Frugal Hacks » challenges

Creativity Or An Act Of Desperation?

DL — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:44:37 +0000

Standing outside gazing at windows with Home Inspector, I mentally questioned his comments. Many of the windows of the home we hoped to purchase had a staining in color of what I might call “coffee with cream and sugar.” Home Inspector assured me this was paint that must have mistakenly hit the windows while being sprayed onto the house. He went on to say that although much elbow grease would be needed, this staining could be removed after moving in. Since this home-to-be was a lovely sage green and not old enough to have needed repainting, I was a bit skeptical. However, what did I know?

Shortly after moving in and finding Home Inspector’s electrical advice had been faulty, my confidence in his window wisdom also became suspect. Alas, my scrubbings and scrapings of said windows came to naught and I realized the damage was inside between the thermal panes. Now four years later, I am still looking for economical solutions to this problem.

Gratefully, we have had some of the glass in windows replaced through the years, but several still remain and funds are no longer available for such. Life seems to keep happening, (like weddings, unexpected car repair, you get the picture.) A new strategy is needed to solve this dilemma. Internet searches have not brought much relief and so I come to you for answers, fellow frugalities!

Certainly, windows covered with blinds are quite fashionable in this South Texas and very wise on many days! However, there are those glorious months of cooler weather when open windows bring soft breezes and sunshiny shadows and make me so desire to roll up my blinds! Being greeted with windows that look so dirty and uncared for is a true discouragement and I am seeking a creative solution to my dilemma. See what you think of my new idea.

My family room has three windows side by side on one wall. There is a top and bottom pane each about 36inches by 20 inches. The bottom panes of each of the three windows are ruined by the staining. Is it creativity or an act of desperation to consider painting these panes with chalkboard paint? I could write verses or quotes upon them and perhaps they would add some character to my décor? What do you think?

Has anyone ever painted windows with chalkboard paint?

Do you have any other suggestions?

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The Love Language of Gifts

DeputyHeadmistress — Fri, 14 May 2010 11:57:06 +0000

A while back my husband and I had an interesting discussion with another couple about gift giving. Her husband had grown up as a missionary child in an African country. Poverty was something he saw every day. She had grown up in North America, her parents were older when she was born, and they went out to eat almost every day. I grew up poor. I wore hand-me-downs from other families, had to wear ugly brown snow-boots instead of the gloriously red shiny ones I wanted because they had to be passed down to my brothers, and sometimes had the power turned off because my father did not pay the electric bill (he was more than willing to buy himself Italian shoes, however). My husband was raised by his grandmother, who owned acres and acres of orange groves in Southern California and did not lack for money at all by the time he came along. While she had the good sense not to spoil him monetarily, he never wanted for anything at all, either. His father did not have good sense, and it was not unheard of for him to wander by and give his son a hundred dollar bill- in the seventies, when a 12 year old could do a lot of damage with a hundred dollars. Once when visiting his family they found out we bought the children's clothes at thrift shops and they were absolutely appalled. An aunt privately took him aside and offered to take us shopping to buy the new clothes. They had not found out because of the way the kids were dressed, btw. They found out because I was excited about really great bargains we found at a local thrift shop and was sharing my joy over this with them without realizing they did not share that joy at all.

Not surprisingly, my husband, our friends, and I all have different ideas about what we value in gifts, and we enjoyed talking about the different processes we went through as we figured out what pleased the spouses in our marriages.

My friend once greeted her fiance's return from a trip with a huge hand lettered sign and some expensive stuff to go with it (I do not remember what, I just remember it was pricey stuff for a college student). Later when it was his turn to greet her on a return trip, he turned the sign around and wrote on the back of it, and gave her, oh, I don't remember- something like a plant he'd grown in his room or some wildflowers. My friend was crushed at what a cheapskate he was, whereas I would have been thrilled with such creative and frugal thoughtfulness.

On the other hand, on our first Valentine's Day as a married couple, my husband brought home a grapevine wreath from a floral shop- one that cost half my weekly grocery money. I was devastated and sick at heart. When I say it was half our grocery money, I mean that week I had half as much grocery money available as usual, and we were already eating a pretty limited diet of beans, rice, potatoes, with rice, potates and beans for variety. A present does not mean more to me because it costs more. If it costs more for what I view a frivolous reason, it actually causes me pain. Very likely this is associated with the deprivations of my childhood and my response to them, but also it goes with my particular personality and love language, just as my friend's love for gifts that do cost money is associated with her childhood and also her own personality and love language.

My friend said she would have been thrilled at such a romantic gesture. I asked her how it could be romantic to have to go without food to pay for a grapevine wreath you cannot eat and do not need, and I guess it just is, if that's your love language. Personally, I don't get it at all, and I mean that. I mean, I understand on an intellectual level that is how some people feel, but I cannot imagine it, I cannot understand why, and it's hard for me to believe that anybody really does feel that way, even though they tell me they do. Emotionally I am sure they can't really mean that, or that if only things were explained to them they would realize that the price on an item has no relationship to its value, and that true gifts are about love and time and service, not price- that's how foreign and incomprehensible that kind of thinking is. It seems thoroughly materialistic and soul-less to me. I never liked the story of the Gift of the Magi, either, in case you are wondering, and yes, I realize that seems soul-less to others.

It was years before my husband and I really understand this about each other. I think we finally got it the year he bought me a hundred dollar teapot I have never liked (you have to dust it with a q-tip), and I bought him a brief-case I thought was ridiculously overpriced.

