Stretch It: Kid Space

Okay, so this one isn't about stretching your money. It is all about what we did to make our little guys small space grow bigger. Our son has too many toys! I'm sure, like 100% positive, that I am not the only one whose child has this problem. Heaven help you if you have more than 1 kid worth of toys! I have read so many articles over the year about how kids have too many toys and are way overstimulated by the overabundance. One even said that having too many toys can stifle their creativity. I couldn't get the idea out of my mind.

We have spent a lot of time getting rid of the extra stuff in our house, grown up stuff. We have had less stuff coming in since we don't have commercials to lure us into the stores anymore, but over the years the stuff accumulates. We encouraged Jayne to donate any toys that he didn't use. Since we started in November around the time we got our Operation Christmas Child shoebox put together, Jayne was in a giving spirit and got a rather large box of toys out of his tiny bedroom.

That was a great start, except that his room wasn't any emptier. It basically looked the same because there were still so many toys left. So, a quick question, how did he get so many? He has toys from my childhood, toys from Adam's childhood, and no lack of toys from every holiday in existence. His room was always a mess and picking up time was a nightmare because it was so overwhelming for him. The mess wasn't just toys he had played with. There were also the toys he had to get out just to unbury the toy he wanted in the drawer.

I came up with a plan that I hope would solve a lot of the toy related problems. It just meant I had to move past my not wanting to take away his toys. It wasn't going to be a punishment and I really hoped he would like the result. So, I packed away nearly all of his toys. No, they are not going to be swapped out on a rainy day if he is bored because a new toy does not cure boredom! They are packed away and he was told that if there was a toy he wanted back, since we chose the keepers, he just has to tell us which one and we will go get it for him. In a couple of months or so, the entire thing will be donated and out of our house. In the meantime, he has an opportunity to save the ones he wants to keep.

Here is what is left after filling a tote to overflowing and then some. He still has all of his Imaginext Star wars and Batman things, his army guys, a handful of cars and dinosaurs, about 10-15 odds and ends things, his swords, and 1 large truck. He still has his under the bed totes of legos and trains and a small box of dress-up items. The closet is empty except for 4 larger toys. Under his bed is empty except for those 3 boxes. He went from 6 drawers stuffed to bursting with toys to 3 drawers with 1 small layer of toys in it.

Here is the big one...How was the reveal? When he checked out his room, he was nothing but smiles. He didn't miss any of those other toys! He loved how much space he had and that it was now easier to pick what to play with. He loved that there is now more floor space to play in because the huge trucks and dinosaur are not taking it up. Pick up time is much faster now. I don't see as many toys come out anymore. He tends to pick one or 2 things to play with each day. Jayne couldn't be happier and hasn't asked for a single toy since we first showed him the new and improved room on Saturday. It did a world of good for the sanity of the whole family. I only wish I had thought of it sooner!

Stretch It: Cleaning

Cleaning supplies can seem like they cost a fortune. We actually don't use many products. We have a relatively small house. It is just the right size for our 3 person family and doesn't have much wasted space. I have reduced my cleaning time and product use a lot. I have tried to split it up into 3 different categories.

*Green Works. I love the product line. I really appreciate the environmentally friendliness of it. I use the dish soap for washing by hand. We don't have a dishwasher, except for me that is. I have since used regular dish soap and I can feel the difference in the water. When I use the green works, it still feels like water and I like that. We use the laundry soap. I generally do 2-3 loads of laundry per week. Unlike many, I don't usually separate. When the laundry basket is full (we all put our laundry in the same one) I toss it in to wash it. Part of the reason I can do this is that I use cold water to wash everything. The soap is what is supposed to clean your clothes and everything comes out just fine. I have never noticed any staining. I do sometimes pretreat nasty stains with shout advanced for set in stains. We also use the green works toilet bowl cleaner. We had been using the kind of toilet bowl brush that the end pops off and you use a new one each time. I liked them, but they make so much waste and are pretty expensive. The green works products are not always the least expensive but they are much lower than many competitors.

*Norwex. I got my norwex products 4 years ago and they are still going strong! If there is one cleaning line that I truly believe in, this is it. If you ever go to a norwex show, you can see the demonstrations yourself. They are almost unbelievable, but they are amazing. I will go down the list of what I have and why I love them. The dusting mitt gets all the dust with no product involved at all, plus Jayne loves to wear it and help me by dusting the house. The microfiber cloths use only water and kill 99% of all bacteria. They can be used on any surface and even for dusting. I use them on my mirrors with the polishing cloth and they come out crystal clear ever time with nothing but water. I have the mop system and it works the same way as the cloths, with just water. The car cloth is great too and also just uses water, that is an entire car clean with just water. I use the drier balls with the laundry too. You can get those almost anywhere now and it means not buying softener. The one downside to the Norwex products are the higher price. But if you off set the price of buying products, they aren't bad.

