There are certain times of the year when I can do and demo certain activities in more efficient ways. It’s not that I can’t demo canning in the middle of winter, but it’s a lot easier at the height of the summer when I have a lot of veggies available. But there are certain rhythms to the year so for readers who might have an interest (or who might want to ask for something specific), here is what I’m planning over the next couple of weeks:

Gardening: I’m going to have to transplant all the seedlings in a major sort of way and move them to our unheated greenhouse. I’ll probably be starting more seeds. I also am thinking about cleaning off one of the beds out in the garden and setting up my own mini hoop house out there, to see how fast the soil warms up and how quickly I can get things into the garden this year.

Chickens: We’ve got a broody hen. Between about Feb. 19 and the 25th, either we’re going to have chicks…or not. So I will be covering that. But in the meantime, we have to move them out of the room where she is nesting with the other much larger chickens. The nest needs to be closer to the ground and we need to have them acclimated to that and the heat lamp and so on.

Cooking: With all of these storms and power outages, I have offered that using a backyard grill to cook on is a definite option. I’d like to offer some experiments to show what we can do. Any specific suggestions for what people would like to see: pizza, baking bread or cookies, soup/chili/stew, pasta? Testing regular kitchen cookware vs cast iron? Just let me know.

Sewing: I have the rest of a wardrobe all planned out (green wool jersey dress et al.), but one thing I have never done with a home sewing machine is work with leather. I have a simple handbag pattern and some scrap leather and want to experiment with how this will work.

Anything else? We’re open to all sorts of questions and ideas. We’re here to serve you guys – anything that will complete the following sentence is up for grabs:

“You know, I’ve always wanted to learn how to …………………..”

Go for it! Leave your ideas and questions in the comments or send me an email at: aunttoby@kitchencountereconomics.com

As the kid says in the old New Yorker cartoon from the 1920s, while poking dubiously into a plateful of something set in front of him, “I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.”

It’s not that your dear Aunty does not believe in being organized, or having goals, or even of making lists. I just think that making lists that stretch out aimlessly to a distance of what actually constitutes YEARS has a built in failure factor. The thing that appears to be missing from all of these programs is some sort of moving it back to NOW.

What can I do now? What can I do THIS week and next week and the week after that to get that thing off the damn list?

Your Aunt Toby (and I believe a lot of people are just like me) is really good on what is coyly referred to in golf as ‘the short game’ – getting stuff done now is always easier and actually more satisfying than looking at a whole mess of long term global goals and responsibilities. I once made a list of ‘stuff I want to do’. Better to do stuff I wanted to do now while I still had the health and energy to do it, so I sat down and made this list.

It went on for damn near three pages. Single spaced. Numero Uno was: Learn how to play the fiddle. Guess how many of the rest of the items I got accomplished or even started on?

Yep – zippo. That was 9 years ago. And I’m still taking fiddle lessons and enjoying playing music but I really do feel that I probably won’t be getting around to many of the others. I used to feel bad about that.

The point of making these lists is basically to prevent people from waking up at the age of (insert your lightbulb moment here) and saying to themselves, “Oh, jeeze..I haven’t done anything with my life.” Now, Aunt Toby would never, ever say that to anyone, that they had not ‘done anything’ with their lives. People tend to get caught up in ‘living’ and the stuff they really wanted to do, dreamt of doing sort of got left by the roadside, like so much excess baggage.

And we all tend to cling to our baggage.

Aunt Toby has put a LOT of thought into this whole thing – I am at the age where the horizon in front of me gets a whole lot shorter every single day. What I concentrate on now is this: what is it that is going to make me feel good about me? What is it about me that drives me nuts and makes me feel bad? Everyone is different. For some people, it’s the feeling of being out of financial control, not knowing what they’ve got, being in debt and not seeming to be able to change that. For other people it’s the seemingly endless ability to procrastinate. For others, it seems to be this ability to not be satisfied no matter what they do, where they live, what their circumstances are, or having the fear of taking risks so they do nothing.

For Aunt Toby, it’s the ability to start all sorts of projects that would never, ever get finished. Here is a technique (and I don’t know where it comes from, otherwise I’d give credit where it is due) that I use to organize ideas, thoughts, projects, goals, etc. in a way that breaks them down into chunks that I can do in the short term, in short bursts of ambition (my ambition tends to come packaged that way), and I seem to be able to get more things completed this way.

And that, my friends (as John McCain and Martha Stewart would say, if they were doing this together) is A Good Thing. I always feel better when I can tic one of these items off the list because I know I am moving forward, an important part of the thing is getting done, and I don’t feel like some sort of slug.

I call this technique: The Thanksgiving Dinner Method (you can call it whatever you like). Think about it this way: When we face some huge family holiday dinner thing, we have one goal in mind. Get everything on the table hot, in the bowls or platters, ready to go, AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME. That requires thinking through the problem in this way: Where am I going and how am I going to get there? In the Thanksgiving Turkey illustration, where I’m going is: table all set, and turkey done/sliced/plattered, veggies cooked and in their bowls, salad made, etc. etc. ) and the thought process for how I’m going to get there is this:

1) What takes the longest – if it needs to be all ready and on a platter at 4:00 p.m., when does that have to get put into the oven?
2) What’s next longest and when does that have to get put into the oven (if it’s baked potatoes, I can tell you that in a 325-degree oven, they take a lot longer than they do usually – trust me on this one)?
3) Do I have room in the fridge for a big bowl of salad? If so, then I can make that as soon as I put the turkey in and put that in the fridge. Depending on the time of the year, I can also make it, seal it up and put it out on the deck in the shade or something.
4) When do I start the veggies? If I’m scheduled to dish up at 4:00 p.m., I’d better have the water at the simmer by 3:45 so that they can be done, drained, and in a dish ready to get out on the table in the right time.

