New to me

Y'all know I've been wanting to get another TV for my guest room/office but I just didn't want to buy one new.  I wanted to get one secondhand (or even thirdhand!) for frugality reasons and to make a better choice environmentally.  I was talking about it at work to Michelle, our nurse who cooks and bakes the most fabulous things and knits and roasts her own coffee beans and has a hippie heart like mine that longs for San Francisco, and she said she had one just stored in a closet in her apartment and after she talked with her hubby, told me I could have it! 

So I went after work today to pick it up.

Y'all.  That thing is 80 pounds (I googled it!) of awkward, bulky tank.  It's a 25-inch Sansui and it's in excellent condition.  I was worried that it wouldn't be by the time I got it home!!  We had to carry it down the stairs of her apartment, rolling it end over end, robot-walking it side to side, anything we could think of to get it to my car.  It was so hot, our hands were sweaty and it kept slipping.  I thought I was going to DIE right there.

It wouldn't go in my trunk but it went into the back seat, along with Michelle underneath it.  She slipped out the other door, we said our goodbyes and I left, not knowing how in THE hell I was going to get it out of my car and into my house without busting it wide open.

I thought about it all the way home and when I got home, I pushed my office chair out to the car, pulled and tugged, prayed, tugged and pulled, pushed my hair out of my eyes, prayed, tugged some more, got half of it into the chair, huffed and puffed, pulled some more until it was all in the chair, the chair's hydraulics collapsed under its weight and the TV almost fell out onto the driveway screen first, ohmygod, I grabbed it just in time, threw my weight onto it to hold it in place and started slowly moving toward the front door.  I got it in the house, as far as just inside the front door.  But it was IN!!!  And it was COOOOOOOOOL in here.  Then I collapsed!!  For just a minute.  I pulled and dragged and rolled it until I got it into the room it was going in and had it hooked up to my Directv cables in less than five minutes.

And now I'm watching Caddyshack!  :)

Thanks, Michelle!!  I'm sure we'll never forget this afternoon!  Ha!!

How long did I make it??

FOUR days!  Four days without spending money!!  :)  I thought I'd go longer than that but I used up my last little bit of hairspray this morning and I thought I had some more under the bathroom sink but I didn't and with this hot, windy humidity like it is, I have to have hairspray.  I'd be scaring them babies to death at work if I didn't.  :)  

BUT!  I used a coupon and got a can for $2.50.  I had to get a box to mail something in because I couldn't find a FREE one the right size but it was only 48 cents so that's almost like free.  

Frugality isn't so much not spending money, you have to sometimes, it's about spending your money wisely, looking for ways to spend less and get more.  Four days of me spending NO money is huge.  Especially from where I've come.  When I went to work in Macon in 1999, our office was right across the street from the mall and I would go to the mall EVERY SINGLE DAY at lunch.  If I wasn't buying Winnie the Pooh beanie babies at The Disney Store, I was buying stuff at Origins.  Or clothes or shoes or whatever.  Just as long as I was buying!  Talking about this makes me feel like I was a junkie or something!  But in a way, I guess I was.  And my drug was shopping.

I've been getting my groceries at Aldi lately.  I LOVE Aldi!!  I have loved everything I've gotten there except for the lowfat turkey hot dogs but lowfat turkey hot dogs are pretty gross no matter where you get 'em.  Some of my favorite things from there are the milk (I buy the skim and it is SO FRESH!  And it stays fresh a lonnnnnng time.  I don't know if they ultra-pasteurize it like Horizon but it tastes like organic milk to me.  And for $2.49 a gallon, it's a steal!), the blue cheese and gorgonzola cheese crumbles (they are huge!  And so creamy and tasty. That's the kind I'm using in my buffalo chicken dip now!), the canned soups (their minestrone and lentil are the best canned soups I've ever had), the veggie chips, crackers, cereals and ice cream are delicious, their frozen chicken breasts are right around $5 a bag and taste just as good as Tyson for way less and the marinara sauce ain't half bad either.  I've been happy with everything I've gotten there!  I've never spent more than $35 there and each time, I've gotten a ton of stuff, enough to feed me for at least two weeks.  I also love that you bring your own bags and don't leave there with a buggy full of plastic.  We have GOT to get more stores on that wagon!!

I was there today getting a few things, milk, wheat bread, oatmeal and granola and I noticed this.  I've been in there five or six times since they opened but I never paid much attention to this.  Aldi has brands we ain't never heard of (Happy Harvest, Friendly Farms, Edenvale, Millville) and this one just tickled me!

