Oh wow

I've talked about how my house always looks like a hoarder house.  Over and over again I clean it out only to find it looking like this a few months later.  I can blame no one but myself for the rooms looking like this.  Do you notice there is no furniture in this room?  Only stuff piled all over the place and my closet office in the corner.  This is supposed to be my substitute living room since the actual living room is my studio space.  About a year ago this room was completely empty.  My daughter had just moved into her own house and taken all her stuff out of here.

A lot of stuff comes into my house but very little stuff goes out.  Heck, I don't even have a full trash can on garbage day.  At most, there will be one bag of trash in the can.  I create very little trash when cooking or cleaning and most of the other stuff gets rescued.  I'm stuffing my house like a strange looking turkey with myself right in the middle of it all.  When someone offers me stuff, I can't seem to say no to it.  Why?  Well, at the time it is offered, I think to myself..... I can use it for this or that so I take it.  Somehow I never seem to get around to using whatever it was I accepted.  I know there are more projects in this room than I will ever be able to complete.  Strange that I have a plastic drawer tower with empty drawers right next to stacks of stuff.

I use a lot of this stuff.... but I don't use it all.  Quite a bit is for my quilting business or my textile art or my charity quilts or my cardboard art.  Some of it is things gathered for a new recycle craft I want to create or for a new art piece.  There's completed quilts waiting to be donated to charity this year at Christmas.  There's art quilts I've made and gotten ribbons on that should be either given to my kids or hung up for me to enjoy.  Hmm... do my kids even want the art quilts?  Would I just be adding to their own pile of stuff? 

There's cardboard boxes with interesting flutes or texture I could use for my cardboard art projects.  There is cardboard furniture in various stages of completion just waiting for me to work on and post the instructions on my cardboard blog.  There is a potty seat that Ladybug hasn't needed for well over a year.  Why is it still here?  Could I be unmindfully hoping it will be needed for another grandchild?

There are 11 window quilts I rushed to get quilted back before winter.  I installed only two and never got around to doing the others.  Probably because I was unhappy about making all of them a full foot too short.  How many years have I tried to get window quilts on the windows?  5, 6, 10?  I believe I took the last one's down in 2000 with intentions of replacing them right away.

It's the rescue of stuff that causes so much of the mess.   (and the stress)  I have good intentions when saying yes I will take it; but, will I ever get around to actually doing it all?  When someone offers me a piece of fabric I immediately think of a quilt it would look nice in so I take it.  My intentions are good.  When I see a cardboard box ready to put into the trash I will notice it has potential in a piece of furniture or an art piece for the wall so I rescue it.  But the box somehow doesn't ever get used.

There is t-shirt scraps just waiting to be made into some new underwear for myself or to make rugs.  There are pillow cases rescued from a friend that are just waiting to be made into dresses for Ladybug.  There are cook books and art books and quilting books that I do use but they don't have a convenient, permanent shelf to live on. 

I've noticed that for the last year or two I've kind of drifted from one project to another without ever completing any.    Time management is the most likely cause although it could be more.  I start projects only to be taken away with work commitments.  The quilting pays the bills so it takes priority over completing a me project.  Once a project is set aside it becomes very hard to get back to it because it gets lost among the piles of other unfinished projects. 

Yes, I know I'm semi-retired from quilting for others.  I don't do nearly as many as I did in the past.  Maybe I should consider not quilting at all for a few months?  I can cut down the bills to bare minimum and get by.  Not comfortably but enough to survive.  It would mean giving up a lot... like the internet and cable and call waiting on the phone.  It would mean cutting back on the laundry and daily showers.  It would mean no air conditioning this summer. 

Umm... I'm not sure that's the way to think.  Let me reverse that.  Maybe I should not do any me projects for a few months and concentrate on just machine quilting?  It would mean the cardboard furniture would not get made.  It would mean not creating portrait quilts or charity quilts or my own underwear, rugs, and window quilts.  It would mean.... Umm, nope.  I can't do that either.  Too much of the way I live depends on my skill of re purposing instead of spending money.

Where is the balance?  How can I continue to be creative with found objects and at the same time keep my house from looking like a hoarder house?  Maybe I should store this stuff in the garage?  Umm... I don't have one.  Maybe in the basement?  Don't have access to mine.  Maybe the attic?  Nope, don't have access to that either.  Under the bed in the guest room?  There is no bed in the guest room.  In a spare dresser?  Don't have any.  How about in an extra closet?  They are all being used.  One is my office, one is stuffed, and the other is for my clothes.  Well, half is for my clothes, the other half is stuffed. 

