As this is supposedly, a FIRE blog, even though it’s now a ‘watch how Frogdancer Jones does retirement’ blog, I thought I’d tot up the travel costs for the road trip I made with my friends from Latvia and then when I was on my own.
When Liga first contacted me with the news that she was coming to Australia and we decided to spend some time together, going to Uluru was not on my mind. After all, I’d just booked a trip to Uluru with the Ghan for September 2024, two months before Liga would be there. Why on earth would I go back there again so soon? Obviously, I’d do a road trip with them along the Great Ocean Road, drop them off at Adelaide and they’d either fly or drive to Uluru.
Then Liga told me that the rental car companies would charge them an extra $900 if they left the car at Uluru, because they’d have to hire someone to drive it back to Adelaide. Ouch! There’d be no way to avoid that because after Uluru they were flying over to Cairns.
Coupled with the fact that there are no direct flights from Adelaide to Uluru, which meant that they’d have to fly from Adelaide back to Melbourne or Brisbane before flying over to Uluru, meant that it made much more sense for me to keep driving after Adelaide.
Liga also said she wanted “to drive the car with the desert stretching away on either side.” That sounded pretty good to me too, so despite my qualms about Outback driving, we arranged for the Crazy Road Trip to happen.
I decided to put aside 4K for the whole 3.5 weeks. It was an arbitrary number that wasn’t calculated with any real thought. It seemed like an amount of money that should be adequate, but wasn’t too extravagant. I had a few things organised with the girls that affected my outgoings for this trip.
I was paying for all the petrol, as a “congratulations on your 7th continent” present for Liga.
We were sharing accommodation, which cut down individual costs for each of us.
I’d already paid for my week’s holiday in the Snowy Mountains, as it was part of my timeshare.
I’d just been to Uluru, so I wasn’t anticipating buying many souvenirs at all.
I was intending to take my Vita-Weats and Vegemite for Frogdancer’s sad breakfasts to cut down on costs, as well as taking wine and some groceries/snacks. I also packed the toastie-maker for when I was in the apartment at Lake Crackenvack. We had the car, so I had the space.
As it happened, I bought a couple of souvenirs as well as some Christmas presents. I didn’t include the presents in my final total, as they were things I would have bought anyway.
The girls paid for 3 restaurant/winery meals for me as a thank-you, which was lovely of them.
Petrol in the Outback isn’t cheap. The most I paid was $3/litre, which is far more than we pay in Melbourne.
So how did I go?
I couldn’t believe it!
I actually came home with change from the 4K! Three and a half weeks of holidays and I spent $3,988.
Yep, just squeaked by with $12 to spare! How funny is that? I wasn’t totting the costs up as I went. I only worked out the total after I got back.
The toastie-maker saved me a lot of money because all I had to buy for dinners was a couple of loaves of bread and some fillings. Baked beans, ham and cheese – nothing gourmet. I’d eaten at restaurants with the Ligas and along the way on my own, so I was happy to slum it at Lake Crackenback. It helped that the celebratory lunch I bought at the resort restaurant wasn’t that impressive.
My sad breakfasts cost me around a dollar each time. The Ligas were spending anywhere from $10 – $20 for breakfast each morning, so that saved me a ton. I like vegemite for breakfast, so it wasn’t a hardship, though I couldn’t look a Vita-Weat in the face for a few weeks after I got back home.
I booked the first 3 nights of accommodation on my solo trip when I was still at home, looking for the cheapest motel rooms. After that, I’d search for a room when I entered the town I wanted to stop in for the night. The only time this didn’t work well was a Winton, where I paid $160 for a room for the night. The cheapest was Bourke, where I paid $75/night for 2 nights. It was very basic, with a shared bathroom, but I figured I could suck it up for 2 nights.
I was very happy that I’d inadvertently stayed within budget!
(When I retired at the end of 2020, I decided that each month I’d go and do something or see something that I never had before, just to keep life fun. And so the “Little Adventures” were born.)
Three Christmases ago, David30, Izzy and Evan27 gave me a voucher for $136 to take a walking tour for myself and a friend. It had a loooong expiry date, so I naturally put it in a safe place and pretty much forgot about it. Every now and then I’d pick it up, look at the expiry date, nod and think, ‘I really should do something about this…’
A couple of weeks ago I found it and saw that the fatal date was DEC 23, 2023.
Ok. The time to procrastinate was done. So I sat down on Saturday, pulled up the website and had a good look. I booked a ghost walking tour for my sister-in-law Eliza and myself in December.
But I still had money left on the voucher.
I saw a trip to Werribee Open Range Zoo. Funny. I’ve been to Africa and done three safari days, but I’ve never been to Werribee Zoo. So I booked a ticket.
I still had $14 left over, so in the interests of ‘waste not, want not’ I found another activity in the city that was $15. I think that 3 activities for $1 is pretty damned frugal!
I arrived at the zoo just after 10 AM and was surprised to see that it was right beside Werribee Mansion. I remember going there YEARS ago… I was still married so that means that it was in the last century! As I walked into the zoo, I saw a tourist info office and thought I’d pop into this on the way out. Maybe the mansion is a National Trust place and I could get in for free. (I still have to make back my money on my membership. England helped a bit, but I’m not there yet.)
As soon as I entered the zoo grounds, a helpful lady escorted me to where the zoo safari tours leave from. They’re free, included with the price of admission. I joined the 10:30 one, which in hindsight was a mistake. There weren’t all that many people at the zoo on a Monday, but the people that were there were mainly mothers with toddlers.