So, what does this have to do with your own list which has been staring you in the face for a while and about which you feel rather poorly?

Let’s go back to the number one item on my old list: “Learn to play the fiddle.” Now, Aunt Toby knows herself pretty well – I’m no good at all whatsoever at learning how to do things from books or tapes. I definitely require hands on demonstration, a little bit of coaching and harassment and so on. So, for me that process started as: Find a teacher who is willing to work with beginners. After several frustrating weeks of working with a guy whose experience of beginners was in working with children under the age of 10, I changed that goal to “Find a teacher who is experienced at working with adult beginners.” Whole different ballgame, that was and I found my teacher through contacting a guy who had a radio program of traditional music.

You see, it is not enough to setting down goals – it’s what is going to work for you in terms of how you can achieve those goals. Another example — what I really wanted to do originally was learn to play the Uillean Pipes (sometimes referred to as ‘parlor pipes’), which are the small pipes from Ireland, not the big bagpipes that most of us are familiar with from Scotland). Could I buy a set? Yep – over the internet you can get anything. I asked all over the place for contacts for a teacher for Uillean Pipes – nice try. The closest person at that time is 3.5 hours travel away – one way. I knew there was no way I was going to achieve THAT goal with that sort of barrier. Finding a fiddle teacher was going to be a lot easier – and it was – so that made achieving the goal a lot less taxing for me. It’s got to be convenient. Am I disappointed in myself that I’ll never play the Uillean Pipes? Only a little bit – but a lot of the music itself that is played on those pipes are tunes that I can play on my fiddle – so I’m a pretty happy camper.

Another on-going goal I have is health-related. Aunt Toby hates, hates, hates socalled “New Year’s Resolutions” – they just do not work for me. I don’t even believe in ‘Doctor’s Office Resolutions” – I used to leave my practitioner’s office feeling that she’d hammered me – again – with a list of stuff she wanted me to do about my weight, my exercise, life in general, my medications yadda, yadda, yadda. And I KNEW what I needed to do. And I KNEW that she was right. But I always kept putting off the exercise and other stuff because it just was not convenient to make those changes. So, for years, every six months, I’d go back to my practioner and my cholesterol did not go down, I did not get the exercise, and I ended up feeling like a slug and a failure (yes, I realize this is shocking to read but I’m not a superhero). I also felt somehow I was letting everyone down – and not holding up my end of things for some reason (I’ll have to examine that at some point).

I used the Thanksgiving Turkey program with that, too. I have to go see my practitioner every six months so that she can balance my meds and check my lipids anyway, so I know that I’ve got six months to get the turkey done. And that turkey is: regular exercise. And I know that I have to work that back to right now – this week on an every week basis. I am really no good at exercising at home except that the DH rigged a platform on a treadmill in the basement so that I can put a laptop on it and can do email, blog, etc . while I am walking (you will start to notice a trend here..). I also check the next week’s weather to see if things will be decent enough for me to ride my bike to work (sorry, I do draw the line at riding when it is absolutely awful but that has to do with safety issues). On the days when I can’t ride, I cheat. I carpool in with the DH and I have him drop me off at a point about 20-25 min. walk from where I work. Once I get on my bike or I’ve been dropped off, I’m stuck – I’ve got to get to work, so I have to get the exercise. In other words – make it convenient to do it..or make it really inconvenient to NOT do it. But in the end, it all comes back to working that goal back to right now – this week. That way, the goal does not get away from you and stretch out and out and out until you feel you aren’t getting anything done on it.

What are you going to do this week that will move that goal forward? Research resources where you can take lessons or classes in Mandarin Chinese or Taiko drumming or ballroom dancing and make a phone call to register? Call and make an appointment to have your doctor look at that funny spot on your cheek that is waking you up at night because you are afraid it’s cancer? Take a walk at lunchtime to take care of private banking and get some exercise? Research whether your local area has any musical organizations that you can join? Call your local school district to see if they need volunteers to come help tutor kids in reading and math?

Doing one thing that moves your goal forward is actually better for you and reduces your stress a lot more than making a huge list that you can’t see over the top of. Because in the end, the goal is NOT to make ourselves feel bad because we aren’t doing what we want or should be doing – it is finding ways so that we can. And that makes us feel good.

Much better.
(turkey photo courtesy of tm22)

No, that photo at the top is NOT Aunt Toby’s freezer, though there are moments when I gaze into mine and have the same feeling like I’m going to be climbing into it, not knowing what the hell I’m going to find. Do you have that feeling too?

Even when you stock up, and even if you know one week later that you bought chicken on sale, cut it up, packaged it and put it into the freezer, would you know how much you really have and when you put it in there. How about a month later? How about 3 months later?

Are your eyeballs glazing over (and not from the cold air, either – you can shut the door to the freezer now..)?

Aunt Toby is as guilty of ‘lack of inventory management’ as the next person, perhaps more so since I have this really deep seated belief in socking stuff away for the winter. So, I have more stuff there that I can’t identify, which makes me very grouchy indeed. And I’m going to cure that one RIGHT NOW.

One of the things that defeats people with freezer management is that a lot of us have advanced cases of ‘I know I’ve got xxx in there someplace, but I don’t know where’. So, when we want to find that, we are faced with basically emptying out the freezer until we come to a package that sort of looks like what we think ground meat or ham hocks or whatever it is should look like. At the same time, we all tend to pick from the section closest to us and if we come up a winner, well, if there is the same thing at the back of the freezer (or the bottom, depending on whether you have an upright or a chest), we are not going to find it. And eventually, guilt or a major family dinner or extra people arriving or whatever causes us to eviscerate the freezer to find the rest and…dang, freezer burned meat (or veggies or fruit or whatever)…again. And you throw that away because freezer burned meat just is very unappetizing (Aunt Toby actually advocates trimming off the freezer burned stuff and cooking it anyway, especially if you can do chicken cacciatore or stew or something like that; sauce hides all sins).

