Step Your Way to Your Dream Budget

Photo Credit: lorimarsha

It’s no secret that I believe most  households can feed their family for $50 per person per month.  If you can afford more than that, it’s okay to spend more.  But many single income families need to be at this level to pay off debt or to avoid taking on debt.  For many mothers I speak with, $50 per person is overwhelming to think about.  I encourage them to gradually step their way to that level as they fine tune their shopping skills.  This way families start saving money early, but  have wiggle room so no one has to go hungry while they are learning.

If you would like to step your way to a smaller grocery budget, try this simple plan:  Set aside your grocery money in a cash envelope.  The first month–keep the same budget you’ve always had.  Spend $50 per person per month on food you will consume immediately–this month.  Spend the rest of the money on lowest cost items as much as you can afford to put in your pantry.

The next month, reduce your total budget by 20%.  Continue to spend the $50 per person on food to consume right away and whatever is left to build up your pantry. Continue shrinking your budget by 20% each month until you are down to $50 per person per month.

Then you can divide that money between buying fresh and restocking your pantry.  At this point you will eat some out of your pantry as you replace what you eat when the low prices show up again.

While you are practicing your shopping skills, pay close attention to the sale prices you see in the grocery ads and on the shelves.  You will notice that some advertised low prices have been lower in the past and will be again in the future.  If you can, hold off buying those items until you see them reach their all time low and then buy all you can afford.  Occasionally coupons will match up with these sales, but if coupons are overwhelming to you don’t worry about it.  I’ve been able to stay at the $50 per person level without touching a coupon.

I believe in you!  Go shrink your grocery bills .

Our Deck

A few years ago my handy husband built a deck that sits in our front yard made from wood he salvaged from a new neighborhood that was being built down the road from us.  An amazing thing happened after the deck was finished.  As bizarre as it sounds, it has made being outdoors more interesting.  Our BBQ pit (doesn’t every Texas home have one) sits right beside the deck.  My homemade (from freecycle remnants) bench sits on the end closest to the BBQ pit (for chillin’ out while your BB-quin’).  And, we’ve placed a few potted fruit trees on the corners along with some roses.

It’s absolutely wonderful for laying on your back and watching shooting stars or jumping off of in pursuit of fireflies.  My in-laws come up on their way to feed the chickens and sit down for a spell on our deck.  It’s the meeting spot for our family.  My son and his grandparents use it as the airplane when they play army and it’s base when we play tag.  And now our above-ground pool resides on it for the summer.  Despite having a porch, which we merely use for relaxing, our deck is the launching pad for our outdoor entertainment.

I hope this summer that your family finds their own “deck’ and happy place outside – the place where you gather to enjoy each other and the nature that surrounds you – whether you’re in the country or in your own backyard in a neighborhood.

How to Have a Money Making Garage Sale

Photo Credit: Morning Toast

We just finished a big garage sale and it was a great success. Not only did I clear out a ton of stuff, but I made nearly $400 to use towards our kitchen remodel. I’ve talked to a lot of people about garage sales. Some people seem to make money while others don’t. I grew up with the best garage sale manager west of the Mississippi (my mom) and thought I would pass on some never fail garage sale tips.

1. Invite a friend or 2 to join you. The more stuff you have the more people will stop. It’s also handy to have someone to take turns watching the sale for bathroom breaks, childcare breaks, and meal preparations.

2. The #1 garage sale day of the week is Wednesday. If you can’t be open 3 days (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) then pick at least one of the big days to be open.

3. Get as many tables and clothing racks as possible. In a pinch you can lay a door over 2 saw horses to use as a table. You can make an inexpensive rack from PVC pipe. Borrow tables from family, friends, neighbors or your church.

4. Take the time to clean your items. A little bit of elbow grease will insure you get a better price. Dirty items have a good chance of staying put no matter how cheaply they are priced.

5. Do price every item, or have a flat rate for certain things that are clearly labeled. “All clothes $.50” for example. “Make offer” sales frustrate the buyer because they have to stop and ask about every item and are embarrassed to offend you by offering too low. Most people walk away from a sale like this.

Tip: Cut squares off masking tape rolls and stick them to cookie sheets to make price tags.

6. If more than one person is in the sale, use a 2 initial code for each person and then keep a spiral notebook with a page for each person in the sale. Masking tape tabs on the pages will help you flip to the page quickly. Leave the first few pages in the notebook blank for writing daily totals, and when the sale isn’t busy you can transfer each person’s earnings to their page.

