Money Maters: Clean Green and Save Some Green

I stopped cleaning with "regular" household cleaners when I had my first baby. Suddenly that 409 I was spraying every where didn't seem like such a good idea.

For a while I went with the less toxic offerings in the cleaning supply isles that were beginning to come into fashion. But after some reading and experimenting, I found my favorite cleaner: vinegar.

I use it for most everything. It is great for cleaning windows and mirrors. It gives a shine that is much better than Windex. It is also perfect for wood floors. Even Martha says so.I use it to clean counters and the bathroom. It meets all my cleaning needs.

Here's how I use it. 1 cup vinegar to 2 cups water.

I then add a few drops of essential oil for a nice scent, pour it into my spray bottle and that's all there is to it.

The vinegar is very inexpensive and since you are mixing it with water, it lasts a long time. The essential oil will set yo back about $10, but since you only use a few drops, it will last you a very long time, too.

You really can't beat it.

I do use other concoctions for cleaning also. Baking soda and Borax make excellent scrubbing agents that won't ruin your surfaces. I love to combine baking soda with Dr. Bronner's castile soap to scrub my tub. He's pretty much a whack job, but he makes great soap.

When I really want to disinfect something (which doesn't happen that often--our country is Clorox wipe obsessed) I use a plant based disinfectant from this company and I like it very much. I only use it on the toilet and after I have cut up raw meat. Cause both of those things pretty much gross me out.

I have really enjoyed detoxing my cleaning supplies. Now I feel perfectly safe letting the kids help me clean anything. And when I have babies crawling on the floor, and eating off the floor, it doesn't worry me one bit.

Do you have any green and/or frugal cleaning tips to share with me? I'd love to hear them.

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Now for the fun link I promised you.

My Milk Toof. Oh my gosh is it ever fun! Spend a few minutes and look around her blog. The photography is lovely, the sets are amazingly creative and adorable and the stories will have you smiling.

But probably my favorite part of this blog is the story behind it. Inhae, the creator, was unemployed and needed a project. She started doing this and it has blossomed. When you do the thing you love, amazing things happen. So inspiring!

I can't wait to show these to James and William. I know they will get a kick out of the adventures of these 2 little buddies. Here's one of my favorites.

Hope this post was a bright spot in your Wednesday. Something practical and something fun. What could be better?

Greta

Money Matters: Doing Our Own

In our effort to save some moula, we have been looking at things we can do ourselves. Doing it ourselves, instead of paying someone else to do it. Because we want to join the Y down the street. But that money has to come from somewhere, so......we fired our gardener.

If you don't live in suburban Southern California, the fact that everyone has a gardener may seem strange to you. But everyone does. We have lived in 3 neighborhoods in the past 10 years and I can't remember anyone mowing their own grass. Some people did plant flowers, and such, but the weekly mowing and leaf blowing is always done by a guy or team of guys who pull up in a truck and in 20 minutes or less have mowed the grass, blown the leaves, dust and grass clippings into the street and deposited the rest in your trash can. Buzz, whoosh, slam, and they're done.

When we rented, we never paid for the gardener. But as homeowners, this was one more bill to pay. Ours charged $60. It seemed a lot for cutting our little patch of grass and blowing around the leaves. When he hacked almost all of my blackberry bush down, fully ripe fruit and all, simply because it was laying on the driveway, it was the nail in the coffin.

Meet our new gardener.

He doesn't have a leaf blower, but every weekend this fall, he used his trusty rake to rake up all the leaves in our front yard. He also works with 2 young helpers. They don't have a tremendous amount of stamina yet, but they are getting better. Eventually, they'll take over his job.

When we bought the house, Aaron asked the owners if he could keep this push mower that was in the garage. I am sure they thought he was a little odd (he also asked for a vintage vacuum that looks like a rocket) but they agreed. And now, Aaron can be seen mowing our lawn with this very vintage push mower.

He likes to keep things old school.

Look at that baby go.

Yes, it is a bit of extra work and time, but Aaron enjoys it. And we are saving $60 which pays for us to join the Y. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Besides, we're also training Aaron's replacements which you really can't put a price on.

I'd love to know ways you "do your own."

My dear friend Erin has been living in the Philippines for the past 2 years and she has been doing a lot on her own. She even washes her own clothes. And I do mean by hand!

Yours probably won't be that extreme. Still, I'd like to know.

Do you do your own nails? I do.

Cut your kids' hair? I don't.

Do you make your own granola? I do. Sometimes.

Make your own clothes. I don't.

So please, do tell. It will be fun.

* To read the first installment in the Money Matters series, click here.

Money Matters and the Christmas Pajamas

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants."

