Savings and Goals Journal #38

It’s been a while since my last check-in. I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. We’ve had some challenges that will help us exercise our budgeting skills. Life does happen. That’s why we’ve been trying so hard to set aside those “just-in-case” funds. We knew we’d pay our income taxes in April. But we also discovered our water heater had sprung a leak. And then we received an unexpected bill from a surgery I had in 2019! All of these things coming in the same month have taken a toll on our savings, but we will just work harder to build it back up!

In the Kitchen

Being careful with our food dollars is where I can make the biggest impact on our budget. Last week we did a clean out the freezer week, where we ate all the little bits of chili and soup and stuff we’d frozen. It made for some interesting meals, but things got used up. Grampy helped at the fire department with a food box distribution and was given a box of food because there were many extra boxes. We enjoyed the lettuce, apples, oranges and potatoes. There were also dairy products and some meat.

I’ll be shopping even more carefully in the coming weeks. It’s been a while since I’ve updated my pantry and freezer inventory, so I’m going to work on that as well.

This week’s meal plan:

• Sunday: Leftovers
• Monday: Fried eggs and potatoes, fruit
• Tuesday: Enchiladas, Spanish rice, refried beans
• Wednesday: Leftovers
• Thursday: Harvest bowls
• Friday: Leftovers
• Saturday: Meatloaf. mashed potatoes, green beans

In the Garden

We’ve been outside enjoying our lovely weather! We’ve had some pretty windy days, but the warm sunshine is fantastic! I’ve been cleaning up the area around our front porch, as well as working in the kitchen garden. Grampy and I repaired the water system for the back yard area. I hadn’t drained it well and it had frozen and split the pipe. It was an easy fix. We already had extra pipe and so we only had to purchase couplings and some PVC pipe glue (ours had dried out.) Grampy said he would help me blow out the water with the air compressor this fall to avoid split pipes in the future.

I spent some time in the east garden digging up mallow weed. Mallow weed is something I have a hard time controlling in the garden. It hardly dies in the winter and then comes back with a vengeance in the spring. I spread some of the compost from our compost bin in the garden as well. I let the chickens in to help spread it around.

So far I have hyacinths and forsythia blooming. I cut some branches of forsythia and brought them in the house to brighten things up.

I chose to save myself the time and frustration of starting pepper plants from seed this year. My daughter and I went to a small locally-owned greenhouse and purchased our pepper and tomato plants. They’ve been spending their days in my little greenhouse and are quite happy. I’ve been bringing them inside at night as it is still pretty cold and peppers are particularly picky about cold temperatures. I’ll be transplanting them to larger pots soon, and I should have nice, big plants to put out near the end of May.

I cleaned up the raspberry patch that is outside our back gate. There are a few empty spots, but there are a few volunteer plants growing outside the fence that I can move into the row. I’m hoping Grampy and I can find a good way to trellis the plants this year. It turns into quite a jungle in there!

This week I will plant some lettuce and spinach seeds in the kitchen garden. I also want to relocate strawberry plants from the east garden to the kitchen garden so they will be easy for the grandkids to pick when they’re outside.

Home and Family

So, if your hot water suddenly seems really hot, go and check your water heater! That is how we discovered our leak. Our water heater was here when we moved here (in 2008). And I don’t know how long it was in here before that. The leak was just tiny. The bottom had rusted through and it was just a little drip. It didn’t damage the floor, thank goodness! This house was originally hooked up to a well, which has some pretty harsh water. A few years after we moved here, we switched to city water, which has far fewer minerals than the well does. A new mobile home water heater (installed, since that is beyond our skill level) cost about $1300. I hope it lasts many, many years!

I called the hospital about the bill they had sent me. I’d thought I’d paid everything for the surgery I’d had in 2019 and was confused as to why I was just now receiving a bill. I’ve known several people who have had this happen to them also. After talking to my insurance, I understand what it’s for, but still have no good explanation as to why it took such a long time for the hospital to bill me. I called the billing office and set up a payment plan. They don’t charge interest, and I figure, if they took a year and a half to bill me, I can take my time paying the bill off! 😉 (And I don’t want to take any more money out of our savings right now.)

Despite being distracted by the lovely weather outside, I’m making progress on the kitchen makeover. I’m working on organizing the upper cabinets. In our older mobile home, there is a lot of wasted space at the top of the upper cabinets, so we installed a small shelf along the back. On it, I am storing things like the water filters for the refrigerator, extra matches and toothpicks and other things I don’t use often. It has freed up lots of space in the lower part of the cabinets.

I am also getting rid of lots of things I don’t use from all through the house. One of the hardest things for me is holding onto things because someone (especially a relative) gave them to me. But I’ve been doing better about letting things go if I don’t use them or really love them. It’s better for things to go to someone who will like or use them, rather than letting them take up space in our little house.

I started decluttering last spring, but I was having lots of trouble with my anxiety through the summer and fall and I didn’t really get very far. Everything seemed completely overwhelming to me and I was only able to keep up with the basics for a while. It was kind of a vicious circle. Clutter added to my anxiety, but my anxiety made me feel overwhelmed and I couldn’t do anything about my clutter. I’m happy I’m doing better. and I’m slowly getting everything back in order! We are working on our second carload of stuff to go to the thrift store. 🙂

I love that we are getting our home more organized. It makes life easier because we can find what we need and we know what we have. Plus, it helps us save money! 🙂

So, the last two weeks were very expensive! But by being careful with our spending, we can get back on track and continue to save and pay down our debt.

Have a wonderful week!