I was shopping for his birthday present, and I began by shopping the way that would please me- the way that would actually thrill me, actually, and make me feel tenderly cared for and understood - carefully, frugally, taking time to assess all the different features, price comparing. This would ordinarily be a very time consuming process where I would go from store to store- because this is how I show my love- by spending time on something. But I was pregnant and had a 2 year old, and the 7, 8, 10, 13, and 14 year olds with me, the 10 year old still in diapers, and I was not supposed to be on my feet more than 20 minutes, and the 2 year old was fractious and we had just finished grocery shopping so I was exhausted, sore, and in near agony from the condition mandating I not be on foot. I also happened to start at the store where he had purchased the ugly teapot and so I had just found out how much it cost which did not make me feel loved at all, it made me feel like I was going to have to make more sacrifices in the grocery budget in order to pay for a present that was not purchased with my likes and dislikes in mind, and I simply snapped, grabbed the most expensive briefcase in the group I was looking at and muttered something quite unwifely like, "I can't keep doing this today. He doesn't care about anything but how expensive it is, anyway, so I will just get the most expensive one and I don't care what it looks like."

When the time came to give him the present, he gushed over it. Among other things he said, "You must have spent so much time finding this!" At which point the children all looked at me waiting to see what I would do, since we do value honesty in our family, and they knew that time is exactly what I had NOT applied in choosing that present, thanks to my big mouth. I shifted uncomfortably and avoided his eye, and he repeated his gushing and praise, so I felt compelled to confess in front of my children, "I didn't spend any time on it at all. I started to, but then I decided you wouldn't appreciate it so I just picked out the most expensive one."

Now if this had been reversed, I would have been saddened. It would have diminished the gift in my eyes, and so I felt like I was saying something hurtful and I was ashamed and embarrassed. But to my husband, brought up with different standards, expectations, and regular electricity, this was not hurtful. It actually increased the value of the present in his eyes. He glowed, and gushed more. And I was shocked, while also a glimmer of a clue began to twinkle in the murky recesses of my brain.

We talked about it later, and for the first time he understood that an expensive present did not speak of love and cherishing to me, it represented cold, calculated shopping and buying of affections the easy way instead of investing one's heart into it and it spoke of materialism and meant deprivation to me, whereas, and I began to understand that for him, buying something new, shiny, and a little more expensive at the store represented, well, excitement, fun, careless abandon, and it says something to him about how the gift-giver values him.

And here's the thing- both of us are quite right. Where we were wrong was to give the sorts of gifts we would have wanted to each other instead of trying to consider the love language of the person to whom we were giving.

My husband stopped giving me store bought cards and started writing me notes and making coupons for acts of service. I stopped making his cards and started buying them. If he asked for a given book, I quit buying it used and bought it new for him, but if I asked for a book, he would buy it used for me. I have literally been known to squeal with delight when one of my children gives me some special thrift shop find for a present and then tells me how little she paid for it. It may represent something cheapskate and grim to somebody else, but to me, I think it represents care, security, and thoughtful love. Maybe you have to grow up in a household where expensive whims might be indulged one day, but that would mean unkept promises, jeans six inches too short, and utilities cut off just a day or too later to really understand this.

To give a nonfrugal gift to a frugal person is like giving chocolate cake to somebody who is allergic to chocolate and who doesn't like it anyway. That is not generous or kind. It might make the giver feel good, but gift giving should be about your recipient, not yourself.

To give a nonfrugal person an obviously frugal gift and go on about your frugality is equally unthoughtful. You are not communicating your love to that person, even if that is what you do want to communicate. One difference is that sometimes circumstances simply do dictate that you cannot give any but a frugal gift, but when this is your situation you can dress it up, make the presentation special, and keep quiet about how frugal you were.

And try to believe people when they tell what makes them feel most cherished and honoured.

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You CAN save more on your power bill; are you willing?

kimc — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:48:01 +0000

A reader over at my personal blog Life in a Shoe left me a fascinating link from Generation Cedar. It seems that the author's neighbors have gone to extremes to cut the power bill for their large house and very large family to just $65/month.

Some of their changes were over-the-top for our family. Others were changes we've already made. A few are on my list of Crazy New Ideas to Casually Mention to My Husband. Yes, I have a list. Don't we all?

Are you ready for the link? Family of 15 and $65 power bill: How do they do it?

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7 Important questions to help you prioritize your storage

kimc — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:17:52 +0000

a short excerpt from my upcoming e-book:

There are two keys to good stewardship when it comes to storage: organization, and priorities. You can prioritize by asking yourself 7 important questions before you store an item:

Will I use it again within a year?

Would I really miss it if it disappeared, or would I forget that I ever had it?

Will it deteriorate or depreciate in storage?

Would it be more cost effective to sell it now and buy or borrow another if/when I need it?

Do I have a good place to store it? Will I have to get rid of something else to make room?

Why do I want to store it? Why not keep it out and use it now?

Do I know somebody else who would benefit from it, either as a loan or a gift

That's my list. Do you have any questions that you would add to the list?

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New month, new you

kimc — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:13:45 +0000

Last month, I switched to cloth diapers and homemade laundry soap. Both were surprisingly smooth changes, especially since we had several inglorious blowouts in disposable diapers during the changeover process. If we weren't convinced when we started out, we were convinced by the time we finished cleaning up.

I'm trying several new things this month, and plan to post about them one by one. On my list are homemade deoderant to replace commercial anti-perspirant, baking soda and vinegar to replace shampoo, and a garden.

It's a new month. What change did you tackle last month? Did it stick? Why or why not? What new thing are you doing this month? Even if you decide the change is not right for you or your household, try something new every month!

Grab the banner and post about it on your blog, or just tell us in the comments!

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