Worms!

Tonight, for my birthday, I went to a workshop put on by the Town of Cary about composting, and specifically, vermicomposting - that's worms!

I didn't really look into the class too much before hand, but once I got there I realized that not only would we learn all about compost worms, but we would get to make our own worm compost bin to take home...including a half-pound of worms! AND! This was all free!

So, now we've got a little worm bin in the kitchen with a half-pound of worms chomping away. Hopefully within six months or so, they'll have grown and multiplied so much that they outgrow their box. At that point, they should be eating pounds of food scraps each week. We shall see, though.

Just Get Started

I'm in the middle of reading a new e-Book called "Your Custom Homestead: Awakening a Fresh Vision of Homesteading." The synopsis is:

Contrary to popular belief, a homesteader doesn’t have to be someone who lives on hundreds of acres with the perfect red barn and white picket fence.

Modern day homesteaders come in all shapes and sizes-
■They live in apartments in the middle of the asphalt jungle.
■They reside in suburban neighborhoods with minivans.
■And you might even find them on the outskirts of town on just a couple of acres.

Your Custom Homestead will take you through a 21-day process of moving closer towards your homesteading dreams, no matter where you may live.

So far, it's a good read. One of the main points that I've reached so far, and one that has really started to resonate with me, is that you don't have to and you shouldn't wait for the future to happen. You should MAKE the future happen, and do it NOW!

This idea is one that I have been thinking about for a while now. It's a theme I've run across in various situations, but the one that comes to mind has to do with peach trees.

I've got three peach trees in 3-gallon pots. This sounds ridiculous, but to make matters worse, I've had them in these pots for about three years now. Each year I've had to prune them heavily to keep them small enough so that the pot size doesn't kill them outright. Of course, this means that they aren't flourishing and have never flowered. Why don't I just plant them in the yard?

Well, I haven't wanted to plant them because I don't want to have to leave them behind "when we move to our forever home." That's an example of waiting for the future instead of making it happen. Firstly, how long will it be before we move? Secondly, how do I know that these peach trees will even be a variety that I love and want to put effort into at our forever home? Thirdly, and perhaps most realistically, wouldn't I rather use these trees as a learning experience now, when I have the time, so that when we ARE at our forever home I can raise peaches the right way without wasting time?

Good, healthy peach trees are so readily available that there is no reason to let these unknown, stunted trees hold me back. I can use them to learn about pruning and proper care, then when we do get to our forever home, I'll be ready to hit the ground running so to speak with the knowledge of how to do it right.

Anyway. That's how I'm feeling about things these days - don't wait for the future. Just get started now!

$40 Wheelbarrow Upgrade

In the past, whenever I needed to use one of our wheelbarrows (we have two), the tire would always be flat. Normally, this isn’t an issue if you’re just moving some rose bush cuttings or something. When you start moving heavier stuff like dirt, it starts to matter.

So last summer, I finally replaced the tubes in both our wheelbarrows. I wouldn’t say the tubes are cheap, but it wasn’t too hard of a job and worked wonders toward wheelbarrow satisfaction.

Then, after one load of gravel this morning, I ended up with this:

And this wasn’t any small little leak; it was flat as could be. I looked and couldn’t find a hole or anything, so I figure that when I was moving around the gravel, I must have turned it just right and popped the valve off the tube. Who knows. I haven’t taken it apart yet to see what’s wrong.

So, in the interest of getting back to work, I picked up one of these beauties:

It’s a $40 Flat-Free tire. It’s a solid tire made from very dense foam-rubber that’s really more toward the rubber side of things. It’s really really nice and I’m actually way too excited about it. The wheelbarrow itself wasn’t cheap and it’s been a real workhorse. Its wheel was definitely the weak spot and now that’s fixed. I loaded this thing up with hundreds of pounds of gravel all day long and it never complained. The flat free wheel doesn’t bulge under weight which means that even when full of stone, you can pivot it on concrete. Try that with a pneumatic tire and you’ll twist the tire off the wheel. Note that in the second photo, the wheelbarrow is full of gravel – hundreds of pounds.

My only complaint is that the new wheel came with a grease fitting in the middle where the axle goes. Firstly, this is a great idea and it should really help out. But, the grease fitting was completely worthless quality. The fitting was loose. I tightened it, but then it pointed directly inward toward the wheel wall – couldn’t hook up the grease gun with it like that. So I started giving it some grease even though it was loose. Then the little spring loaded nib of the fitting fell off. It was apparently screwed into the other piece and it just came out. The spring fell out. Then, I couldn’t get the little screw-in piece out of the end of my grease gun! I grabbed it with my pliers, but the tip of my pliers broke off. Arg! I finally got it out and just removed the whole grease fitting. Autozone sells them and I’ll put my own back in there so that I can grease the axle. Wonderful idea, but awful follow-through.