So, here is what Aunt Toby is going to do: Using my fairly dormant (but pretty well developed at one point) skills at taking inventory, I’m going need a couple of things for this:

1) Containers – I figure whatever foam or other coolers, wash baskets, heavy cardboard boxes, etc that I can find and I’m going to label them: beef, chicken, fish/shellfish, veggies, fruit, prepared meals(because I’ve got a whole whackload of chili in that freezer..I know that because I see it every time I open the door. Do I take any out? Nyet.)
2) Indelible markers
3) Heavy Duty Freezer bags
4) Grocery Plastic bags (or plastic tubs or whatever storage I can find easily)
5) Garbage can
6) Pail of hot water with a little bit of soap in it, a sponge and paper towels
7) A helper (if you don’t have a live in helper, find a friend and offer to do this for them too)
Inventory Sheets that look something like this:
Location/Shelf……..Item……Weight……Date Purchased……………..Took out

Right now, I have no clue as to when anything got purchased, but when I get new things, I can put that in. Also, for things that I took out of a bigger package, and broke down into smaller packages, how do I know how much is there? Well, I always repackage into meal-sized chunks, so I know that I’d be looking at a pound of meat anyway. If you can estimate by feel, then you should heft the packages and mark them accordingly. If not, find or borrow a scale.

So, here we go – I’ve got my boxes arranged around me and I reach in and the helper and I start pulling things out , undoing the wrapper if we have to take a peek and putting them into the boxes: chicken goes here; beef goes there, the chili and chicken soup and enchiladas go into the box marked ‘prepared meals’. Anything that is a disaster goes into the garbage. Anything like a bag of veggies that looks like it could use a new bag gets it.

Once the freezer is empty (and I’m not going to defrost this thing, ok; I accept that I am going to waste some energy here with this), the helper wipes out the freezer and dries it out with paper towels. While he or she is doing that, I am labeling all the packages with what it is and that day’s date and I’m putting everything that is the same item into one of the many grocery store plastic bags I’ve got. Now, my freezer is an upright, but I have some baskets in it. Chest freezers usually come with baskets. If you have baskets, put some sort of label on them because people do pull baskets out to rummage around in them and move things around before they put them back. Once you’ve put on your inventory sheet that the chicken is in basket 1, then as long as you always know which basket is number 1, then you are good to go.

So, now I have all of my stuff labeled, categorized and all lumped together. Someone now packs the stuff back into the freezer and shouts out the number of packages in the basket, plastic bag, tub or whatever you are using, and the location you are putting it in. Such as: “Chicken, 10 meals, shelf one” or “ground beef, 5 servings, basket 1”. And the helper marks that down on the list and you go through everything until you have everything packed back into the freezer.

THEN, what I’m going to do with this information is this:
1) I’m actually going to look at it. What have I got? What don’t I have? Between now and when harvest season starts, what do I have to clean up and make into meals? If I have a bunch of something there that I just don’t eat very often, I have to write myself a reminder – Don’t get that again – that is a waste.
2) I’m going to set this up with another set of columns on the right and keep a running inventory so that as I take something out, I’ll know when I get to the last two pieces or whatever and can put things on the shopping list.
3) I’m going to get a lot more creative with my cooking because dayam…I’ve got some very interesting stuff in my freezer that I need to move out of there.

Freezers are a great tool for food storage, but they really needs to be managed – and the best way I know of to manage them is to treat them the same way that the frozen food department managements in grocery stores do – rotate the stock, pull the old stuff to the front, move it out.
Photo at the top is courtesy of Aleksi Aaltonen
This post can also be found at Firedoglake

As many of you know who read my other diaries, I am someone who believes in the power of language. I believe that words and their meanings have almost a magical quality to change our thinking. Think about the phrase “Homeland Security” – think about what THAT’s done to us.

Aunt Toby is here to announce the opening salvo (remember that detergent?) in my war against any of the words starting with the letters: S-A-V. That word and all of its daughter and sons (saved, saving, savings) have basically lost complete meaning. And here is my reason why: People think that “saving money” (that is, paying less for something you are going to buy anyway, or buying something based on the discounted price) is SAVING MONEY.

What you really DID was “NOT SPEND MONEY” or, perhaps more clearly, “NOT SPEND AS MUCH MONEY.” You did not actually SAVE MONEY. That is: YOU DID NOT TAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE SPENT HAD YOU NOT GOTTEN THE DISCOUNT, AND PUT THAT MONEY IN A BANK ACCOUNT OR A JAR OR AN ENVELOPE UNDER YOUR MATTRESS OR BURIED IN A COFFEE CAN IN THE BACK YARD. In many cases, people are actually encouraged to BUY MORE and SPEND MORE when they are in that situation (the “buy two; you’ll save twice as much” issue).

There is a huge difference between:
– “not spending as much money” on an item and taking the money you did not spend on X and then going out and spending it on Y, and
– “not spending as much money” on an item and then taking that money and “socking it away.”

So, I want us to NOW replace any words that start with the letters S-A-V and replace them with other words:

Socking it away…a little old fashioned, but comes from the period when people would put extra money into a sock in their dresser drawers to save it.
Accumulating
Amassing
Collecting
Hoarding…think of yourself as Smaug – it puts a friendlier face on this word
Putting Aside
Bank, banking
Salt Away
Conserving
Storing

See how this changes your thinking, because you can no longer say, “I saved $xxx on this”; you have to say, “I’m putting $xxx aside,” or “I’ve got $xxx that I’m socking away.” It’s an entirely different mode of thinking, created by using different words…words that have specific and actionable meanings.

