Tips for a Newbie Gardener?

Whew!  This month has gone by incredibly fast!  It’s hard to believe we are just a few days from April.  What happened to March?!

Thankfully, the month has been full of good busyness – getting ready for the baby by clearing out our office, which will become my son’s room, so his room can become the nursery.  We’ve been doing well on ebay selling off our business, and although it’s slow going because of the sheer amount of product we have, we are seeing the numbers go down every day, and in February, our first full month, we made over $1000.  (Of course, after Ebay and Paypal take out their fees, you can expect at least a 10% drop!)

So our newest project is our garden.  We have 4 acres, most of which was corn field.  This summer, part of that will become a nice veggie and herb garden!  Now, when we lived in Minnesota I grew flowers around the outside of the house, but the soil was so rich and peaty there that you could plant anything and it would grow with no effort.  When we lived in coastal North Carolina, I had a vegetable garden that consisted of zucchini and snap beans – they did wonderfully considering the sandy soil and hot weather – until we went out of town for two weeks!  When we came back, there was nothing left of the garden but shriveled, sun-burnt plants!  It hadn’t rained once while we were gone.

I feel like I’m taking on a lot, expecting to do a much larger garden with all the basics – carrots, cabbage, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, etc.  I think we can do it.  I love getting out in the soil (and I’ve already planted bulbs out front) and since the ground is already broken up from the fields, all we’ll have to do is add fertilizer and plant each seed according to it’s instructions.

But I’m scared that I’ll miss something.  So…any tips for a newbie gardener?

Cheap Spaghetti from Scratch

To go with my previous post about cooking from scratch to save money and eat healthier, I figured I’d share some of the recipes my family really enjoys that are inexpensive, healthy, and easy to make.  One of our favorites is spaghetti and meat sauce, with a small twist.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Ingredients:
Whole wheat spaghetti noodles ($1)
1-5 ounce can tomato sauce ($0.40)
1-3 ounce can tomato paste ($0.25)
1 jar of grape jelly (to taste) ($2.50)
1 pound ground beef (optional) ($3.29)
Spaghetti Seasoning packet ($0.75) or the individual ingredients

Boil noodles.  Brown ground beef if you desire it.  Once beef is browned, add tomato sauce, tomato paste, and enough water to form sauce. If you are unsure, add just a little water at a time until sauce is thick but still fluid.  Add 1-2 large spoonfuls of grape jelly to sweeten the sauce or leave as is for a saltier sauce (Olive Garden sweetens their spaghetti sauce with jelly, according to my husband’s research!)  Add seasoning, and simmer until well-mixed and warm.

Not including the jelly (because you don’t use the whole jar) this recipe will cost about $0.78 a person and will serve at least six servings.  However, if you have a husband who eats like mine, it will be a normal serving for me, one for our son, and that leaves two large “servings” for hubby.  It also reheats in the microwave wonderfully.

We often eat this with garlic toast (butter some bread, sprinkle garlic salt on top, and toast in the toaster oven or broiler until lightly browned) and corn or broccoli.  A simple dessert of chocolate pudding with frozen strawberries is a wonderful and cheap dessert!

Buying from scratch when you can’t afford organic

One of the things I’ve struggled with lately is the idea of putting certain chemicals in my body through the food I eat and the personal care products I use. I’ve really been trying to get away from over-processed foods, especially since I’m currently pregnant. When you start to research some of things that are put into our food from raising the animals or plants to the creation of the final product, it really is quite scary!

I can buy organic foods at our local Walmart and our Giant Eagle grocery store, but the prices are sky high. Walmart isn’t too bad – I can buy a can of organic spaghetti in a can for $1.29 – but selection is extremely limited. The same exact can at Giant Eagle is $2.99 (but they have an incredible selection!) For the record, the same can of spaghetti circles in a well-known non-organic name brand is about $0.89 at our Walmart. Both stores are five miles from my house.

I can also make a 40-minute trip (mostly country roads, so it’s about 15 miles) to the nearest natural foods store, and find every variety of organic food possible. The same can of Annie’s Organic Spaghetti in a can would be about $2 at this store, but the distance is prohibitive, unless I’m already out in that area.