Ok, I've bored you enough for today.  I have some serious thinking to do while I work on the next quilt.  Just one more thing.  I've been stopping by Jilly's blog for a visit over the last few days.  This morning all I could do is say.... Wow!  She has really cleaned her house out and it looks wonderful.  You should see what she's done with her quilting stash.  Go have a look.



Coupons

I watched a show last night on the learning channel (TLC) that brought back memories and at the same time left me really puzzled by the purchases.  It was a show called Extreme Couponing.  The coupon people on this show bought thousands of dollars worth of STUFF for very little money because of their coupons.  The main thing about using coupons in the show was that the store doubled the value of the coupons.  A 50 cent coupon would become a dollar.  A dollar coupon would become two dollars.  The people spent hours and hours gathering coupons, matching the coupons up to sale items, going through the store to fill up several carts, and then going through the register line.

Let me tell ya, I was one of those who could buy several hundred dollars worth of STUFF for mere pennies if I chose to do it.  I first started using coupons in the 60s when there were coupons and refunds (rebates) almost everywhere you looked and only a few people used them.  Back then the stores gave away stamps that we put into books and traded just like money for things like sheets, dishes, appliances, furniture, and just about anything.  The stamp stores had catalogs of stuff very similar to regular catalogs today. 

Back in those days there were coupons for meat, fresh fruits & veggies, milk & bread, and just about anything needed to eat healthy.  We didn't see convenience foods in the stores back then like we see them today either.  I rarely paid more than 10 cents on the dollar for anything I needed.  Often, after coming home with my goods I could mail off packaging parts and get refund checks sent to me for the items I paid only a few pennies for in the first place.  Sometimes I earned thirty or fourty dollars a week by going through other peoples trash for packages offering refunds.  Many times one package had several refunds that could be had by sending different parts.  A top for one refund, a bottom for another, a weight seal for another, and sometimes just for sending a receipt.

Heck, even the stuff I bought for pennies had free stuff inside.  There were bath towels, hand towels, and face cloths in laundry powder boxes.  Glasses and dishes came inside oatmeal and cereal boxes.   Jelly came in drinking glasses.  Free stuff was given away at gas stations too.  Fill up your tank and you got free silverware or other stuff plus they gave you stamps to put into your stamp books in the same transaction.  Gas was from 15 to 30 cents a gallon back then as well.  Oh to have those days again!  If you got the oil changed in your car you got a coin inside every can of oil.  The coins could be traded for stuff just like stamps.  

Did you know Depression Glass dishes were originally free give away items at gas stations?  They were.  I think the whole "give something free for a purchase" phase came from the original free dishes given away during the great depression.  Now those dishes are worth hundreds of dollars to a collector.  I could go on and on about the free stuff and refunds back then but I don't want to bore you any longer with my trip down memory lane.

Ok, back to the people featured on the show.  I don't know what part of the country those folks live in but what they did certainly can't be done here in Kentucky anymore.  My suspicion is that after the manufacturers see the show; those people won't be able to do their extreme shopping anymore either.  The people on the show really went way beyond what the coupons are intended to do.  One man bought 1,000 boxes of cereal which he got for a few pennies.  A Thousand boxes!  No way can one person eat that much cereal in a lifetime.  He bought 300 toothbrushes.  So how many times would he have to brush his teeth to use up all those toothbrushes?  He bought enough food stuff in one single shopping trip that it would last him 150 years or more if he lived that long.  He said he shops like that all the time.  His garage looked like walking into a mega store.

One woman said she was leaving her stockpile of groceries in her will.  Her kids would inherit it.  She bought 60 bottles of soda and almost 2 thousand dollars worth of other stuff for less than 10 dollars on her one shopping trip.  Now come on!  How many large bottles of soda can one family drink in 3 months?  That's how long it would be before the soda is on sale and coupons would come out again.  Ok, some people drink soda all day every day.  But, how long will 500 boxes of pasta and 300 jars of pasta sauce last for a family of 4?  I don't know about you but that would be way too many pasta meals for me before it gets too old to use. 