The bus was full of them. Loud toddlers. So loud that I couldn’t hear most of the commentary that the bus driver was saying. When we pulled back to the loading area after an hour spent driving around, the next bus-load had far fewer toddlers on it.
Just an observation that may help someone else in future. Go after the mums have taken their kids before nap time.
So we spent just under an hour driving around massive paddocks, looking at African animals. Of course it was interesting. Who doesn’t love a giraffe or a hippo? But having been on three African safari days in South Africa, this just wasn’t in the ballpark. It was ok, but…
When I saw the ostriches, I had a flashback from South Africa of turning a curve in the road when we were driving in a minibus and seeing an ostrich loping majestically along the side of the road, just going about its business. It was amazing. Say what you will, it’s a little less magical when the animals are penned up in an enclosure, no matter how big that enclosure is.
Plus the kids screaming in my ear didn’t help, either.
The giraffes were good, though. You can see that there are smaller ones in a cage in the background. All of the giraffes here are male and they just had some adolescent males brought down from Dubbo zoo. The three giraffes who live here were incredibly interested in the new arrivals, who will be in the separate enclosure while they all get more familiar with each other.
The zoo is divided into three main parts: the Australian trail, the African trail and the safari tour. Once I got back, I headed off along the African trail. I wanted to see where the gorillas were because there was a keeper’s talk at 1:45 so I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t miss it by getting lost.
After that, I ducked back to the café area for an early lunch. I thought I’d get in and out before the toddlers descended on it.
There’s an extraordinary number of birds who hang around this place, but I’ve never in my life seen so many Blue Wrens. They were everywhere. Tiny little chonks with such vivid colouring.
There were 3 encounters with animals that were fantastic. The first was the lions.
I rounded the corner on my way around the African trail and there they were. The whole family was up near the glass.
There was Mum, Dad and 3 cubs. So close!
We all got excited when one of the cubs sat up, but then it thought better of the whole idea and lay down again.
I mean, look at this.
It’s like he’s posing.
The camera doesn’t do justice to the range of colours in this guy’s coat and mane. Just beautiful.
I walked further along. The place is very kid-friendly, with cutesy little signs like this all around.
The sign didn’t lie. Three of them, having a nap after breakfast.
Fair enough. I like a good nap, too.
In the wild, hippos prefer to eat at night, but obviously this doesn’t happen here. The keepers feed them just before they leave for the day and then again at 7 AM when their shifts start.
I managed to hear this information on the bus before the kids started yelling.
The ‘giant’ tortoises are in the indoor play area. They’re funny creatures who were surprisingly lively.
I had 45 minutes to kill before the gorilla talk, so I ducked into the Australia trail exhibits.
These are Tamar wallabies. They were listed as extinct in the 1920’s, but then a small population of them that people had taken over to an island in New Zealand were found and brought back to Australia. This zoo is part of the breeding program to bring their numbers back.
I liked how the mob of kangaroos was casually hanging out with the emus, while the cassowaries were close by on the other side of the fence.
Just chillin’.
And then I had close encounter #2.
I accidentally walked a little off the beaten track and noticed a few emus at the back of a fence. I quietly walked over, not wanting to spook them, and one came right up to stand beside me.
Checking me out.
My phone just couldn’t properly capture the iridescence of his face and neck and the texture of his feathers.
I don’t mind admitting that I was glad the fence was there. He was HUGE. That beak could do some damage if he wanted. No wonder they won the Emu War.
However, it was something special to be standing so close to this bird, able to look into its eyes and really observe him. He was standing there of his own free will for several minutes before I slowly started to move away.
I had gorillas to go and hear about!
I got to the gorilla enclosure just in time to see them barrelling out of their house and across the ground to get to the food the keepers had put there. For an hour beforehand, the keepers had been inside with them, doing enrichment activities and health checks.
There are 3 gorillas here – a father and his two sons. One of the sons is now the dominant one, and this is the one who came and sat right before the window, claiming all of the goodies.
Close encounter #3.
For a while, he turned his back on us as the keeper spoke.
The thing I found most interesting is that the gorillas communicate not only by vocalising and body language, but by smell. She said that it smells like fried onions, so a Bunnings sausage sizzle is like having a group of gorillas walk through a patch of rainforest.
Having these 3 close encounters made this whole trip worthwhile. The beauty of these animals is incredible.
As I was leaving, I remembered the Tourist Information Office.
I went in and the guy was very helpful. I got the impression that he’d had a slow day. I asked about Werribee Mansion, (NOT a National Trust property, to my chagrin) and then he mentioned that the State Rose Garden was right beside it.
I didn’t even know we had one! I said this and the guy said, “So many people who live here don’t even know it. It makes me angry, because I’m the president. It’s at its absolute best right now. You really should go and see it.”
When he went on to say that it was free – my favourite price – and was only 500 metres up the road, I told him that I was sold. So off I went.
It was stunning.
I thought I’d only be there for 5 or 10 minutes, but I was there for ages, just wandering around and looking at the blooms.
And blooms there were.
I wandered around the outside of the garden, then entered through this arch.
Stunning.
I loved the look of this – like a bridal veil on the ground.
My Gran loved red roses. Every time I see one, I think of her.
I was thinking about her a lot in this place!
The garden beds are laid out in a Tudor-style formal garden, with heritage roses in a border around the perimeter and a section that David Austin himself came out from England to install.
It was mid-afternoon on a cloudy day, as you can see. There were a few family groups finishing off picnics, and a few other people like me, wandering around and just soaking in the atmosphere.