So what do you do? You want to avoid those additives – growth hormones, genetically modified foods, preservatives, artificial colors and flavors – but how do you do that when you simply can’t afford the price or the distance?

I’ve found I can avoid a lot of these additives simply by buying ingredients to cook from scratch. Buying flour, baking powder, sugar, and cocoa to make chocolate cake may have some pesticides or genetically modified components, but you won’t find the preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, and other additives you find in a boxed cake mix. (Speaking of other additives, why is there high fructose corn syrup in that non-organic spaghetti-in-a-can?)

It’s also cheaper to buy organic flours and sugars than it is to buy the organic boxed cake mix – but it’s almost always cheaper to cook from scratch – organically or not.

The biggest arguments I hear against cooking from scratch are time and knowledge. I often hear that cooking from scratch requires more time, but I can’t say I’ve really had that experience unless I’m comparing cutting up fresh vegetables to put in a stirfry compared to simply pouring in a bag of prepackaged veggies and meats and heating. Most of the time, it is just as quick to prepare a meal with fresh foods as it is to prepare a box meal.

I also hear people say they don’t know how to cook from scratch. Cooking can be tricky, but it’s not that difficult. A good cookbook goes a long way – I particularly like the old Good Housekeeping, Betty Crocker, and Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks. If you can find an old copy, grab it up! It’s full of every imaginable recipe – and all from scratch.

When you can’t buy organic – buy from scratch. Less processing = fewer chemicals, additives, fats, sodium, etc. You control what you put in your body – you may not be able to completely eliminate bad things like growth hormones, pesticides, and GM food, but it will be a great improvement on prepackaged foods.

A Little Savings Can Go a Long Way

My son has discovered money.

Now, he’s only two, and he hasn’t figured out money will allow him to take all those toys home from the toy store. But he does know two things:

1. Coins can be put in a video game or crane machine for a bouncy ball.

2. Coins can be put in a bank (though I think the pleasure lies solely in the actual act of putting the coins in.)

In fact, we just went to Cici’s Pizza last night, where the all-you-can-eat salad and pizza buffet is only $5 a person. In the back, there’s a game room, and it’s been a tradition for us to go and spend a quarter to get a small bouncy ball. After this, my son is usually just as happy “driving” the race car simulation game as anything, and we just let him play on the introduction without putting money in!

But I’ve noticed that when we get home, my son really likes to put his coins in his bank. Once his coins are all deposited, he begs us for more. So I’ve taken to saving my change to give to him.

And while saving change seems like a small thing to do, it’s actually very effective, especially when you are saving for something! I actually have my own change bank, which I emptied out right before we moved. After just a few months, I had $40 when I emptied it!

This was effective, but it was so easy to raid my piggy bank when I knew I’d want a Pepsi from the church vending machine or when we were taking the toll highway. I didn’t have a goal to save for, so the change was available for every whim. I’m sure I would have saved more if I hadn’t been playing the Viking!

Giving the coins to my son changed that. It’s absolutely gratifying and terribly fun to see how excited he gets putting a few pennies and nickels into his bank. And I feel like when it’s in his bank, it’s his money, so I don’t dare take any!

I don’t know what we’ll do with the money – maybe we’ll save it up for something big he’ll need in the future, but because it’s his it will stay there – except for when we go to the bank and deposit it into his savings account.

I’m still using my coin bank, but I’m also still raiding it. What would motivate you not to spend the money? Where could you put your extra coins when the day is done so they actually add up? If you don’t have a child, would a picture of what you are saving for motivate you to keep your hands off? What about a bank you’d have to break to open?

Victory! CitiBank Personal Credit Card Paid Off!

Woohoo!  This is our first real debt removal victory.  Yesterday I put the final $114 towards this credit card with my husband watching.  It feels good!

Our December bill listed our balance at $2261.81.  We’ve been putting everything we can towards this debt.  I am simply amazed that in 4 months worth of payments, we eliminated over two thousand dollars! It really makes me think we can continue to do this.

