Surviving on next to nothing, part 1

The other day, Erin at garden now - think later! was talking about the financial challenges she faces in a single income military family.  She went on to discuss some of the things she does to keep her family occupied and afloat on a limited income.  Since I lost my "day job" a year ago I've found myself in a similar financial situation, and thought I would share what I've been doing to survive on an extremely limited budget.

A little bit of background, to put things in context:  I have a family of four.  We live in subsidized housing, which means we rent rather than being homeowners.  It's a bit of a double-edged sword.  I could not survive on this budget if this were not the case, but while I avoid the expenses of homeownership, it also means that I cannot make changes to the house or property that would make our lives easier - namely adding rooms (this house is truly tiny!) or modifications like a root cellar.  While we have managed to avoid needing Cash Assistance (Welfare), we do have food stamps, which helps.   Finally, my daughter has significant autism.  This is really the root cause of most of our financial difficulties.  There is no local appropriate childcare for her, and with the current job market, I have difficulty finding someone willing to hire a person who can only work part-time, no evenings or weekends, and needs all school holidays and snow days off completely.  This also means that we have some expenses that would be "wants" for most families, but are "needs" for ours, just so that we can maintain our sanity :)

These are the things I have done to survive.  A lot of them are based on ways to shift some of the real cash burden to the food stamps, because it's easier to control how much we spend on food than how much we spend on gas.

I looked at our non-food spending and realized that a large chunk of it was spent on cleaning supplies and various disposable products.  In order to reduce our spending here I...

• cut up some old, ratty bath towels and started using them to wipe up spills instead of always reaching for paper towels. I now spend about 1/3 as much as I used to on paper towels.

• started making my own cleaning products.  Food stamps will only help you buy food - they will not pay for soap!  However, many homemade cleaning products rely on vinegar, which you can buy with food stamps!  Now, instead of spending 3$-4$ each on five different cleaning products that will last maybe a month or two, I spend about $8 total on a few key ingredients (I use dish liquid, rather than the liquid castile soap a lot of recipes call for.  It's cheaper, and it doesn't separate with the addition of vinegar, as I found the liquid castile soap did), and can make enough different cleaning products to last for six months.

• started making my own soap.  This may seem like a bit of a stretch, but again, it comes back to the "food stamps won't buy soap" deal.  You can, however, use them to buy olive oil and coconut oil.  Real soap is made with oil and lye (sodium hydroxide).  I spent about $15 on lye a year ago.  I think I still have enough left to provide as much soap as I need for another three or four years!

• stopped using shampoo to clean my hair.  Instead, I use a baking-soda solution to wash, and a dilute vinegar to rinse (BTW, if you look for "no poo" info online a lot of people refer to the vinegar rinse as a "conditioner."  The vinegar does not "condition" your hair.  What it does is neutralize the baking soda, which is necessary because hair can be damaged by long-term exposure to alkalies like baking soda.).  More "cleaning" with food products!  My sister the hair stylist tells me my hair is in great shape, and no, it isn't greasy, and no, I don't smell like salad dressing.

• got washable pads to use with our Swiffer (DH likes to mop every night - he finds it relaxing), and found a way to refill the Swiffer cleaner (we drilled a hole in the bottom of the bottle and stuck a plug in it) so that we could use our homemade floor cleaner.  I think this saves us about $20-$30 a month!

• started using cloth diapers.  Because of her autism, our daughter can't be allowed outside her bedroom without supervision.  Unfortunately this includes overnight, which means she can't use the bathroom when everyone else is sleeping.  We have had her in pull-ups for a long time, but I recently found a pattern for waterproof underwear intended for children with enuresis, which I have adapted to our needs.  This is a savings of about $30 for me.  If I had a child still in diapers all day, the savings would be even greater!

• made my own "baby wipes."  Some accidents require more than just toilet paper.  I had some lightweight cotton terry remnants that I cut into squares to use as "washcloths" instead of wipes.  No need for any special liquid - I just wet them in the bathroom sink as I need them.  Probably another $10 savings there.

• do the numbers!  Sometimes, due to economies of scale, making things myself is not cheaper than buying the cheapest store version.  I found, for example, that while it was cheaper to make my own laundry detergent, it was not cheaper to make my own dishwasher detergent.  The store brand dishwasher detergent actually had a lower unit price than my own homemade.  

Wow!  This is a lot longer than I'd expected it to be!  I'm going to have to continue this topic tomorrow, and lay out the things I do to save money on food and other expenses.  I hope some of these ideas have been useful to someone!

Finally getting some good garden news!

My cucumbers are doing brilliantly!  I picked two today and had them for lunch, along with some of my grape tomatoes.  I'm trying to anticipate when enough of them will be big enough for pickling.  At the moment I'm aiming for sometime between Friday and Tuesday (understanding that Weekends Don't Count.  I can't get anything done on weekends) for making the first batch of pickles!

My Roma tomatoes are finally starting to turn red - and so far the blossom-end rot is still at a manageable level!  I plan on turning these into tomato sauce, so I'm going to experiment with freezing them as they come ripe so that I'll have enough for a big batch I can put up.  I figure it's mostly the texture that suffers when you refrigerate/freeze tomatoes, and I'm going to be cooking them anyway, so it may not really make much difference in the long run.  Anyone who's tried this and has an opinion please chime in!