Speaking of the atmosphere, the air was perfumed. It was almost intoxicating.
As I walked around, I came across the David Austin section.
This bee was really enjoying herself here. She was embedding herself within the billowy petals.
Most of the roses in this part of the garden were named.
The guy in the Tourist Information shop said that a year after David Austin came and planted all of the roses, he had to come back and revise the whole garden plan because they didn’t realise how well roses grow here in Australia.
They had to rip around a third of the plants out.
I really liked this one, even though it doesn’t look like a rose. Though I suppose the leaves give it away.
Here’s a similar one in pink.
The pavilion sits in the middle of the garden, with four paths leading straight to it.
This was a totally unexpected thing to see but I’m glad I did it. Anyone in Melbourne who has a few hours to spare should hop on over and take a picnic. What a lovely place to take someone to sit under a tree, drink some wine and just enjoy.
Last week I knocked back a day of teaching to have lunch with an old friend. I’ve known Max since Evan26 was Evan2. Back in those days I was struggling to keep my head above water financially, while Max was single, with only one son who lived primarily with his mother. In other words, his paycheque was his own to do with as he would.
Max likes to socialise by going out for meals, so back in those days he’d sweep me off for dinner every now and then and I’d have the (rare to me) pleasure of eating a meal not cooked for the tastebuds of toddlers. Our lives have always been very different.
Max is really into Eastern religion, meditation and yoga. He travels widely, usually to sunny, warm places where he can soak up the sun and relax. It seemed to me that he was out and about nearly every day of the week, going to parties, dinners and lunches, which was a vast contrast to my life of being stuck at home with my 4 small boys all the time. Delayed gratification was never a thing he was a fan of, whereas to me, it was all I had to hope for.
Fast forward twenty-five years.
The four kids I was raising on my own are now off my hands, (pretty much.) All of them are living productive, creative lives and two are settled with long-term partners. I’ve reached financial independence and now, after decades of being tied to staying at home with the family while they were young, I’m now finally free to travel and spend my days how I choose.
I’m happy. I’m turning 60 next week and I’m looking forward to the next delicious stage of my life.
Max has now retired at 69 years of age. He’s on the Aged pension, living in a unit he’s paying off. He lives with his son, who is now 40 and is a recovering heroin addict. Max would love to sell or rent out his unit and live overseas in a warm climate, living off the proceeds of the sale or rent. However, he’s stuck, because his son has nowhere else to go because he’s unable to work.
Max has chosen to remain pretty much computer-illiterate. This has left him as an easy mark, which some woman found out when she scammed him out of 16K recently over the phone. Why does this happen to people who can least afford it?
He knows that he’s left it very late to improve his finances and he’s flailing around, trying to put things in place to produce an income for the future.
He put a few grand into cryptocurrency, which of course he doesn’t understand.
He’s excited about the 20% per MONTH returns that he’s been promised. I asked him if he personally had seen returns like this. The night before we met for lunch, he received his first dividend payment, so he thought, “Oh, this works,” so he put in another 10K. I thought, ‘Isn’t this a classic way they reel people in?‘ He said that the woman he works through has just under 1 Billion US dollars that she’s looking after. I thought, ‘If that’s true, why would she be interested in your piddly 10K???”
He also paid 5K to do a course in currency trading, which after he joined he realised happens on computers, which he hates and has no idea how to start using, so he’s letting a friend do the coursework. They plan to split any profits the friend ends up making.
He’s fearful of the future and is clearly envious of what has happened in my life. There were a few remarks here and there with references to investments etc. that made me feel a bit uncomfortable.He sounded almost bitter at times about how his life is looking, especially compared to mine.
It’s as if someone has flipped the coin of our lives and we’ve swapped sides.
“You’ve done really well, Frogdancer,” he said as we were eating. “You don’t have to work and … you’ve got excellent karma. You deserve it all. But… (he sighed), I’m not happy. I feel like I’m trapped and I wish… I wish I’d done things differently.”
I was telling this to Ryan28 when I got home. He’s picked up my frugal, valuist ways and he was nodding sagely. Then I asked him a question:
“If Max and I had each died at say… 45, who would you say had the better life?”
“Huh,” Ryan28 said, struck. He thought for a second, then said, “Max. He would have had the better life.”
“Exactly,” I said. “The whole thing’s a gamble. If we were able to know how long we’ve got, we could plan things out. But obviously, it doesn’t work that way. He enjoyed life when he was younger, whereas I’m enjoying it more as I’m older. It’s that whole Grasshopper and the Ant fable.
“The ant is busy putting things in place for the future, while the grasshopper just mucks around, enjoying the present. It’s all wonderful for the ant if he lives long enough to enjoy the wintertime when he can enjoy the fruits of his labour. But what if he gets stepped on and squashed just before winter hits? He’s toiled his whole life for no reward. Whereas, the grasshopper may starve to death in winter, but he’s had one hell of a happy life up until then. It all depends on how long you live.”
“I guess it’s all about balance,” said Ryan28. “Working the future but doing fun things now.”
I thought it was an important thing for Ryan28 to think about. He and I are probably too much inclined to practice delayed gratification. I want him to live his life while he’s young! (To be fair, so far it’s worked bloody brilliantly for me, but that’s not a guaranteed outcome for everyone.)
Getting back to when we were sitting at lunch, Max looked so defeated and sad. I leaned forward and said, “Yes, I’m in a really good spot right now. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned: it’s that life is a series of waves. You’re up and everything is going fine; then something happens and you’re sliding down.