*The rest. Our vacuum does not use bags, so no extra cost there. We still have many products that are just used occasionally or during spring cleaning like comet, magic erasers, oven and stove top cleaners, and some others that I don't ever use. These are things that I don't have to buy more than once a year, sometimes longer. My all time favorite cleaning trick is for the very difficult to clean microwave. Microwave a bowl of water (with lemon if you want to freshen the scent) for a couple of minutes and it loosens up everything making it super easy to wipe down.

I will be sharing more about organizing my cleaning and my homemaker's journal in another post. For now, I would love to hear about your favorite products and tips for easy cleaning!

Stretch It: Bills

Monthly bills are one of the most difficult places to cut. We always saw them all as a necessity, but if you look more closely you find that you are tossing a lot of money at things that aren't needed or are not efficient.

Electric/Gas - These are pretty much required, especially in MN. You can help by turning off lights, unplugging devises, and keeping the temp in your home at a moderate level. We don't have AC but we keep our house at 68* during the day in the winter and 62* at night. It saves a lot on our bill and we get to wear snugly sweaters. It also helps if you do some winterizing in the fall, but that will be a different post.

Phone - People are addicted to their phones. We made the decision to switch to a land line with the most basic service. We weren't making long distance phone calls anyway, so we just don't have long distance service. We don't need to text, we can call or use a multitude of messaging options online. We also feel that when we are out and about having a family day, we don't want to be reached. Our monthly phone bill is right around $16 now, a huge drop!

Garbage - We kept this while we were still changing diapers. Now, we haul our own. We are spending about $5 a month on our garbage now. It is free to recycle and we get things sorted better now. Plus we bring in cans when we go and it usually covers the cost of the garbage and often leaves us with a little extra. It works well for us and is something we recommend. It also means purchasing items that aren't going to fill our trash, less of an issue now that we make many things from scratch.

Insurance - I cannot even begin to describe the amount we were being ripped off by our insurance company! We saved a huge amount on our car and homeowners insurance by looking into new companies. What really burned my biscuit was the fact that our old insurance company covered 0 of our broken sewage line, but our new company would have covered half and we pay nearly half as much to have them!

Cable - Way to expensive and terrible service! We dropped it and have never been happier. We spend about $8 a month on Netflix and it gives us all the shows and movies we want. If you want current series (as they air) you can try out hulu plus. If you are a huge sports fan, this might not work. It is a fantastic way to cut though.

Car Payment - Make sure you have a car you can afford. Here is the real thing to think about though...how many cars do you need? We have 1. Sometimes we have a difficult time juggling, but we know that we can't afford car payment and insurance times 2. I have known so many couples that had 2 new cars and complained about not having enough money at the end of the month.

Those are the only ones I can think of at the moment. It all comes down to what you really NEED. Many of us think we need things, but look at how many people all over the world are living without them. I would love to know how all of you are cutting down on your bills. Let's all learn from each other!

Stretch It: Entertainment

I am going to keep this relatively short as it is over 90 degrees and I don't have A/C (a great way to save money, but slightly uncomfortable).

Having fun doesn't have to cost a lot. Sometimes it can take a little looking to find some activities, but it is worth it and occasionally it means trying something new. Every area has its own events and places so I will share a few of the things we have done in our area that are free or low cost.

In our town: We did many things for summerfest that were all free, we did not spend a dime while we were there. We have been attending the public library's presentations about countries of the world (2pm on Wednesdays), There are other periodic, mostly holiday related activities that we have done too. Plus there is always fishing, biking, walking, hiking, parks, and any other way you can enjoy the outdoors...ooh, how about sledding, I would love to think about sledding right about now ; )

In our surrounding area: Austin has the Spam museum, free to all and we are going there tomorrow (post soon after). Rochester has free entry to the art center for Olmsted residents. We have done ____ days events in other towns before, Like Rolling Stone days where I sit at my Crazy Elephant booth and Adam takes Jayne to all the fun events and parks. We have seen movies at the public library in Rochester and they also have walk through exhibits on occasion. The local movie theaters have free movies quite often too, you just have to see what is playing and when. Think bank is also giving out tickets for an evening at the zoo, so make sure to keep up on goodies at your bank, you never know what kinds of fun events they might have cooked up. And if you want to hit a zoo close by, you can hit Oxbow Park.

Within 2 hours of our house: The Como Zoo is free and I especially love the conservatory. We get a yearly membership at the MN Zoo. It is a great bargain for how much we visit and we get discounts on other zoos throughout the country. The history museum in St Paul is free and educational. The children's museum is free on the 3rd Sunday of every month (thanks to Target, who pays for all admissions). It is quite busy on those days, but still fun and your kids will probably pass out in the car on the way home.

