Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do or Do Without

The title for today's post is an important one. I've tried for the past couple of years to make this saying my motto, hewing closer to it when money gets really tight, and maybe veering away a little in the interest of convenience when times are better. This week has definitely been a "make it do or do without" week. I spent the grocery money this month on birthday supplies and stocking up on meat, and while both of those were good things to do, it left us short in this last week of the month. We've been out of bread all week, and the fresh produce and milk were gone on Tuesday or so. It's just for a few days, tomorrow we're going shopping to get staples and February is coming soon. Since we're all still getting calcium, protein and fiber, I count it as less a crisis and more an exercise in innovation.

You learn things when you're cooking without the stuff you used to have. This week I learned that it's possible to sub in things like cream cheese or sour cream for milk in recipes and boxed dinners. Tuesday for lunch we had macaroni and cheese (and cheese) with diced hot dogs and frozen corn that was actually pretty good. Monday night I put the last few spoonfuls of sour cream in the microwave and used them to make an enchilada topping that was actually much better than if I'd used milk. Tortillas are easy to make with ingredients around the house, and you can use them instead of bread in lots of ways. I've been able to use quite a few of my stockpiled cans now that the pantry is organized and I can see everything I've got. Tonight I used a cheddar broccoli soup mix and added potatoes and ham to make it a full (and delicious) meal. Not too bad for the end of the month!

My motto serves me well in weeks like this, and things that I've done recently, like making a rag bag of one of M's destroyed pairs of pants and filling it with old clothes scraps, have worked out very well. Being able to repurpose and reuse things makes me feel good and thrifty. At the same time, though, I find that the motto can be my enemy when it comes to getting organized. Like many chronically disorganized (that's what they call it when you're not a hoarder quite yet) people, I like to hold on to things that are just a little bit broken or torn or expired, hoping that I can fix them or find a new use for them. Sometimes it's true. Robert had a good time using my old pans for drums, and I have replaced plenty of buttons and even repaired some small tears or ripped hems in our clothes. But much of the time, I find that I am unrealistic in my thinking, wanting to keep a broken lamp I have no skill in repairing, or thinking of a great use for some weird empty container that is so time and labor intensive I'm never going to get around to it.

At some point, you just have to say enough is enough and get out the trash bag, even if you're not 100% sure that you can't use a thing anymore. I have to be realistic about my own time and capability and even enthusiasm for reusing or repairing an item. Using Freecycle to get rid of these things is a good idea, but I have to be realistic about that, too. Is someone going to drive all the way to my house to collect this item from me? Am I going to find the time and make the effort to put it online? Or will I and my family be better off if I just put it in the trash and get on with my cleaning? It's the antithesis of using up and wearing out, but it's keeping house.

As with many housekeeping-related tasks, I use my Grandma J as the gold standard. She was both an excellent housekeeper and a frugal person, so I know it can be done. When I get up to my neck in items I can't decide whether to keep or toss, I ask myself what Grandma would do. Most of the time my imaginary Grandma-guide tells me to throw things out, and as a result, things are starting to get a little cleaner. We're still far from "a place for everything and everything in its place" the way she advocated, but it's a worthy goal.

I guess it's a matter of striking a balance between getting the most possible out of our things and not letting our things overwhelm us. For now, I'm trying to cultivate an attitude that lets me feel good when I find a new purpose for something that would've been waste, but at the same time lets me not feel guilt when I don't. Sometimes you just have to let go, and let that be okay.

Home Improvement

I haven't been blogging much lately, I know. This blog was a lifeline back in Robert's first year, when I was totally cut off and needed any form of grownup contact, no matter how tenuous. Now that he's almost two years old, there's no time to sit down and write! Ah well, time marches on. I do want to pick up again, but I make no guarantees as to my reliability. I'll just have to make the entries I do post extra-good.

So lately I've been watching Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive on Netflix. It's not for the schaenfreude, which is the reason I watch most reality shows, but because the problems these people have resonate with me. I don't have a houseful of cats or garbage piled to table level, but I am chronically disorganized and I recognize thought and behavior patterns in the people they profile that I see in myself. If you watch enough episodes, you start to realize how many normal people, people who like keepsakes and collectibles, may be just one tragedy, one dollop of despair away from hoarding. It often seems like there are one or two events that precipitate hoarding, and I know that feeling too. When I found I was pregnant with Robert, there was a period of time when I couldn't gather things fast enough. More food, more baby clothes, more blankets, more whatever, even though it was a time in our lives when we were trying to clear out our storage spaces and needed less, not more. I got over it, but I think it reveals a tendency.

