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I congratulate you both on getting that old sofa dealt with!

Not only do those fast food stops cost money but precious time that we do not like to spend when traveling . We like peanut butter sandwiches with an apple and we always have those items on hand.  We always keep our insulated water bottles full and in the fridge so grab and go.  

We have become overwhelmed with the to do list as well.  It is hard to get older and not be able to deal with everything ourselves.  I put money in a budget category each month for repairs to our home.  It is hard to find help here though because of all the explosive growth and thousands of new houses being built. We will press on and do our best.

I remember so many things that you talked about. Growing up back then was so different. I still miss those times even though they were so much harder. It wasn’t just harder but more rewarding. If not for the things I learned I would have a totally different outlook on life. 
in this day and time we need to be much more thrifty. It doesn’t matter what your income. But with me I have to be extra careful. Social security doesn’t cover what my income did when I was working full time as well. Since I “retired “ from disability it costs more due to doctors bills alone. 
Since we are 1st cousins I was wondering if you still have the same phone number. 
you stay on my mind so often and I truly miss the times we’ve shared in the past. Like in particular the time when Grandmother laughed so hard at Charles and Mike’s antics. Lol

I lost your number along the way is why you haven’t heard from me but I think I can get your number from sis if it’s still the same. 
I have enjoyed your posts and am so thankful that I signed up. 
It’s like having you back in my life again but maw bell lied it’s not as good as actually talking and being together. I miss those times more than I can say. 
It’s funny how our lives seem to go full circle back to the past. Without the knowledge from our past we would be in some serious trouble without the lessons we learned. 
Hopefully we can connect soon. 
Thank you for taking the time to share these things with us. You don’t know how much it’s truly appreciated. 
BTW I REALLY MISS YOU  Thank you for so many sweet memories. 
love cuz. 
One last thing I hope and pray that you have a very blessed Thanksgiving. 

I was reading along, wondering and wondering how the sofa bed was going to get out of the house, and then you took it apart! I love it! :) I think that if we didn't have to do these things, we'd never learn how to problem solve so well. I am grateful that since this study, I have to face obstacles I have to think through, not buy my way through. And Grandma Donna is the best example! 

My life goal is to never have too much to do again. A peaceful life to me is one that you can maintain comfortably. I'm working hard to get there. Right now we're in the middle of changing the landscaping in the front yard. We're doing all of the work ourselves, and it's been a very cheap project that will gain me room to plant more flowers. I have a 7,000+ sq ft yard. It's pretty small, and I have big ideas, but I am limited by the space I have. :)

I am so excited because after admiring all of the furniture Grandma Donna and Grandpa Charles have picked up over the years and restored, I finally have one! I've needed a new desk chair and wanted an old-fashioned one. Someone had a beautiful old, solid wood, curved legs, sturdy ladderback chair put out with their trash! The cushioned seat needs cleaning and there are some scuffs and scratches on the wood, but my son sat in the chair and gave it some hard wiggling before we put it in the car and took it home. It looks like it was unused for years and someone was doing some cleaning out. 

We're working especially hard right now because we want to have everything about the house done by the end of next year. It's all necessary changes, like the painting we did. We started painting in the hallway, painting it a beautiful light blue that curved around into the entryway, and I actually had tears in my eyes as it was painted. I didn't realize how depressing the brown walls were until then. I love the color change, but we're fixing the bad painting job the builder did. We've fixed the plumbing, we've fixed the grading, we've fixed the ventilation, we've fixed the A/C, and we've fixed the painting, so far. 

I keep a basket under my purse with snacks yo take with us when we’re out. I also keep my lists, shopping bags, and any other errand items there as they come up because I can easily forget something if I don’t! 

We had a large sectional left in a rental that we couldn’t move…. Until Mister got his reciprocating saw out… it was firewood in short order! 

Today we were going to change our dryer vent hose… and ten minute job took two hours because I ended up washing the walls, appliances, and floor as well as replacing and securing the hose to the wall better. These little jobs become huge so easily! But I’m glad it’s done until February when I will be sure to do it again so it won’t be such a mess!!! 

