and on our way home from work: nothing really important.

Todd was so upset that his phone was stolen that he said he didn’t even want a cell phone.  Of course, this statement was made out of anger, and a few days later, he came around to the idea of getting his phone replaced.  We were planning on changing our cell phone carriers after our contracts were up, so Todd was without a phone for a couple of weeks.

I noticed a few things while Todd was without a phone.

• We had a lot more to talk about at dinnertime and throughout our evenings together
• I was able to concentrate more on my work instead of checking my phone every 15-20 minutes for a new text
• It really isn’t that bad not being “connected” to one another throughout the day
• Todd really can survive without being online while at work

I have considered going without a cell phone altogether; however, Todd worries about me on my 1 hour drive to and from work each day (witha vehicle that has over 175,000 miles on it). We have decided to downgrade our cell phone plans from a contract to prepaid services*.  By doing so, we are saving over $600/year on our cell phones.  By downgrading our services, Todd and I have agreed that we will be talking less to one another to and from work each day.  It has truly been relaxing driving to and from work listening to podcasts and books on CD without being interrupted, not to mention it is a lot safer!

*For anyone wondering, Todd is going with StraightTalk for his cell phone provider.  He will have unlimited talk, text and internet for less than $45/month because we will be paying every 6 months (to get A discount).  For me, I am going to be with the same carrier (AT&T) but downgrading to their “pay-as-you-go” plan which will give me 250 minutes a month and unlimited texts for $26.63/month after tax.  We are going from spending $128/month for cell phone service to around $70/month and not being locked into a contract. 

Have you tried going without a cell phone for a week?

What has been your experience?