It's people, like the extreme couponers on the show, that mess the system up for the rest of us.  Back in the 80s there was a lady named Michelle Easter that went on tv and told of her extreme couponing too.  She started a magazine called Refunding Makes Cents that was filled with the latest refunds out all over the country.  People who subscribed to her magazine could trade refund forms with other people and double, triple, or quadruple the rebates they got from one package.  A package they got for free in the first place.  She messed it up for those of us who only took our fair share.  It was only a year or two later that the refund forms started disappearing because the magazine created so many extreme refunding people.  No manufacturer can continue to operate if every dollar they earn is given out in free items plus refunds too.  They would go bankrupt very quickly.

Not long ago I was challenged to live without my coupons.  I agreed to take the challenge but my neighbor continued to bring coupons to me.  I kept them even though I wasn't using them.  I have managed to live quite well without the coupons.  Well, right before my last shopping trip I decided to have a look at my coupons once more.  There are very few really good useful coupons anymore. 

Out of all those coupons, I came up with only these that were actually usable for my purchases.  The rest were for what I call junk items.  Junk items that most other people don't like either. 

After making out my shopping list and matching coupons to sale items..... I didn't use a single one of the coupons.  I found better bargains on items that didn't have coupons out.   For example the 40 cents off on yeast.  Even if it were doubled to 80 cents the store brand would still be a dollar cheaper than one with a coupon.   Stores here in my area stopped doubling and tripling coupons about two years ago.

If you find coupons that really are on products you use; then for heaven sake use some common sense when using them.  For example let's say you use one roll of toilet tissue per week. (Ok your family might use more but this is only an example, K?)   A year's supply would be 52 rolls or about 13 four roll packages.  If the coupon and sale is out every three months then you only need 3 packages to last until the next sale.  If you bought 4 packages every three months then at the end of the year you would have 16 extra rolls in your stock pile to help with any possible financial crisis.

Here's another example.  Let's say you use about one jar of pasta sauce and one box of spaghetti a month.  How many jars of pasta sauce and boxes of spaghetti would you need for a year?  (12)  The sale and coupon comes out every three months so how many do you need to purchase for a three month's supply? (3) How many extra to buy every three months for building your stockpile of emergency food?  (4) 

Ok, I do know there are people who keep up to 20 years worth of food and water in their stockpile.  That's a lot of money tied up in stockpiled foods that could be lost to a disaster.  I can't help but wonder how many of the people lost all their stockpiled food to flooding out west last year.  How many lost their stockpile of food in the fires that swept across an area a few months ago.  How many stockpiles are buried beneath the mud slides in California right now?  You understand what I'm saying?

So if you are going to use coupons and stockpile stuff..... at least buy and keep no more than you can reasonably use and no more than you can afford to loose due to a disaster.  Keep the money saved so you can replace what you need when you need it.  Use coupons wisely and buy only your fair share.

Ok let me sum this whole post up into four simple words that anyone can understand.

God doesn't like greedy!

In my opinion God does want us to have food stored away; but, only enough to last a little beyond a year's supply.  That's why he created the seasons.  In the spring food is planted and farm animals have babies.  During the summer everything grows and matures.  In the fall it's all harvested and preserved to last until the next fall season.  During the winter we start eating our stored up foods.  Spring arrives and it starts all over again. 

Even God's creatures know to store only about a year's worth of foods.  What would it look like if squirrels kept a 20 year supply of nuts in their tree house?   What would a ant hill look like if there were 20 years worth of  dead bugs saved in it?  How fat would a bear be if it stored up 20 years worth of fat for it's hibernation? 

I'm not putting down anybody's religion.  I'm just stating my own thoughts about what should be stored for the future.  If your religon teaches you to keep more that's ok.  We can agree to disagree.

Ok, blogger is acting up.  It must be telling me to stop type-talking and post already!

Too obsessed

The phone rings and I answer.

Daughter says..... Hi Mom, what'cha doing?

I say.... making garbage.

Daughter says.... Huh?

I say (with a little giggle).....  Sorting things that can be thrown away.

Maybe I'm being a little too fanatic about cleaning my house these days?

Maybe a little too obsessed with organizing and food preserving?

Maybe I'm a tad too worried about knowing where to find the things I need, when I need them?

Maybe I'm just a bit too much into doing frugal cooking again?