Thank you for another wonderful post, gDonna. I have felt overwhelmed for several years. We have way too much to go through and I have to do it. Fifty-eight years of our items (although I purged much before our move to this house), plus my husbands parents antiques.

The idea of listing the highest priorities is a very good help. I will do that this evening. I do hate feeling overwhelmed to the point of holding my breath, at times.

I went on and on and never said what food I'd pack for a trip! For years, on our road trips, we'd pack sandwiches in a cooler. I'd make enough for lunch and dinner, and have fruit and snacks like nuts to go with them. That way at least the first day of travel was taken care of. Since reading this blog, I've gotten a lot of new ideas for food to pack. 

I always have crackers and cheese along with a cereal bar available to take with me even if its just a trip to the grocery store along with my reusable water bottle. I get low blood sugar attacks and this takes care of it.

On longer trips we usually take sliced ham, cheese, pepperoni and crackers and/or rolls. Homemade cookies and I make up peanut butter crackers.  We take whatever is available in the fridge, cold chicken, apples, homemade trail mix and even homemade granola. All of us carry water in reusable bottles. oranges and grapes also carry well. We have bags with cold packs to use.

Growing up we did not eat out, we always carried food and if it was a long trip we ate at roadside tables and rest areas.

Great job on removing the old sofa, I understand the heavy mental lifting in dealing with these things, I am still dealing with a basement full at my parents house and they have been gone since 2014 and 2019. I work on it a bit at a time as it is overwhelming and emotional. Sometimes I think I am just moving things from one place to another. Plus some of it goes to grandkids when they get their own homes. 

I have to hire things done that I used to do myself, its frustrating but necessary. I am also lucky that I have family around to help with heavy jobs, I hate having to ask but I am learning my limits.

JC

When we were newlyweds we received a “Pyrex Portables” bowl and carrier that had a cold pack.  I would make a pasta salad for us to eat at the rest area as we traveled between states to see family.  These days those kinds of trips are taken in our campervan, so I have a refrigerator, microwave, and stove burner at my disposal — such luxury!  Still, we often pack the making for sandwiches as they are quick and simple.  If we are gone at supper time we pack premade (by me) meals we can heat in the microwave.  If we are going someplace over a meal time and won’t be with the van, I typically pack muffins, cheese, fruit, etc.  I try to keep homemade muffins in the freezer so we can grab and go.  When I am on the ball I also bake cookies and wrap them in packs of 2 for us to pack as well.  If we go somewhere and it’s hot out, I pack two water bottles, on to carry with me and one for when I get back to the car.  I fill that one to the top with nugget ice and tuck an iced tea spoon inside — having that to look forward to taught me to stop wanting to get an ice cream or soda.

I grew up in a time and place where fast food was everywhere, although we rarely ate it until the 1980s.  Over the decades we’ve had times we ate restaurant food often (not fast food so much) and times we hardly had restaurant food at all.  We’re once again in time where we almost never get restaurant food, and it feels completely normal to us.  Last night we were driving home from the market and my husband wanted to drive through the downtown area to see if the Christmas tree was lit — he’d seen it lit last week on a walk during the daytime, but then I read the city was doing the official lighting this weekend.  It wasn’t lit.  Anyway, the point is as we came toward downtown I saw all of the restaurants (sit down and fast casual, we don’t have fast food in that area), and I remarked how I rarely even think of restaurants anymore.  It is as if they aren’t there, because they aren’t in my mind.

The little pink and white pitcher and basin are lovely!

I too was wondering how you and Charles would get the sofa bed out of the house, and enjoyed reading about your ingenuity in taking it apart!  Over the past few years we have cut apart and taken apart several items so they fit in our city waste bin.  Last week my husband took apart some packaging made of pressure treated wood; our son’s gym equipment arrived in it and then it sat outside for a year.  Pressure treated wood isn’t safe to burn, so we didn’t think it would be safe to use in planters either, because of the chemicals.

