Challenges and Goals

Every year I read about some CEO of other head of something or other doing a “retreat” about January 1 or so to evaluate the previous year and set new goals for the coming year.

I always read these with interest and a certain amount of cynicism. For the past 30 years my  goal has always been: Be the BEST mom I can be.

All the other goals and challenges have been subservient to that one. To take the 10 three-blade razors in the pack I bought in January through the whole year (and yes, I am on track with this one) is just me managing the limited dollars that come into the household in a given year. Spend less than $420 per month on food for the four of us–same. Identify 2-3 sources of financial aid for college for each kid–same.

I want to thank each of my regular readers for your attention to my rambling thoughts. I hope that those of you who have stumbled onto the blog from some other place have found some nugget to take home.

This is my farewell blog. I have exhausted my thoughts on the topic of single-mom-enough. If you want to read more on frugality, I recommend

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

and if you want to read more about minimalism go to

http://www.missminimalist.com/

Goodbye all–and thanks for the fish. .

Completing the Count

The count of Stuff I Share With The Kids finishes with what is outside the house: garage and front and back porches.

Outside/Garage (19)

Bench

Table

Chairs (3)

Lawn mower/gas can

Hose

Rake (2)

Snow shovel

Spade

Yard tools (4)

Ladders (2)

Bird house

Broom

Nineteen items outside, total of 174 items that I share with the kids for 2012.

More Fun, Less Money

Entertainment costs are as big or as small as you want to make them. They could be a big black hole if you decide you must have the luxury yacht moored near Los Angeles, or have your kids take polo lessons in Connecticut, or your life is not complete without a private rocket trip to the space station.

Most of us don’t have that kind of money to spend on entertaining ourselves. Lucky for us, it doesn’t have to cost much at all.

In the past month we have done all of the following for free or little money:

Bike ride in the park.

Walk in the rain in the park with a friend (especially fun as this rain ended our summer long drought.)

Made a drawing for a gift for a friend.

Read a bunch of library books and watched a couple of library movies.

Watched a movie at a friend’s house.

Had friends to dinner.

Breakfast beverages (coffee and diet soda) with a friend.

Volunteer for school organization and got to watch play for free, plus got free soda and popcorn.

Rock band rehearsal (the instruments cost money to start out, but then are hours of pleasure/frustration afterward.)

Assisted in production of local  film.

Celebrated a family birthday with a pot luck meal.

Overnight and gaming with a friend.

And that doesn’t even count the things we wanted to do but couldn’t get to because we were so busy.

 

Paying It Forward

Over the years many folks have lent a helping hand to our little family: giving rides to the kids, groceries and a bed when I was in college, moral support. None of these folks expected anything in return for their kindness, so when I get a chance I pay it forward.

I got an opportunity earlier this week. A young mom who has been having mobility problems has a beautiful flower bed that her school aged kids created for her on Mother’s day. Someone has kept it watered throughout the drought in the midwest this summer and the flowers continue to bloom. They had started to get overrun with grasses though, obscuring their beauty. So I did a guerilla weed. I drove the hour or so to their house, spent about an hour weeding the grass out of the flowers and drove home. It was the most fun I have had all week.

Miscellaneous Items: 19

Here continues my counting of the stuff that I share with the kids. These are miscellaneous items from around the house. I’m working my way to the kitchen which has the most objects in it.

In the basement, 4 items: washer, dryer, vacuum and box of tools. In the bathroom, 2 items: shower curtain and trash can.

In the bathroom

And then from other places in the house and gathered for the photo: broom and dustpan, cloth bags for groceries (#5), tin of sewing supplies, flashlight, bin of cleaning supplies, fire extinguisher.

useful stuff

Also, counted, but not photographed: the house and a rug by the back door.

 

Kitchen Share With the Kids Count (81)

Saute pan

Pizza pan

Colander

Mixing bowls (4)

Saucepan with lid

Pie plate

9 x 13 pan

Measuring cups and spoons (3)

Flatware (24)

Cooking utensils (8)

all in one drawer

Cutting board

Kitchen towels (3)

Kitchen wash clothes (3)

Microwave

Stove

Fridge

Blender

Cookie sheets (2)

Stock pot

Printer

Food storage containers (15)

some in use

Trash can

Aloe Vera plant

Family photos (4)

Living Room

This is part of my “things I share with the kids count.”

There are two couches with three pillows, a table with a bowl. The bowl holds seasonal items-lemons in summer, pine cones or squash in fall, red and green and silver glass balls for Christmas decoration. In the photo are a couple books, these are my daughter’s but library books usually hang out here as well.

long view of the living room

The focal point of the room is the fireplace. There are two candlesticks with candles and a silk flower arrangement on the mantle. The fireplace tools are in the basement for the summer.

4 decorative object: mirror, candles, flowers

Here is a view of the entry closet. The photo is a little dark, but you can see below: a red suitcase and a bari saxophone in its case (I don’t count this as it is on loan from the school.) On the shelf: ice melt, tape for getting cat hair off the couch and cat food (which is stored in this closet because the cats do not have opposable thumbs.) I do not count consumables so the only thing in the closet in the count is the suitcase.

partially used storage space

Count for the living room is 13. This space is also used daily. There is usually one or more persons sprawled on the couches reading or playing an electronic device. On Sunday afternoons the couches are pushed against the wall opposite the fireplace and the local teen improve troupe practices in the space. When family comes to visit, I give them my room and sleep on one of the couches. Again, less clutter leads to increased versatility.

And while it’s been a few years since they were used for that purpose, the couch cushions make excellent forts.

