Unnecessary, but fun

Last post was sort of about not spending or spending wisely. This post is about spending. I stopped at a little thrift store. Oops.

I defend my spending money there because all the money (donated building and help!) goes to support a local "private" school. It is private in that no government money is used to support the school. Although, it is basically a Catholic school, any child is welcome - except that there is a huge long waiting list. It is that good of a school.

I purchased a few saucers (bowls) and a few pieces of "silverware" (one fork was real silver - 10 cents!). Always seem to need more.

Also purchased were a lightweight denim shirt with puffy sleeves and two out of style rayon dresses. These were a dollar each. The denim shirt will someday lose the "puffs". This is for me. The puffed sleeves make me look like I'm wearing football shoulder pads or whatever they are called. The navy dress will hopefully get a zipper and be shortened. It fits my daughter beautifully, but is very difficult to get on and off. The maroon floral dress? Who knows. It fits my daughter, too, but the color is wrong for her. I will try to remember to get before and after pictures.

What I spent the most on was a whole grocery sack of sewing patterns - some newer, some older. Below are three of my favorites.

This is possibly the oldest dated 1962:



This pattern, with minor adjusting, should fit my daughter. Too bad it isn't in style at all.

Then there were these:






These are from the Associated British Paper Patterns Ltd., Denbigh Rd. Bletchley, Bucks. There is no copyright or date printed anywhere on them.

If anyone wants to get rid of old (1960's and 1970's and maybe early 1980's) patterns, I am in the market for women's half sizes 10-1/2 to 12-1/2, young junior/teen sizes 9/10, 11/12, and 13/14, and junior petites sizes 7, 9, and 11. I really don't want to pay a fortune for each pattern, but would pay for the patterns and for shipping. My email address is available from my profile page. Thanks. Oh, these would be to use. I would not be reselling them.

Random, but I have misplaced my list of passwords for all my internet sites. OH BROTHER!!
UPDATE: The passwords have been found. phew! Now the checkbook register is missing. It is probably in the huge stack of bills waiting to be paid. Groan.
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Budgeting and Being Frugal

Budgeting, careful and controlled spending, being debt free, and becoming more self-reliant are huge topics right now. Well, there is a new blog with great ideas about how to save money, set up budgets, and how to stay out of debt, etc. It is written by a mom and two of her daughters. (I've been reading the daughters' individual blogs for quite a while and thoroughly enjoy them.) They give easy to follow guidelines - mostly good common sense - and some extra hints that maybe not many know about.

So without further ado, I'd like to direct your attention to a new blog:
Frugal Wife = Wealthy Life

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How We Started The Pantry

This is how we started our pantry. I need to restart this process to figure out what needs to be added or eliminated. And, it would help create a food budget.

I'd post pictures of our pantry, but it is completely disorganized not to mention really dusty. (Time for a major overhaul. Note to self: Drinking water needs to be used up and replaced.) Our pantry is basically several sets of metal shelves that are set up in a U shape in the corner of what was the rec room.

In my previous post where I explained why I keep a stocked pantry, I don't think I mentioned that I'm also worrying about the country's state of affairs. I think stocking up is a really good idea. I've been adding more prepared foods to the pantry - things that if the power goes off they wouldn't have to be cooked before eating (canned meats, vegetables, etc). They may be expensive and not taste the best, but we wouldn't go hungry.

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When we started our pantry we were really poor. If we were really lucky, we'd have a couple of dollars left at the end of the pay period. Sometimes we'd have only 50 cents left. A few times we were down to 10 cents when the next pay check arrived. (For two years, we didn't go to a movie, go bowling, or do much of anything that cost money. We didn't drink alcoholic beverages. There was seldom juice, ice cream, soda pop, candy, coffee, or tea in the house.)

After running out of food a few times, my husband figured out that with his erratic schedule we had to buy more food when we went shopping. We didn't know when we'd get to go again. To do this, we needed to know how much we could spend at the grocery store, how much food we needed, and how much it actually would cost to buy it.

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We lived in a single wide mobile home. The floor plan was rather unique in that it had a small room off the kitchen. This room had a coat/broom closet and a space for an upright freezer. (It even had a door to the outside. This room was an amazing feature for those of you who are too young to know about mobile homes.) The manufacturer called it a mud room. We called it our pantry.

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*Dh made a list of all the different foods, cleaning supplies, paper products, and grooming aids we had on hand. (It wasn't much. This was before we had stocked a pantry and before we had a deep freezer.)
*To the list, we added what we were out of that had to be replaced.
*I figured out a menus for each meal for a month.
*I then figured out how much food we would need to make up these for just the two of us.
*We added to the list what we absolutely had to have to get by until the next shopping trip and what was needed to make up the meals that were on the menu. (I have always kept a grocery list on the refrigerator and/or by the phone.)
*Then we added what we would like to have (juice, jelly, fresh produce, lunch meat, ice cream, chocolate chips, pop, etc).
*This all was written down a single column on a few sheets of school notebook paper. (I can't remember now if like items were grouped or if the list was alphabetical.)
*Dh added columns across the paper: package size, price per oz/ea/pound/whatever, store name. I typed this up using carbon paper so that we had several copies.
*Then we took our list and went product and price shopping.
*Actually, this took a few shopping trips to get a good idea of which stores consistently had the best prices. (We seldom could go shopping when what we needed was on sale, so we looked for the best over all prices.) We filled in the columns on our list. We bought by comparing, changing brand and/or store, or duplicating an item if the price was right. We'd buy larger containers of non-perishables.
*We kept track - to the penny - of what we spent. If a needed item was on sale, we'd add an extra to the cart until we reached our spending limit. Sometimes we'd have to decide if we really, really needed an item. Sometimes we'd go over budget just to get the bare necessities. Sometimes we had enough money to add some extras.
*Somehow, slowly our pantry was being stocked.

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The menu planning kind of went by the wayside, but we kept this list updated for probably 15 years. (It's kind of ironic that when we could have put it on the computer is just about when we quit keeping track of prices!)

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If I remember correctly, we finally mostly shopped at two stores - one was Safeway and the other (I think) was locally owned. We'd only go to the other stores if a sale was good enough to make it worthwhile.

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Even with all our careful planning we'd still sometimes run out of things. A piece of meat would be half fat or gristle. A recipe that said it made 6 servings would barely feed us one meal. I'd forget to write something on the list or forget to take the list when we went shopping. We'd have unexpected company. Sometimes there just wasn't enough money to buy everything we needed.