Learn to COOK

For just about as long as I can remember, I've wanted to live more simply. It didn't/doesn't matter how simple my life already is or was; I've always wanted to simplify it even more. More sleep, less stuff, more time, less stress, more space, less clutter. I used to want to be a nun. That being said, I'm a packrat and don't find severe aesthetic asceticism in a house.

Still, the simple life is attractive. Happily, simplifying and scrimpaliciousness in general have a lot of factors in common, so the one tends to feed nicely into the other.

It may not seem like a step toward simplifying your life, but the first best thing that anybody ought to do if they want to live more simply and/or more cheaply is to learn how to cook, and cook well.

Restaurant food, unless you're specifically going to a restaurant that serves explicitly healthy food, is not good for you. It's not meant to be eaten every day, or even every week. If you wouldn't eat fast food every week, check the nutrition facts at your favorite dinner spot and ask yourself whether you should really be eating that every week either. Mr. Scrimp has worked in restaurants for years, and you should hear what he has to say about the gallons of cream and pounds upon pounds of butter that restaurants put in everything. Everything.

One of the easiest and quickest ways to cut costs in your budget is to stop buying pre-prepared food and make your own. There is no aspect of this that isn't a good plan, believe me. Your food will be healthier, cheaper, and, once you've had some practice, just as delicious, though usually in a different way.

Mr. Scrimp and I are fortunately matched in that we both already loved to cook before we got married. Without ever having the energy or interest to put into being pretentious or really crazy about it, we're both foodies. So it's been fairly easy for us to not eat out in favor of cooking at home.

Even if all you know how to do right now is boil pasta and make sandwiches, start thinking about eating more pasta and sandwiches while you learn how to cook food that's good enough to be worth staying home for. Once you learn how to do it you may find you're surprised about how much people charge in restaurants for food ingredients that you know from experience are very cheap. It isn't that restaurants gouge their prices, necessarily, but if you go out, you pay not only for the food itself, but for the handful of prep and line cooks who got it ready, the chefs who cooked it, the hostess who seated you, the waiter who took your order, the server who carried it out, and the busser who cleaned it up.

I kid you not, because we're both willing and able to cook for ourselves and each other, Mr. Scrimp and I are eating this week (that's 7 days) on less than $40, which we spent exclusively at Whole Foods. Whole Foods is hardly a cheap grocery store, and before we started really scrutinizing what we spent, we could easily drop $70 a week there. None of what we bought was processed or pre-cooked or microwaveable. To tell the truth, we don't even own a microwave.

My point is, if you're willing to do a little extra work, you can spend much less money, spend more time with your significant other (if you have one), and eat better food.

All of the above not only applies to restaurant food but to convenience food--pre-cooked dinners, chips, ramen, whatever it is. Those things are cheaper, yes, but if you rely on them to eat frugally, you're on the way to destroying your health in the name of saving money, and the truth is, that's just not worth it.

It goes once again back to the gap between broke and poor. Poor is a mindset that gives up and takes the lowest common denominator without being ambitious for more. Poor lives on ramen. Merely broke says "well, I don't have much money, but I'm going to use what I've got to get not only the best value but the best quality."

I'm formulating an entry on a few of the most basic cookbooks that every adult ought to own. If you can read and have basic hand-eye coordination, you can cook from a cookbook.

Five Dollar Decor - Celebrating Nature

Every Friday, I'll be posting Five Dollar Decor--five ideas for interior decorating that can be achieved by spending only five dollars. For five dollars, you can add one new element to your in-home design. For twenty-five, you can revamp an entire room around a new theme. Hmm... a trip to Starbucks, or a weekend redecorating project?

Well, another week is gone, and it's time for the weekend. If you're like me and someone who loves you gave you a subscription to Martha Stewart Living at some point, you have seen the ridiculous amounts of greenery that litter her home(s). Well, I have plants in my house, but I can't afford two dozen houseplants to put in my Indoor Garden Corner Nook Thing, or whatever she calls it.

That being said, I am a huge nature lover, and I would love to theme a room around the things I find most beautiful in the natural world.

1. Framed Faux Foliage

Ok, I'll cop to getting a little carried away with the alliteration there. This idea comes from The Red Chair Blog via Dollar Store Crafts. Once again, you may need to dig around to find a frame that keeps this project under $5 for you--but then again, you may not. It depends on the scale you're going for.
 
I recommend tea-staining the paper you mount the foliage on in order to get the antiqued look that is so popular over at Design*Sponge. Or, you could borrow a page from their book and try more creative backgrounds--why not brown paper, from the back of a grocery bag, or leftover scrapbook paper, or wallpaper? The sky's the limit. If you live in an area where location and weather aren't conspiring against you, you can of course make the project even cheaper (but less instantly gratifying) by using real foliage.

Alternatively, you could splurge on some paint and antique the silk flowers, or paint them some color other than green, or use them as stencils. When you're done, hang them in groups, as in this photo from TheNest.com.

