A big thanks to Mary Ann and Nicole for letting me share my frugal journey here with you all. Truth be told I’m not entirely that frugal. It is in part due to the fact that we live in the city. Categories actually exist in my budget that other people wouldn’t dream of putting in theirs. (Do you have a category in your budget specifically for parking tickets? I didn’t think so.) Furthermore, daily living here is just more difficult to manage without spending any money.
Take laundry for example. Mary Ann wrote a great article about line drying laundry. I whole heartedly agree that you should line dry laundry. But we shouldn’t. If we line dried our laundry, we would find either find it missing by morning or drenched in pigeon droppings. I’ll spend the extra $1.50 to dry it!
Then there’s the whole cloth diaper thing. Totally frugal and in my opinion–completely worth the extra effort for most people. However, I would have to soak a soiled diaper in the bathtub (in a bucket) then wait until my husband gets home, where upon after doing dinner and nursing babies, I run to the laundromat two blocks away and wash and dry the diapers (which by the way would cost me about $4.00 to do.) Not quite so easy and I‘m not sure spending $4.00 every day for upkeep would really save us money. For the person out there who is going to suggest a diaper service–we don’t exactly live in the type of neighborhood that diaper services are willing to go to.
Complicating matters worse is the fact that we have twins. It’s a double whammy because twins really hit your budget hard, but gone is the time that you have to spend being frugal. We realized very quickly that there were things that were worth spending the money on. No longer was I able to cook unless there was another adult at home. So all of the sudden, upon the arrival of the twins, we started ordering take out at least once a week. It simply was worth the money to buy myself an hour of sleep here or there. . .and essentially that’s what I was doing.
So I have had to find a balance between utterly frugal and what works for an urban dwelling family. I have begun “remaking” my grocery bill by doing what I can do to cut costs. Our frugal bloggers are going to allow me to share my process with you and I invite all of you to make suggestions or comments if you have any great ideas! You can look soon for my astronomical grocery bill and my plan of action on how to start trimming!