Their medicine/vitamin/pain reliever brand is WELBY.

As in Marcus Welby, M.D.  Ha!
I'm showing my age here but if you're over 40, 

you know who I'm talking about.

Dat's him!  :)

My frugality project

I'm always looking for a project or experiment.  My South Beach project, my Old Lady project, my Wen experiment (which by the way is working out great IF I don't use it.  Ha!  If I use Wen every day, my hair looks at me like Droopy Dog.  

                                                What??

It makes my hair TOO soft, too silky to hold a style.  Oh, it looks fine, it just won't hold body or curl.  If I use it a couple of times a week, it's great.  It's just enough conditioning to keep down the frizzies and combined with some volumizing shampoo, we've gotten to be good friends.).

So I've been thinking a lot this week about another project.  An experiment in frugality.  One of my friends on Facebook posted a question this week, "How long could you go without spending any money?"  Except for necessities: gas, groceries, medicine, bills.

I got to thinking about that and thought it'd be fun to try it.  I've been at home this week, cleaning my house and doing yardwork, watching movies, cooking and reading and guess what??  Aside from my $7.50 movie ticket today, I spent NO money.

I am already a million times more frugal than I used to be.  I try to reuse everything, make do with what I have and if I bring something into my house, I try to get rid of something.  Give it away, usually.  But I wasn't always this way.  Seven years ago, I set out to live a simpler life.  To live with less.  And I have never been happier.  Less truly is more.

I'll be honest, having your husband in prison causes a woman to find other ways to fill that void.  Even though I have never had Larry home with me, his absence is a canyon-sized void in our home.  When I was much younger and having a much harder time with our situation, I tried to fill that void with shopping.  I became a compulsive shopper, an excessive spender.  And guess what?  Most of that spending was of the plastic kind.  I was spending money I had not even earned yet.

I was 23 when Larry was transferred to Walker County, up near the Tennessee line and I drove the 242 miles one way every weekend to see him.  On my way home through Atlanta, there were two malls that called out to me.  Those of you who knew me back then know that I had the clothes!  I had the shoes!  I had the expensive pocketbooks and I had the entire line of Clinique makeup!  I used nothing but Clinique.  I had the $60 perfumes, too.  The ones that made Larry's nose run and his eyes water.  A complete waste of plastic there.  Ha!

I never wore the same thing twice to see Larry.  And before I knew it, I was in a hole.  I had thirteen (13!) maxed-out credit cards.  I was nearly $20,000 in credit card debt.  I was drowning in it.  I would pay my $200 credit card payments then go charge another $200-$300.  I never filed bankruptcy but I did seek help from Consumer Credit Counseling and maintained my excellent credit score.  But it was hard.  It was really, really hard.  I worked in credit, as you all know, and I could not let my credit score suffer.  How could I advise someone about his/her payment when I couldn't even manage my own?  I couldn't.  So I lived at home much longer than I should have.

I finally bought a house I could afford.  Well, kinda.  I brought all that debt with me.  Since then, I've been blessed with a few windfalls that have gotten me completely out of debt except for my car.  No mortgage and no credit card debt.  I have learned my lesson.  No more charging.  No more buying things just for the sake of buying them.  I can't stand clutter anyway. 

And I really can't stand shopping anymore either.  It feels like such a chore when I need new clothes (my South Beach project, wooo hooooo!) or if I need to buy a present for somebody. 

So this frugality project of mine shouldn't be all that hard.  I'm starting Monday, August 1st, and I will go as long as I possibly can without spending any money needlessly.  NO clothes.  NO shampoo.  NO makeup.  NO soaps and body washes and lotions.  I will use what I have.  I will eat what's in my pantry and my freezer. 

I want to replace the TV in my second bedroom.  It's 20 years old (a purchase from my old life, a TranSouth office that I closed) and has started doing the vertical line thingy.  I can hit it on the side and it plays fine.  For a while.  I read online that all it needs is resoldering the part in the back that has come loose, the vertical hold.  I can do that!  I have a soldering iron!  I can solder!  I've seen me do it!!  :)  So when it gets to the point that I can't pop it upside its head to get it to play, I'm going to take it apart and try to fix it.  And if THAT doesn't work, instead of going to Walmart or Best Buy to get a new one, I'll get one secondhand or better yet, get one Freecycled.  Maybe an exchange for a little blue sofa I have stored in my building out back?

If anybody wants to join me next month, please do!!  I think it'll be fun.  At the very least, it'll be educational.  :)  You never know what you can do until you do it.