In what ways are you and your family cutting back in order to afford gasoline and the rising cost of everything these days?
We started limiting our trips into town (Albuquerque) back when gas was $2.00 a gallon and it cost us about $5 a trip. Now that it’s $4.00, and everything else is going up, in some cases rather dramatically, we have pared down to the bare necessities, in order to stay within our budget. I don’t know about your income, but when people say they’re living on a “fixed income”, and usually mean a retirement income, I can relate. My husband gets a paycheck twice a month, and it’s pretty much “fixed”, too. It hasn’t gone up in years. We live on a budget, as do most folks I know. When expenses go up, something has to go down in order to balance the equation. Credit cards usually fill in the gaps.
Our income has remained the same, but our middle class lifestyle seems to be deteriorating somewhat, in some respects. At least when viewed superficially, depending on what you consider deterioration, as opposed to, say, a re-alignment of priorities, a re-ordering of expectations, a re-learning of what’s truly important in life.
We pretty much don’t do “vacations” anymore. Haven’t for quite some time. We decided we’d rather spend the money on fixing up our place. So, we do short, day trips, instead. Saves a bundle and there’s lots to see within a day’s drive around here. Besides, we have too many critters to go anyplace. Even the best critter sitters won’t milk a goat.
We gave up spending the big bucks on big ticket items like the Ballet and Musicals and Concerts.
Do I miss getting all gussied up, going out to a sushi dinner and then taking in a Broadway Show down at Popejoy Hall in Albuquerque once in a while. Yup. But those evenings used to cost what our entire gas budget for the month is, now. Something’s gotta give.
Life is changing. Not only did we make a decision to re-order our lives a while back, but the economy has apparently decided that we’re on the right track, and is pushing us right along now.
To save water and electricity, we quit using our dishwasher about two years ago. It’s still there, and still used, as a rather expensive, but convenient dish drain. We saved enough water every month to water our blackberry patch four times!
We tore out our “zero clearance” fake fireplace with gas burning logs, and put in a Lopi Woodstove. Bought a Husqvarna chainsaw, got a permit to cut wood and saved ourselves a bundle on natural gas last winter. Fresh, crisp fall air, great exercise, wonderful picnics, the smell of fresh-cut cedar! The gas company now owes us money!
I have used only cold water to wash my clothes for several years now. But this year, we went a step farther. See photo above. Hot, dry air blows most of the time around here, and it’s free.
My clothes dry on the line now in about half the time it used to take to dry them using costly, and getting costlier, natural gas. There’s a real art to hanging clothes on a line. It’s almost like a prayer, or a meditation. If you do it right, as you take them down they almost fold themselves into a neat pile there in your laundry basket, ready to be put away, all sunshine fresh and snowy white!
Prices for that watery stuff in plastic jugs that passes for milk in the grocery store has now far surpassed what it costs us to produce our very own pure, nutritious, enzyme-rich un-pasteurized goat milk, right here at home. We drink it ice-cold while the life energy still remains in it, just minutes out of the goat. The ultimate health-food drink! Added bonus is the kefir, chevre, cheddar, feta, mozzarella and ice cream! Have you seen what those pricey gourmet food stores charge for hand-crafted goat cheese! And we eat it on our toast for breakfast and feed it to the Apsos.
Our chickens lay more eggs than we can consume in a day, and they do it with joy, élan, enthusiasm and humor. And we know what’s in those eggs, too. Not the pallid, insipid imitations that those pitiful battery-raised hens produce in their short, brutal lives that end up in polystyrene egg cartons down at the local grocery. These are the real deal! Beautiful brown eggs that resist the first crack on the cast iron skillet, then willingly divide into two equal parts to reveal the yellow eye of yolk and firm clear white that will soon be chuckling like the hen who laid it. All this for the price of half a dozen of those so-called free range eggs in the health food section at the local Smith’s.
And then we have our organic garden which produces all the fresh produce we can eat during the summer and a freezer full of good eats that lasts until the garden is in the ground the next year. It’s a lot of work, watering, weeding, tending, putting up fresh picked veggies. It’s a lot of fun picking your dinner every evening, like I just did. Fresh spinach, arugula and baby romaine salad! No need to worry about salmonella or e-coli in our garden goodies. I know exactly where it came from, how it was watered and fertilized, and who picked and prepared it!
I am not a lady of leisure by any measure. My hands are scarred, my nails are short and my cuticles are ragged. My neck is brown and my skin is dry and sun damaged. But my heart pounds steadily and easily in my chest, my blood pressure is enviable and my cholesterol is perfect. I haven’t even had a cold in years, much less the flu or the omnipresent sinus infections I used to get, prior to goats and garden. Our life style is our health insurance and hedge against inflation. And now, hanging my freshly washed clothes out on the line, I can even be thankful for the wind!