That's not as depressing as it sounds, though. Watching these shows helps me, because I can take the coping skills, the decision-making skills that the folks on the show learn and apply it to my own stuff. And it's helping! Recognizing the problem and wanting to change is the biggest step to actually changing. These past couple weeks, I've been downing an episode or two, then attacking my kitchen. My kitchen is small, it's cramped, and it is full of stuff I love, which makes it a huge target for clutter and jumble and mess. I love cooking, and I especially love kitchen gadgets. Even if I haven't used it yet, the idea that I could use something to make a cool recipe or to make some task easier is just awesome to me. That makes collecting easy, and letting go hard.

In the kitchen, I started with my pantry. Since before Robert was born, we've had a cinderblock pantry against the living room wall, because I coupon and we have such limited cupboard and closet space. Our kitchen also has two doors, a normal size door to the hallway and a giant opening to the living room. Robert is not allowed in the kitchen (nothing in the world could make that space babyproof), since he became mobile we've blocked it off, first with the Pack 'n Play, more recently with random boxes and baskets and whatever is handy. It was messy and non-utilitarian and it blocked me from access to my pantry, so it kept things from getting put away. I decided to make a major change, and embarked on our biggest home improvement project in ages.

M and Robert and I went to the hardware store, which is always exciting. We got a 48x16 board to replace the top pantry shelf, where my Cansolidators sit. On the old shelf, the cansolidators didn't sit nicely, they hung off a bit at the front and the back, and I worried about loading them fully. The new board was wider, longer, and substantially stronger, so the Cansolidators could be fully assembled and loaded the way I'd always wanted them. At home, we totally emptied the pantry shelves, threw away anything that wasn't good anymore, and wiped down the shelves, then disassmbled it and reassembled it in the opening between the living room and the kitchen, to make a permanent barrier between the two rooms. The shelves open right onto the kitchen, so I have easy access, and Robert can't get into the kitchen.

The back of the unit was a problem, though. It used to be against the wall, and a block and board shelf typically doesn't have a back. Leaving the pantry shelves wide open and next to the toybox is asking for trouble, though. After talking with my mom, I had a brainstorm for Robert's birthday present. I went back to the hardware store, and this time got a sheet of plywood cut to order, some blackboard paint, a brush, and some nails. I painted the plywood with blackboard paint and nailed it to the back of the pantry. Voila! A back for the shelves, a giant chalkboard for Robert, who loves chalk drawing. With everything organized back into the pantry, I have never been happier with that part of our apartment.

I've done a lot more work as well, a lot of organizing and a lot of sometimes painful throwing away, but this entry is long enough. Anyway, here's a picture of the front and back of the new pantry.

That's the Way the Money Goes

It's been a little while since I updated, but we've been keeping very busy. I really need to take a new batch of photos. Robert has a cute new haircut that makes him look much less baby and more little boy. It's super cute and I will try to get something up here. The weather's been pretty nice here, so we've been getting outside more, just walking around for the most part. Robert is getting good at walking! He can make it across the living room on his own, and outside he does well when holding onto a hand. Soon he'll be running, I know, and then climbing, and then I just don't know what I'm going to do.

The financial front lately has been a mix of good and bad news. We got our tax return and did many responsible things with it, adding to our IRAs, adding to Robert's school fund, paying down some debt, and refilling the emergency fund. That was good. M got a grant for next year so he can work on his dissertation without having to teach. That is good! The grant is for fifteen thousand dollars before taxes, so it's a pay cut. That's bad! He is prohibited by the terms of the grant from doing anything else for money for that entire year. That's also bad! But I've crunched the numbers till they started cracking around the edges, and if we have no unexpected expenses and make no frivolous purchases all next year, and gas doesn't climb too high, and all our costs remain about the same, we should be able to live on that. That's... well, it's hopeful, I guess. It's better to be inevitably sunk by the unexpected than to start out in the hole.

My problem is what do I do right now to prepare for the financial burden I know is coming? Look for a job, obviously, but that's not without plenty of problems. Robert is still young enough to be on the high end of daycare costs, for one thing, so a job has to be pretty good to even be worth my while. And those aren't easy to come by around here. They're _really_ not easy to come by for someone who has been out of law school as long as she was in, and has never had a real paying law job. I'm going to be taking training this spring that will hopefully let me become a Court Appointed Special Advocate, which is both really important volunteer work and legal work that will hopefully help polish me up for jobs, but that's down the road a little ways. I can't count on finding a job that's going to bring in more than it would cost in terms of daycare, gas, and loss of couponing time.