So what we have left as far as credit cards is around $10,500 on the other Citibank and $6000 on the Chase card.  I’m unsure which one to work on next.  The Citibank has far more and a higher interest rate.  Plus our shipping costs for our ebay liquidation are still being charged on this card, so I want to make sure we don’t get too close to the limit (we have about $2000 left on our limit.)  But the Chase card would be eliminated much faster, and I think our low interest rate expires in November.

It feels wonderful to have one fewer bill each month.  With recession looming in the future, I don’t want any debt hanging over my head – it’s just one more thing that could really ruin a person!

February-March 2008 Progress Post

So I’ve decided that since we’re already halfway through March, this is going to reflect everything we’ve paid up until today. (And seriously, where does the time go?)

Personal Credit Cards:

Citibank: Was: $1212.73
Now: $114.17

This was all snowflaking from our business sales on ebay! Wow! That’s $1098.56! (And today I transferred that last $114 from my Paypal account. As soon as it is in our checking account I’ll pay this card off.)

Business Credit Cards:

Suntrust: Transferred to our Business Citibank for a better interest rate and a much better bank.

Chase: Was: $6138.80
Now: $6040.50 (I paid $150, finance charges of $24.79 )

Citibank: Was: $10,556.49
Now: $10,617.85 (I made a payment of $330.00, finance charges of $50.44 – and the reason it went up so much is because we charged 340.92 to pay for shipping for the business)

Total Credit Card Debt:
Original Debt: $18, 954.86
Last Month: $17,481.67
Current: $16,772.52
Monthly Difference: $709.15
Total Paid Off: $2182.34

Accessible Savings Account:
Current: $7,396.96

The huge amount in our savings came from a refinancing – All but about two hundred of this is earmarked for our new septic system. We still need to come up with another $6000 or so to cover costs. We’ve been talking about, and I’m not sure what the plan is, except to save as much as possible. It’s likely we’ll have to finance it, because if we put this off anymore to get more money together, we will get in trouble with the county health department – they have a law here that all septic systems must pass a particular test or be replaced when the home changes owners, and our’s is old enough it’s almost guaranteed to fail.

So I may not be posting much, but I’m still getting rid of this debt!

The Great Clothing Swap – Swango.com

My son is growing!  Suddenly, almost overnight, his size 18 month pants and shirts are all too short!  And not just a little – I didn’t notice until one day I put a shirt on my son and the sleeves were a good inch above his arms.

Now this I was not expecting.  We’d purchased 2T clothing from the end-of-summer clearance racks, so we have plenty of t-shirts and shorts.  But it’s still March, and I’m sure some of you are looking out the window at the same thing I am – a foot-and-a-half of snow, and more swirling down.  So we’ve been keeping our eyes out for 2T pants (he has lots of shirts that still fit.)

So today, when I found an online clothing swapping site called Swango.com I was very excited. I see lots of clothing for the whole family, although at the moment there isn’t a lot of maternity.

Just like many online swapping sites, the site works on a system of credits.  Each item you list will initially earn you a free credit, with a maximum of ten free credits.  When you sell an item, you and the buyer split shipping costs, and the buyer pays a $0.99 transaction fee that goes to swango.com.  I really like the fact that Swango uses the transaction fee to cover making the site run smoothly (by using paypal checkout) and also donates part of it to a charity that provides clothing to families in need.

You can use the credits you earn to “buy” clothes!  A brand new Gap onesie I’m eyeing would cost me 2 credits.

Swango, of course, is just one way to swap clothing – Ebay, Craigslist, freecycle, thrift stores, family…there are so many others.  And the benefits to swapping instead of buying new are plentiful:

~ swapping keeps clothing out of landfills – because if you never purchase new clothes, you never have to dispose of them!  Plus, you save the chemicals, raw goods, and other parts of the manufacturing process.

~ it’s cheaper!  It’s often just a couple dollars (compared to tens of dollars for new) or even free

~ swapping in many places means you will get something that is almost as good as new.  Swango.com previews listings and may reject those they feel are not in good condition.  I can’t tell you how many clothes I have inherited off of freecycle that were brand new, and many that were just as good as they would look after my son wore them a couple times!