We never went out to eat when I was a child.  There was a restaurant or two in our little town, but we ate at home or at grandparents or did potlucks with friends.  I went on vacation with uncle's' family several times and those were my first restaurant experiences.  Fast food did not exist until I was in high school when 15¢ hamburger places popped up.  

When the kids were home, we seldom ate out because even fast food was too expensive.  My late dh was a junk food junkie and would have lived on it given the chance.  Even when I'd pack him a good lunch for work, he'd often eat fast food.  When it was just the two of us, we did sometime stop at restaurants when traveling, but generally I packed food and we'd stop at a park in a small town to eat.  Almost all even tiny towns in rural areas have a town park and we found some really lovely ones.  Now days when I go to town (30 miles) to shop, I usually take only a breakfast bar and water.  

I prepared bankruptcies for 25 years and always told clients, that no matter what your income is to survive you must spend less.  That is a simple fact of life and often, especially for elderly, that means moving to a small apartment or even a Section 8 apartment.  Not a pleasant fact of life, but that is just the way it is.  Many people run into hard times and use credit attempting to maintain their previous lifestyle until the debt overwhelms them.  They liquidate retirement, run up credit cards, borrow from family, take bank loans and eventually end up in bankruptcy.  If they had adjusted their lifestyle immediately when hard times arrived, they could have kept their retirement (very important) and adjusted to living on their lower income.

Oh my goodness,that little pitcher and bowl set are perfect where they are! I love that! I always have brought a cooler full of water and snacks/meals for road trips.Worked with my kids just fine. I grew up doing this as well. I don't eat out or go thru drive thrus, I just think it is too expensive, doesn't taste good and I can make it better.Saves me money I am sure. I do get one special coffee a year, in the red cup. lol. But so far I haven't wanted it this year.I keep thinking, my homemade London fog tastes much better! I am just exhausted from exposure to the internet and all the things at this point and I don't even have the normal social medias. I have this blog and very select Youtube channels (You would enjoy Real Vintage Dolls House, she is very insightful and interesting.  Very 1950s vintage and frugal living) I cannot imagine being swept up in the social media exposure.Thank you for the breath of fresh air and place to find comfort and tranquility. This is my restful space. 

This is quite appropriate as we're just this minute looking at sofa beds to replace the very heavy queen sized bed in the spare room which is used about two nights a year for visitors if any - there's only the two of us and we really don't need a big bed in that room.  It's almost new, but really we don't want it and as we're getting older it's too heavy for us anyway.  We have done most of the hard work around here and just concentrating on making this old house as age proof as we possibly can.

We don't do fast food, and have rarely done so in the past - I come from a small coastal town on the north coast and we didn't ever have fast food places back then (didn't even get television until 1969), and there was just a fish and chips shop here and there.  Consequently when I see people eating at those type of places constantly, I think it's just junk food and not a healthy diet.

Oh and I also forgot to say that we always pack sandwiches or rolls when we're driving somewhere distant, and always have a thermos flask of boiling water to make coffee or tea (I'm the tea, I don't drink coffee).  As well there's always some fruit, hard-boiled eggs, perhaps a chicken leg or two - things like that.  And always water as well, plus with the car fridge in the back there's always a cold bottle of soda water to replace that salt if it's really hot.

That was one way to move a sofa!  Good job.

I rarely eat out but when I do, it’s not fast food unless I’m with someone who really wants to get it. 

Because of hurricanes, I keep dried fruit, peanut butter, single serving tuna and chicken pouches, and crackers in the house. I have extra water on hand and usually fresh fruit.  I pack sandwiches and fruit to go sit with hospitalized people. I have a microwave at work so I consistently pack leftovers for lunch at work, along with iced tea. 

When the kids were little  and we drove long ways to visit family, we packed sandwiches, fruit, homemade cookies, water, fruit juice, and as a rare treat, cereal, chips and sodas, which were huge treats for the kids. It was cheaper than stopping for fast food. 

I have a list of proj I am building for when I retire. I will have to prioritize mine as well. Some things need to be done first in order to get others done. Some are more necessary and urgent so they will be moved up. I have enough things already in my list to keep me busy for a few years.   