Now, to putting words into action: Actually finding out the difference between what you would have paid and what the item/service/whatever is actually costing you and putting it into a “socked away,” “stored” or “banked” state:

First, make sure you have one of the following available to you: a separate bank/credit union account (if you have a credit union available to you, either on an employer or community basis, you ARE a member, right? If you are NOT, then DO NOT GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200 AND DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER WITH THIS ARTICLE UNTIL YOU GET YOURSELF REGISTERED WITH THEM. AUNT TOBY IS VERY FIRM ON THIS: CREDIT UNIONS ARE GOOD THINGS)

Example 1: Buying some THING (item of clothing, appliance, etc.)
1) Do your research – where can you get the best buy?
2) What is the highest price you find vs. the lowest price? Are you going to buy from the lowest price (if “service after the sale” is not an issue for you, then this is easy)?
3) NOW, DO THIS. DO NOT QUESTION IT OR THINK ABOUT IT…JUST DO IT. SUBTRACT THE LOWEST PRICE FROM THE HIGHEST PRICE…AND EITHER WRITE A CHECK AND DEPOSIT IT INTO THIS SEPARATE ACCOUNT OR, MORE EASILY, ELECTRONICALLY TRANSFER THAT AMOUNT INTO THIS SEPARATE ACCOUNT.

Example 2: Taking lunch from home vs. eating out
1) Do your research – how much money on a weekly basis are you spending on eating out? Check all your receipts over a month – you ARE keeping your receipts, right? We won’t consider how much going out to eat costs if you are charging these on credit cards. We’ll just take the strict meal/tip costs.
2) Divide that cost by however many days per month (we won’t get into the whole 30/31/28 thing) this is – if you only eat lunches out on weekdays, then it is 20; if we are talking all month, it’s 30 and then multiply by 5 or 7 (depending on whether you are looking at work-week eating out or everything)– voila – weekly cost.
3) Put that amount of money – real cash – into your wallet or purse in an envelope – to only be used to buy the separate ingredients you will need to make lunch. Now, if you are taking left overs from “big cooks” on the weekend, that is separate, but if, for example, you would be buying a salad every day then it looks something like this:

Salad’s out: $7.50/day x 5 days = $37.50
Now, my salads out have: mixed greens, 4 cherry tomatoes, a handful of nuts and about an ounce of cheese in them. To buy at the grocery store:
Mixed greens – 2 packages should do it = $5.00
Package of cherry tomatoes – 1 pint – has about 30 = $2.50
Cheddar cheese, 1 ounce, $3.00/pound, 5 days = $.94
Nuts, ¼ c. per salad, 5 days, $2.99/#, 4C. to a pound = $.93
Total Cost: $9.37 for the week for the salads; on a per salad basis, that is $1.87
4) So, $37.50 less $9.37 is $28.13. Take that money out of the envelope – don’t use it to buy anything else and put that money into your bank account, a big sock in your dresser drawer or whatever you want, but do not use it for another thing.
5) You might want to think about it in the same way with buying coffee/Danish/breakfast on your way to work or eating dinners out as well. But it all adds up to the same thing.

Example 3: Getting your spouse, BF, GF or SO to cut your hair.
1) We all start the same way: do your research. How much are you spending to get a hair cut now? $10? $20? $50?
2) If you offered money of any amount to your spouse, BF/GF/SO, they would probably be insulted – that does not mean you can’t do something nice for them, like bring them a cup of coffee in bed or buy them a cup of coffee later. Just figure that into the equation.
3) Take the difference between what you would have spent on the service and what it’s costing you. $20.00 minus $0 = $20.
4) Bank that – or, take them out for coffee – a nice cup of coffee locally (not Starbucks) is $1.50. If you want to go fancy, get a spritz of syrup and spend $1.75. Then, bank the difference – really do that. If you get a hair cut once a month, then you are going to accumulate a lot of money. Even if the difference is only $8.00, that is $96 a year. If it’s $18, that is $216 a year.

You can actually accumulate money if you actually put it aside. Just getting discounts on things does not “save money,” nor does “failing to spend” if you are not putting it away. Savings is an ACT – you must actually DO IT and DO IT REGULARLY. Think of this as your Financial Wellness Program – all Wellness Programs only work if a) you actually DO THEM and b) you perform them on a regular basis.

(cross posted at Oxdown Gazette)

Now that the holidays are over, it’s even more tempting. I received one today with the headline: “The one you won’t want to miss: $5.99 and UP!!!”

That’s the sort of thing that, except for the fact that I have never been able to use my store credit card to shop ON their site, would have, in the past, had me with the plastic out, clicking off item after “bargain” item. But, I have taken an entirely different philosophy about my closet these days that I would like to share. I think it works for all genders and certainly makes ME feel that I’ve got one more thing under some modicum of control.

Read this whole thing and then do it, OK – Aunt Toby doesn’t want anyone to break a leg or a clavicle running up and down the stairs to do this.

This is an assignment, so go get your notebook and pen. Draw a line down the middle of a page. Go stand in front of the closet and imagine some particular event that happens to us all – sometimes several times – in a year. Pick events that frankly make you go crazy in terms of deciding what to wear. On the top of the left hand side of the page, write: Event. On the right hand side, write: Outfit. Under Event, write the first thing that comes to your mind. Here is an example:

Event
Funeral – Close Relative
Funeral – Not Related But Close
Job Interview
Wedding-winter
Wedding-summer

Stare into the closet and ask yourself the following question: What do I have there that is appropriate for the occasion?

While everyone does NOT have tickets to President and Mrs. Obama’s Inaugural Ball in a couple of weeks (if you do, Aunt Toby envies you, unless you don’t have an appropriate outfit – as you know, the Rules of Shopping say that when you need something wonderful to wear, all wonderful things disappear, POOF!), but everyone sooner or later has a funeral, a job interview or a wedding to go to as a guest.