Esther De Waal

Aaron and I have always been a 1 income family. We knew from the start that one day we'd have children and we wanted to prepare for only 1 member of the family working outside the home. So while I finished my credential and my student teaching, Aaron worked. Then while he finished his illustration degree and started the MFA program, I taught school. When I was pregnant with James, it was a toss up as to who would stay home, but Aaron's freelance job turned into full time, so I got to become the stay at home mom I always wanted to be.

Despite that well thought out financial plan, we haven't been the most financially savvy in other areas of our life. We probably could have saved more and made wiser choices, not taken a 5 week trip to Europe, bought a cheaper car.

Still, my husband is a champ at socking away money. He excels at budgeting and money management. He really likes to save money.

I'm going to be honest with you. I do not. I like buying what I want when I want it instead of waiting to see how much we can afford at the end of the month. I like little extravagances like fresh flowers and going out for coffee. Who doesn't like those things?

Oh, I'm not the worst. I don't order things and have UPS delver them to my neighbors so my husband doesn't know about it. I don't use the grocery money to buy American Express gift cards and then go clothes shopping with them. But I do see a good sale and think, "well, this is a great deal. I'll just put it on the card and we'll pay it next month. What's $30?" Or something to that effect.

But this year we bought a house. And we still have a lot of fixing to do. And the economy is pretty bad. We'd like to put more money in our savings account. We're going to have 4 kids! We really need to stick to that budget. I really need to.

So December became the month of reckoning. If you are going to prove you can stick to the budget, December is the month to do it in, right? We always come away with a credit card bill after Christmas. And Aaron has a healthy dislike, OK passionate hatred, for credit card debt. The goal: stick to the cash only system, no "emergency" atm or credit card purchases.

It was hard. Not because there wasn't enough money, but because I had to prioritize how I spent it. I couldn't buy everything I wanted and justify it because, "it's Christmas." I had to make do, and be creative and stretch those dollars. And for a little while, I hated it.

Things really came to a head the day I realized that buying the kids new Christmas pajamas wasn't going to be in the cards this year. "What?" you ask. "How expensive can kids pjs be?"

Let me explain. I might be shopping at the wrong places, but pjs from Gap Kids are at usually around $20. It is hard to find them on sale in sizes that are not huge or tiny. Well, $20 times 3 is $60. That seems like an awful lot to spend on kids pajamas.

Old Navy isn't much better and even at Target I was looking at $15 a pair. And they weren't even that cute! I did find pairs for around $10 at K Mart, but they were ugly and not soft, and I'd rather the kids have none at all. I should have planned ahead and bought them on sale last Christmas.

The thing was, I had Christmas pajamas from last year for Lilly and William. They were both a little big last year, so they'd fit just right this year. That would leave only James. He really did need pajamas because he was down to 2 pairs.

But I didn't want to reuse last year's pajamas. I wanted new ones. Like I get them every year. Cause it's Christmas. I didn't want to save. I didn't want to be thrifty.

I just wanted to buy my kids new Christmas pajamas, dang it!

So there I was, battling it out with myself in the kitchen. I was mad. It didn't seem fair that I couldn't get what I wanted. I know, I was being selfish and juvenile. It's embarrassing to admit, but I am aiming for truth here, and reality.

That was when I realized the truth about those pajamas. They didn't matter one bit. My kids didn't care if they got new pajamas. It was about me. It was about my attitude. There are people who can hardly put food on their tables and I am complaining about some stupid pajamas? I was so ashamed.

It is so easy to become discontent with all the luxuries we have in our lives. Our homes, our closet full of clothes, cars, dishes that are just for decoration, lots and lots of shoes, not just 1 pair, and the list could go on forever, right? We don't even see them as luxuries, but as things we are entitled to. We eat out, we rent movies, we buy music. Even if we only do those things once a month, we are doing them more than so many others ever do. When I was in India, the 3 teenage girls we stayed with had never been to a restaurant. Never. They were 16, 17 and 18. We took them out for my birthday and it was the grandest celebration they'd ever experienced.

I knew that truly sticking to the budget meant making sacrifices. If I wanted to do everything on my list for December, then some other things had to give. I had to let go. And the very moment I did, those pajamas didn't matter anymore at all.

Maybe you're reading this and you can't believe I would make so much out of something so small. But I think we all have something akin to the Christmas pajamas in our lives. It is really a matter of being content with what you have. Just like the quote at the opening of this post says.

I am sharing this with you because I hope to grow in this area of my life this year. I hope to find more joy in delayed gratification, saving up, planning ahead and stretching my dollar. It's funny that these are things I think are so important to teach my kids and yet I still have not mastered them myself. Over the course of this year, I will share some of these money matters with you--the highs and lows, the real truth.

And I know I can do it because of this promise, one of my other favorite thoughts on being content:

"I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." Phillippians 4:11-13

By the way, here are the kids in their Christmas pajamas. They seem perfectly happy, don't you think?

I'm learning, oh yes I am.

Yippee!