All that said, I can’t wait until summer and garage sale season.  I haven’t found a really good thrift shop that carries clothing around here yet, but the garage sales are great!  Now, if only this snow would melt!

Maxed Out!

I just finished watching Maxed Out - a documentary about predatory credit card lending. Or, as Jay Antani from stated on the review site I linked to: ” a Dante-esque descent into a distinctly American form of Hell.”

If you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend you check it out from your local library. It was interesting, although I think I enjoyed “Super Size Me” a bit more, at least from an entertainment standpoint.

As with any documentary, I’m careful to keep in mind that the film is not an unbiased source. And there were portions of the movie that were obviously edited to provide the greatest emotional and logical response. But I think the importance of a film like this lies deeper.

“Maxed Out” really focused on the credit card companies and how the government has failed to protect the consumers adequately from irreputable lending practices.

But what they only hinted at was the other half of the problem – we have become accustomed to getting what we want when we want it. We don’t want to wait, and we don’t want to consider whether or not it’s a smart purchase. It’s so easy to just drive down to the local Walmart and get whatever we want. If it’s not at Walmart, it’s on the internet. And if we don’t have cash? No problem. Just charge it!

When we get to the root of consumerism, it’s this exact mentality that destroys our financial freedom – not the credit card companies. They are definitely a problem, and there is no doubt in my mind that predatory lending practices take advantage of consumers. But when we start to look at our own behavior, it’s easy to see that the desire to have things – to store up for ourselves – is what very often puts people in a position to start thinking of credit as an acceptable means to acquire. Obviously, there are also people who had no choice but to finance necessities – medical care, car repairs, etc. But what I really want to concentrate on is the “Acquisition Mentality” so many of us have. What can we do to combat it?

I don’t know when I started thinking as if I deserved and should have every little thing. That if I am bored, an acceptable way to pass the time is to go to the mall and shop. I don’t think it was my childhood, because we simply couldn’t live like that. But somewhere between my teen years and today, I started to believe that it wasn’t a big deal to use credit for every little thing I didn’t have cash for – and that’s exactly what the credit card companies want you to think.

It’s been hard to change that mentality. I can finally say that shopping for entertainment, especially at the mall – holds little allure for me. And I believe that change came when I started really thinking about my wants and needs. Do I need it? Or do I want it?

When it comes right down to it, I need very little. I need food. I need water. Shelter, and clothing. Heat during the winter. If I have these things, I’ll survive. There are other things that are needs, but just barely – I’ll survive without them, but they really do make life more pleasant – toilet paper, shampoo, hot water. A computer with internet access. These are my priorities if I have to make a choice.

And there are lots of things I want – junk food, or a new outfit. A new car, or curtains for the dining room. Those come last.

But the funny thing is that when I start to think about each item I want to get and try to decide whether it’s a want or a need, more and more I find myself deciding I don’t even want to buy the things we don’t need – for the most part anyway. I want to wait until we have more money in the savings, or we pay off a credit card. I’d rather make do with what I have. I don’t want to buy on credit anymore. I want to own it free and clear. I don’t want to be “Maxed Out” because I’ve bought things I think I need when really I need to get out from under the thumb of other, richer people and corporations.

To close, I wanted to share something that happened in a conversation between me and a new friend of mine. I really respect her and her husband – they don’t do things conventionally, and their choices often go back to a poem I quoted in my very first post:

Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or do without.

My friend came up to me after church on Sunday and showed me a rash on her hand. She was wondering if I knew what it was from. I didn’t, but I asked her if it itched, and if she had tried hydrocortizone cream for the itching. She said, yes, it did itch, and she had tried using a baby wipe on it to see if the alcohol would kill the itch. She didn’t want to have to buy a tube of hydrocortizone.

What would I have done? I would have driven to Walmart just to pick up a little tube of cream! What a difference! And yet, she found a solution that worked just as well (even if it did dry out her hands a bit) and didn’t have to pay a bit extra or make an extra trip.

Now, if I could just always think more creatively!

