Frugal Underwear -- aka What do YOU wear under a leotard?

My oldest girl (6 yo) is taking a gymnastics class. They have to wear a uniform to class -- the girls wear a leotard. She took dance last year and always wore underwear under her leotard -- yes, it stuck out a little bit, but who cares? She's a little kid. Plus, she usually wore a dance skirt.

This year, it's really obvious because of the cut of the leotard. You just can't tuck in the underwear. It doesn't work. I still didn't really care. Neither did she. But for two weeks in a row, the other girls in the class made fun of her. (Devil children!)

So, I tried to convince her to wear the leotard without underwear. She didn't want to. She said it felt funny. I understood. Honestly, going sans panties seems a little mature for a 6 yo, but what do I know? My gymnast friend explained to N that it is just like wearing a swimsuit, but N wasn't buying it.

She was really upset. She didn't want the other girls to make fun of her, but didn't want to have her panties showing.

I tried to find a high cut pair. No dice.

So, I found a great solution!

We took a pair of her underwear, cut the sides, and created a sort of tanga cut. She gets nice coverage and the feeling of underwear (no thong action, thank goodness) and no grief at class.

Money spent = zero
Solution = awesome (granted, it's a weird problem)

Is it better....

to use regular plates and glasses instead of plastic or disposables if you keep breaking them?

I seem to be having a butterfingers problem. Last week -- broke a glass. Tonight -- broke a plate and a dessert bowl. What's going on? And that's not really an isolated incident. I figure that I break (accidentally!) about one plate or glass a month. Broken glass is not recyclable.

I guess I'm still ahead of the game, but sheesh! None of the information I've read about the benefits of reusables mentions breaking stuff.

Then there's the rag I used to wipe up the shards because I wasn't getting all of the micro-shards with the broom. I threw that away. At least I used a really gross rag.

And how about last week, when I was bringing home the groceries in lovely canvas bags, and then dropped one of the bags (how this happened, I don't know) that contained 2 bottles of wine. I ended up throwing away the bag because I just couldn't deal with all the shards of glass and didn't want to put it in the washer like that.

Birthday Edition

We've been on a major spending cutback here in Gradgreenland. C and I have not bought anything other than food and a birthday gift for a kid birthday in the last few weeks.

So, then C's birthday came up. My students asked me what I got him for his birthday and I could tell they were shocked when my reaction was, "nothing".

Uh....

C and I pretty much agreed not to exchange gifts for the sake of exchanging gifts about 5 years ago. Not even birthday cards. He thinks they are a waste of money. I can see that. A handwritten note or even a romantic e-mail can get the point across. To tell the truth, better than any birthday card was the call he gave me a couple of weeks ago in the morning to check on me because I had been feeling bad. Sweet.

So, I didn't get my husband anything for his birthday. But he didn't want me to spend any money on anything. Instead, we'll be having one of his favorite dinners and I made him a cake. I even gave him a choice of flavors :)

I guess we're not a romantic couple -- but maybe we're just not into wasting money. I find it much more romantic to be friends with a man that I love and to do things together. We agree that we'd rather spend the money on a new couch or on a vacation than fritter it away on gifts that we don't really need.

That said, every now and then an awesome opportunity comes along. Great concert tickets, for example. And if that happens to fall near a birthday or Christmas, they get wrapped.

How many pairs of shoes do you need?

More specifically, how many pairs of shoes does an 8 year old boy need?

I thought 2. He has a pair of sneakers and a pair of sandals. In case of emergency, he can wear the other. It might not always be ideal, but we live in Texas, and you can pretty much wear sandals all year round.

Then he got the sneakers COVERED in mud and filth. Monday morning came -- and they were still foul. I told him to wear the sandals. He told me they had poop on them. He showed me a VERY small stain -- could be poop -- but they're not stinky and we had to leave.

He refused to put them on. Stubborn child. He walked up the hill to school in his socks. There, my husband met us (he works at school and was meeting me to pick something up, thank goodness). Problem solved.

But I went home guilty, thinking, "am I an evil mom? Am I stingy with my kids because they only have 2 pairs of shoes? What's the norm?"

I tried to google an answer. I discovered that adults have WAAAAY too many shoes. But I couldn't find a solid answer for kids. So I asked a mom that I respect. She told me that her kids have 2 pairs. I don't feel so guilty anymore.