2. Laboratory Garden

Your $5 here is going to be spent at the dollar store or the thrift store, where a little digging will pretty easily find you five glass vases--narrow and cylindrical, or, if you can find them, the stranger and more bulbous shapes that are reminiscent of a steampunk mad scientist's lab.

Head outside--even if you live in the city, you should be able to pull this off. Right now it's November, and I live in the land of the Lake Effect, so greenery is getting sparse, but it would be just as lovely to fill these with tall, stripped branches or boughs of berries. In the winter, you could change it up and stick some evergreens in there or something. In the spring, early flowers and greenery could take over, and in the summer you could do anything that grows, of course.

Cluster the vases on a side table, or spread them out along a larger table or mantel.


3. Branch Hooks

I'm going to be getting together with my husband and seeing about putting together a photo tutorial for this, because we want some for our house. You can purchase these for about $40 a pop from Live Wire Farm, or you can make your own with some carefully chosen branches, a power drill, and a couple of screws. (via Haute Nature)

4. Stones

This article in Country Living, of all places, suggests filling two large glass jars--one with stones, and one with blown eggs. I'm not sure I would do the eggs, because country living isn't exactly the aesthetic I go for when it comes to decorating, but you can go pretty crazy with stones. Fill a jar with small rocks from your front yard. Take a day trip out to the country and dig up a giant flat stone to put on your coffee table. Make a centerpiece of river rocks (which you can buy by the bag at some dollar stores). It's quick, it's simple, and it's beautiful.

A google image search revealed some beautiful photos by people who have done something along these lines. I'm sharing my favorite, which came from EcoSalon.


5. Leaf Mobile

By and large, I associate mobiles with babies. You know, they hang over a crib. That's where they go.

Well, yeah, if they're made of felt and have clowns on them, they do.

I'm using the term "mobile" here loosely. I'm not suggesting you sit down and spend your weekend going crazy making something that spins around in the wind or anything like that. My aunt once made a much simpler version (and I wish I had a photo) by stringing fall leaves on fishing line and attaching each line individually to the ceiling with a thumbtack. The leaves were staggered so that as you walk into the room it looks as though, hovering above the table, someone had frozen autumn leaves in time as they were in the process of falling.

You could do it that way, over a dining room or coffee table. You could string them up against a wall as an art piece. You could get crazy and cover an entire wall with strings of leaves.



I know that a lot of these ideas might not be up your alley. It's really, really, really easy to overdo decor in this theme and end up with some sort of messy, cluttered, "rustic" look, and I hate that. So while I might not implement all five of these ideas in one room, I would happily scatter all five throughout my home.

Product Review: Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day

One of the things I find easiest to forget when I'm broke is how important it is to be proud of the things I do have. That means stomping clutter, keeping things clean, and taking care of what I've got. If you don't, you have the problem of the Broken Window Theory--if one thing gets broken and you don't fix it, you won't fix the next broken thing either and eventually you're stuck with a filthy house and a bunch of broken stuff.

I love to have things clean, but I don't like cleaning, and I hate the smell of the vast majority of standard cleaning products out there. Most of them give me headaches and I don't like the idea of coating the surfaces of my home with harsh chemicals.

Enter Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day. We bought it without any idea of what it was or how well it would work, because we wanted to test out something that was environmentally safe and people-friendly. We started out with the countertop spray, figuring that if we didn't like it, it was only $4 lost and we could go buy something new.

We now have the countertop spray, the dish soap, and the surface scrub. This stuff picks up almost everything. I was able to take scuffs off a matte wall in about 30 seconds. It gets our dishes sparkling clean and rinses off with no residue. The surface scrub is good on everything from the subway tile in our bathroom to stuck-on food in my dutch oven. Best of all, it's non-toxic, cruelty-free, environmentally friendly, and smells fabulous.

It comes in five scents and also unscented. Our favorite is lemon verbena. Each scent is aromatheraputic, so it cheers you up and relaxes you as you clean. What's not to love?

Another why

So, there are a lot of links on the sidebar of this blog. Probably about half of them go to crafting sites or blogs. Why is that?

I like to differentiate between poor and broke. My husband and I are broke. Poor people are poor. We aren't always going to have no money, we just don't have any right now. Poor is a state of mind. Broke is a state of being--a temporary one.

But in a practical sense, they're pretty much the same thing. Thing is, I don't want to look poor just because I'm broke and can't afford to buy nice things. The answer? I'll make 'em.

Even if you aren't artistic or particularly creative, there are so many things out there that are ridiculously easy to make or alter. See something you like at Anthropologie? (it's in my link list because I love to browse it for ideas). You can probably find someone who has made a cheaper copy using things they picked up at Goodwill. If they have a blog, they probably left directions for how you can do the same thing. Want to wear high fashion? You don't have to be fabulous at sewing to embellish or alter clothes you already have, and if you can't sew at al, it's worth it to learn.

You can have nice things and a nice life without looking like a bumpkin and without breaking your bank... if you're willing to be a little creative.