Please understand;  I've spent far too many years thinking of the quilting customers first.  Customers came before my own life and family.  This year, for the first time in a lot of years, I actually have time for cooking and cleaning instead of working 16 hour days right up until Christmas day while at the same time telling my friends and family..... I can't.  I actually have time to leisurely create a charity quilt or two.

I firmly believe the more organized my home is..... the better quilter and person I am.  The less time I spend with finding something.... the more time I have for using it.  Which is why I work so hard at trying to stay organized. 

My professional machine quilting career started out innocently enough.  I started my career in a time when very few people wanted their tops quilted by machine.  (1981)  Machine quilting had not gotten the recognition it has today as being a good thing. 

Gradually, over the years, machine quilting started getting accepted and I got better at it.  More customers came to me and my customer base grew every year.  I got busier and busier.  I started telling my friends and family I had to finish the quilts first when someone asked me to spend time with them.  One by one the customers became the focus of my life instead of what's really important. 

I neglected my health.  I stopped doing frugal things.  I forgot about my dreams.  Every year I focused more and more on being a fantastic machine quilter and let my life slip away from me. 

About three or four years ago I began to wake up to reality when my daughter said "Mom, quilting is your life."  It was then I realized not only had I not spent time with my kids for years; but, my grand kids and great grand kids were growing up and they don't know me.  Sure they know I'm Granny but they don't really know me.  

That's when I announced my semi-retirement from professional machine quilting.  I have only 4 customers now.   They bring me enough income I can afford to eat and keep the roof over my head.  I'm eating better without spending a lot.  My health improved immediately.  I'm clearing out a lot of clutter because I want a simpler life.  Not just physical house clutter but mind clutter as well.  I want a life that includes my kids, grand kids, great grand kids, and my real friends. 

To be continued....

Big room sized boxes

I was talking to my daughter a couple of days ago.  Rather, I was complaining about how difficult it is for me to get myself together.  I was telling her how my life seems to be so out of sinc with what I know and what I used to do.  I was telling her how the shows "Hoarding" and "Hoarding, Buried Alive" haunt me.  Most times I watch the shows and think to myself, how can they live like that?  I count my blessing that I don't have to live in a house with garbage everywhere.  Then I look around my house and I feel like I'm slowly becoming a hoarder and feel powerless to stop it. 

I feel like such a hypocrite for type-talking about all the things I do when I no longer seem to do them or get around to doing anything.  Kind of like when someone once told me.... "don't do as I do, do as I tell you to do".   Well, I don't want to be like that anymore.   If I tell someone the right thing to do, it should be because I've done it, am still doing it, and know it works. 

Reading through all my past blog posts, to create the links pages, I saw many of the organizing stuff I used to do then realized just how out of control my life has become.  Some things I've done in the past, very good things, are not being done because I can't seem to get around to doing them anymore.  Let me explain.

I've always been a very organized person.  Yet, right now my house is not organized and it got that way over and over again no matter how many times I organized it.  I've always lived frugally and know tons of ways to be thrifty.  I find myself spending money on things because I can't find the ones I already own.  I've always been a clean person.  These days I find myself throwing up my hands in frustration because I can't clean without doing something else first, then something else before that, then even something else before that.  So much so that I end up wasting time with crafty things instead.  I've always done DIY crafts of all kinds.  The crafts seem to be only an avoidance of what I really need to get done. 

Those who have been reading my blogs for awhile know how difficult it's been for me to keep my house from being overwhelmed with STUFF.  Time and time again I've cleared out things only to find my house piled up again with bags and boxes of STUFF.  There are times when I get so frustrated trying to have a neat and clean house I want to toss absolutely everything away and start all over with a completely empty house.  But.... you know what?  It would probably just get filled up with STUFF all over again.

While talking with my daughter she asked me to describe what the problem was so she could understand what my frustration was all about.  I started to explain it to her.  Light bulb moment!  DUH!  It finally dawned on me what is really causing the problem.  What I told her was.... "It's hard to organize things into pretty boxes under the bed if there's no bed.  It's really hard to group fabrics into organized dresser drawers when there isn't any dresser.  It's difficult to put craft items into nice containers on a closet shelf when there's no closet shelves.  It's hard to organize a pantry stash of groceries when there's no pantry."  You see my problem?  I do finally.  Duh!  Why did it take me so long to realize this?