And how does it relate to the movie I watched tonight? Well, it really doesn’t. But it does have a lot to do with my thoughts after finishing the movie. Our debts inevitably come down to our own decisions about what we want and need. Sometimes it’s absolutely necessary. But so much of it is from buying things we don’t need! What gets me most when I think about this, is that often we think we do need those things!

It was a reminder to me that I need to think more and buy less!

Just an Update – Where Have I Been?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I apologize for that.  It’s been a tumultous couple of weeks, and I’ll explain quickly and get on with the good stuff!

I mentioned in a previous blog that I’m pregnant.  Let’s just say that I’ve been not feeling up to much until very recently.  I’m still trying to get the house back in order from those couple of weeks – and I’ve realized that women must have selective memory when it comes to being pregnant and in labor.  Otherwise, they would never willingly repeat the experience!  But I’m feeling a lot better now, as I near my second trimester, and I’m focusing my attention on a clean, de-cluttered house and a freer-from-debt household before Little One arrives at the end of September.

I’ve continued to try to declutter my house, using the Container Theory.  Several of my friends online have joined me, and it’s been fun to hear about the things they’ve been cleaning and stuff they’ve gotten rid of! As for me, I’ve managed today to remove and give away about 6 or 7 boxes of children’s clothing and more than that many garbage bags full.  (These were all clothes that were given to me that either were the wrong size or gender for my son!)  They went to a woman with twins who has many friends with children and a mom who is running a church rummage sale next week.

I’ve also gone through my books and removed the ones I won’t read again.  These went on half.com and paperbackswap.com.

And I finally went through the piles of papers on my desk.  Suffice it to say I’m amazed I managed to pay all our bills on time and avoid late fees!

I wish I could say I’ve done more in the last few weeks.  But it’s a start, right?

The only other thing worth updating is mentioning that our refinancing went through today – we signed the paperwork on Friday and Ohio law requires a 4 day waiting period in case we change our minds.  This means we’ll no longer owe our friend nearly $11,000 from our previous mortgage, and we’ll have about $8000 to put towards our new septic system.  The rest we’ll pay in cash.  As usual, I hate feeling like I’m adding debt, but this was a planned expense.

Pretty boring, I know.  But I didn’t want to take almost two weeks off without letting you know why!

The Desk of My Dreams – and the Bane of My Wallet

I found the perfect desk at Sam’s Club.  It’s a secretary desk – and it’s an organized person’s dream – lots of drawers, even a built in file cabinet.  Perfect for my needs.  But it’s $400!

But let me give you some background – part of our business equipment is a large corner desk.  Each “wing” measures about 5 feet, so this desk is huge!  It’s also basically a table.  It has a flat top and no drawers.  It is perfect as a shipping area  up in our office.  But as we sell our product and get rid of the business, we aren’t going to need it.  It’s too big.  Too useless!  The office will become a bedroom again, and we needed something small that would hide our bills, my laptop, and our files in plain sight in the living area.  Brian and I discussed it, and we decided that selling the current office furniture and buying something to fit our needs would be a much wiser idea.

And so when we went to Sam’s Club to pick up cat litter and cat food, this desk stood out to us.  But we weren’t planning on buying a new desk until we were done with the old one – we needed to sell it to afford the new one!  At the same time, furniture at Sam’s seems to be seasonal.  Right now there is one in stock at our Sam’s.   We don’t want to charge it.  That’s not a good idea.  So we came up with a plan.

We could use the extra money in our paycheck and some from ebay.  And we’ll do that to make up the difference.  But we’ve got a huge black filing cabinet sitting empty upstairs.  It’s being used to put random items on.  We also have a few store displays to sell.  And I’ve been storing some soap base from my stint with making soap – which was very, very fun, but now I have enough soap to last me the rest of my life, and half of the soap base still left.  We also have some baby clothes I’ve been meaning to sell.  So we’ll sell all these things that have really just been cluttering up our lives (remember the Container Theory?  The office is the exact opposite of what this theory proposes, but selling the stuff will help a lot!)  And with the money, we’ll buy something that will simplify our office into one little corner of the room.  That feels a whole lot better than going into more debt!