K.I.S.S.

My total at the grocery store yesterday was $87.36. This is well above my weekly goal of $75 but I stocked up on several items that were on sale, one of them being 10 pounds of ground beef that was about $1 less per pound than I typically spend. I came home and divided it into smaller packages and now have several weeks worth of ground beef in the freezer, which will help me save money in the coming weeks by not spending so much on ground beef. Which takes our grand total left for the month to $529.72.

Now for the K.I.S.S. part of the post. Keep It Simple (Stupid) is one of the mottos of my life and ties into being a spendthrift quite nicely. I don't like paying someone or something (i.e. a machine) to do what I can do for free. Just a few examples are:

*I hang my laundry out on the line as much as possible because I don't like paying the electric company to power my dryer to do the same thing that the sun can do for free.

*We try not to go out to eat often because I don't like paying someone to cook when I can do it for free with inexpensive meal ingredients.

*I choose to keep the lights off during the day because I don't want to pay the electric company for something that can be had for free by opening the blinds and curtains.

*I choose not to have several appliances in the kitchen (mixer, food processor, etc.) because I can do it by hand, thus saving the money on the electricity and the appliance cost.

*I choose to have a garden and grow as much produce as possible so that I don't have to pay someone else to grow it for me.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Each of these cost saving measures are a choice that I make because I'm trying to keep it simple. There are times that I feel it is worth it to pay someone money to do something you yourself can do for free. We do use our dryer during the winter months and rainy weeks because I feel it is more convenient during those times to pay the electricity for that instead of hanging clothes up inside on a rack. During times of illness, business, or just plain tiredness I sometimes feel that it is worth it to pay someone to cook a meal for us. That, again, is a choice.

Sadly, it seems that the simple part of life is slipping away. We have so many time saving gadgets in our life but we seem to be busier than ever. Instead of spending all day boiling water, washing and wringing out clothes, hanging them out, and ironing them we can just throw the clothes in a machine that does the work for us. I'm not begrudging the advancement of technology because it does make life easier, but it doesn't make life simpler. We are now so dependant on the technology that our daily life revolves around it. I've heard the stories, that may or may not be urban myths, about how a key fob for a car wouldn't unlock the door so they fretted about how to get into their car, never once realizing that they could stick the key in the lock and unlock it that way. Or the grandmother who went to visit her granddaughter and remarked about all the dirty dishes that were in the sink and the granddaughter said her dishwasher was broken so she would have to wait for it to be fixed...never once realizing that she could do dishes by hand. Because they never had to do thing the simple way, the simple way to do them never even entered their mind.

Even though I like to keep it simple, I realize that I rely on a lot of the convenient products out there as well. Bread never used to be bought, it was always homemade. There wasn't such thing as laundry soap, dish washing soap, separate shampoos and body washes ages ago. Homemakers made their own household products and there was often a one cleaner fits all things that they made for their daily household and body cleaning needs.

One of my goals in life is to slowly become more and more self-sufficient. A major goal of ours is to homestead someday but that is further in our future. For now it is to start small and get back to the basics. I'll just keep reminding myself "Keep it simple, stupid."