“At the moment, I’m up and you’re down. But something will happen, either to me or the kids, and I’ll slide down that curve. You’re down, but something will happen and you’ll be on the upward swing again. I’m really conscious of that, so when I’m in a good spot, like now, I consciously enjoy it. because I know that it’s not going to last. I may as well enjoy it while I can!”
This appealed to Max and he brightened up and started talking about how Eckhart Tolle talks about similar ideas. I haven’t read any Tolle but Max is right into it. This put him in a better frame of mind and we chatted happily until he dropped me back at home.
I found it an interesting thought experiment. We in the FI/RE community are so good at delayed gratification. I think I’m the Queen of it, myself! And it’s mostly a very good thing. However, changing one thing that we all have no control over and looking at life through a different lens… sometimes a bit of immediate gratification along the way might also be a very good thing.
We only have “one wild and precious life.” We have to make choices based around immovable things that we have no control over. Due to my situation with raising 4 boys on my own, I was relentless about working for the future to provide the financial security for my family that we didn’t have. I had to consciously teach myself how to stop and smell the roses and enjoy the little things in life as they happen. I envy the people who seem to be born with a foot in both camps.
So who has lived the better life? As Ryan28 said, if you look at the early part of our lives, Max definitely comes out on top. I hope and believe that, when we look at our lives through the lens of another couple of decades of living, that we’ll both be happy with the paths we’ve taken.
***
Here is the poem that I found that quote from, in the paragraph above. I love it:
THE SUMMER DAY by Mary Oliver.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
This time next week I’ll be in Santiago, Chile, all going well. These last few days before I go, I’m planning on starting to pack and buying the last few things I need to get before I go.
One is a waterproof case for my phone. I’ve decided to buy a waterproof pouch rather than a case, so after doing some research I’ve elected to buy this one. The reviews are good and I think it’ll do the job well. My quilting mat came in handy when I had to measure the phone in inches!
I also bought a sim card for my phone which will work in both Chile and Argentina. Surprisingly, most of the sims I looked at only had one or the other, which was annoying. My travel agent advised me to get one when I was there, but as I’m arriving in Santiago in the middle of the night, I didn’t think there’d be too many phone stores open. Better to be safe than sorry. The sim should be arriving today. I’ll take it with me and swap the sim cards over on the plane. It just occurred to me that I’ll need to learn how to get the sim card out in the first place.
You’ve already seen my pee bottle, which has traumatised people both here and on FB. Steveark’s comment on my previous post made me laugh! I’m hoping to bring back the bottle untouched by human urine, which will mean I’ll have a very useful souvenir to remind me of the trip. It will have been with me on the ice on every excursion. You can bet I’ll be reminded of Antarctica every time I use it.
I’m a big fan of buying useful souvenirs.
This olive oil container is from San Gimignano in Italy. Every single time I pull it out from the pantry I’m reminded of that beautiful village on top of the hill. When my friend Scott and I were going through security at Paris airport, we were looking at my case as it went through the x-ray. “Is that YOURS? What on earth have you bought?” he said as the image of what looked to be a miniature watering can glided by.
I also have a very cheap-looking spatula that I bought in a supermarket in Pyongyang. I was there, mingling with the locals as they were buying their groceries, when I saw it and thought, “I’ve been meaning to get a spatula for ages!” It’s absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, but I know where I bought it and I love using it.
Every Christmas I blog about my Christmas tree which has decorations from all over the world on it. No one has a tree quite like mine!
So having a water bottle that has travelled with me to the end of the world and back seems like a very good fit.
I still need to buy some lip balm. This morning I was looking at the blog 43 Blue Doors. Bonnie and her partner Trin retired in (I think) 2016 and have been slow travelling around the world ever since. It’s a fabulous blog with incredible photography and detailed descriptions of the places they’re travelling.
I posted about ‘My New Goal’ in October 2020, when I had 3 references to Antarctica in the one day. Up until then, I’d never even dreamed about going there. Bonnie wrote a post about her trip, which was the third nudge from the universe I received that day. This morning I looked at the page again and played the video of the chinstrap penguin colony. The sound of the wind made it obvious why lip balm is on the list as a necessity.
I hope Penguindancer! still checks in here and knows that I’m finally going. She was working in Antarctica and used to read my blog. If it wasn’t for her, I doubt I’d be going.
Today I’m going to be getting out my itinerary and hopefully booking a couple of day tours for Santiago and the surrounding countryside. I will only see the inside of the airport in Buenos Ares, but I’ll be spending a couple of days in Santiago and I think that being ferried around in a group might be the most efficient way to cover as much ground as possible.
Unless I buy a horrifically expensive souvenir, I think that all of the major expenses for my trip have already been paid for. I have tiny slivers of time on either side of the cruise where I probably won’t be spending a lot, especially if I’m on tours, and once I’m on the ship everything except alcohol and souvenirs are taken care of. I’m hoping that my pesos for Chile and Argentina will be enough for taxis and food, while the euros and my debit/credit cards will take care of everything else.
I’m known for being frugal in most areas of my life, but travelling overseas isn’t one of them. Being able to see and do everything I want when I travel is one of the reasons why I’m so frugal in other areas. I like to get bang for my buck! So who knows what I’ll end up spending?
I’m already starting to look at where I’ll travel in 2023…
… I have just one continent to go to complete the set.
As promised, I’m posting the soap recipe that’s my ‘go-to’ when it’s time to make another batch. It was the first soap recipe I tried and I love it. The bars of soap come out consistently firm, not crumbly and last for ages.