Calling hours and funerals are usually events that are announced rather suddenly and leave us anxious in terms of dressing appropriately. Lacking time to do an adequate search and shop for appropriate attire only makes the occasion worse. A call to come in for a job interview can provide the same anxiety; usually you get a couple of days notice, but Aunt Toby once got a call first thing in the morning and was asked to show up before lunch! Weddings usually give the greatest notice but still are fraught with dressing problems.

Men are very lucky: All they need is a good dark suit (navy or medium grey will carry you through all seasons; navy and charcoal grey is great for the winter), a change of nice dress shirts, a couple of good ties, good dress shoes in black (not loafers) and dark blue or black socks. That outfit will carry them through everything on the list plus weekly attendance at your chosen house of worship. Men are very lucky.

For women, a nice blouse and medium colored or dark suit (not black or navy; looks too much like an airlines uniform) or dress (knee length, not too low in the neck, with some sort of sleeve; if you can get a matching jacket, do that) will get you through everything except for the summer wedding. A pretty tailored dress and hat will get women through that and there is the added usefulness of wearing it to work or church and shaming people who show up in blue jeans and tatty tee shirts with their coffee mugs on Sunday mornings.

Now, let’s think about that: For the guys, one outfit focused on a dark suit. For the ladies, one outfit for winter focused on a dark suit or dress and one outfit for summer focused on a tailored dress. All eventualities. All stressful times. All taken care of with one outfit – sort of like that “One Ring to Rule Them All,” right?

So, go back to the email adverts and the closet and ask yourself the important question: Do I or don’t I have that one outfit? Is there anything in those adverts that I am getting that is going to get me that outfit? What do I really NEED? Don’t be seduced by the photography or the pricing or perceived bargain-ness.

If they are showing the sort of clothing on your list, it’s time to think seriously about investing in that one outfit. If not, take the money that you would have spent doing the “click throughs” to the shopping cart and put that money away and SAVE IT.

Go visit places that have good solid clothing of this sort and watch sales (right now is a very good time – in colder areas, get all wool or nearly all wool for suits; if you live in warmer areas, look for tropical weight wools or fabrics with some wool in them – keeps wrinkles down – for suits; dressier fabrics that do no wrinkle or have to be dry cleaned for dresses). Men, if you can get an extra pair of pants with the suit, that is a great investment. If you need a pair of good black conservative pumps or tie dress shoes, the same goes for that.

As you visit, try on clothing and get comfortable with the process, put away more money. When you find the items you need, get them and put them in the closet. Think of this in the same way as buying staples for the kitchen shelf: They are there and ready for when you need them. That way, when you get the call for the job interview, or sadly, for a funeral, you can just reach in the closet, pull out your outfit and you are good to go.

You can get more wear out of the outfit and reduce your per-wearing cost by wearing your outfits to work or religious services or to go out to dinner. But you will have an outfit. You will not have to run around trying to find something appropriate to wear, having to pay more than you had planned on, or perhaps not finding anything that fits.

This way, when you see advertisements or things in stores or magazines, you can ask yourself, “What are my clothing needs for the next six months or a year? Is what I’m seeing something on ‘my list’? Or is it something that is appealing to the eye but has little wearing value in terms of what I need and will eventually end up in the bag for the charity or the landfill?”

NOT buying stuff we don’t need is another way to save money.

(cross posted at Oxdown Gazette)

We’re back in the kitchen (because that is where the food, the heat and the good seats are). We’ve talked about (to review, in case anyone is taking notes here and no – there are no essay questions on the final) saving money, starting a garden, “doing one thing” to improve your situation, and finding out who your network is.

Today, we’re going to grasp the wriggly monster with both hands: The country is in the toilet. Really. The news gets worse every day. It looks as if we are “staring down the barrel of a gun” and “hitting the wall” – simultaneously. (Being able to do both at the same times is going to take the skills and physique of a contortionist, but I digress.)

And now Elliot Spitzer gets out there and basically says that all the money that has been used to bail out the banks and AIG was wasted – like we didn’t know that already.

But he did talk about something that we WILL talk about which is:
“government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation, not in a failed business model…”

What I want you to do, right now (and you know I am all about the “right now”) is to take that phrase “government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation” and replace a couple of words so that it reads like this:

“personal investment in the long-range competitiveness of ME” or “family investment in the long-range competitiveness of family members.”

Recently, I also wrote a diary about the cost of higher education and what it is doing to American competitiveness (you know the shorter version and frankly, our competitiveness is in the shitter too). How are you going to improve your and your family’s competitiveness with THAT?

I’d also like to remind folks about a couple of things from the Great Depression and from bad times more recent: Companies that invested, whether it was for advertising (during the Great Depression) or in developing new products (even when Corning, Inc.’s stock went straight into the toilet, landing finally at $1.80, they still invested in developing new products, which is what keeps them competitive), invariably come out the other end of an economic mess in better shape, more profitable, and more competitive than those who hunker down, cut spending, lay off staff and hope to still be there when the sun shines again.

So, what does this have to do with you, bucky? And your fam? You need to look at yourself and your family as your own little economic unit, your own little company, if you will. And we are in the bottom of all toilets right now. Time to cut costs to the bone? Hunker down? Hope things will get better later?

Mmmmmm, no.

Yes, you can cut your operating costs at home – plastic on the windows, more effective nutrition, not eating out. But you need to, like those successful companies from the Great Depression, invest and position yourselves for the future.