It's said that all organizing starts with flat surfaces.  A shelf is a flat surface.  A drawer has a flat bottom surface.  A table is a flat surface.  A box, even one under a bed, has a flat bottom surface.  Well, gee whiz, no wonder I can't seem to get organized.  I only have one flat surface in two of my rooms and that's the floor.  Well no wonder I have bags and boxes piled up all over those rooms.  The rooms are like one big room sized box with one flat bottom.  I guess if you look at it like that, it makes sense that everything is organized in there.  Everything is organized into a bag or a box within the big room sized box.  What I really need is more flat surface dividers within the big room size boxes.  Yup, I need furniture and shelves. 

To be continued.....

Stash busting idea

Is anyone looking for ideas to help with their stash busting?  Anyone doing a stash busting report on Judy Laquidera's blog?  How about this one for great stash busting?  Make sheet sets.  It's a great way to use large amounts of fabric.  If you decide later on that you really want the fabric for a quilt you can simply cut up the sheets and make a new sheet set from something else. 

It was after type-talking the other day about how my grandmother used to make her own sheets that it occurred to me, I can do the same thing.  Well, actually, I could have done this many years ago and didn't.  I always felt my quilting stash was just for quilts.  I would buy other fabric for other stuff.  I think much differently these days.  My quilt fabric does absolutely nothing just sitting on a shelf or in a box or in a bag.  It's better to make use of it.  Then when it's done it's work for a while, the fabric can be cut up to become quilts..... just like women did in the older days. 

The white fabric in the picture is actually pieces for my window quilts that I'm finally getting around to replacing.  The cream color fabric will be my sheets and pillow cases.  The burgundy fabric and the leaf fabric will be the trim.  I plan to make some sheet sets from more colorful fabrics too.  I just happened to have more of these fabrics than anything else right now. 

I used white fabric for the window quilts so I have the option to dye them later if I want.   My sheets will be flat instead of fitted.  I could make fitted because I do have a quantity of elastic.  I prefer to make the flat because they are easier to fold and store than the fitted ones.  Flat is also easier to use for quilts later.  I'll use hospital corner folds when putting the sheets on the beds.

I plan on using my fabric stash for other things too.  Lots of other things!  You'll see it right here on this blog as I get more done. 

Plastic bag drying line

There was a time when backyard clothes lines would be seen with bread bags hanging and drying.  You know, back in the days when clothes lines were in every one's back yard.  Not many things came in plastic bags back then but bread did if you bought it.

Well yesterday as I was flash freezing meat I ran out of freezer bags.  Normally I just put the store package inside a freezer inventory bag but this meat came in large family size packages.  I had to make smaller one person sizes before freezing it.

It was only a couple of years ago I had sworn I wouldn't wash and reuse freezer bags.  I've since come to my senses and realized I need to reduce my carbon footprints.  I started washing and reusing my freezer bags a few months ago. 

The last few days I've been drying frozen vegetables and keeping the bags.  I thought, well hmm, the bags are made for the freezer so why not reuse them to package the meat?  I do double bag so these should be fine.  First I should wash them, but where can I dry them?  I have an idea for making a drying rack.  Nope, can't do that, I don't have the time right now because I have a fair entry quilt to finish.

So, I made myself a temporary plastic bag drying line.  I put two small nails just inside my cabinets.  One on either side of my sink.  Then found a piece of elastic to use as the line.  I thought about using bungee cords but mine were too short.  I needed something that could be stretched fairly tight but is temporary.  I want it out of the way when I'm through with it.

Here the bags are all washed and hanging from their very own drying line. 

 

The bags are now washed, dried, and used as the inside wrapping.  I used twist ties to close each bag.

Now it's double bagged and ready to list on my freezer inventory then return to the freezer.

Oops!  I just realized I didn't write down how many pounds I have so I can list it on the inventory sheet.  The original package is gone so I can't look at it.  Garbage was picked up already.  Hmm.... I think I should write "food scale" on my list of items to look for at the thrift store.  I've been wanting one for awhile. 

So how about you?  Are you doing your part to reduce your carbon footprints?  It could save you money.

Active or passive frugality

When some people think of living frugal they think of hanging laundry, making their own soap, cooking from scratch, scrounging building materials to re-use, canning a year's worth of foods from a garden, repairing their own plumbing, or using plastic grocery bags for crafts, and stuff like that.  For busy folks this sounds like way too much work and far too much time.  Doing stuff like that is called active frugality.  It's not for everyone.