I have money set aside, for things that I wanted to do. I wanted to do sessions with a professional organizer to help me get the house in order. I think it's really important, and I'm not making progress on my own. I got a great deal on two months of Jazzercise classes, and I've been doing that and was sort of hoping to continue. I have plans to put some money in our Roth IRAs, now that we're going to be looking down the barrel of 30. I could scrap all those plans and sock all that money into the emergency fund. That's what my squirrel-brain wants me to do. I know a financial winter is coming, and I must save all I possibly can. On the other hand, all these plans are good things to do, things that will improve our quality of life for a long time, and hopefully our health as well. It's not like a new TV set or something. I just don't know what to do.

I tell myself that at least we know now. It's not like a sudden layoff where the decrease comes with no warning. Sure, this summer was already going to be tight, but at least we know that things aren't going to get better when we hit the school year like usual. We can plan! And in the spring, M will still be getting paid like usual, so I can do things with that money. I'm going to toss everything we can spare into paying down the one remaining credit card debt, that's for sure. The more I pay of that before September, the fewer months that it will be a line-item in the budget. Man, will I be happy to see the end of that! And we have an emergency fund that's in decent shape, given our income. Dipping into it just to get through the year is not a sustainable plan, obviously, but it's good to know that when the inevitable small disasters happen, we aren't totally sunk. So it's not all misery and woe. I just have to keep reminding myself of that. We've got a lot of things going for us, even now! Things are going to be okay.

Tuesday, February 24, making soup!

Today is split pea soup day, and I am very excited. Ever since I got this honest-to-god ham bone, I've known what its destiny would be. Turns out, I left about twice as much ham on the bone as I needed, though, so I thought I'd make more soup than the recipe was slated to. Unfortunately, none of my big stockpots ended up making the move from our last house with us. They were cheap things, and towards the end, when the moving truck was stuffed to bursting, they got triaged out. I later learned that we had boxes full of things like old mail and canned goods that should've been donated to the homeless shelter, but c'est la vie. I was buried in finals and M was left with a totally disproportionate share of the packing, so I lost my right to bitch (very much) about how it all ended up. I rarely used the pots while I was in school anyway, so it didn't seem like a huge loss. 

Unfortunately, that means I've had to try and split my recipe into two pans. Stymied as to how one goes about splitting a hambone, I've resorted to soaking it for ten minutes in a pot, then switching it to the other. Just so both pots get some ham lovin, I found a gristly bit of ham I'd saved in the freezer and put it in the non-hambone pot, and switch it around too. I have no idea if this is going to turn out, but the house is starting to smell like split pea soup. I take it as an encouraging sign. Assuming this turns out, I'm going to have enough split pea soup to float a small, viscous battleship. 

Saturday, February 21, leftovers

The pot roast was wonderful, as usual. It cooked for six and a half hours to the sort of perfect consistency where it didn't quite fall apart but could be cut quite easily with a plastic spatula. We each had a big dish and M had seconds, and there's enough left for a big lunch tomorrow. Between that, the french toast I have  slotted in for breakfast (French toast is cheap! I don't know why I so rarely thought of it before this month), we shouldn't need to eat supper. We're going to the Oscar party, and there should be plenty of snacks. 

Afterwards, when the leftovers were put away and the crockpot was getting cool, I realized that the liquid in the bottom had thickened up, a sort of gravy of roast drippings, mashed up potato, mushroom soup, and onion bits. Normally I'd probably throw it away, but it occurred to me that I still have this half rutabaga from the pasties, and it would probably be quite nice to cook and mash it, then pour this gravy on top. So it went into the fridge as well. I'm getting into the habit of this using-everything business. 

That reminds me of the experiment I did last night. Meijer had a very good sale on potatoes this week, so I bought an extra bag, figuring they're always useful for fillers and snacks. Last night I tried my hand at homemade potato chips, actual fried chips, not oven-baked. It was a qualified success. I used one potato, cut very thin with the mandolin slicer, fried the pieces in vegetable oil, and salted them. First batch was very very soggy, second batch was soggy in the middles, and third batch was a little too done. But I'm fairly confident that now I know what a homemade potato chip is supposed to look like, and I anticipate success with my next venture. And I found a use for the peanut butter jar I saved and washed. Normally I throw those away, but I remember how my grandparents always used to save them, and figured I'd find a use for it. It makes a dandy container for used but still decent cooking oil, so that I don't waste all that I didn't use, or contaminate the bottle. It was a very thrifty day, all in all. No new home for Pookah though, she's back with us for another week. 

Shopping Wish List

One part of this whole plan is that there is not much room left for anything that isn't a food product, whether or not it would be useful around the house. Every so often, of course, I still need to pick up household essentials, though. This usually happens on the triage system, with some items on the list so far down that they will likely never reach the top. Here's my current non-essentials wish list, in no particular order. 