The blog post I took it from was from 2010 and I see that I was one of the first people to comment on it. Makes me feel a bit old… That blog has now been taken offline. This made me panic when 3 years ago I went to pull up the blogpost to make my next batch and it was unavailable.
My soap recipe has gone forever! Oh crappity crap! I tried PMing the blog author but she never got back to me. That was a little surprising but hey. What can you do? A few weeks later, I mentioned it on the frogblog as I was posting about making another soap recipe to give as Christmas gifts for work. A brilliant reader called Jamie sent me a link to the wonderful soap recipe post that they’d archived. I was so happy!!!
I’ve noticed that some readers since yesterday have tracked down the soap recipe I posted about in that frogblog post that uses Lux flakes. This is NOT the recipe I love. Don’t get me wrong… it smells like Lux and it’s easy to make, but call me a purist: it didn’t feel like I was making real soap. It was a bit of a cheat. But if you feel like making soap and the thought of using caustic soda turns you off, then by all means use this Easy-Peasy soap recipe.
But if you want the brilliant soap recipe, here’s the archived page that Jamie sent:
(I could’ve just given you the basic recipe, but I like the way Suse’s post gives a lot of information in a readable and informative way. This was my entry into the soap-making world and I like the idea of sharing the original post with you all.)
Suse’s post gives a ton of good hints and tips. I’d add that it’s not a good idea to rush mixing the melted oils and caustic soda mixes together. I’ve found that when I was impatient and mixed them together while they were still quite hot, I’d run the risk of the whole batch curdling, which is disappointing when you unwrap it the next day to find out that it hasn’t worked. Then I’d have to rebatch it by melting it into a slow cooker, which works to make the soap usable, but it’s never quite as pretty. Giving it an extra 10 minutes to enable the oils and caustic soda to cool to a ‘warm’ temperature is time well spent.
If you’re wondering if the soap has started curing properly and whether the caustic soda has saponified properly and lost its bite, the easiest way to test this is to touch the tip of your tongue to the newly unwrapped soap. If you feel a ‘zap’ like a tiny electric shock, then the soap has to be rebatched. This has only happened to me a couple of times. It’s annoying when it happens but it’s not the end of the world. Re-melting it in a slow cooker, then putting it back into a mould and wrapping it up for another 24 hours does the trick.
Another soap recipe that I really like is the one on The Witch’s Kitchen. Her blog and book (I just LOVE this book – such a useful resource, especially the plant index at the end!) are terrific. Anyone interested in food gardening should set aside some time to sit down with a cuppa and rummage through her blog. So much information.
Anyway, in this soap recipe, she mentions using grated lemon zest as a little added extra in the soap. How nice would that be? Also, as with the Terrific Soap Recipe, there’s a lot of useful info in the comments underneath the original post.
If you like the idea of making homemade soap to give away as Christmas gifts, now is the time to get started. The soap recipes that use caustic soda need at least 6 weeks to cure properly, so if you set aside the time to make a batch or two now, you’ve already got yourself organised for Christmas.
Imagine the warm glow you’ll feel from being so efficient!
Can you guess what I made yesterday by looking at these ingredients?
If you guessed soap, you’re bang on the money!
A quick glance back at the frogblog shows that I’ve been making soap for over a decade now. When I first began, I tried just about every recipe that I could lay my hands on. I made green tea soap, coffee soap, olive oil/Castile soap… you name it, I gave it a go.
For a brief time, I even had teachers at school buying it from me.
But now I stick to one very basic but effective recipe that I first saw on a defunct blog many years ago. It rarely fails and even if it does, it’s easy to fix.
But why would I bother to make soap in the first place? After all, basic soap is cheap to buy. I clearly don’t NEED to make soap to save a few pennies – after all, I retired by choice 2 years ago. I’m not short of the pennies required to keep myself clean. So why would I still choose to do it?
One of the main reasons I find myself coming back to doing this whenever my soap stocks start getting low is that homemade soap is very good for the skin. Commercial soap makers take out the glycerin that’s formed when soap is made, because glycerin is lucrative to sell on its own. My soap has its own glycerin within it, so the soap moisturises as well as cleans. I like that.
I also really like to have pretty soap put aside for little gifts. A bar of homemade soap and a hand-knitted washcloth is something that I like to give when I go to a blog meet or when a friend has a birthday. These handmade gifts, wrapped in brown paper and string, look great.
The third reason is that it’s personally very satisfying to produce something useful from nothing but a random bunch of ingredients. The same can be said of knitting and quilting, I guess. Being able to point at something that now exists in the world that wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t here is a nice feeling. (Pointing at the boys just doesn’t have the same effect…!)
Another reason why I like to do it is that I can personalise each batch. This batch of soap smells like eucalyptus. I’ve sprinkled dried cornflower and calendula petals over 3/4 of the top, but I’ve left a strip on the side free of petals because Ryan27 is a hairy guy and he doesn’t like to pick petals from his chest hair after having a shower. Fair enough. Sometimes I add rolled oats or poppy seeds (lovely and scratchy), food colourings, and different scents. Every batch is different.
The last reason is a hangover from the days when the boys and I were very, very broke and I had to stretch every dollar. Anything that I could do to stop a visit to the supermarket was a way to save money. Growing some of my own food and making things like soap is a way to limit setting foot in the supermarket and spending more money. I like the discipline of this, even though I no longer need to do it for financial survival.
