Former Coupon Queen Comes Clean Part. 1

I use to be a Coupon Queen.

You know the kind, with my binder, paying $2 for $200 worth of groceries.

So much so I had my own "store" in my garage. Lovingly called, The Stockpile Room.

My friends and family knew if there was anything in the world they needed or wanted

that more than likely, it was in the The Stockpile Room.

For a year and half we paid maybe $500 for over $20,000 with of food, heath care,

cleaning supplies and toiletries. For the love of Glade coupons, I taught Coupon Classes.

So what changed?

After 18 months of this frugal addiction....errr... I mean hobby, God showed

us that gathering food was now going to be a tad bit difficult.

No more mindless filling the shopping cart with all of my great bargains.

It was near Halloween. Our family does not celebrate this holiday. But some

neighborhood friends brought over some candy for the kids. Candy Corn.

Who does not love candy corn? My oldest daughter for a day or so happily

munched on the candy corn when I said they could indulge. Then one night

as she was in the kitchen doing dishes she popped a piece in her mouth.

Her body said, enough.

She had an allergic reaction that made her throat close and for her breathing

to come to a small struggling wheeze. Thankfully after a trip to the ER, she

survived. Many children who have severe food allergies do not. I was so

thankful. I was also full of questions. The ER doctor just said in passing,

"No more candy corn for her." No one said why or what was in it.

It took many trips to her regular doctor and then a allergy specialist to

finally get to the bottom of why one day she was fine and the next she

almost died from this seemingly innocent treat.

The explanation?

Her body had had enough of artificial food dye.

What?!

But why I ask. I had to know. No one else in our family had issue with them.

Because they said, over time consuming "chemicals" and tricking our body

to think it's food is going to effect some of us. And given that her father has

a horrible allergy to honey bee's and I to shellfish....it was just a wait and see

game of what thing her body would reject.

And to make life interesting, her test for wheat showed a probable allergy there as

well. More test would need to be done to be exact but we should probably refrain.

I came home that day and sat in The Stockpile Room. I did something I had not

done yet. I turned over the packages of all this free fabulous food.

Red 40

Yellow 5

Why was there wheat products in my canned beans?

Modified Food Starch

My lunch meat was NOT gluten free. Huh??  

There is wheat in lunch meat?

Names of things I could not even pronounce much less know what it was.

By the end of the night I sat with a house of $1000's of dollars worth of

food that my daughter could not eat.

To be continued....

Bill Paying For The Clueless By Choice

Every household has a system for paying bills.
In some households the couple pay bills jointly.
Or maybe one pays them and the other stays in the loop about the particulars.
Our is neither of those.
I pay them and my husband begs to not have to look at.....
THE BLUE FOLDER.
Seriously, its not even a blue folder anymore. But the name stuck.
So I pay the bills, I juggle the expenses. I budget.
All he wants to know is when is dinner ready and when can he buy another gadget.
Nothing more, nothing less. The less he knows, the happier he is.
I am really okay with this system. It works for us for the most part.
I figure he is a great Dad and works hard, really hard, so I will let him off the hook on this one.
But lately I had a morbid feeling take over me.
What if I was sick and could not pay them?
What if I was in a coma and could not pay them?
What if I died....would the kids ever have electricity again?!
Dramatic much? Meh.
But seriously, the problem with a one sided system is if the keeper of the
system goes down, so does the system. Not good.
So, in a effort to keep a roof over my children's head and power
for their Wii should I eat shellfish accidentally and die....I made a manual. 
All of our bills are in there, current one of top of each section. I also staple
receipts, confirmations etc. to the bill once it is paid.
Neat. Organized. Informational.
But because that is not enough for my clueless by choice hubby, I went a
step further. I added paying instructions at the beginning of each bill.
I went into Word and I typed in step by step of where, how, how much, and when.
OCD much? Meh.
Seriously, if you have never paid the electric bill in like 10 years, you need to know
where to go, how much the service fee is going to be and how long it takes to
credit to your account. Or at least I would need to know this. If I was clueless. By choice.
I am working on a table of contents. Oh yes, I have issues.
And also should note I am keeping a years of bills with paid receipts in the binder.
I know organizing experts claim there is no need. Trust me, there is a need.
Ever have a company you owe claim you did not pay 4 months ago?
BAM! Shut the front door, yes I did. Here it is.
This happened to us with a rental company. The wrong amount of entered on the computer
but was entered correctly on the receipt of payment. Had I not kept the receipt we would
have paid $375 for someone else's mistake. No thanks.
I am also going to print the Excel budget I have each month and include it.
However this may or may not send him off the deep end.
Too. Much. Numbers.
The point?
Do what works for you and your family.
Experts can only suggest what may have worked for some.
Adapt systems so that they work for you, not you work for them. 