Advertising and Marketing:

Get out there. Let people know you guys are still around and about. Attend school functions; go to your local Chamber of Commerce “get togethers;” talk to the folks at church. Let people know who you are, what you do, how you can help THEM, too. Do good stuff. This goes triple if things at your work start to look shaky. Do not hide. Don’t let anyone hide.

New Product Development:

Companies look ahead and if they are smart, do the stuff that needs doing to position themselves for the next wave up. Corning pays the scientists and engineers to cast their minds into the river of the future and you and your family members can do that too. Talk to your kids – find out their dreams. I know people find it funny when I write: “Be a patriot: take a degree in accountancy,” but it’s true – have everyone think about what is good for the country AND for themselves and talk about ‘how do we get there?” If you have college or education benefits at work – USE them. If they will allow you to use them for other family members, then do so. Explore programs that might be available at your children’s schools – perhaps there is a tech high school and one of your kids is technically inclined. Don’t allow all the chitchat about college to get in your child’s way – go talk to the people and find out what they’ve got and how your kids can take advantage.

Be a creative thinker. CAD-based machinists in my area START at $40,000 a year and our local Vo-Tech high school trains for that. In some areas, they are so hungry for them, the companies will hire them and then pay for college for them to move on in the technical field.

Use the internet, books and tapes from the library and learn new stuff – invest in yourself and in members of your family. Perhaps you will make a mistake – perhaps learning some particular computer program will not help you when we come out of this, but the more you do it, the better your chances of having the products that will sell when we come out the other end of this tunnel. Every product development that Corning does is not a hit “out of the park” – think about this that way.

Another thing is – if you have a small business and need money, you need to look for money. I realize that the meme out there is “there is no money.” Here’s a story:

The DH and I were working on the house once when the kids were little. We’d just gotten started and had paid the first payment to the contractor when I lost my job. I remember coming home that day and realizing that the contractor had picked that day to rip the back of the house off and dig a 15 foot hole in the back for a new basement, which was now filled with water. I put my head on the steering wheel of the car and wept. At dinner that night, the DH and I were in a panic: How could we possibly get a loan from a bank now that I had no job? All that stood between us and the great outdoors was a big blue tarp.

A small voice from a chair next to us piped up, “Ask Grandma and Grandpa – they have money.” Our 5-year old had cut through the muck and mire to the nub of the issue – we just had to find someone with money. There are all sorts of people out there who have money and who have been getting shittier returns from the market for a long time.

Your job, if you need money for a new business, to expand your business, etc. is to find those people. Go back and see: Advertising and Marketing. You need to meet and find people who a) have money to invest, b) are willing to invest locally and c) are willing to invest in YOU and your family to do whatever it is you want to do. Don’t be shy and don’t think they aren’t out there because believe it or not, they are. Just go to the internet and do a search on “angels” – they are out there and they are looking for a better return and better control than they can find in the market. In your case, you need to find your local versions of angels – believe me, they are out there.

Above all – FDR and Frank Herbert (Dune)were right: FEAR IS the mind-killer. Now is not a time for fear: It is a time for thinking and planning and doing.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

You will need: Paper, pencil, and however you keep your contacts going: Roladex, PDA, address book, file cards, the old scraps of paper on the refrigerator with the grease stains on them, etc.

Divide the paper into three columns: People I Know, People the Spouse/SO/Partner Knows, and Everyone Else. You can organize the people alphabetically, by where they work, or what they do or any other way you so choose. But get them ALL down there under some column along with a note for “what they do in life.” It doesn’t matter what exactly they do in life; just that you put it down and if you do not know, then you need to find out.

You can be as blatant or as discrete as you want to be – ask directly, check around, whatever you want, but you need to know a little bit more about this person than merely, “Joe Dokes, phone number.” And here is the reason why: One of these days, something is going to happen to you or the Spousal Unit/SO/Partner/Person Who Shares Your Bathroom Cabinet or your kids or your dog/cat/pet unit and you will want to be able to put your hands on a bunch of people who you can call. Because there is always someone who a) knows more about the issue than you do or b) knows SOMEONE ELSE who knows more about the issue than you do.

“My kid needs braces – do you know a good orthodontist who won’t spout Christian theology while he’s got my son under the wires?” “I need a plumber who can work with a house that was built in 1865 – know anyone?” Or, and in this economy, this is a biggie: “It looks as if my unit might be downsizing, so I need to start making contacts with people who need skills in XYZ.”

I’m not going to get into the “you should have been doing this all along” stuff. Or, “you should have been taking courses at your local college to upgrade your computer skills in CAD or C++” or anything like that. No matter how this reads, I am NOT your mother. But I can tell you that picking up the phone, talking to people, telling them that you need to find someone you can talk to (especially if you are not asking THEM for a job) can yield you big results. Trust me, ask Jane Hamsher. I’m sure she’s got a Roladex the size of a side-by-side fridge.

Once upon a time, as some of you might know, I was an accountant. Not a very good one, mind you, but that is what I made my living at until the DH and I got pregnant for the second time and I realized that if I continued doing the same thing for the next 20 years, I was going to slit my throat and make a very large mess in the bathroom for someone else to clean up. And what I really wanted to do was get into marketing (don’t ask me why I chose marketing).

What right did I have to decide this? Well, given that I’d had a couple of marketing classes in school, that was it. But I did not have any experience with marketing; I did not have a portfolio of anything. In a word, zip.

But I did know the DH (a lucky thing since we were pregnant for the second time) and he knew someone in the publications office where he works and gave me her phone number. I called her and told her I was looking for information about getting into marketing and asked if I could get her coffee and talk to her about it. We met. We talked. She gave me the phone list from the local Advertising and Marketing Society with instructions for me to call the first guy on the list, tell him she’d told me to call and make an appointment. And she also told me to ask him at the end of the talk, “Do you know anyone else on this list who you think would be willing to just talk to me?” She said to work each one the same way – at the end of the conversation, ask that question. If the person said, “No, can’t think of anyone,” then just go back to the list and start again, “Hi, this is …and so and so said for me to call you.”

