Welcome to Making Do

Everyone needs a goal. When I was working and raising kids, my goals pretty much all revolved around those two things. Living in a 2 paycheck family (decent paychecks) we got used to being able to spend without watching every penny. I have to admit, it was nice. For many years when the girls were young we really had very little liquidity. And to be honest, we didn't always use what we had wisely. Through a lot of trial and error, we eventually got to a place where we made better decisions. Movies in the theater were not an unheard of activity. New clothes because we wanted something new, not because we needed something new were not so much a luxury as an ordinary occurrence. Eating out was no longer an special occasion.

Then I got laid off. In the last year the car died, one girl got married (not a cheap event, let me tell ya, and we did much of it ourselves and had help from our families too), and I am still unemployed. Grateful as I am for unemployment insurance, I really want to see us get in the habit of holding on to what we have, rather than pushing the end of the funds every month. While I can't cut the rent, or the cost of gas, I do have control over the menu and the shopping. I want to see that line item on the budget move steadily down without compromising either our nutrition or my need to not eat the same thing all the time.

I don't know that this will be of interest to anyone but me. Still I want to keep all the data in one place, and I think I will stick with this longer if I put it online. There is the added advantage of not having to keep up with paper menus and recipes if they are all in one spot. So this is my purpose. I may stray into adventures in coupon-ing or the trials of johnson grass in the garden occasionally too.

There are 3 of us at home now. I really have no idea how much money we were actually spending before, but it was in the neighborhood of 450 a month, including fast food. I would like to see that cut in half, with less fast food and more preplanning.

And this is the crux of the issue: I am not a planner when it comes to food. I get up and say, "Hmm, I think I feel like having fried chicken tonight". Going to a menu and seeing that its spaghetti night just hasn't worked for me in the past. But now I have to manage in a different way. I am still fixing portable lunches for 2 people 5 days a week. Can't do that with left overs if you don't plan ahead for them, right? Also, we were eating a lot of processed food and pure junk that shouldn't be in our diets anyway. With everything preplanned, I can decide ahead of time and keep the nutrition on track.

So this is my goal--better food, less money, and no one gets bored. Check out my links list for the other sites and bloggers who have inspired me. I have learned a lot from them and maybe you will too. I suppose there should be a time limit on this experiment (I'm thinking of Julie and Julia, cooking for a year) but I think the goal is going to be to continue to reduce and refine from now on. We will see what happens :)