I know there are probably a lot of things that I missed. Take some time to look around and you might find something you never thought you would try, or even something that you never thought you would do because it was too expensive, turns out to be a great deal if you time it right. Share some of the things that you love to do in the comment section. Maybe it will be just the idea someone else was looking for!

Stretch It: Food

Food was by far the most difficult area for us to cut back. You need the right balance of health vs. frugality. We are still working at it and have shaved down our food budget every month. Here is what we did...

-Eating out. This is the hardest area for us. Eating out is a very expensive way to dine. We have been working hard to just say no, but sometimes it is hard not to. When we do eat out, we try to be smart about it. Many fast food places have coupons as do sit down resteraunts. When we go to a sit down resteraunt we choose a dish to share. Most places give you enough food for 2 or more, so you might as well share. The last time I went to TGI Fridays, I got a 3 course meal for $12.99 and I can teel you that it would have been enough for all 3 of us.

-Plan Ahead. We used to be a

"what should we have for supper tonight, I don't know let's pick something up at the store"

kind of family. That is a good way to watch your food budget skyrocket. We staarted planning our meals for the week and it helped so much. Now we plan our meals for a whole month. We still aren't quite used to picking up food for the month, so we occationally need to pick something up but not as much. We try to change a few meals every month to keep us from getting bored.

-Cooking. This is the most important part of our food budget. Without frugal meal choices, we would not be able to keep our budget down. We have a mix of recipes from http://dollaradaymeals.com/ and some of our own creations. Most of our meals cost $1 or less for the whole meal. It took a lot of time to research low cost meals that were less than $5-10 a meal. Most places have frugal recipes that are aparently on the budget of someone who makes much more than us! Another site I really love is http://www.youtube.com/user/DepressionCooking. Clara grew up durring the depression and shows (videos) how to make some really great frugal dishes. They actually sparked the creation of some of our own recipes.

Cutting down your food budget can be hard. With a little research and a willingness to try something new, it can be done. Keep in mind that frugal meals are usually made from scratch. When I started, it took me 1 hour per meal. Now that I have been able to streamline it a little, I tend to do about 1 hour of cooking a day. Check out the recipe below. It is tweaked the way we love it and is a healthy, hearty, frugal meal...

Vegetable Rice

Ingredients
2 large potatoes

1 small onion

3 carrots

3 cups beef stock

1 cup minute rice

pepper

salt

Chop up your vegetables. Put the beef stock in a pan and cook till boiling. Add the vegetables. Cook until the carrots and potatoes are tender. This takes about 10-15 minutes, but cook them to your desired softness. Make sure your stock is still boiling then add the rice and stir it in. Cover and remove it from the heat. Let sit till the rice has absorbed the beef stock, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and your meal is ready to eat.
makes 4 hearty servings

(also great topped with cheese)

Stretch it: Gas

This is a series I am going to call stretch it! Adam and I have people ask us about ways to cut spending all the time. I thought this would be a great way to share with everyone at once and get in depth with each topic. If you remember a ways back, we did a year without spending. While we didn't end spending as little as we started, we learned a lot of things about how we spend our money and why. I want to share what we learned with all of our readers. I would love to hear what area you would like to learn about, too!

I don't usually fill up the gas tank, but a couple weeks ago I did and saw the cost...STICKER SHOCK! We already had some gas saving measures in place, but I can tell you that it made me want to do as much as I could! So here are some areas that We have worked our money saving magic...

-Make your trip worth the while. We live in a small town and drive to the nearby city for many things. We used to go in several times a week and now it is a maximum of 1. We keep a note pad on the fridge that write the things we need to do on. We think about the item that we need. Is it essential to have the item now? Not usually. So we add it to the list. When we go into town we make sure that it is not just for 1 stop and we plan the most efficient way to get them all done.

-Use your feet. We walk when we can. We are lucky enough to live close to things like the library, post office, and small stores. We walk to them, always, no exceptions. When we can we find a central location to park our car and walk to all the stores. You get some extra exercise, and you save money on small drives from store to store.

-Bike it. For longer trips, not walking distance, we bike. We bike for quick trips to the grocery store, Adam bikes to work, and we even bike 10 miles to go to the free movies in town, that's 10 miles back too. Not only do you save money on gas, it can help you save by not having a gym membership/driving to the gym if you walk/bike everywhere you can. If you aren't going to be carrying much, you don't need your car to haul it. When you don't use your car, you don't use your money. It is all about weighing the options.

-Stretch your gas. Do some research on your car to find out what the highest speed is that continues to get you the best mileage. For our car that is 55 mph. Yes, everyone passes me at 65 mph on the highway, but It makes my gas last longer and only adds about 2 minutes to my drive to work. Give it a try some time and see how much longer it really takes you to slow down a little. Sometimes being in a hurry can cost you money when you least expect it.