I think that all of us have become used to having way more clothes than we need, tons of extra shoes, socks, etc. And it leads us to not really take care of the things that we have. If I had really been thinking, J's shoes would have been washed as soon as we got back. But I was tired. If he had had an extra pair of sneakers, chances are the muddy ones would still be at the front door. But we don't really have a choice. We have to take care of them.

Some years ago, I traveled around South America with a small backpack. I'm a wimp, so I couldn't carry. Here's what I had for clothes:

Hiking boots
Sandals
3 pairs of socks (washed the socks at the hostal each night)
underwear -- probably 5 pair -- can't remember
3 t-shirts
1 pair jeans
1 pair shorts
1 pair PJ pants
fleece
long underwear

I traveled for months. I washed my clothes by hand and hung them to dry, or paid someone to do the same. I had to be careful. If I dripped something on my shirt, I had to quickly clean it up. I had to think about what I wanted to wear and where. If I knew that I would be visiting a cathedral, I couldn't be left with only shorts. Sometimes I wore multiple layers to keep warm. (South America can get very cold, especially in the mountains.) But it was a great feeling -- I could easily carry everything that I needed. I never had to pay a porter. I could carry my backpack onto the bus or airplane -- no checking necessary. In the whole time, there were only 2 problems:

1. On a camping trip in Ecuador, someone stole my boots from outside my tent. Luckily, I had my sandals, but I was not able to get new boots until I got back to a major city a few days later.

2. My brother and I went on a jungle tour and came back enlightened but disgusting. We stayed at a hostal to rest and wash EVERYTHING. Unfortunately, it started to rain. And didn't stop raining.... we had to pack our wet clothes back into our backpacks and travel to Quito in pajama pants and t-shirts... not exactly appropriate attire. So I guess the lesson is -- if you have a limited supply of clothing, you don't want it all wet (or muddy and/or poopy) at the same time.

P.S. How many pairs of shoes do YOU think is reasonable?

Stay out of the store! -- Cooking with what's on hand...

So.... the gradgreen family is trying to save some money. That basically means 2 things:
1. Stop buying stuff
2. Cut down on grocery shopping

#2 seems kind of harsh. C's usual response is "but we have to eat!" I agree. I LOVE to eat, but I think that we can cut some of the expenses. We looked over our bills (don't worry, we pay the card off every month) and found that we had 23 separate trips to the grocery store last month. Holy Canoli. That's not how I want to spend my time.

So we agreed to work with what we have on hand... to the greatest extent possible. We have made a couple of trips to the store to re-stock milk, bread, peanut butter... you know... the staples. But the trips have been far less expensive than normal.

Here are some of the meals we've had:
1. Chicken pot pie. Thanks to S for the inspiration. We had frozen chicken and peas and some funky carrot sticks and broccoli. Chop chop chop with some onion. Make a delicious gravy. I'm not up to a pastry crust, but I made some homemade biscuit dough and baked it on top. Yummalicious.

I was really proud of myself for the biscuit dough, because I was SOO close to calling C on his way home and asking him to pick up a popping package of frozen biscuits. But that would have been lame. Homemade biscuits, especially the drop biscuit kind, are very easy to make.

2. Baked potatoes. This was an emergency dinner, so we microwaved the potatoes. They were organic russets, so a little smaller than the norm, which is perfect for the microwave. We had steamed broccoli on the side as well as a couple of veggie chicken patties that I cut into triangles. This dinner was a big hit and it was made out of true desperation.

3. Chicken soup. This is best made with chicken thighs because they have the most flavor, but I had a couple of chicken breasts. Add some onion, carrots, peas, rice.... wait a second... this is remarkable similar to chicken pot pie! Yet different, somehow.

4. Spaghetti and meatballs. I had spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, some leftover sauteed peppers and onions from a cookout and a couple of leftover hamburgers. Cut up the hamburgers -- cook in the sauce. Voila! Nobody even mentioned the fact that the meatballs used to be hamburgers.

Those of you who have kids have probably noticed that so much of what kids like depends on packaging. They don't like Kix, but if it has Shrek on the front, they do like Shrek cereal, etc. The same is true for leftovers. I fix the plates in the kitchen and nobody has to see all the parts coming together. Sometimes the result is even tastier than the first thing I made.