Grandma Donna wrote,

Some of you may have read the comment by Alicia S, this is my first cousin and we lost contact with each other many years ago because we live in different states and our parents died, we changed telephone servers, dropped land lines, different contact information all the way around and when I was not getting reply's back from emails or calls I finally quit trying because there was no response.  Same on both sides so Alicia found me through this blog and decided to contact me through this forum.  I am so happy that she did and just so you know, we talked on the phone for several hours this afternoon once I contacted her by email from her forum sign up. :)  I missed her too. (Heart Alicia)

Grandma Donna Wrote, 

Ann W,  I never thought to locate a small town park to stop to have lunch.  What a wonderful idea. :)

I grew up picnicking when we traveled, so picnics are part of my love language! Mom made oven-fried chicken and potato salad, which we ate cold. We also opened a can of pork and beans and ate them cold. To this day, these picnics at roadside tables are still favorite memories. On our first date, my husband and I shared a picnic lunch. We even took wedding reception leftovers in a cooler on our honeymoon, and I loved stopping along the way to picnic! When I had children, I found it infinitely more easy to stop at a rest area for lunch than to take little children into a restaurant, so the picnics continued. I always try to make the food interesting so no one feels like it’s a bad thing to picnic. Pigs-n-blankets, pepperoni rolls, and ham biscuits are fun options in lieu of sandwiches. Pasta and fruit salads, bean salads, homemade cakes and cookies, sliced veggies from the garden, and refillable water bottles are just a few of the things that end up in our picnic basket! The trick is to keep foods at the ready so they can quickly be gathered for an outing. Like many of you, we have reached the point where we don’t enjoy restaurant food as much, though an occasional night out gives me a break from the cooking chores. Most of the time, though, we find homemade is more economical, tasty, and nutritious than eating out.

Count us among those who look for a small town park to enjoy our traveling lunch!  We’ve also stopped at some much larger parks in larger cities.  Parks are so much better than rest areas when traveling with children and/or dogs, and you get to experience a new place, not just a rest area.

Also, when we do stop at rest areas, we find they aren’t as nice as they were in the 1980s and 1990s.  For some reason many of them no longer have picnic tables.  But when we are in hurry to get from point A to point B, rest areas are convenient.  Or we just eat in the van wherever we get off the highway for gasoline, to minimize stops

I love that G' Donna & Alicia reconnected!

Picnics are my love language too! I'm teaching my grandson the joy and delight of picnics. 

When I was a kid picnics for the Sunday would be mom's fried chicken, potato salad, bread, carrot & celery sticks and some sort of dessert. Water. We drank water from jars mom saved or a giant Thermos. For years after I was married picnics meant fried chicken but we'd buy it at KFC or similar since I didn't fry chicken. Now it's whatever the participants like--- sandwiches,  salads, etc basically whatever is in the fridge that we regularly eat.

About the only time I get restaurant food now is if someone else buys it. Because they want it. Otherwise, I'd cook.

Oh I almost forgot snacks on car trips would be peanut butter on saltines or ritz crackers. Boy those tasted good on a long afternoon in the car.

You know I think there's something to knowing how to be hungry.  Food tasted better back when we had to wait for the next meal.

Twenty to thirty years ago, when my husband and I were flying from St. Louis to Alaska, I packed a small cooler with sandwiches, etc....to take with us on the plane, so we wouldn't be tempted to eat in the airport on our layover, wherever that was.  At the time, my husband was flying a lot for work and would periodically get upgraded to first class.  Indeed, before take-off, we ended up moving seats and for years one of our private jokes was...."You might be a redneck if you pack a lunch to take with you on a first-class flight".  :0)  (My husband had been gifted one of the Jeff Foxworthy tear off calendars for Christmas and we had a lot of fun that year seeing how many of the calendar quotes hit home for us.)

“I thought about the money that Charles and I have saved since we learned to feel hungry again.”

Wow—there is A LOT of truth packed into that small sentence. 

