It Is Time

When I was young, I did not know how many life experiences I would draw upon as I got older.  I wish we all could understand this while we are young so we could pay more attention and ask our elders more questions.

I have always been a curious thinker, I like to know how things work and why and I do better if I can see it and learn visually. A mentor is even better but there are not as many mentors today as we once had.  We have now gone several generations without them as many of the old skills of the past have been replaced by machines that do it for you but this comes with a cost.

I try to be a mentor here on my blog with words and pictures since I cannot be in person, but it is not the same.

This morning I did some mending on the treadle.

We cannot know the future so many people go about living life giving little thought about the what if's. We are prodded along with people advertising and trying to make us look foolish if we do not have what they have deemed to be important.  Many have succeeded to a point that people are in great debt and their lives are now dependent on the use of many of these expensive items.   This became a ball and chain that we were tied to called debt, and the sad part is that we got along perfectly fine without so much of this, even when my children were young.

When Charles and I realized this was a mistake  Charles and I started ridding ourselves of the items that actually became a financial and clutter burden and paid off our debt.  

I did not know that we had the best before we discarded what was actually better.  We became trapped into a society of buy and discard each time a new improved version came along or an item that we never knew that we could not live without.  But, we could live without it.

Once we did this, everything changed as we had a new perspective.  I do believe that we make mistakes so that we learn important lessons.

I pulled some turnips this morning.

My Grandmother would always have a garden wherever they lived, they moved often as they were poor and always looking for a place that cost less to live and my Grandfather found different jobs such as driving a delivery truck and then he became a mechanic.  They lived rural or in a very small community.  My Grandmother would dig a garden and set up a place for her chickens.  They never had junk food as that was not afforded and there was often some kind of soup simmering and leftover cold biscuits in the skillet setting on the shelf with a cloth over the top of them.

Dumplings were always a way to stretch a meal. 

I still do this today.  We do not need many of the items in the grocery store.  

Today we must be smart about things and get back to basics.  My blog post title is "It Is Time", and it is time to take things seriously and take charge of our home, our budget, make sure we have no waste with anything. Keep a check on our electric meters, our water meter, our food budget.  

Plant seeds, do not purchase expensive store bought plants.

You do not need tanks like ours, I have arthritis and a degenerative spine and I am older so over the years we have bought these tanks. You can grow vegetables in the ground or in the same bag that garden soil comes in.  Most any kind of container will work to grow food.  One year I planted some bell peppers for my mother in law and she wanted to use a small rectangle planter that I thought was not deep enough but I planted them anyway in that container.  She had the most beautiful peppers that year and that taught me that I could use less soil than I realized.

This year I am using all sizes of pots and hanging baskets and this could be in cut off empty milk bottles and Juice containers, most anything.  

If you have a patio or balcony, make sure you have some kind of food growing this year.  There are many vegetables that you can grow in a small space.  Tomatoes, Lettuce, Bok Choy, pots of carrots, peppers and many many other things.

Try not to use your clothes dryer, make the most of a sunny day.  

I am careful with Charles shirts and pants and put them in an area that there is not strong sun so to not fade the shirts.  I turn his pants inside out when I hang them and that will help to not fade dark clothes. 

Take care of the chores, March is our normal month to wash the windows and then again in the fall.  

I am excited about the new things I am adding to the garden this year such as the old fashioned potato onion.  I am trying to grow as many vegetables that would be considered perennial.  Sometimes perennial can mean to harvest from that plant and let it cure and save it to replant the next season.  Perennial can mean it can stay in the ground all year around.  

I am obsessed with growing many varieties of onions this year such as bunching onions, Monique shallots, walking onions and many others.  It helps to motivate me if I am growing something exciting.  I have cabbage, celery and onions growing together in several areas. 

Our backyard looks like a construction site right now since we started building our privacy fence.  This week we transplanted a fig tree and blueberry bushes to expand our front drive area so that we can turn the car around easier to drive out forward into our busy street.  There is always something to do when you truly live in your home and make it the most it can be.

We have to live under a rock to not see that it is time to live very frugal and save every dime, nickel and penny that we can.  If you are not familiar with envelope system for saving money it is an easy look up on the internet. We are not spending unless it is absolutely something we must have.  

Make sure that we save monthly for those annual renewal bills that come in or the quarterly ones.  Those fees can hurt your bank account if you forget about them being deducted from your bank account.  Our homeowners insurance, house tax and car tags are yearly.  Some things are cheaper if you pay yearly instead of monthly.  

If you can, to be able to pay yearly if you do not have the money to do so now is to continue to pay it monthly and then figure out what the bill would be for yearly and divide that amount by 12 and if you can, each month treat it as a bill and save that into a fund and in one year you can pay it in full because you have saved for it.  As soon as you pay it, then you continue to save that monthly payment into the fund.

Above I wrote about the ball and chain of debt and even though we are not in debt now, without realizing the consequences, we had gradually added "services" to our life due to technology. Many of us buy into this, and different from when we buy "items".   Services would be that subscriptions to buy online, subscriptions to watch or view online.  

I have canceled anything that is not completely necessary, such as services subscriptions that have monthly or annual bills. It feels good knowing that those fees will no longer be coming out of our bank account or off the credit card. We do not have a television in the house so we do not pay for cable. We do have internet and if need be, I can cancel that and take my laptop to the local library to do a blog post. I wish that phones were still like they were before cell phones and digital.  Just one house phone in the house would be perfect for me, and that would be life changing and feeling like we have taken our life back.

 We have shifted back again are doing our best to buy the things we need from small businesses, our smaller grocery stores and produce markets because they need our support. We are looking to find our local farms that sell to the public to also support them. 

As a dear blog reader once said, we must treat our home as a business and that means bookkeeping, management so that it becomes profitable.  Our profits end up in savings.   

Our Elizabeth had a trip to the vet hospital because she had a grand mal seizure two weeks ago.  She has never had a seizure and it was a very bad one.  The Vet wanted to keep her in the hospital for the day and while there she had two more severe seizures.  With medication we have gotten her stable now.  She has had a few mild episodes where she cannot stand or walk and focal seizures.  We made her a safe place out of a large tote and put soft bedding for her to rest until she can stand.  

This week Elizabeth has done well, we still do not know what has caused this, she had tests done the day she was in the vet hospital but that did show why this is happening.  Our challenge is remembering to give all three doses of medication each day.  We have set alarm reminders on our phone and that is helping. We must be completely accurate with this medication.  

I have not been posting as often because we have been so busy with the fence, the garden and family obligations at this time and our Elizabeth's new issue. I am hoping that things settle down soon so I can get a better routine again.  These things happen in life and we get through them and then life settles for at least a little while. 

I wanted to tell you that I got off of Instagram, it is not like a book or a good read, it pulled me in to too much time spent scrolling and it is something that I did not have in the past. While scrolling we often see things we wish we could un-see.  I am trying to only have my computer for blogging and reading things that I can learn from. 

Are you making changes due to higher costs or possible changes that could affect your budget?  I would love to hear from you up in the forum because it helps all of us when we share ideas.  Please no political talk, but helpful talk about the things that you are doing to save money, grow food, or talk about what you have been doing at your house, we all love to know what each other has been up to.  It may depend on where we live, do you have cell phones or still have a simple land line?  We have always had changes but nothing like now, what are your solutions to living in these changing times? 

Grandma Donna