In other better news, the Garden Beetle season seems to mostly be over, and my herbs are trying hard to stage a valiant comeback!  Of my nine purple basil plants I think I truly lost three of them.  The other six look much like this one, so I may yet get pink, basil-scented vinegar this year!

There will be pickles!

...Eventually :)  First cucumber blossom of the season!  I admit, I started late.  My garden is pretty small, so I had to wait until the peas were done before I could plant cucumbers.  The upside is that I was able to direct-seed them instead of starting them indoors, so no transplant shock.  Last year's cucumbers were a bust - they got hit with hail and never quite recovered.  This year looks much more promising!

My grape tomatoes are finally ripening, so I have more salad fixings.  The romas are sizing up nicely, and I finally have one starting to turn red!  So far I have not had anywhere near as much trouble with blossom-end rot, but it's still early.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed - I want tomato sauce!

On the flip-side- this is all that's left of my purple basil :(  They've also gone through my tarragon and my sage.  The stevia never really had a chance, it got eaten up when it was so small.  They have gone on to my mint and my shiso now - the only plant that's still mosty OK is the oregano.  They're even eating my marigolds!

 At least I've finally figured out who's doing this - it's these little buggers here -

The Asiatic Garden Beetle.  A lot like Japanese beetles, but nocturnal, and not so picky.  Apparently they're endemic in New England.  They're controlled in much the same way, also.  Unfortunately I found out about them too late in the season for nematodes to be any use, and I understand that milky spore is not very effective in the Northeast.  At this point traps and handpicking are about the only solution.  I'm pretty much giving up the herbs for lost this year :(  I'll have to get some nematodes between now and the spring, and with luck I can get this infestation under control within the next year or two!

Bugs or Slugs?

Somebody...

is exceedingly fond...

of my basil and sage!

I have yet to catch the perps red-handed, so I'm not quite sure who I'm dealing with here.  I've had slug bait out in some areas for a while, and I'm trying the soapy water trick, but it's too soon to see if it's made a difference.  Anyone have any idea who could be doing this and what's the best way to combat it?  

My garden looks nekkid!

My peas are all done for the season :(  The plants are now in the compost getting ready to provide nitrogen for next year's garden, and I have planted my pickling cukes where the peas used to be.  I know I could have had cucumbers out much earlier, but I didn't have room!  I really need a much bigger garden.

Last year my cucumbers did not grow past 8" tall.  Some of that may have had to do with the hailstorm we got in June, but it was such an off year for gardens it's hard for me to know which failures were mine and which were Mother Nature.  At any rate, I figured since cucumbers grow quickly I might as well direct-seed them this year and avoid potential transplant issues (and things like forgetting to turn the lights on or off!), and so far they seem to be doing well!

I'm hoping to get at least 6mos worth of pickles out of these - maybe a year if I'm really lucky!

Why I make jewelry

Many people outside the metalworking world may find it odd that I really don't wear jewelry, except for rings.  Most of the time it just doesn't occur to me.  Because I don't need to "look nice" every day, my wardrobe is more geared toward functional.  In my case, functional is "How fast can I throw something on before DD freaks out because I haven't responded quickly enough?" and usually equals T-shirt + jeans.  Functional also means not wearing anything that can easily be grabbed at or pulled on, either of which could result in damage to my work or damage to me (!), and I don't want to risk either.  The times I make exceptions I am frequently sorry.  I still haven't located the "safe place" I put the baggie full of beads (some of them my handmade sterling ones) after DD grabbed at a necklace I was wearing at a family wedding!

My friend and business partner is a Jewelry Person.  She works in an office and has to look nice, and she loves to wear jewelry.  She is someone who will continue to buy jewelry even though she makes it herself, because she sees things she wants to wear.  I can see jewelry for sale (handmade or otherwise) and appreciate it, and in the case of handmade I can appreciate the effort that went into a fine piece of work.  I will not buy it because I just don't wear jewelry!

I'm most definitely a "process person."  I don't make jewelry because I like to wear it.  I make jewelry because I love to make small things - I find miniaturization fascinating!  I love to work with metal - it stays where you put it, and the likelihood of messing something up just by lifting it (as I found with clay!) is highly unlikely.  Most important, I love to make things that  can be used.  I'm certainly not knocking  purely ornamental work and wall art, but my creative needs are rarely fulfilled by that kind of work.  For me to really get that sense of satisfaction at the end of a project I need to be able to do something with whatever I've created.  I love Functional Art.  This is why I grow vegetables instead of flowers.  Flowers are beautiful, and I can stare at them all day, but in the end I find myself saying "Here they are - so NOW what?  What comes next?"

For me, jewelry gives me that sense of satisfaction because when I'm done with a piece, I can do something with it.  It's the "functional" part of "functional art" that is the important thing.  I may not choose to wear it, but the point is that I am able to!

Playing with Photoshop again :)

I'm not sure what this is, but it's pretty!  It showed up in my garden this year.  I thought it was a volunteer lettuce, but I see similar flowers growing by the highway exit ramp, so now I'm not so sure.  I showed my son the plant with lots of pretty blue flowers.  In typical fashion he responded with "Lots.  Pretty.  Blue."  Only my mother will get the obscure literary reference, but since she reads my blog I'm putting it out there for her :)