It’s funny how the things that I once did to save even a few cents towards big things like the mortgage or the boys’ education are now the things that I choose to do for fun.
Smething that I was really looking forward to when Tom30 left home and Ryan27 was housesitting was how I was going to use up the food I had in the freezer and the zombie apocalypse cupboard during the 9 weeks when I’d be living on my own before I went away to Antarctica. During the lockdowns I’d bumped up the stores a bit and it seemed like now was the perfect opportunity to eat them down a bit.
I decided that I was going to keep supermarket visits to an absolute minimum and I’d spin out the meat I had by making vegetarian meals, using up the piles of lentils and beans I had hanging around. I was going to use up the frozen veggies I had – about 5 packets – and utilise what I had growing in the garden rather than buying fresh greens.
I have lots of longlife milk and milk powder, so that wouldn’t be a problem, though eggs, carrots and potatoes would be on the shopping list. I have heaps of stewed fruit that I’ve frozen as ice cubes. I have enough rice and bakers flour to sink a small ship, so all in all, I was in a great position to live out of my pantry for quite a long time.
The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. How long could I make everything last? This was going to be interesting! I didn’t set any specific targets… I just wanted to wing it and see how far I got.
Then two days later Ryan27 moved back home.
*sigh*
Now don’t get me wrong – I’m very happy that he’s happy to share a roof with me, but my frugal experiment went straight out the window. He wants to make a Mongolian sauce for me to try that he discovered when he was away, so I found myself at Aldi yesterday buying some broccoli that he wanted.
THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I WAS ON MY OWN!!! I’D DO WITHOUT THE BROCCOLI!!! I know I could have refused to buy it, but I don’t think it’s fair to inflict my own little frugal games on unsuspecting housemates.
Another frugal entertainment is my reading challenge. This is in its third year and I LOVE it! In a nutshell, I have to pay over 2K in local council fees each year. I decided to try and “make’ those rates back by reading over 2K’s worth of library books, which are paid for by my local council.
Since I started it, the only books I’ve bought have been a couple of recipe books. I had no idea that my local library was so very well-stocked. I rarely go into my local branch and browse. Most of the time, I hear about a novel I’d like to read, jump on the library’s website and do a search. It’s a rare day when the library doesn’t have a copy of the book I want.
I’ve read literally thousands of dollars worth of books since I began this challenge. Obviously, I wouldn’t have bought all of those books myself, but I certainly would have bought quite a few. I’m addicted to reading and I always have 2 or 3 books on the go at any one time.
This challenge is fun. I have read so many books that I never would have bought for myself, I have the goal of meeting a dollar amount in a 12 month period so I can’t slacken off, and also have the satisfaction of gradually, book by book, ticking down to meet my goal.
I keep track of it on the side of this blog. It’s practically the only Maths that I enjoy.
Scrap quilts? I can spend hours upon happy hours creating quilts from fabric that’s been hanging around here for ever. Cheap as chips but when the quilts are finished, they look a million dollars. I love entertaining myself so happily and so cheaply.
I guess it’s that, as I get older, I’m getting more and more intolerant of waste. Waste of resources, waste of time, waste of money. The feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction when I can reduce any sort of waste is a precious one.
I don’t see why, just because I’ve reached financial independence, I should deny myself that feeling. Feeling accomplished and satisfied makes me happy. Frugality ticks so many boxes for me and – lets be frank – I didn’t retire just to turn around and give up one of the very things that make me happy.
Twenty-four hours later I unwrapped the soap and cut it into bars. Ryan27’s ‘pure’ unpetaled soap is already on the cake rack. It takes 6 weeks to dry before it’s ready to use, so once it was all cut, I carried it to the laundry where it’s safely tucked away, slowly curing.
I’ll probably have enough soap here for personal use and for gifts to last at least 6 months. It’s a small thing, but it fills my heart.
A few days ago someone asked me if the rising prices that seem to be hitting everything from food to haircuts was the reason why I was picking up so much CRT work. The question took me a little by surprise because this hasn’t been the reason at all.**
The conversation around the table then shifted to sharing sad tales of how our lives have already started to be impacted by things getting more expensive. I kept pretty quiet because no one likes a know-it-all. But I wondered if people might be interested in a post where I share some of the strategies that I’ve used over the years to help us get the most bounce per ounce in our grocery shopping.
I picked groceries because I think this is the main area where people can stretch their dollars. There are so many different ways here to tweak how and where we spend our money to keep more of it in our wallets. I know that once I got the other bills under control, grocery shopping was where I was able to keep finding ways to stretch our dollars further. These strategies have now become habits.
Over the years, as my financial situation improved, I’ve allowed some relaxation in some areas of our grocery spending. But the good thing about knowing how to stretch the dollars is that, if you ever need to, you can immediately tighten your spending up again because you already know how to.
The control lies with you. There’s power in that.
The two main ways to save money on groceries are to:
Shop smarter, and
Stop wastage.
The best way to save money on food is to (obviously) pay as little as possible for it. Shopping the specials and stocking up on items that have a long ‘use-by’ is a winning strategy.
If you’re feeding your family on food that has been purchased at a discount, obviously that means that more dollars stay in your pocket. The way I ramp up this is to have a store of food that I’ve bought cheaply… in bulk.
I’ve always had a store of food and other things that we regularly use at home. The habit of doing this started when I was a stay-at-home parent with many small mouths to feed. I’ve always been a long-term thinker, so it just made sense to stock up on items when they were on special, knowing that it meant that over time, I’d be feeding my family for less money per serve.