I went through three people before I got my first job offer. Yes, I Got A Job Offer. Was it the perfect job? No and looking back, if they’d had their heads screwed on straight and had not been in a bind because their marketing director had just left to start her own business, I probably would not have taken it. But they did hire me. And in that job I learned about printing, contracting for design, trade shows, trade show booths, pre-show marketing for trade shows…and a lot of other stuff. And yes, I sent thank you notes to everyone I’d spoken to who had helped me along the way.

This technique works. It’s been written about numerous times in magazines and books (What Color is Your Parachute is numero uno on this).

The thing to remember TODAY, though is this: Shit Happens. One of these days, your kid will need an internship, or your SO is going to tell you s/he wants to change careers, or God help us, your boss is going to call your department in and tell you that the jobs are being moved in 6 months to Duluth, MN. As the book says in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, DON’T PANIC.

The place to start is: Who Do You Know? And then…Who Do THEY Know? You never know who someone will know..or who someone’s kid is in a play group with. Or where someone you met went to camp and oh, by the way, do you know that so and so was at camp with him? Or who someone once worked with who now works for the company you really really want to work with now.

OK? So, take out the paper and start writing and pick…up…the…phone.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

I’m here to point out something that tells me that it’s actually going to be worse for a lot of people.

There were major differences between where and how people lived in 1930 vs. how and where people live NOW, especially with regard to where we get food and how it is produced and how much access people have to actually producing food on their own. I will use the example of New Jersey and “rural” areas and populations as surrogates for having access to and being able to grow your own food.

On an overall basis, in the United States:
1930……………..43.8% of the population lived in rural areas
2000……………..21% of the population lives in rural areas

In New Jersey:
1930……………….3.2% of the population lived in rural areas
2000………………. .2% (That is right…two-tenths of a percent – 17,283 people out of the entire population of New Jersey, live in rural areas.)

Now, just living in a rural area does NOT mean that you either a) are working as a farmer now, nor does it mean that b) you have the skills to do so. But it DOES mean that you have access to land around you that you could either lease, buy, or use to grow food if you wanted to do so.

In terms of the amount of land in farms in New Jersey:
1930………….1,758,000 Acres (In case you are wondering, this IS where the name “The Garden State” comes from. New Jersey was the market garden for New York City for a very long time.) The average size of a farm was 69 Acres, which is an indicator that there were a heck of a lot of extremely small, individual farms.
2000……………805,682 Acres and the average size of a farm is 85 Acres..still a lot of small farms around.

In terms of the percentage of land in farms in New Jersey:
1930……..36.6% of land was in farms
2000……….17%

So, what happened to all the rest of that land? Think: Sprawl. Malls, parking lots, retail and housing development in all the counties that snuggle up to New York City, with all the rural activities going on in the counties much farther away.

Something else to think about is sheer “skills of living” – for the last 40 years, the American Consumer has been encouraged to…well, consume. Not “make,” “grow,” “fix,” “repair”…just go out and buy. In 1930, there were still several generations of adults around who knew how to do those “make,” “grow,” “fix,” “repair” activities, whether they lived in rural areas, or had learned them in their youth and had moved into the urbanized areas, but they still knew how to do those things and survive.

How many people who do not live on farms do you know who know how to do: carpentry, plumbing, welding, clothing repair, shoe repair, glass and window repair, electrical work, grow and process foods, etc.? If you had to sit down and write down ten things you know how to make, grow, or fix…how many could you write down? If you had to write down what would happen to you and your family if: you lost your job, lost the house…would you know what to do? Where to go? Who could help you? Who would be willing to help you?

It might be a good exercise to go through … sooner than later.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

Right about now, between McCain’s totally spinning out of control (on a personal and on a campaign basis); Palin “going rogue”; banks NOT doing what Paulson promised they’d do with their bailout money, and winter coming on, it’s going to be easy to just throw up your hands and say, “I can’t cope – there is nothing I can do – I’ll just end up sitting in the dark, freezing to death, starving.”

There are a lot of things out there that none of us can control. None of us is going to be able to go to Congress, lock the doors and refuse to let them have access to the bathrooms until they hold Paulson and the financial community accountable.

Ok? Get used to it.

But – on an individual and family basis, as I have written here before, there are a whole lot of things we can do. The problem is: which corner of the elephant do you sink your teeth into first?

As Curly says at the top (God, I love that film), “one thing…just one thing” – just pick one thing and take a good long hard look at that and see where you can make changes.

I’ll use myself as one good, sinful example: in many areas of my life, I have no idea how much stuff I’ve got or where it is. So I end up doing things like: buying another pair of black pants, another pair of black pumps, another size 8 set of knitting needles, etc. I also do things like when I see a sale on something I like, I tend to buy a bunch of it. I must come by this one naturally because when my father died, we found six pairs of darned (and redarned and redarned) socks in his drawer and elsewhere in his chest, 32 pairs of brand new, in the packages, beautiful wool socks that he’d bought because they were a great price and goodness-only-knows-when-I-might-run-out. Sort of socks as savings account.

Now, I have this problem all over the house, and it really is quite overwhelming and makes me feel guilty and stupid and out of control. So, what I did was PICK ONE THING: the stupid knitting needles (hey, I like to start small – the black pants thing is just too over the top – I’m really afraid of finding out how many pairs of extra black pants I have that I am not wearing). I enlisted the DH’s help (easy to get him to help get things organized) to run around the house, look in every odd paper sack, knitting bag, etc. and find all the odd needles. I happened to have saved a couple of those ‘in-notebook’ zip pencil holders and I organized them and the other notions and oddments (hey, so I have a collection of 12 tape measures – whose business is it?) and put them into a three ring binder that I put on the shelf in the room where I (shudder) keep my sewing machine, my fabric (another project), and other craft stuff.

