Monday, January 02, 2006

Reassessing our lifestyle this new year

Another blogger friend of mine is beginning her road to voluntary simplicity and her discoveries are causing me to pause and look at my life and what I have because of my lifestyle choice. I've done pretty darn good in the four months we've been living in the States.

* I cook every meal from scratch, providing healthful, inexpensive nutrition.
* I buy everything I can on sale and use coupons.
* I breastfeed Aidan and feed him homemade babyfood, with the exception of his cereal.
* I can STAY AT HOME with him and not work for money, which is the most rewarding part.
* We've bought all our furniture used or from an inexpensive store, such as IKEA.
* The rest of our furnishings were extras from my parents who are currently RVing.
* Car is borrowed from our parents while they are RVing, thus saving a bundle. (we rarely drive anyway since Golf works from home, saving a TON on fuel.)
* Any clothes for the baby not given to us are bought from consignment shops.
* Any adult clothes are sale items.
* We have pride in being 100% debt free!
* I carefully track all our expenses on a spreadsheet so I can see exactly where our money is being spent.
* We have no clutter. Everything we have we use.

So far I feel like I'm doing everything right, now we keep living like this to see what happens. The biggest goals are financial, nest-egg investment and college savings kind of things. When I look back on my list, I feel like we're on the right track and it will pay off.

2 comments:

Running2Ks said...

You are doing so many wonderful things. Keep it up!

Crunchy Domestic Goddess said...

That is awesome and inspiring. Kudos to you. :)

Ahh, to be debt-free. We have a long ways to go for that, but I do feel good starting on the path to decluttering our lives. :)