• Resolve carpet cleaner
  
• Filters for carpet steamer
  
• Coffee Grinder
  
• Shaving gel
  
• Matches
  
• New plants for outside planters
  
• KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer (this is a convenient bottom item for any triage list, but it's fun to dream about. Especially with the attachments.)
• New sheets for the bed
• Pack of dish sponges
•  Silver wire for crafting
  
• Cable television (another bottom dweller, since there's always the internet.)
• Febreeze
• Wrinkle Releaser
• One of those cool-looking tub wands
• Light bulbs for my gooseneck lamps
• Rolling pin 
• Brita Filters 

There's more, there's always more, but those are the things I've been missing lately. Most are just conveniences that I can live without easily enough. We have plenty of toilet paper, toothpaste and paper towel, and really, what more do you need besides food? And there's generally a workaround for what you need and don't have. Yesterday I was going to use the carpet steamer ($64 from Linens 'N Things last year. No wonder they went bankrupt!) to clean up a mess, but I realized that the filter was apparently disposable and had apparently disintegrated since last time I'd used it. I had the carpet cleaning solution, though, so I put some in a plastic flour container (my mop bucket didn't survive the move here, where I have about 5x2 feet of tile), filled it with hot water, and scrubbed the floors with a washcloth. Luckily I have plastic gloves, cause that stuff's caustic, but the point is that it worked. 

Instead of a rolling pin, I've been known to use the tube part of my turkey baster, or even a ceramic mug. It's not perfect, but it works okay. I have Netflix and we're invited to an Oscar party, so who needs cable? The gooseneck lamps are among the few fixtures in our house that will not take CFLs, so they are a low priority to relight, for all that they are cute and fun. The Febreeze and the tub wand are just shortcuts and labor savers, and if there's one thing I've got right now, it's time on my hands. I can get on my knees and scrub, and somewhere around here I have an iron, if no board. 

 I will probably end up getting the matches, the Resolve, and the Brita filters as soon as money allows. The cat has stopped puking since we switched up her food the other day, but I learned in my last apartment that quick attention to stains saves a lot of money in the long run. With all the crazy weather we've had around here lately, candles are more than an indulgence, but they're not much good if you can't light them! And water is the cheapest beverage around, but only if you can stand to drink it. My current filter is two months old, and I'm starting to taste the chemicals again. Yick. Sometimes you can find bargains on that sort of thing, though, so I'll keep my eyes open. 

Tuesday, February 17, the big dinner

It didn't all go exactly as I planned, and it was on the table later than I thought, but for a meal I'd never prepared before and have only eaten once or twice, it worked out well. I ran out of flour while making the pasties, due mainly to changing recipes after I'd already done the shopping. The dough was a simple business of flour, shortening, and salt all cut together, then mixed with water and rolled into a ball. I didn't have any waxed paper to wrap it in, so I improvised with a stylish paper plate hat so it could sit in the fridge for an hour. 

While that was sitting, I made the apple crisp. That was an easy recipe, though after trying the finished product, I think I would add more cinammon and less nutmeg. I was using fresh-grated nutmeg (nutmeg is not cheap, but I got a tube of nutmegs two years ago and they've lasted very well,) and it's quite a bit stronger than what you shake out of the canister. No cream or ice cream to go with it, since the stuff I got yesterday at the store has Oreo bits, but it held up fine on its own.

When that was cooking, I started cutting up the veggies for the pasty and defrosting my ground turkey. If you have anyone who buys you kitchen presents, ask them to get you a mandolin slicer. I got one for Christmas this year, and it has saved me hours of work and made cooking veggies much more enjoyable. I cut up potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, and onion, then mixed it all together with the raw meat like a very lumpy meatloaf. 

Not having flour for my hands, the board, or my nonexistent rolling pin made the pasty dough a sticky situation. I wound up greasing a cutting board and spreading the dough more like pizza dough, then dumping a lump of the filling on top, folding it over, and trying to get it onto a cookie sheet without the whole thing falling apart. For reasons I am not certain of, after I had my four pasties on the sheet and in the oven, I still had a little dough and about half the filling left. That was meat and veggies, and I wasn't about to just waste it. 

By this time M was home and hungry, but the pasties needed to cook 70 minutes. In a fit of inspiration, I mixed the dough and filling together, added a handful of rolled oats, some garlic salt and some pepper, then formed it into balls and fried them in veggie oil. They turned out quite tasty, and made a great first course. I skipped the cheesy biscuits at this point, realizing we were going to be pretty full as it was. We had a romantic first course of apple crisp and meatballs, then finally the pasties were done. M was very happy. I was almost full already, but I ate half of mine. Pasties are a great idea, but I think I'm going to find a new recipe for next time. 

The best part, though, is that with all the food we had for supper, there are plenty of leftovers. We ate two of the four pasties, so instead of turkey sandwiches tomorrow, we'll get to have these again. Nice!