Last night was a Mama night. MrW was away on a work trip and at 2am I felt the tap... you know the tap....the soft but persistent tap of a child that needs his Mummy. Poor little N. (Master 10) has had a cold the last week and a bit and it's just lingering but in the wee hours of this morning his throat was hurting, the poor wee poppet. I haven't had the middle of the night wake ups for quite some time and it is a bit of a shock to the system!
| N. playing Hockey last night. He started playing last year and loved it! Unfortunately I think it was the icing on the cake to set off his sore throat :/ |
So it was a bit of a bumble through the day today at work but we got there in the end :) I have been pondering since we re-set the budget to accommodate for our big adventure of where do I start to cut down our spending and ramp up our savings?
I mean we have simplified before, made everything (and I mean everything) from scratch, sewed clothes, had a vege garden, shopped in bulk and stockpiled and so on to live as frugally as possible but I don't have much of an idea of how to fit that into our 'new' lifestyle. I wasn't working before, yet I am now so I am in comparison quite time poor. I had a larger Kitchen and plenty of storage for stockpiling but now I have a teeny kitchen with no storage and everything seems that bit more expensive up here in the city - but we can do this!
So we start as every journey does.... with small steps :)
I've been hanging out the clothes the last few days; see simple little changes :) the dryer has been working non-stop since I started working a year and a half ago because that is what was easy, we all know though that easy does not normally leave room for cost saving! I just need to allow 10mins each day to sort the washing and hang it out AND I have two more capable helpers to help now.
I hit the supermarket today and stocked up, I plan to use what we have in the freezer as in the deep dark depths I'm not actually sure what we have in there. I plan to gradually make my way to fortnightly shopping again, I used to save money doing this and it saved on time - I could buy into that perk that's for sure. I came home and started to unload the groceries and opened the fridge door to assess how it was looking and oh my goodness! How did it get so gross in there?! Do you ever realise that it seems fine but when you really look you see that it's not so fine after-all! Out went containers of goodness knows what forgotten leftovers, the last of the scrapings in jars that were dated 2015/16 and in I went with some hot soapy water and some elbow grease. A wee while later I had a nice clean and organised fridge ready to start stocking it back up again.
| Ahhh clean and organised...looks a bit empty though! |
I've formulated a plan for the stockpiling issue, there is a corner in the laundry that I can claim for a set of cupboards - just. It's only a wee space but I think I can make that work with the help of MrW's handy skills and a small investment. For the moment the pantry is a weeee bit full :)
I baked some cookies for the lunchboxes, something that used to be taken for granted in our house. I've often commented to MrW for someone who used to live in the kitchen I can't believe how little time I want to spend in there now. I do so miss my old kitchen but I just have to make this one a functioning space and find a way to enjoy it so I can start back the baking and from scratch cheaper meals. Don't get me wrong, I definitely cook each night but just not in the way I used to with spending hours pouring over recipes and creating lots of different tasty, nourishing meals and I certainly don't cook in bulk at the present time. I have barely baked though and that is something I do yearn for, the bought bikkies just aren't the same! But that's ok, with a few adjustments I will re-ignite my kitchen passion I am sure.
Small steps and small changes and I hope that we can create a new version of our simplified more frugal life that we used to find so much contentment with.
Let's call this Journey #2 xx
| The yummiest cookies; Nut Brownie Cookies :) you can find the link here |