Many problems in life would be solved if we learned to delay gratification as well as saying ‘No’ to ourselves

I am so glad Grandma Donna and Alicia S have reconnected! :)

I like reading about the 1930s, and how sometimes travelers would stop at a farmhouse and ask if they could pay for a meal. I'm sure the farm family appreciated the extra money. The first roadside restaurants were starting to show up then, and they served food they made themselves, not like the restaurants today that serve prepackaged, chemical-laden frozen foods. If I lived in 1930, I'd like to have those fresh-cooked meals on my travels! Fast food and restaurants today don't even sound appealing. Picnics and homemade food does. :) It's our way back to the past. 

Starting in January, we're going to a monthly "payday." We're going to live on the month before's money. At the beginning of the month, we'll transfer the allotted money for the month to the checking account, and the weekly paychecks will be automatically deposited to the savings account for the next month's expenses. Anything over the budget amount will get put in another savings account, or used for a planned home improvement, or dental bills. 

We usually pack slices of Christmas cake for our travels/errands. Each Christmas we only ever want to eat a small amount of the cake my husband makes because there are so many other food items around. So we slice it up and freeze it. It provides for the next year. When we get ready to go out we get out two slices. These are high calorie slices! Marzipan, cherries, icing. So they have been very welcome when our journeys have taken longer than planned due to roadworks or similar. We also take a flask of coffee rather than paying for coffee at a service stop. 

There are three slices of cake left now.... 

How lovely that you have reconnected with your cousin GDonna.

As a child growing up in the UK the only fast food we would get to eat would be the treat of fish & chips during our annual holiday to the seaside and boy did we look forward to that.

Otherwise family picnics would mean a selection of sandwiches, cooked chicken, boiled eggs and fruit plus a handmade cake for afterwards. Nowadays I pack a flask of hot tea plus cold water, then Cornish pasties if we want something more substantial or filled rolls if it’s a lunch only meal plus an apple.  There is still a cake though, we especially like a Bara Brith with a small piece of cheese.

We're currently traveling by train. Since it's an 8-hour journey, we packed some food. For lunch, we'll have warm chili and hot tea.

Here are a few more photos.

Sibylle- hello, traveling by train is fascinating to me. I live in Texas and we don't travel like that. We have Amtrak but it's very limited to where you can go. I live on a farm and if I have to travel to downtown Dallas I take the train and my packed lunch. I dress up like a 1940s farmwife, with my 1940s dress and shoes and a basket of lunch because it's 15.00 for a sandwich on the train. 

I am just so happy that you and your cousin found each other!!   We have a family member who is 'lost'.  The only one who had contact info died quite suddenly of a stroke so hopefully he will surface some day.

Actually about eating out, we do love a good pizza from a local Mom and Pop place.  $10 for one that is two meals for us.  When we do spend money out we try to keep the money local and not support the big chains.

When we traveled growing up Mom and Dad would stop at a produce stand along the way and that fresh produce was the basis of many meals.  Yummy tomato sandwiches, fresh peaches in Georgia, and pecans that my Dad could put two in his hand and crack them and hand them over the seat for us to snack on.  Those were the days.  We always stopped at little parks along the way.  Wonderful memories!!

Another wonderful post!  I remember the lean times of my life very well, too.  I am amazed at how you moved that sofa!  I keep packages of turkey jerky, pack cheese and crackers, and fresh fruits for quick meals on the go.  Leftovers from dinner are usually what I have for lunch or breakfast.  Today that was fettuccini topped with hamburger and gravy.  The rest will go over mashed potatoes.  Cream of cauliflower cheese soup was the reheated meal yesterday.  I wish you a life of abundance and health.  

"delay gratification"

When I was growing up I heard words like delaying gratification. I never hear that now. But I don't know if maybe it was just where we lived or even just my family. My husband insists he never heard that phrase when he was growing up.

But it does seem to me that very few put it into practice.  Why even people I know out of work don't!

