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Aug 24, 2008    |       7 comments

Frugal Family Fun – Bike Riding

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Before we go any further, I have a proud mommy-moment to share. I was coming home from the doctor’s the other day and saw a child riding a bike near my house. I first thought it was my son, but then I noticed that there were no training wheels. So it wasn’t him. Wait – that’s his helmet. Oh my…it was my son! And he was riding without training wheels!

I parked the car, and yelled to him, “Aren’t you missing something?” He smiled ear to ear. I gave him a hug. I was so proud of him. He had been riding well with his training wheels, but he was scared to try it without so we didn’t pressure him. I guess he wanted to give it a shot, and off he went leaving his training wheels far behind.

All morning yesterday, my son was asking, “When are we going bike riding?” He had to go out again and stretch his bike riding legs. So we went out riding for a few hours and had a blast. That night, he wanted to go out again. He reminded me of Forrest Gump – when he was able to run without the braces on his legs, he ran everywhere. My son now wants to bike everywhere since he no longer needs his training wheels. He is so proud and mom and dad are so proud too. This opens up some great frugal fun since there are plenty of biking trails where we live. All three of us can go out and enjoy them and my son can enjoy his training wheel freedom.

“I’m free…I can go anywhere!”

Sometimes the things that kids say are so cute 🙂

Aug 21, 2008    |       22 comments

Husband and Wife Discussion #2

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My husband said one thing during our camping trip that left me pretty much speechless. It came about after our discussion about a smaller home. He said, “Why don’t we sell everything and start over?”

My silence gave me away. “You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” he said. I was thinking about it. At first glance, it seems pretty silly. There’s no way we’d make a lot from all of the stuff we have and then we’d have to buy new things. No, we couldn’t do that.

I broke my silence, “We couldn’t sell everything.”

“But, we could sell a lot of it,” he said.

By golly, I think he was onto something. In order to downsize our home and simplify our life, we really have to trim out the fluff from our lives. We trimmed a lot during our garage sales last summer, but there is still a lot left. Off hand, I can think of a desk that we really don’t use (except to put stuff on), an extra air conditioner and a cabinet we no longer use because everything was moved into the cabinet I used for the bald eagle collection I sold.

It’s not just the big things, either. My husband sorted through our kitchen and discovered that we have four spatulas, three slotted spoons, three solid spoons and three whisks. Do we need all of them? Nope. But somehow we accumulated them through the years. My guess is that I saw some on sale and bought the extras (I still fight bargain blindness!).

Let’s not forget about clothes. My husband brought up a great point, “I wash the same clothes all of the time – we don’t even wear half of the clothes that we have.” Again, he was right on. I have clothes that I haven’t worn in years, not because they don’t fit, but because I prefer to wear other ones.

I find it amusing that I thought we got rid of a lot of things last summer. Turns out, there is so much more we can sell and it won’t affect our quality of life at all. That’s the thing…I think we were so used to having excess things that it didn’t even dawn on us what was happening. We got so used to it.

My son is excited – we’ll be having another garage sale soon!

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