Big Change

Well, due to quite a few reasons, we decided to move Oliver from his preschool into another preschool. Although all that led up to it took a while, the actual transition happened quickly and was very hard on Oliver and us.

Our whole house was stressed out (Around the same time, Oliver started having possible seizures) and nobody was very happy. It was clear that he wasn't happy at his new school and every morning I had to pry him off of me crying and begging me not to leave him. It made it so much worse to know that I was leaving him so that I could essentially come home and do nothing. Also, he was thrilled to leave school everyday whereas before it was always an effort to get him to leave. In short, he was just plain unhappy and was not our happy-going wonderful little boy that he always has been.

So a week ago, we decided to just go for it and pull him out of preschool. Even though I've been unemployed, we've never wanted to take him out of school because he loved it so much, and we didn't want him to "lose his spot" in case I did find work. But, we had pretty much decided that whether he stayed in school or not, he wouldn't be staying where he was. So we took him out and now he stays at home with me.

Short term, this is saving us almost $1000 per month. That's serious money. Also, my hope and plan is to end up in a situation where I can be working from home for a while and continue to keep him here. Then, when I have an opportunity to get paid work, we will be in a position for Kati to quit her job and stay home with him. We aren't planning on sending him back to school, but of course things change. I guess I should say that we are hoping very much that we won't have to send him back to a school.

We truly are seeing this - as sudden as it was - as the very first step in finally realizing the lifestyle and household that we've been working so hard toward for almost 5 years. We had always told ourselves that once we're out of debt, one of us will stay home with him. Well, we aren't out of debt yet, but the whole reason for getting out of debt was so one of us could stay home. So, now we're presented with an opportunity to do that. Even though it wasn't exactly like we planned, one of us can start staying home with him immediately and we'll figure things out from there.

So, how's it working out so far? Wonderfully. Even the first day of staying home, he was so much happier. We were both much happier and less stressed out too. So far, Oliver and I have put together a house cleaning schedule and are sticking to it, we've figured out the schedule for preschool story-time at the library and plan on going to that, and we've got lots of ideas of fun stuff we can do during the weeks. Oh, also, I can be present for all of his therapy sessions so that we'll have some idea of what's going on with that.

Food Preservation

In the past week or two, we've been experimenting with preserving some food. First, Papoo gave us ~3/4 of a bushel of pears and a grocery bag full of muscadine grapes - both grown at his house.

Also, Kati's mom gave us an old Ronco food dehydrator.

I sliced up some of the pears and dried them out in the dehydrator. They dried well, but they weren't really my thing.

Then, I picked up some Ball jars and we gave canning a try. I made grape jelly (which we go through a lot of due to all of Oliver's PB&J Waffle sandwiches). And we made Pear jam and Pear-sauce. We still had a great many pears left!

Then, we picked up half a bushel of Honey Crisp apples. We canned 10 pints of apples slices and currently have a batch of delicious smelling cinnamon apple sauce ready to be canned.

Paying off Debt: Learn to Do It Yourself

One very successful way that we're helping ourselves pay off debt is that we've more often been choosing to do things ourselves rather than buy an item or hire a job done.

One significant example is that a little over a year ago our heat pump stopped working.

I had a contractor give us an estimate for replacing the system - let's just say it was five to six thousand dollars. I talked to someone I worked with and he suggested I just do it myself. Do it myself? You can't do that, can you? You have to have a license and all that!

Well, turns out, you can order all the parts online and they come pre-charged with the refrigerant (the stuff you need a license for). You can just put everything into place, run the pipes and open a valve to release the refrigerant. Of course, I'm simplifying it here, but it's really not that bad. I managed to get it all done over the course of a about a week of evenings.

Best part - after the tax credits for the new system, we got it all done for under $2000. That's what I call worth it! Then, the new system saved us money on our electric bill to the tune of $30 per month! Wonderful!

How We're Paying Off Debt

Maybe you're sitting there, consumed by, or completely ignoring, the piles of debt that surround you. So, how do you get to where we are — actively paying off debt, living on a budget and hopeful for the future? Well, the first step is to STOP IT.

Seriously, just stop using credit cards. If you've got credit card debt, the last thing you need is more credit card debt. Take them out of your wallet, freeze them in a block of ice, bury them in the yard, fling them into the ocean, whatever you have to do to take them out of your life. They can't be an option for you while you're paying off debt. Using credit cards when you have credit card debt only intensifies the problem. So get rid of them. It will take time to rearrange your thinking, but you'll get there. Before long, you'll be used to the idea of not buying things you can't afford, and you won't even miss your (life-stealing, soul-sucking) credit cards.