Polyvore - Playing Dress Up

You can follow me on Polyvore or Pinterest! 

How to stop using trash bags

I told you in a previous post that I would talk more about how 6 months ago we
stopped using trash bags. Well, here we are.
I am guessing the first question everyone will ask is...
"Why?"
Just like the TP question. Everyone wants to know what is so
wrong with what many consider a must have, can not live without,
your nuts for not using it, household item.

Here's why....
It's made of plastic. Duh, I know. Many are not biodegradable or
can be recycled. That means it fills a landfill never to break down or
never to be recycled into anything else.The EPA estimates that nearly
100 billion to 1 trillion bags are used each year with less than 6% of
them being recycled. That is a lot of plastic. We won't even address
the process of making plastic and the air pollution. The fact is, we are
running out of room to bury this stuff. Consuming less or even better
stop consuming at all is the answer.
The next question we always get when we challenge the status quo on
things is always this :
"Well, what do you use instead?"
Our answer always causes that rapid blinking look that I find so entertaining.
We don't use anything.
That's right. Our trash cans are naked. Naked naked naked.
Now, some of you probably just threw up a little bit in your mouth on that
thought but I assure you, I am a germaphobe so it isn't all that gross.
I am going to show you how to get unhooked off those bags. But before
we go any further I wanted to say, if your using recycled or biodegradable
bags, kudos for you. I know that biodegradable ones exist, I just can
not justify the price on our income. And our thought is, it is best just to learn to do without. 
Want a naked trash can? Here is how.
Compost. Easy enough. Nearly all of our food that is not edible goes into our compost.
We also add in grass clippings sometimes. Shredded paper as well.
We must have a wicked garden, right? No. We don't garden! However, that soil gets
used in potted plants, flower beds and the like. Even if you do not do those things here
is a great idea to get rid of your compost....give it away on Craiglist/Freecycle. You
will be overwhelmed at the people who will want your crap...I mean compost!
Recycle. We had up to that point recycled in a lazy way. We knew the basics. But
I went to our county recycling website and got a break down of the recycling. Now nearly
75% of our trash is recycled. Paper, glass, cardboard, plastics all go into our curbside
recycling program. Any plastic bags we get go back to store recycling. We try to avoid them
at all possible by using cloth shopping bags and mesh produce bags. Sometimes it is
unavoidable. Our county does not recycle Styrofoam but our local grocer, Publix does
recycle the egg trays. We have drop off points for magazines & newspapers. Office
supply stores recycle our ink cartridges, old cell phones and so on. The point is if you
take 15 minutes to research you can recycle nearly all of what you toss. With very little
effort on your part.
Donate. Anything that is useable, we donate, sell or give away. There was a time
that we would just put the old beat up table down by the curb, *gasp*, I know.
Even things you think are not worth it can be used by someone else. Like I mentioned
above, old cell phones are recycled by organizations. Shoes , even beat up ones, are.
Our area has a diaper bank for any unused diapers. Whenever I see something in our
home that we no longer have a use for and I am not sure its worth anything to anyone,
I put it on Craigslist for free. I have never had an item not taken & used. There is always
someone who can use what you can not, I assure you.
What does that leave? Not a lot. We went from being a 4 curbside trash can family
a week to a half filled one can a week. We realized the #1 reason we lined our can was
for messy messes, like food. Once we eliminated that, we saw clearly that there
was no need to line our trash can. The poor thing is naked all the time now.

Is it easy to stop using trash bags? No, not at first. Because let's be honest,
do you really want to have to focus that much time on how to dispose of your
trash? Not what I enjoy doing either. But when I realized the key to conserving, less
consuming was all just a matter of a lot of brain work and little physical work then it
was just a no brainer for me to give it a try. Our transition from 4 curbside cans a week
to naked trash can took us 6 months. It was a constant process of, "where does this go?"
Looking for recycle symbols, referring to our local recycling center and digging yogurt
cups out of the trash while yelling at the kids & hubby. Fun times. But soon it became
second nature to question it. Soon it became the norm for the recycling can to be taken
out more than our trash needing to be taken out. It became our norm.