El Reciclaje -- Recycling in Spanish

I'm so excited that today we started the community action chapter in Spanish class. Part of the chapter focuses on recycling. This gives me a legit way to talk to my (kid) students about what we can and can't recycle. I had already banned throwing away paper in the classroom :) and I make the students use one piece of paper over and over for warm-ups instead of starting on a fresh sheet of paper (Why do they want to do that? I don't get it.) I'm trying to think of something to really push the boundaries and learn Spanish at the same time. Ideas?

Tape

This year I have also been lashing out against tape. In an elementary school it's hard to be a purist about this, because tape is so prevalent. However, I tell the kids that it's better to glue than to tape because tape has plastic and will last forever. Maybe that's oversimplifying things. I'm pretty much making up my explanation, so I thought I'd consult Fake Plastic Fish. Sure 'nuff -- tape has plastic -- she encourages people to use either paper tape or something else.

In the meantime, my students are beginning to think I'm crazy. "She hates tape!" "She thinks the pencil sharpener is too loud!" "She cries out in pain if I throw paper in the trash!"

But come on. The pencil sharpener is REALLY loud. For Pete's sake... what happened to the pencil sharpeners that worked on people power? The electric ones stop class. It can't be money. The manual ones cost about $15 new. The electric ones? Around 30. Wow.

And the magic of giving a kid a little pencil sharpener with a catcher for the shavings? I don't see many of those. But "GGGGGGRRRRRRRRZZZZZZZ!!!!" in the middle of class? ALL the time.

Fixing Stuff

A big problem nowadays is that it is many times less expensive and less hassle to replace something than it is to fix it.

The sole falls off your shoe? Replace it.
Your printer needs new ink? It's sometimes cheaper to buy a new printer (!?*#)
Bicycle tube gets a flat? Replace it. It's complicated to patch them.

But no!!! It may be easier sometimes to replace something, but in the long run, that's not the right thing to do. It's not the right thing for the planet -- it's a huge waste of resources -- and it's not a good lesson for our children. If something is worth having, it's worth taking care of.

I have 3 recent examples of how fixing something may be a pain, but it's worth it:

1. I bought a pair of shoes at Goodwill. They are awesome. They are SO cute. They cost 6 or 7 dollars. They're leather with wooden soles. Love 'em. But AFTER I bought them, I realized that one of the shoes was missing its rubber sole. And that the other one was about to fall off. So I brought them to the shoe hospital. About 40 dollars later (Gah!), I had a sweet pair of shoes.

Was it cheap? NO.
Was it worth it? Yep. I love these shoes. And they would have cost about 100 dollars new.

Incidentally, shoe repair is much more prevalent and less expensive in Latin America. When I was a frequent traveler, I used to bring my dead shoes to Latin America for revitalizing. Usually to the tune of less than $5 a pair.

2. My home phone stopped working. We decided that after many many year of love, the battery had probably worn out. I went to Radio Shack to get a replacement. It was about 20 dollars. Holy canoli! That's almost the cost of a new phone. But... I had the best ever response to the salesman who tried to sell me a new phone. Check it out: "I can't. My mother passed away 5 years ago and I have messages and songs from her recorded on my phone. I'm not buying a new phone." The salesperson sold me a battery.

3. My lamp stopped working. It just wouldn't turn on anymore. We had an extra lamp in the garage, so I tried to substitute, but I found out that I had a LOVE affair with my Tiffany lamp. I would get very grumpy every night when I had to read by the harsh harsh light of the substitute lamp. I told my husband that I would do anything to repair the lamp -- I was willing to pay $100.

Then I remembered my mother rewiring a lamp. Shoot. I can do that. I went to Lowe's. I bought a socket. It cost $3. I tried rewiring the darn lamp. It sort of worked. My husband brought the lamp back to Lowe's. The most awesome Lowe's worker ever tried several solutions, in the store, until he was able to fix it. For less than $10. No charge for the electrician consultation. He even gave us a new curly lightbulb.

That lamp cannot be replaced. It HAD to be fixed, and we found a way.

Anything worth having is worth taking care of.

Green Lawncare in Texas

Now that it's not such a depressing sight, I can report on the state of my lawn.