Figure out how much debt you have. For someone who's never been in debt, this may sound so elementary, but in my experience, we debt-carriers are fairly good at avoidance. Recognize that the problem isn't just going to go away, and you WILL have to take care of it at some point. You can either deal with it now, when you are up-to-date on all of your payments, or you can wait until the debt collectors come calling. It's your choice. We use Dave Ramsey's debt software to keep track of all of our finances. It costs less than $20, and it will tell you in black-and-white what you have to do to pay off your debt and when it will be paid off. Then you just start chipping away at it.

Create a budget. Dave Ramsey's software will walk you through this one as well. The word "budget" is so scary to so many people, but when you're actually living on a budget, it's so freeing. Now that we have money allocated to various purchases, I never feel guilty when I'm spending money (you know, unless I'm knowingly blowing our budget for an item, ahem). If I budget money each month for a haircut, I know that the money is there for when I want or need to get a haircut. I don't have to fret about the cost; it's built in and there for the spending.

Get rid of stuff. This can be big or small, but getting rid of it can go a long way. If you've got a car payment and you can make do with one car, get rid of a car. We had two car payments, and my husband decided to sell his car. He made enough on it to buy an old, but functional, pickup truck. It's transportation, and it's helpful when we're working on home renovation. AND that's $350 per month more we can put toward debt. If you've got a bunch of old books, sell them online (we made a couple hundred dollars that way). If you've got baby clothes you don't need any more, have a yard sale or take them to a consignment shop. You'll get rid of the "stuff" clutter that is so paralyzing, but you'll also make a little bit of money that you can put toward an emergency fund and/or put it toward chiseling away at debt.

Pay with cash. We've actually gotten out of this habit (tsk, tsk), but it's so much easier to stick to a budget when you commit to using cash for everything. There's no "going over" budget when you only have cash. A trip to the grocery store means carefully considering every item you're putting in  your cart, because you don't want to be that person who doesn't have enough money at the checkout. There's no "extra just in case" with cash — you either have enough money or you don't. It makes us much more conscious of every penny, and it's a surefire way to stick to a budget.

Open multiple accounts. This might seem random, but it's really worked for us. We have a bill payment checking account and a grocery/gas checking account and an account that I'm putting some money into for a birthday trip in March. We transfer $100 per week for groceries and $60 for gas onto our grocery/gas debit card, and we take out cash for the smaller amounts that we put toward other expenses (like haircuts and eating out). Then we ignore the rest in the bill payment account. Our bills are all set up to autopay, so they get paid and any extra we have in the account stays in the bill payment account. It helps not to see a big number in our "spending money" account, and we never run out of money to pay our bills.

Be in it for the long haul. If you have thousands of dollars of debt (like we do), recognize that this isn't going to be a quick fix. You'll hit bumps in the road. You'll have unexpected expenses. You'll want to scream because everyone you know goes out to dinner every single night and you have to eat at home. You'll want to throw things because everyone else seems to have life so easy and it's only hard for you. Believe me — many of the rest of us are right there with you. (And, I truly believe that those friends who aren't making any more money than  you but are spending like millionaires are hiding dirty debt secrets. It will catch up with them. Karma. Right?) For those unexpected expenses that WILL come up, try to build up $1,000 or $1,500 in an emergency fund even before you get started paying off debt. That way, if your car needs repairs, you won't have to stop making payments toward debt, you can just roll with the punches.

Set goals for the future. I can't tell you how much money I blew for the instant gratification of having a new thingamajig. You've got to change your mindset by setting goals for yourself and your future. Do you want to buy a house? Quit your job? Have kids? Own your own business? What are your motivations for getting out of debt? Keep those things in mind when you spend money. Think of money as a tool and make informed decisions about how you spend it. Do you want to spend your life working so that you can pay off things you have forgotten about, didn't like that much or have discarded already? No one does.

Remember, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. We had close to $100,000 in debt when we started trying to dig our way out. That's a deep, deep debt hole. It can be discouraging to plug numbers into the Dave Ramsey software only to find out that it's going to take three years to get out of debt. But every day we get closer. And, when it comes down to it, we don't have a choice. We can pay it off now or pay for it later. We're young, we're just starting out — I'd much rather learn to live within our budget now than have this debt catch up with us later.

Disclaimer: Do I need a disclaimer? If you take advice from random people on the internet who are not professionals, do so at your own risk. And check out Dave Ramsey ... dude knows a thing or two about debt.