Actually, living frugally is more about what you don't do.  It's about giving up extravagance in favor of acquiring more.  Huh?  Ok, it's more like giving up the daily trip to McDonalds so you can buy a new computer.  It's about giving up a weekly trip to have your nails done so you have the money to go on a vacation.  Passive frugality is about giving up something because there is a greater goal. 

Living frugally should be a combination of both passive and active frugal things.  If you enjoy cooking then cooking from scratch will be easy to do.  But, if you cringe at the thought of picking something from the trash then why would you even consider dumpster diving?  If you love to garden but hate to sew clothes from scratch then stay with the gardening.  Leave the sewing to someone who enjoys it much more. 

Frugal living doesn't have to mean giving up your home to move into an old school bus and wear patched pants.  Frugal living is more about living the life WE want to live without the stress of keeping up with the Jones' live style.  Frugal living is a philosophy of less waste in a throw-stuff-away society. 

I do many types of crafts because I enjoy doing them.  At the same time my crafts are intended to help my budget.  If I create a rug from some scrap fabrics it's because; 1) I need a rug, 2) I don't want to pay for one, and 3) I enjoy making rugs.   True, when my kids were small, I crafted things because I had a major financial difficulty..... no money beyond rent and utilities.  No money meant I either begged for what I needed or made it myself.   I hated begging so I started crafting.  Cratfing gave me bartering power.  For example;  when I needed a refrigerator, I made a quilt and went bartering. 

As you decide on what frugality means to you... think about the stuff you already do and add to it a little at a time.  Add only what you are comfortable doing.  Get rid of the excess stuff that doesn't truly make you happy.  If carrying a high interest rate balance on a credit card causes you great stress; then why keep it?  If you are not worried about money but are concerned with the future of our planet then maybe consider giving up just one throw away item?  Later you could try something else that saves money.   

Frugal living is a life style we choose to live.  Not one that society forces on us.  Even Oprah, with all her wealth, will tell you she saves the little artificial sweetner packets from restaurants.  It's true!  I saw her tell about it on her show a long time ago. 

You see what I'm getting at?  Frugal living is..... living within your means and ignoring those who tell you to spend, spend, spend.

My front door

This is my front door.  (yes, I see it needs to be painted again)  Anyway, do you realize that everytime you leave your house it's going to cost you?  It doesn't matter where you are going or what you are planning to do... you will be spending some of your hard earned money.  Even if you only drive around for awhile and go back home you will have spent money on gas.  Think about it.

I'm just as guilty as anyone else who has repeatedly slipped back into the spend, spend, spend mode.  I see, I want.  Yup, I see things I want and
wind up getting them even though I really want to save money.  Maybe it's a kitchen gadget I believe will make my life easier.  Maybe it's a thrift store find that I've convince myself is a fantastic bargain.  Maybe a visit to the fabric store has me thinking about quilts to be made so I bring home more fabrics.

We are all taught from the time we are born that spending is what we should do.  Heck, sometimes our first real outing without adults is at the mall.  We're given some money and told to meet the adults back at a certain spot at a certain time.  Then, we are also taught to have more and do more than the neighbors.  A bigger boat, a newer kitchen, a fancier car, or even a movie theater in our house.  Get the idea?  It's called "keeping up with the Jones".

What it all boils down to is accumulating stuff.  The more stuff, the better.  So I got to thinking about it.  Is it really better to have an abundance of stuff than an abundance of money?  Sure, I might tell myself that all this stuff will help if for some reason the economy takes another nose dive.  At least I won't run out for a long time. A good justification for my over spending.  But..... will it really help?

Will a few hundred yards of fabric stash pay an electic bill?  Will a dozen tubes of toothpaste in the cabinet buy me a bag of flour?  Will a dozen pairs of pants hanging in the closet do anything to help me if I must pay for medicine?  I hope I'm making my point here.  The point is that I need to stop accumulating so much stuff and start accumulating a bigger stash of money. 

I don't know why.... but lately I've been thinking about how little we owned when I was a child.  We had "enough" to get us by and that was fine.  We didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing or even inside walls in the house but we ate well and were happy.  I want that feeling again.  The happiness that comes from knowing I have enough.  There is no need to accumulate more.  So in my quest to be even more frugal I'm including accumulating far less stuff while getting rid of the excess.  No, I won't go pitching and tossing things just to get them out of the way.  Rather, I will be using up what I have before seriously considering more purchases.