7. Try to organize your sale as well as possible. Put housewares together, office supplies together, group clothing by size and season. We had limited time to do this before the sale opened, but I walked around moving items as things sold until the sale was well organized. Every time a sold item made an empty spot, I shifted items to fill the spot. This spread things out so each item could be seen and kept our sale looking huge even though more than half the original items were gone.

Tip: Move especially appealing items, like a beautiful dress or a super cute swim suit, to a front spot that can be seen from the road. Keep tools and other “man” type items in prominent places too. Men can be some of your biggest customers but most will only shop a few minutes.

8. If the weather is sunny, pull tables and items into the driveway. The more stuff that can be seen from the road the more likely people will stop instead of driving by slowly and moving on.

9. If you see a person driving by slowly, wave a friendly hello. They feel noticed and are more likely to stop and look around now that they realize they’ve been seen.

10. Signs are very important! The simpler and easier to be seen the better. High contrast black writing on white signs is perfect. “Write Yard Sale” or “Garage sale” with a large black arrow in huge thick letters. Cover it with plastic to protect from the elements. Be sure you have a sign at every turn and periodically check through the day to make sure your signs are still there. Good manners require that you remove signs at the end of the day and put them out again when the sale reopens.

Tip: Don’t forget the sign in the yard. You don’t want anyone to think that you are moving or just cleaning out the garage .

11. Advertising your sale on Craigslist is free, easy to do, and will bring extra traffic. Especially do this if you have large or specialty items. Posting photos of your key items and setup will help encourage people to make the trip.

12. For safety, wear your money in a fanny pack, and start the sale with plenty of ones and quarters to make change. Periodically take large amounts of money into the house in a safe place. If someone robs you, calmly hand over the pouch. It will only be a part of your earnings from the sale.

13. Don’t price items too high. Good jeans with no holes are worth $1 or $2. Most kid’s clothes move best at $.50 an item. If you have a lot of name brand great quality items, you should try to sell them at a consignment store like Children’s Orchard first. Pricing things right will earn you a great reputation and get people coming back year after year. On the other hand, a friend of ours in the sale had a lot of new looking purses priced at $.25 each. I could have easily gotten a dollar each for them. When in doubt, get a second opinion from a garage sale buddy. If several people look at the item and put it back you can bet the price is too high. It’s fine to walk around and mark your items down while the sale is going.

Tip: I love buying clothes at garage sales. When we can’t wear them anymore I sell them for the same price I paid for them and use the money to buy at garage sales again. Contrast that with buying clothes new and then selling them at a garage sale taking the money and buying new again. The loss is substantial.

I see having a garage sale as a ministry. We could just take our items to a thrift store where they will bump the price up 6-10 times the garage sale value. (The proceeds usually go to a worthy cause.) Or we can offer our items at low prices for a few days and give people a chance to really save while we recoup some money to help our families. After the sale take what’s left to the thrift store and donate to help them raise funds for their worthy cause. It’s a win-win situation.

A question I’m often asked is: Do you save items from a garage sale for a future sale? I used to and often the items did sell at a later date. Recently I’ve felt the joy of decluttering! The thought of taking any of those things back home was terrible. It felt really good to donate them to a worthy cause.

The Big Money Saving Secret

The secret to saving a ton of money is backwards planning.

It’s not buy what you want when you want it, but want what you can buy when you can buy it.

Most articles on grocery savings tell you to make a menu plan and a careful list, then stick to the list when you go shopping. Instead I suggest you go to the store, buy only the best deals available and then meal plan based on what you have. This may mean that you can’t follow a recipe exactly. This method requires creative cooking. It requires a knowledge of common substitutes and basic kitchen chemistry. You will become a better, more experienced cook. And you WILL save a ton of money.

The longer you practice this method of shopping and planning the easier it gets, because you will build a large variety of ingredients in your pantry to plan from. Soon you can do your planning before you go to the store based on what you already have and what you know you will buy from the loss leaders in the ads. Then it’s easy to pick up one or two essential ingredients to complete your meals.

Here’s an example of basic cooking chemistry. Fact: 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch or 2 Tablespoons of all-purpose flour will thicken 1 cup of liquid to gravy or concentrated soup consistency. Halve the amount of thickener for soup; double it for pudding. You can use this knowledge to make your own gravy, cream soups, or cooked pudding. No more mixes required!

Here’s an example of common substitutions: plain yogurt can be substituted in equal portions for sour cream and visa-versa. Use this for taco night, dip and dressing recipes etc.

