The Optimistic Gardener

Today I planted things. In egg cartons. In my kitchen.

I'm the optimistic type. Despite my many gardening failures in the past, I will persist. I actually grew beans, chard, tomatoes and zucchini last year and some of it survived to harvest.  So this year I'm taking it to the next level and "starting" my own plants. I only spent about $20 on dirt and seeds so it's a small investment compared to the plants I bought last year for significantly more money. And the pre-grown vegetables I also bought.

Three varieties of tomatoes, hot peppers, flowers, zucchini and pumpkin have all  been laid to rest in special "starter mix", moistened and covered, and hovered and prayed over.  If all goes well, by this time next month I will be ministering tenderly to well over a hundred tiny seedlings in our decrepit greenhouse shed, and be anxiously waiting till the daytime temperature climbs over +20 and I get them outside and let Mother Nature take a greater hand in their care - that chick really knows what it's doing when it comes to plants and junk.  Me?  I'm merely hopeful.

Frugalista Goes Cold Turkey

Like so many people, I fell off the wagon over the holidays.  There was temptation everywhere!

And while I certainly could be talking about food and drink, I'm not - I'm referring to my moratorium on clothes shopping for myself and a general commitment to consuming far less overall.

Of course I had to shop - buy gifts and goodies for people - so I was in and out of stores quite frequently before Christmas. I actually made out okay with the Christmas shopping, managing to get my shopping done with only ONE trip to the mall and only about four visits to the dollar store.  The rest of my purchases were made in individual stores which somehow makes me feel a little righteous.  It helped a lot to make lists and try to stick to them. Also, as a side-boast, we used only cash this Christmas for our shopping - Holla!

No, the trouble came afterwards.  Appetite whetted by the pre-Christmas consuming, bargains everywhere and a fat stack in my wallet courtesy of my mother-in-law, I went on a little bit of a shopping bender.  Some of the details are a little hazy, but I'm fairly certain I spent the whole holidays going in and out of stores - it's the MIL's preferred pastime, so there is a tendency to overindulge when she visits. And, you know, the holidays and mother-in-law visits are not generally regarded as times of low stress, so some of the retail activity was therapeutic in nature (at least that's what I told myself when I found myself alone and aimlessly wandering the concrete aisles of the local Walmart Supercentre at 10 pm on the 27th, and then again on the 28th, returning my purchases of the previous evening and buying more things.)

I really loved it at first, I mean I REVELLED in the deliciousness of the merchandise, the fondling, the choosing, the purchase, the bringing home of the bags and the ceremonial laying out of the goods.  I've really got a problem...  I actually leave tags on new clothes just so I can experience the "thrill of the new" when I bring the garment out of my closet to wear for the first time, and remind myself of the great deal I got when I look at the tag and see that red sale price handwritten in.  (Sometimes won't even throw them out; I'll keep the tags and receipts on my dresser to look at another time, which is maybe just a little obsessive!) But after a few days, it all began to feel like some painful compulsion, like the cigarette that the addict HAS to have, even when she has strep throat (yes, speaking from personal experience here; don't judge, okay?).

But the holidays ended, the MIL went back to Winnipeg, and life returned to normal.  Except the part where I didn't just stop shopping.  I squandered three precious hours at the mall last Sunday, and again yesterday I found myself a the dollar store with nothing really critical to buy.  I can't afford to be like this, and I hate to waste my time this way.

They say that the first thing you have to do when you have an addiction is admit that you are powerless. I say bullshit!  I have all kinds of power and I'm exercising that power by stopping the shopping right now.  And I'm not even going to indulge myself by sharing the details of my various (Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! Amazing deals! I can show you the receipts!) Boxing Week purchases.

From now until Easter at least, there will be no clothing purchases, no unplanned household purchases, and no trips to the drugstore or the dollar store without a list.  The fat stack's gone now anyway.

Frugalista Gives Up Her Favourite Hobby

So this budget thing kind of means that I have to give up shopping as a hobby.  I realized that the other day when I was in the mall (the trashy mall I love so much that has Old Navy, Claire's, London Drugs, Winners, Zellers, Reitmans AND...a Dollar Giant "everything for $1.25" store. Shangri la for people who want to buy lots of things, cheap).  I needed to buy two items from the dollar store and then go down to the end of the mall to the grocery store for an additional two items for JPM's birthday, and I had to walk THROUGH Zellers and past every single other store to get the specific items I came for.

And it took every fibre of my being not to just stop in and see what was on sale.  Because there was nothing else planned or needed besides the items on my list.  No cute tops, or toiletries or earrings or socks or frying pans....  Just paper plates, napkins and French bread. Period.

And then I had a revelation: there are plenty of people in this world who just go out and get the stuff they need, who only shop when they actually need something.  We've been trying to be those people - not just buying stuff because it's on sale, or because it strikes our fancy, or because we MIGHT need it sometime.  I think that to rock the whole frugalista thing and to be successful on our new budget - this is what JTM and I need to get good at: being the kind of  people who acquire the things they NEED, and who don't treat shopping as a hobby.  And we will just have to fake it till we make it - cause it is going to take a long time to rewire ourselves as need-based consumers.

One issue I  keep coming up against is that the urge to consume seems to be innate; and if I shut down one channel, another one opens. In other words, I've been eating like a PIG lately.

Viva la Frugalista!

Here's a little unsolicited financial advice from me to anyone who stumbles upon this: don't get a Phd using credit cards.  Okay? Just really don't.  Oh, and read that again, because it said P.H.D. not iPod (I know, they look almost the same right?  Except one of them costs, like a million dollars and the other one you could probably buy with your birthday money plus six months worth of wine bottle deposits.  Not that you would have to buy a new iPod that way.  Unless, of course, you lost it on vacation or something like that....)

So that being said, it's time for me and the Good Doctor go get our financial house in order once and for all.  And the only way to do that is to apply ourselves with the utmost of rigor, to getting rid of high interest, nonsecured debt, by spending less money on incidentals like food, shelter and clothing, and giving much, much more to MasterCard each month.

So we put together a new, very stringent "use cash only" household budget and went at it.  For about fifteen minutes.  That's when the 12 year old HAD to have new shoes, and five extra people showed up for dinner, and the car needed a brake job. Immediately.

So back to the drawing board.  Next thing we did was go through an exercise called "What Stuff REALLY Costs and How Much of it Do We Need.  Turns out that the basics, not even including the good coffee and wine and olives and baguettes, or goat cheese or bath bombs from Lush, were going to cost far more than we'd budgeted.  We pay a premium on everything, and I mean EVERYTHING living here in paradise.  It doesn't seem like  a big deal to pay .15 extra for a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle, but it adds up bigtime!  Once we figured out What Stuff REALLY Costs and How Much of it Do We Need, we revised our plan again to make sure we had enough money for the 50 litres of milk, 10 dozen eggs, 10 rolls of toilet paper, etc., that we need each month.

It's going to take a lot of self-discipline, but we'll get there. Here's what I learned this week: sunflower seeds cost half what walnuts cost, and pine nuts cost more than twice what walnuts cost. But, after the Frugalista Pesto Taste-off, I can confirm that any of the above used to make a decent pesto (though we all thought that pine nuts were the best, followed by walnuts and then seeds, but all were good).

Spaghetti with pesto image stolen shamelessly from the worldwide web. We were too busy chowing down to figure out the food-porn settings on the camera and take pictures of our dinner

   This weekend we are doing back to school shopping with a list and a budget, and I'm thinking of making some cloth napkins. Film at eleven.