One of the greatest delights in life is creating something out of nothing. Now I don't mean literally as only the good Lord can do that. I mean you have some plain, ordinary leftovers in the fridge and you bundle them up and have yourself a mighty feast on your travels whether at a rest stop, plane or train. Maybe you add a bit of cake and your favorite tea. And once consumed you are as full and satisfied as if you had dined at the finest restaurant.  And you peer at fellow travelers and smile as you did not open your wallet as they did. 

Hello Grandma Donna,

Thank you for another great post. I was glad to read that you and Charles figured out how to remove the gigantic sofa. 

When I read what you wrote about how you felt about your packed food while passing fast food places, I realized that I had similar feelings (twice) at church this very morning. A young man in front of us was quietly eating a delicious-looking hunk of dark chocolate during the sermon. When we stood up to sing, I glanced down and noticed the source was in his mother's purse- it was one of those really good chocolate bars that are way out of our price range right now. However, I have been making my own for a month now- I'm still figuring out the best recipe- and it's easy, delicious, and nutritious. I had to stifle my craving in church because we are out of the needed ingredients and I will have to wait until the next big shopping trip to buy what I need.

After the service, my daughter's Sunday school teacher handed me a five-dollar gift card to a fast-food restaurant. Apparently the children had been divided into two teams and had a Bible trivia contest. Each child on the winning team received a gift card. I thanked her for it, but since we do not have extra money for all of us to eat there, we will stop by for only what my daughter can get with the five dollars. 

When we travel, I usually make pepperoni rolls and cut up carrot sticks. Even buying luxury items like string cheeses and pretzels is cheaper and more nutritious than fast food!

Tara D.- I love that you dress in vintage clothing when you travel by train! 

I think I have found a sibling, Lainey.

Good, hot, fish and chips on the pier at Weston-super-Mare, a holiday treat. 

We both took packed lunches to work for years, a cheese or peanut butter sandwich, hard boiled egg, a bit of salad, fruit, homemade cake. 

Bara brith is my standard cake, baked when the oven is on for a Sunday pot roast. The soaked dried fruit eked out with grated apple or carrot, sometimes made with sultanas and a spoonful of marmalade, (I save the last of a jar of jam or honey to rinse out with tea for the Bara brith,) a teaspoon of black treacle with cheaper white sugar, or malt extract in place of most of the sugar. Midwife Mary Thomas wrote her mother’s recipe for me on a busy night shift about 30 years ago. It is probably a wartime recipe, not using any of the fat ration. 

I replaced the plastic mugs, beakers, and lunch boxes, take cutlery and inexpensive vintage linen napkins, and a flask of tea, in our stout shopping bag, but our picnics for journeys or days out are much the same, though the bread is now homemade, and the eggs from our hens. I carry an insulated stainless steel bottles of cold tap water and a small beaker, drinking out of a tepid bottle all day is unhygienic. I take a large vacuum flask of filter coffee to leave in the car, which we have when we arrive, and before the drive home. 

We drove to North Wales regularly when my parents were alive, and depending on the weather, we would stop at Llangollen for short walk and a picnic by the river. In winter I took a flask of hot soup and we had a picnic in the car at Llyn Celyn reservoir.

It seems to me “delayed gratification” is a term I encountered after I became an adult.  I never heard it as a child, no one told me to practice delayed gratification when I was hungry and we had to wait until we were home to eat.  It was just the common practice, at least at our (low) income level.  It would never have occurred to us children to ask our parents to stop for food because we were hungry.  Hunger was something we were used to, and I think at all levels of income there wasn’t this idea that we would eat the moment we felt the slightest hunger.  We ate breakfast, lunch, an afterschool snack, dinner, and sometimes dessert.  I suppose this might be one reason I still prefer a small snack around 3 p.m.