Yes, I’m that person who has multiples of the same things in their trolley. My pantry in the kitchen looks like anyone else’s, but open my ‘zombie apocalypse’ cupboard in the laundry and it’s a different story.
Currently, there are around 20 tins of different legumes; 30 tins of sardines for the little woofs; around 6 cartons of UHT milk; 3 boxes of tissues; 3 slabs of diced tinned tomatoes (my home-grown tomatoes were awful this year – normally I’d have heaps bagged up in the freezer); 2 huge bags of rice; around 20kgs of bread flour for bread rolls and pizzas; lots of different sorts of tea bags and dried home-grown herbal tea leaves; lots of toilet paper; dried red lentils, peas, and chickpeas; hand sanitiser; garbage bags and baking paper; red wine; ground coffee and a heap of other things.
When you buy multiples of an item that you’ll eat, you can then spread the savings out to magnify the savings. One tin of diced tomatoes at 50% off will save you, say, 50c. Buying 10 tins will save you $5.****
Over time, and with lots of different grocery items, those savings add up. Given enough time, those savings add up substantially.
I’m guessing that most people who read this post will have enough money to immediately start taking advantage of staples by buying them in bulk when they’re on special. For those of us in that position, then the main inhibitor on the size of our stash of groceries will be the amount of storage that we have available. No point stocking up on 4 slabs of toilet paper if you’ve got nowhere to put them! No one wants to be tripping over stacks of tins and packages in the hallway. as we make our way to the kitchen. So the size of our cupboards/shelves and other spots will be our guide.
If, however, you’re on an income with not much disposable money, storage isn’t usually the main issue. Instead, it’s gathering together the money to actually start buying extras of the groceries that your family uses. A store of extra groceries like this takes a fair bit of time to build up because you might only be able to buy 1 or 2 extra things, instead of 5 or 10. Sometimes, buying even a few extra things can be a real stretch. I know – I’ve definitely been there.
If this is your situation, then it helps to keep in mind that even buying ONE extra item at a great price is helping your overall situation. It might not move the needle much, but every tiny good decision is a step forward. Looking long-term, which is what I tend to do, many tiny good decisions can move you a long way.
And if you’re moving a long way, then as time goes on your position will improve and you can then take larger steps. That’s what happened with me.
An unexpected advantage of having a home ‘supermarket’ came to light during the pandemic. In the lockdowns, especially before the vaccinations came around, having these stores meant that we weren’t forced to go out and mingle with people. We were able to stay at home for far longer without being the slightest bit deprived.
I really loved that unexpected benefit of having a store of staples available.
Now, you can buy cheap food and store it away until the cows come home, but if you’re not actually using it, then you’re deluding yourself. Reducing food waste is the second essential part of stretching our grocery dollars.
I remember when I was at home with the kids, back when they were really little. I saw an ‘Oprah’ show where she had an efficiency expert come in. They were looking at food waste in random people’s houses.
He was going through a woman’s fridge and throwing food from her fridge crisper and pantry shelves into a garbage bag. He said something like, “Every time you don’t use food and have to throw it away, you may as well cut out the middleman and throw $50 notes straight into the trash.”
That made me sit up straight. He was absolutely right.
Due to my little family being on the bare bones of our ar##s anyway, our food waste was already pretty small. I couldn’t afford to waste much. But that remark made me redouble my efforts. Every time I was tempted to throw perfectly good food away, I’d see actual money being scraped into the bin.
It was more than flesh and blood could stand.
A few years later, when I decided I needed to grow some of our own food to help cut down on artificial additives in our food, the anti-waste thing REALLY came into its own.
A definite food chain developed. First humans. Then dogs. Then chooks. Then the worm farm. Then compost. Finally – the garbage bin.
Hardly anything went out the door. Our food stayed here, either nourishing our bodies or nourishing our garden, which in turn produced food to nourish us. It was an almost closed cycle.
That cycle, minus the chooks, continues today, even after we moved to The Best House in Melbourne. It’s extremely rare that the boys and I throw food away. We try and use up everything we buy, grow and make.
As the boys grew and some of them moved away and our household became smaller, sometimes we began to eat the same meal two nights running. The amount of food that would once be used up for one night to feed five of us can easily be stretched to feed three adults over two nights.
Any smaller servings are great to throw in the freezer and be used for a quick lunch a few days later. Today’s lunch of bolognese came straight from last night’s dinner. I think it was even tastier the second time around.
Speaking of small servings, sometimes I have steamed veggies left over from dinner. I have a container in the freezer that I throw them in. Every couple of months I make chicken stock paste and veggie stock paste… SO MUCH TASTIER AND CHEAPER than using the cubes and liquid stock from the supermarket. Each batch uses enough fresh veggies (and chicken, if I’m making a chicken stock paste) to fill up a thermomix jug. Of course, I pull anything that needs using up out of the crisper drawer from the fridge, but having the frozen ‘waste’ veggies from previous meals means that I’m using up ingredients that need to be used and saving some other veggies, that may be fresher, to be included in another meal later on.
Every little bit helps.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but the two strategies of buying grocery specials in bulk and reducing food wastage as much as possible are the bedrock of being able to stretch grocery spending further. I know that to me it became almost like a game, where every time I used up something, found a great deal and bought up big, or made something stretch further, it was fun.
Let’s face it, the road to financial independence isn’t quick. It takes many years to get there. Anything that helps to get us closer and is like a game has GOT to be a win!