Fungus Fighter

Molasses is great for fighting fungus and disease in your garden. At the first sign of trouble, mix up this recipe:

Fungus Fighter

1/2 cup of molasses

1/2 cup of powdered milk

1 tsp. baking soda

1 gallon warm water

Mix the molasses, powdered milk, and baking soda into a paste. Place the mixture into the toe of an old nylon stocking, and let it steep in a gallon of water for several hours. Then strain, and use the liquid as a spray for your garden every two weeks throughout the growing season.

Source: Great Green Book of Garden Secrets by Jerry Baker

Gangly Seedlings

If the annual seedlings you started indoors begin to look weak and gangly before it is time to set them out, try making a cold frame or window greenhouse to give them sunshine and fresh air.

Source: Great Green Book of Garden Secrets by Jerry Baker

Mulching Peas

When you mow your lawn, save the grass clippings and use them to mulch around your sweet peas. Doing so will keep the roots moist and prevent mildew from occurring.

Source: Great Green Book of Garden Secrets by Jerry Baker

Here a little, There a Little—Getting Projects Done

Many of us have all of those projects lying around the house and tucked away in boxes. These are projects we would love to get to “if”… “if” I had this or that, “if” I knew this or that…or “if” I just had the time. How many times have we said that? The reality is that we already do have the time; we just have to know how to use it rightly to finish our projects.

Having many projects on the to-do list or half-started, it is easy to get overwhelmed or even give up. I used to think of all my many projects that needed to be finished. I ended up spending way too much time trying to plan how to get them all done, instead of working through each one. Each item on the list was also too vague, not accounting for some key parts involved in getting each task done. We need to get more specific, only choosing a few projects to work on at one time. It is also necessary to order the tasks on our list so that working on them becomes practical, like the top, bottom, and quilting steps to making a quilt. If we spend all our time on the whole picture we’ll get overwhelmed. Being more specific about the order of each step will help us to begin to work towards completion on our projects.

The search for the elusive time. So, we have our smaller, more specific projects in mind that we want to finish, but cannot find “The Time” for it. That always seems to be a problem, doesn’t it? I search for this time everywhere and can’t find it: those glorious huge chunks of time that we long for to finish this or that, but the “if only”s do not get us any closer to that pile of fabric in the corner. The first step that GOD has been teaching me is to not wait for those few continuous hours to appear, but to schedule an hour a day (or a few times a week) as a time specifically set aside for crafts.

A review of your daily routine may reveal that there is something that is already taking up too much time. These may be areas of your day that you probably want to cut down anyways, like computer or TV time. Replace some of that time with the crafts that you want to do. Instead of simply trying to cut down on unconstructive activities, focus on spending that time doing something else that is more constructive. It is good to have a scheduled time in your routine, instead of waiting for that miracle craft moment to appear.

It is best to take advantage of what time you do have.

To use the time that you are given for the day, especially in regards to squeezing in craft time, requires a change in perspective. The majority of people think that no significant progress can be achieved in a short amount of time. We tend to assume that, in order to get anything done, we need at least an hour or so of uninterrupted time. However, even the smallest increments add up over time. Anyone who has ever accidentally left the bathtub plugged with a slowly leaking faucet has seen first hand what amazing results can come from slow, consistent action.

It is impressive how fast those single drops fill up the bathtub. It is the same when we devote small increments of time to a given task. Scripturally this point of view is described in Zechariah 4.9-10: “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that YHVH of hosts hath sent me unto you. For who hath despised the day of small things? For they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven…”

Now that we have covered our project focus, schedule, and perspective; let us discuss how to recognize time and use it. This is another step that GOD has been teaching me. There are many instances during our day where we end up waiting around for ten minutes or so. What are we currently doing during that time? Usually nothing. Think of the times when your hands are idle, and brainstorm how you can keep your hands busy with your craft projects.

Consider what the virtuous woman does with her hands (Proverbs 31): they are occupied in her work, in helping the poor and needy, and in producing good fruit. Keeping my hands busy with good things also helps me to think things over and pray, even for ten minutes, if that’s all I have. For example, I take my crochet work with me when I need to take the bus. I also take something portable with me to work on while I’m stuck in the laundry room for an hour. Since I have to stay in the laundry room anyway, it is like an extra hour for craft time. Recognizing small increments of time as opportunities for working rather than a waste of effort will help us to find all the available time which can be used for completing our projects.

The last thing involved in clearing out our projects corners is being consistent. Stick to your shorter, detailed project list in your small opportunities of time. Working on a few projects at a time will help you keep focused, and as you see your progress you will be encouraged and motivated to get it done.