If you think this all too much for you. Then please, switched to biodegradable bags. If you
can't justify the cost (and they are a bit more than those hefty ones) then go to a landfill
just one time. I dare you. It's gross. I don't want my children's children to live on top of one
nor do I want that stuff to keep piling up. It was enough for me to know I had to do something.
Is it extreme? Maybe. But that is how I roll. I don't do things half way or to the norm extent.
But when I see how this earth is being taken care of, I question our stewardship to God. Or
rather, our lack there of. I am as far from a PETA tree hugging vegan as your ever going to meet.
I am a God fearing, raised in the South conservative folk who likes a good ol' juicy hamburger.
But I can't help but think, is this how God intended us to use what He blessed us with? When
it takes so little for us to do better? It is like the old saying...
When we know better, we do better. 

~This post is being linked up over at Frugally Sustainable Link party "Frugal Days, Sustainable Way's #20" this week, go take a peek....it's awesome sauce!~

SOS....

We are in the middle of a stomach virus.
Everyone but hubby has it.
Ugh.
Sending soup and prayers please!
Be back soon!

Where is the pictures???

Some have noted the lack of photos here.
There is a reason for that.
I'm poor.
No, really. I have a very slow internet connection and it takes
FOREVER for them to load up.
But we are working on that!
Until then I am kinda of liking the clean sparse look. :)

How to Become a Paper-less Kitchen

First, let's get the most ask question out of the way....
'What's the big deal anyways? It's just a few paper towels.'
If you have ever handed a guest a cloth napkin or a dish towel for a mess,
and your not at a Crunchy Mother Play-date, then your going to get this.
Or maybe I just have strange people in my home.
It never fails, someone has to ask.
I use to say something cute like, 'Because I love doing laundry.'
But that is an lie and it also does not deter the more adamant ones.
So, how about some facts instead?
Did you know that 40% of the landfill is made up of paper products?
That is always shocking to me when I read that. That means 40% of what
is in there can be recycled. But people choose not to. Mindlessly tossing their paper
items in the trash. I use to be one of them. Using cloth deters that lazy mind of just tossing.
Besides, paper towels can NOT be recycled.
It is estimated that if each family cut back one roll of paper towels a year it would save over half a million trees each year. Just one less roll.
Because I am all about going big, my first thought was....if I forgo all of them think of how many trees would be saved??? And I like breathing air, so I am all about saving some trees. ;)
Furthermore, it take one or sometimes two WHOLE trees to make one roll of paper towels.
Let that sink in.
I will wait.
Mind boggling isn't it?
That is the effect I was going for.
At this point in the conversation I am usually faced with a person with their mouth agape.
Now it's time to sell this paper-less show!
I do one extra load of laundry a week for my cloth kitchen products. Not even a full load.
I was in cold. A little bit of homemade organic detergent (yes, another post, another time) and
if they are icky, some homemade oxyclean/bleach (yes yes yes, another time) helps as well.  
I line dry and I'm back in business.

What do we have in our cloth only kitchen?
Various cloth napkins. All picked up from the thrift store for less than $.10 each at the most.
We are a family of 5 , we eat 3 meals a day at home so for me I am comfortable with about 50
napkins. We don't need them every meal so this lasts a week.
Cleaning Cloths. This is a modge podge of rags. Some are worn out wash cloths. Some are towels that
had holes in them that I cut up for rags. Some are some neat microfiber cloths someone gave me. I save those for cleaning mirrors and windows. These cloths are used to scrub counters, wipe up messes, dampen use for BBQ fingers at the table and so on.
Cloth Kitchen Towels. Again, all bought used at the thrift store for less than $.50 each. I have about 12 and need more. I have found after a few years doing this that traditional dish towels are nice but good quality hand towels meant for the bathroom are much more absorbent. Often they are tad bit larger. I am not a person whose hanging towel on her stove must match the throw rug at the sink, so this works for me. These cloth are use drying dishes, cleaning up spilled drinks and whatever else you can think of.

Laundry like I said is once a week. Maybe a half to 2/3 of a load. I wash in cold and then line dry. It
really isn't an issue. Maybe because I have solved the laundry battle in our house is why I can say this!
YES, another time and another post. It's a recurring theme around here.