 

 

 

The Dining Room

Many folks will tell me how they admire my minimalism….but they could never do it with kids/spouse/pets or think about giving up their books/Pez collection/baseball cards. “OK,” I say. Every game has its rules. Draw a big Sharpie circle around whatever it is you can not do without and think about minimalism outside that circle.

Here is my dining room. This is the room my family of four eats in 2-3 times per day. It also gets used an “office” or project room, a place to read and sometimes a place to fold laundry. All of the rooms in my house multi-task. This is normal in many traditional homes around the world. I’m not sure when middle class folks started to designate rooms to furniture types instead of function, but I would guess that it happened about the time marketing took off after WWII.

Total number of objects in the room (in the share with my kids category) is 42. Here in the corner hutch you will see

Dishes

This includes two Corning ware serving pieces with lids. These can be frozen, baked, microwaved and look fancy on the table. They are versatile. Next shelf down are five mugs–used to be six. Ah, that is family life. (And some paper napkins, in case you were wondering) Down from there are five glasses and five small plates. Used to be six and eight. So. Down one more shelf are nine bowls and six large plates. Used to be ten and eight. The reason some are missing is that we use these dishes every day. Small and large plates, bowls, glasses are all used as serving pieces from time to time. All are inexpensive (mostly from Pier One or Target) and white or clear. Everything matches, can be used together and if all but one of the large plates breaks I just buy some more white dishes and call the lone large white plate a “serving piece.”

Also in the room are the über functional table and chairs.

table and six chairs

And because every environment needs a little soul, there are three works of art. The first is a movie poster for a movie two of my kids help make.

Paper Airplane poster

That is beloved daughter in the upper left corner and beloved middle son in the lower right. The movie was a hoot. Here is a trailer for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6n8XQ2Igw0

Here is a painting that my mother carted back from Mexico City at significant risk to our personal safety. Mom and I both think the painting says, “Welcome.” Other family members were too traumatized to see it in a positive light.

Bienvenido

And my artistic favorite-The Joyful Buddha, an housewarming gift from mom.

I think he is pleased with the minimalist room he dwells in

There is also a portion of the dish hutch with a solid door. The only thing in there is the tool to unscrew the bulbs from the light fixture.

Intelligent design?

So there you have it. One of the most used rooms in the house–42 items total.

Degrees of Freedom

I can hear that clock ticking. Not the one in the crocodile that the Lost Boys are afraid of. As a child, I could not wait to grow up, could never understand why someone would want to remain in an infantile state forever.

Not the one to create babies. Lord knows, I have enough children. (I love you, every one.)

No, the clock I hear is the one to my freedom. My daughter is a senior in high school. One more year and she is out of the house. My middle son is a junior. Two more years and he has moved on. Youngest is in 8th grade. He has 5 more years of schooling here left. But I can hear that clock ticking.

And it manifests itself in two opposing ways: I want to squeeze the joy and intimacy of every single moment that I have, because I know it will not likely be like this again. And I relish my new freedom.

One less child in the house is less driving and co-ordination of schedules. It is one less person’s tastes I have to accommodate when planning the meals. It is less mail, less shopping, not as many trips to the instrument repair shop.

I am getting a tiny glimpse of it this week while the kids are in DC with their dad. No cooking. No trips across town to  a music lesson. It is very peaceful. Will it get boring? Hmmmm. I do not allow kids boredom, the world is filled with fascinating things to do/read/places to go. So, I think not.

Degree of freedom this week: 3/10.

In a year? I’ll let you know.

Lime Green Silk Heels

The year that I turned 40 I left my husband. My life savings were invested in his farm and I walked away from the money and most of my stuff. I left with the children ages 16, 5, 4, 1 years,  a weeks worth of clothing for us all, a couch and a few dishes.

I liked the sense of freedom that I felt without all the stuff weighing me down and determined to keep my possessions to a minimum. Thus the annual counting of stuff was begun. It has been a continual learning process.

Before I ever heard of the Pareto Principle and the 80/20 rule, I lived it with my clothing. I was figuring out how much clothing is enough, and noticed that I wore my favorite clothing most of the time, even though there were other items that I almost never wore. Usually the unworn items had some small flaw: they didn’t fit well, they didn’t go with anything else in the closet, they weren’t flattering. Money poorly spent, I told myself.

Overtime, I developed a simple system of clothing purchasing so there was little waste in the process. The rules were general: buy clothing that can be worn to work, when it starts to get a little worn, wear it for non-work days. Don’t buy anything that doesn’t go with at least two other items in the closet. Buy only black shoes and black socks. This system worked pretty well, still does.

Several years ago, I did something silly and inexplicable. I bought a pair of lime green silk heels. They had an open toe (so I couldn’t wear them to work,) about a 3 1/2 inch heel (so I was not likely to wear them to the grocery store,) and they did not match any clothes that I had at the time (so I wasn’t going to wear them to a parent-teacher conference.) Mostly they sat in my closet on a shelf at eye level and I saw them every time I opened the closet door. They made me happy.

At that time my life was little besides work and parent responsibilities. My children were fairly young and need help with baths, homework and the floor had to be wiped down after every meal. I took three-minute showers instead of soaks in the tub. I exercised during my lunch break. My library card languished. I had no practical use for “date shoes.” But they made me happy.

Those shoes were a colorful reminder that life was not all work, that I could choose a different path if I wanted to. All I had to do was put them on and I would become an impractical girly girl. It was as if I had an open-ended ticket to Europe and could leave anytime I wanted.

Those years were filled with hard work and not enough rest. The bright green shoes were a nourishment for my spirit, a reminder that I was more than just a mom. Single parents have to take care of themselves as well as the kids. We need good food, sleep, exercise for the body. We need fun, beauty and connection to others for the soul.

Don’t forget the fun.