Be consistent with your routine craft time, as well as taking advantage of small increments of idle time that come up. Be sure to change up your projects when you are ready to move on to the next few—that way you won’t get tired of doing the same thing over and over again. Lastly, reward yourself! Do a quicker, fun project when the “big bad forever project” gets done. A single drop, small beginnings, and short increments of time turn into a full bathtub, a finished Temple, and a finished project with GOD’s wisdom.

To rightly use our time to finish our projects, we need to look at our schedule. Then, using scheduled and unexpected small pieces of time consistently, with a change in perspective, will help turn our small beginnings into a finished masterpiece. “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.” Isaiah 28.10.

Homemaker’s Notebook

Over at the Homestead Revival, you will find this nifty Cloth Napkin Tutorial.

Child Training

Excerpted from the book From Chaos to Calm by Melissa Ringstaff

Scripture Memory: “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6

I remember holding my son for the very first time and gazing with wonder that he was mine. What would he become? The answer to that question was found not in a book, but in my willingness to patiently teach him day by day.

James was my first and I had prepared myself as best I could for the job of being a mom. I read every book I could get my hands on. I wanted to know the best ways to do everything from feeding him to disciplining him.

That was nineteen years ago. One thing I have learned is that on the job training never ends. There is always more to learn. As a baby grows into a child and then into a teenager the problems a mother is faced with grow and change and only get more complex.

I now have five beautiful children of my own and through the years have learned that children require a great deal of patience and teaching. With each child I have learned better ways and new ways of dealing with the same problems. In all honesty, there are things I wish I could go back and change, but, unfortunately, any mistakes we make as moms cannot be undone.

How can a mother raise a child who loves the Lord, works hard, and is kind to others when this world encourages immorality?

Begin as soon as possible. Whether you have a newborn baby or teen, begin setting an example for Godly living today. It will be easier to change bad habits in a very young child than an older child, but it is possible to teach children at any age.

Be consistent. One of the biggest mistakes moms make is being inconsistent. When you tell your child the rules, follow through. If little Johnny knows he is not supposed to jump on the sofa, do not ignore the bad behavior because you don’t feel like dealing with a fuss or because you are busy.

Be patient. Being a mom is not always easy. You will have to teach your child the same principles over and over… and over again. Sometimes these teaching moments will be painful. When your child tests your resolve by mouthing off, it pains your heart. Patience will help you to deal with the disobedience without losing your cool. Patience will also help you to enjoy those many teachable moments. For instance, my children crowd around me in the kitchen to help. Often when cooking supper, I am rushed and wanting to get supper on the table fast. However, if I take the time to let the children stir the batter, tear the salad, or flip the patties, I have taught them how to love by my willingness to be patient.

Be firm. Children need to know their limits. If you allow your child complete freedom without setting specific limits, you will raise children who are out of control and rude. Parents who set reasonable rules for their children have children who are secure in their love and who are able to respect authority on a greater leave, i.e. teachers, employers, the government. Remember – if you say NO, do not give in and say YES. Whining, badgering, and complaining should never be a reason to change your mind. You will teach your children that if they beg long enough you will eventually wear down.

Be an example. If it is important to you that your children are well mannered, respect others, and work hard set the standard by your own behavior. Children learn more by watching you that they do by listening to you. Always remember to say please and thank you. If your child brings you a flower or helps to clean up, tell him thank you. When you are thoughtful of the needy in your church or community, you are setting a good example. If you want your child to learn to be neat, make sure you keep your own things picked up.

Be fun. Motherhood will pass by faster than you could ever imagine. I am still in shock that my son is almost 16! I wish I had realized years ago how much I wanted to hang onto the precious times we had together. Read to your child daily. Play games with your child. Laugh with your child. Explore the world together. Find the magic in the everyday moments. Snuggle as much as possible.

Be a witness. Giving a solid foundation of Biblical teaching is the greatest gift you can give your child. Pray with your child every morning and every night. Read the Bible together. Study together. Talk about the Scriptures and how the Bible applies to today. Show your child what it means to live a Godly life.

There will be times when you feel that all your hard work is not working! But you can trust God when he says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Melissa Ringstaff is the Founding Director of A Virtuous Woman, a pastor’s wife, and homeschooling mom. She is the author of several titles including The Homemaker’s Journal: Keeping House, If It Were Not So…, Spring Cleaning for the Heart and Home and From Chaos to Calm: 15 Weeks to a Happy Home.

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