We bought a house in June. We live in Texas. You probably heard about the drought. It made the national news. We were gone for most of July. So, here's the situation:

June 1 -- beautiful lush green grass; we move in. We ignore the grass as we paint the house & move.
July -- we're gone. Continue ignoring grass. Call my brother mid-July after hearing from people all over the northeast about the drought. He waters the lawn. Once.
August 1 -- we come back to Texas. The grass is brown. And crunchy. When I tried to hand-water some of the grass in the back yard, it washed away. :/

Austin has water restrictions right now. We can only water lawns on Sundays before 10 am or after 7 pm. It has started raining again, which is sort of hard to believe after so little rain all summer long.

So what does the lawn look like now?

Well. It looks different. But not so bad. When we came back, I decided that we would just try to "save" a patch of grass in front of the house. There was also some grass under a big oak tree that had not done so bad, so I gave it a little hand-watering love (permitted under watering restrictions). I pretty much let the rest of the (huge) lawn go.

The grass is mostly St. Augustine, which is not the preferred grass for our area. A better choice would be bermuda or buffalo grass, which does not need as much water. So, a lot of it died. But some of it is coming back with the rain that we are having now, and starting to cover some of the bare patches. And then a large portion of the side yard is covered in a fluffy clovery substance. Not sure what it is.

We've planted a couple of native trees and are planning on planting some more. We are hoping that some more trees on the lot will help with erosion control (very important since our house backs up to a steep drop-off with a sometimes creek) and in the prevention of desertification. The grass underneath the tree was just so much happier than the grass in the burning sun.

When we get more organized, we will be replacing some of the grass with native plants and mulch or gravel. I'm still not totally sure what the best method is, so I will be doing some more research.

Mowing
I think that what helped the lawn look slightly better than surrounding lawns is that we weren't here to mow it. I've noticed that a couple of the neighbors have lawn services that cut the grass regardless of what's going on. I have seen one service cut the grass in the rain -- twice! Many people cut the grass very short and it really suffers in the sun when it is that short.

All About Lawns recommends the following care for a lawn during a drought:
1. let your lawn grow higher than usual
2. mulch the clippings
3. water in the morning
4. plant drought-tolerant grass
5. fertilize less
6. or let your lawn go dormant

It's funny that I did #1, 5 and 6 by default just by not being here :)

When we got back, we had the chance to try suggestion #2 -- mulch the clippings. Again, this is because of laziness and frugality, not because we read the suggestions at the time.

Our Lawn Mower
We bought a push reel mower -- the kind that uses no gas or electricity. It was under 100 dollars at Lowe's. I thought it was pretty cool that it came in a small box that I could easily pop in the back seat of my car. I wasn't expecting that in a lawn mower. I had the choice of paying 20 or 30 extra dollars for a bag, but I decided not to.

It's easy to push. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. My 8 year old son can push it with no problem. I mowed the lawn the other day in platform shoes and a dress. (Maybe not totally wise, but I was in a hurry). The only annoying thing is that EVERY STICK IN THE WHOLE YARD will get stuck in the blades and you have to stop and very carefully pull it out. I have to stop every couple of minutes, but other than that, the mowing thing is a breeze. This is also the reason that, although my son CAN mow the lawn, I don't think he's quite old enough to do it. I have no problem having him push the mower, but I'm afraid he might miscalculate the stick removal and take off a finger.

If the grass gets really tall or there are crazy weeds, the mower doesn't do the greatest job. Weeds really need to be weed-whacked or they just stay there, waving around in the middle of the lawn.

Mulching the cuttings
Again, this happened because of laziness and frugality. I could buy the bag or rake the cuttings. Didn't want to do either. I just left the grass fall. When it finally started raining, I noticed there were a couple of areas where the grass didn't seem to be growing back because it was all clumped with grass (this is called "thatch" in the lawn-care world), so I raked those areas. The rest of the lawn seemed to do just fine.

Mulching the cuttings is beneficial to the lawn if you don't let the lawn get too long. You should only be cutting about 1/3 of the blade of grass at a time. Ideally, the cuttings will fall INTO the lawn, helping the soil hold in moisture and providing some fertilizer. If the grass is so long that it covers the lawn, it just builds up thatch and makes it hard for the grass to grow.

Ahhh... the joys of home-ownership. Just a few months ago I was totally innocent of anything lawn-care related.