So, how is taking an hour of an afternoon to get this one thing organized a thrifty thing to do?

Well, I now KNOW (really and truly know because I also wrote down the numbers on a 3×5 card and put it into my wallet) that I have no excuse to buy any knitting needles ever again..unless I want Size 0 or Size 1. So I have no excuse to spend money on that at all. I’m on the knitting needle diet – sort of like being a diabetic only with knitting needles instead of refined carbs – never again. When I added up all the additional pairs of size 8s (and 7s and 6s and 5s) that I’d bought (these babies are not cheap – we’re looking at $6-$7 a pair) because I’d forgotten I had them or couldn’t find them, I was looking at almost $100. Wasted money.

So, how to pick “just one thing”? Just look at where your money goes and pick one activity in your life that is costing you money and change what you are doing and how you are doing it. It might require organizing it, like I did with the needles (and desperately need to do with my closet), or it might require rethinking the planning (like cooking on weekends or using the grocery store circulars to do the shopping or getting up 15 min. earlier to make yourself lunch to take to work).

But it will do two things: first and most important, it will make you feel that at least in this one area of your life, you have exerted control, made it better and made it more workable, and secondly, it will save you money. It will not take you a tremendous investment of time and probably no investment of money at all. The first time is a little bit crazy, but it does get easier – just pick one thing and do that – start big, start small, but get started with one thing … and then move on to the next.

Here’s a few of the “one things” that I changed that got us more knowledgeable, organized and saved us money:
1) Sat down with the DH and the grocery store ads on Sunday and decided what we wanted to eat on a weekly basis.
2) Made it family policy that when the DH picks me up from work, we go home immediately instead of running errands which can lead us to go out to eat. Eat at home and then decide if going out to do errands is worth it or if they can be done at lunch, consolidated at the weekend, etc.
3) Looked in the freezer to see exactly how many pieces of chicken we had. At this rate, we don’t have to buy chicken, no matter what the bargain price, until Spring ’09.
4) Looked at myself in the mirror and decided that I really look awful in white blouses, thus eliminating the urge to purchase any even though they are being flogged in the fashion press.
5) Figured out that if we could get paste tomatoes for less than a certain amount of money, it would be worth it to can them; otherwise, not worth it (except for the whole sodium thing – but that is a quality issue).
6) Looked at the list of charities that we’ve been supporting and made some decisions in terms of what is really important to us as a family.

Don’t feel overwhelmed; just make your own list and start with one thing at the top and do it. Just one thing. (Thanks, Curly)

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

A big part of the problem is that the whole concept of “being thrifty” got thrown out the window in about 1982 – that’s as close as I can come to a date when certain people — who before could not put their hands on a credit card for love, money, their first born or anything else — all of a sudden became a “desirable market.” The reason I know this is that when the DH and I were young, foolish and early married, we couldn’t get a credit card despite two jobs that together earned us $25K in 1979.

By 1985, when I was working at a different job and also serving on the loan committee of my company’s credit union, we were packaging “credit card consolidation loans” for people already in the hole (and taking away all their cards except for Sears so that they could get a new furnace if they needed one).

But, I digress — before this period, there were a lot of people out there who had “thrifty skills.” Yes, there were folks like the grannies who were washing and saving plastic bread bags. I don’t see that really as thrift – that’s recycling. Thrift was knowing that buying your lunch out was a big mistake. Thrift was knowing that buying crappy clothes and shoes was NOT a good way to go.

What happened to that? Well, besides the whole “loose credit” thing (and we know what that has done to us), what also happened was: Walmart, Payless, Target, H&M, etc. etc. all around the world. It is not just us here in the US of A who have been seduced away from thrift…but people all over Europe as well. The engine that serves all of those “cheap goods at cheap prices” is all the manufacturing that takes place in places such as China, Vietnam, so called American Samoa, etc. And we won’t go into here the effect of having that engine out there…and not within our national borders any longer. Suffice it to say that finding an American made pair of leather shoes is a chore.

So, what is thrift in today’s “buy and throw away” environment? We won’t get into your 401K (which looks as if it’s on life support at the moment – we all have this issue). Let’s look at the actual stuff of daily living.

Rule 1: Think of yourself as a diabetic: plan how you are going to put things into your mouth that will nourish you and get you through the day…and do it ahead of time. Diabetics do not walk out of the house and, on an adhoc basis, purchase stuff as they go along. The ones I know plan out and take stuff with them to work, school etc. They are not at the mercy of whatever coffee shop or restaurant happens to be out there inviting them in when they feel hungry.

How to put this in motion and what makes it thrifty: If you are single, this is not so easy. This is an opportunity to get together with friends, do some planning, buy stuff in bulk, cook it up, put it in the fridge and be ready for the week (and how great is that).

This works the same way for families as well: once a week, sit down, actually discuss “what do we want to eat this week,” make out the shopping list, buy, cook or package, and get ready for the week. Yes, it takes time away from watching tv and football and going out drinking with your friends (unless you want to combine drinking with your friends with cooking, which is actually a great idea). But it saves time and stress and money.

The last time I bought a take out salad that had cheese and nuts in it, it cost me $7.50. Trust me, you can do this from ingredients that you buy at the store for a whole lot less and you will eat better; you will have control over what you eat, how much you eat, etc. I used to spend about $50 a week on lunches and coffee. I don’t spend that any more. That money goes into the bank and accumulates.

That, my friends, is thrift. It is worth your while to do it and it puts money in your pocket (or keeps money from jumping out of your pocket and into someone else’s pocket). Thrift – it’s the new black.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)