Speaking of fast food gift cards, my son received a $25 gift card to a regional fast food chain as a tip for his work.  We used it to get french fries (they cut and fry the potatoes in the restaurant) and fountain drinks (we both like to mix 7Up and pink lemonade into what we call “lemon up”).  That cost us $10 from the card.  It had been a long time since we’d had fast food, and it wasn’t fantastic, but it was a nice treat and didn’t cost us anything

I went over our grocery budget this month.  It wasn’t planned, it was just how stocking up worked out, and I didn’t feel inclined to make myself wait until next month.  It sort of feels like a failure, but at the same time I know we have an annual grocery budget that we divide up into months, so it all shakes out.  Part of it was buying some groceries for our youngest, who missed several work days due to illness and then found herself penalized with fewer hours once she was able to work again.

Grandma Donna Wrote,

Janet W, thank you for sharing your Bara brith recipe.  I am not familiar with the name of this cake you are calling Bara brith and something I enjoy about this forum how we learn so much from each other.  :)

Lainey T_2, thank you for mentioning this Bara Brith cake and bringing it to our attention.  

It is a Welsh name @GDonna, meaning speckled bread. Mum was Welsh, and Welsh speaking, Dad was evacuated to an Aunt in Wales after the first bombs fell on Birmingham in 1940. They travelled to senior school on the same local train.

I looked up a recipe for Bara Brith. Sounds good! I love raisins and tea breads. 

I know it's not homemade but I found some protein bars that are fairly good. I would pack those to take with me during long commutes to help reduce my want to pull over and get something expensive and full of unneeded calories. I also kept a water bottle with me. Some times I'd pack a lunch too. Usually just a sandwich, fruit, and some nuts. 

I hadn’t thought about adding some marmalade to the cake JanetW that does sound rather nice! 
How lovely that you have a family recipe, I use Dame Mary B’s which always turns out well, as do most of her recipes tbh :

Gdonna I am truly grateful that you share all the 'silly little things' that you do to save money.  I will be cutting back my work hours next year and will therefore definitely need to start being more frugal.  Although my husband has an average full time income, I currently work only part time and don't earn a huge income, but I have found that our expenses have definitely expanded to fill our income this year.  The catch 22 of working more and having a slightly higher income this year (compared to  the past few years since having our kids) is that I have more disposable income, but I have less time to manage it and our resources properly.  Why work more only to spend the income on conveniences or waste it because I don't have the time and energy to manage it properly?  My son needs quite a few specialist appointments, so working less will free up the time and energy to take him to those appointments and just generally be around to make sure our home environment is calm and organised, rather than frantic and disorganised like it's felt this year.  Your 'silly little things' have given me so many ideas and encouragement for stretching our income next year.  I'm truly excited about having the extra time next year to do the things I love - sewing and repurposing clothes, growing fruit and veg, cooking from scratch, and yes, going on picnics!

Our picnics are a lot like everyone else has mentioned - pretty much anything that we have in the fridge and pantry.  Sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, maybe homemade breaded chicken fingers, plus fruit and cookies etc..  If we don't have time to throw together a picnic, we might stop at the supermarket and buy a rotisserie chicken and some bread rolls, as for a family of four, that works out to be cheaper than buying takeaway.  Plus any leftovers can go in the fridge when we get home and be used for something else.  We always have our picnic basket stocked with a table cloth, napkins, a tea towel and rubbish bag, a small chopping board, a sharp knife in a scabbard, plates etc and cutlery.  That way, even if we don't have time to actually make sandwiches before we go, we can just throw all the fixings into the basket and cut them once we're at our stop.

Sybille M we use wide mouthed thermos containers like you have in your photo too.  We either use them for warm food like soups or stews, or occasionally we'll cook up some chicken nuggets for the kids (much cheaper than buying them at fast food places along the way!)  We also use those thermoses for cold food like yoghurt.

Melanie d -- I am so glad you have the opportunity to cut back your work hours! I was amazed at how much money I could save by not working when I quit my job. And you're right about it slowing down the frantic pace. Good luck to you next year when you make this change! :)

how can I live more like the past when I have young kids at home. My oldest son is 10 and daughter is 3. Clutter and noise are the norm around here and it’s hard when my son’s friends from school have new devices/phones etc. 

people in the past had young kids too!

Just say no. Make home a sanctuary. Set limits.