** Sequence of Return Risk and volunteering to help pay for a wedding are the reasons I’m doing casual relief teaching. 🙂
**** Of course, being me, I was going to keep the maths simple!
Dad joke of the day:
What’s it called when a chameleon can’t change its colours anymore?
On Christmas Eve last year, Ryan27 and I drove over to Mt Eliza to his friend’s place. She had some lilies and elephant garlic that she was happy to give away.
I stood and watched while Ryan27 dug them up and we brought them home.
The elephant garlic was planted last week in one of the wicking vegetable beds. The lilies were planted as soon as we got home in the backyard, right near the pizza oven.
The main entertainment up till now has been watching how quickly these plants have been leaping up from the ground.
But two days ago I went out to get some green leaves for dinner and there it was – the first flower.
There are two more flowers quietly growing that will soon be out.
Over time, I’m looking forward to being able to have these as cut flowers in the house. I’ve always loved their shape – so simple and elegant.
Why am I writing about this on Frugal Friday? Because I’ll be enjoying these flowers for (possibly) the rest of my life… and they were free.
Not to mention the elephant garlic – a lifetime’s supply of garlic for free as well.
If you have the space, setting aside spots for perennial flowers and vegetables is a great investment, both financially and for personal satisfaction.
My $7 rhubarb plant I bought from Aldi 3 years ago has provided huge amounts of rhubarb stalks each year – enough to supply our household, my parents and my sister. I think it paid for itself in the first 3 months of being planted. Imagine how much free food it’ll give when I dig it up and divide it into more plants?
I have a lime verbena, 3 lemon verbenas and a lemon myrtle, as well as many different types of peppermint. Free herbal tea, anyone? They’re great either fresh or dried and make great little gifts.
I haven’t bought bean seeds for years – I just let some dry on the vine and then plant the dried beans in the following Spring. Free beans are my favourite type.
I’m not even going to try listing my fruit trees. Once they become well-established I’ll be one happy little gardener.
One piece of advice – only plant what you’ll want to eat!
Do you have any perennial plants that have been absolutely worth it?
Dad joke of the day:
If Satan ever lost his hair, there’d be hell toupee.
The quilt I made for my parents for Christmas is the perfect metaphor for the journey to financial independence. Quilting, like becoming financially free, has basic, simple steps but it certainly isn’t easy.
It’s not quick, either. But each seemingly insignificant decision that we make along the way contributes to the whole, beautiful product at the end.
The broad brush strokes of this quilt are the same as every other quilt in the world – it has a top of smaller pieces of fabric sewed together; a middle piece of warm batting and a backing fabric, sewing through all 3 layers to hold it all together and with a binding fabric sewn around the edges to stop it from fraying and falling apart. All quilts are the same basic construction.
Financial Independence s the same. The basic construction is that a financially independent person has gathered together the resources, usually over a time-period of decades, to support themselves financially without having to turn up to a job or business for money. Every financially independent person falls into this broad brush stroke category.
But as with the quilt, once you zoom in, the details can vary tremendously.
Take another look at this quilt.
This is a quilt made from scraps. There is no other quilt the same as this in the whole world. When I decided to make it, the broad brush stroke decisions were already decided. I knew how this quilt would be put together. But then some further decisions had to be made.
Each square would be made from scraps of one colour.
I would not buy any more fabric – I would make this quilt from what I already had. (It was in the middle of lockdowns, after all!)
Each square would measure 12.5″ square.
Most squares would be rainbow hues, but a couple would be brown, black-and-white and pink, just to tone it down a bit.
The quilt would be double-bed sized, as that’s the size bed my parents have.
Very similar to how we start along the path to financial independence. When I found out about FI/RE and decided to see if I could swing it, there were a few decisions to be made as to how I was going to go about it.
I had already paid off my house, so I decided I’d concentrate on putting together a share portfolio. House prices, even back then, were prohibitive for a sole parent on one teaching wage. Buying rentals was out of the question.
I decided to drop back a day a week at work and become a Thermomix Group Leader, running a team of consultants in my area. In other words, I chose to augment my wage by running a side hustle.
I was still supporting my four teenage boys. Reducing my expenses by installing solar panels, creating a food forest with fruit trees, veggie gardens and chooks, and cooking from scratch would cost more in the short-term, but over the long haul would make my journey towards financial independence much easier.
So far so good. But just deciding these things will not produce either a finished quilt or a financially secure retirement. You have to go smaller. Which specific actions are you going to take to get these things done?
Zoom in on the quilt. Every single piece of fabric here is the result of a deliberate decision and a deliberate action. See the black and white square? If you zoom in on that, you’ll see pieces of fabric that are less than a quarter of an inch wide. (Yes, I’m crazy.)
Some of the pieces in these squares are much larger and therefore contribute more towards the overall finished quilt. But the quilt would not be finished without every single one of these pieces, no matter how small. Every single decision and action in putting these fabrics together has mattered.
You could make the argument that the smallest pieces of fabric in the quilt almost matter the most, as they show that the commitment was there to finish the overall quilt top, by using every single piece of fabric at my disposal – no matter how small. I knew that even though a 1/4″ stripe of colour wouldn’t contribute a huge amount; IT STILL HELPED. After all, all I needed was enough pieces of coloured fabric to cover the top of a double bed. Keep at it long enough, keep putting fabric pieces together no matter how small and I knew I’d eventually get there.
It’s the same with financial independence.
All you need to do is cover 25X your annual expenses and you’re golden. The broadest brush stroke of all, I know! But how we all choose to get there is incredibly varied. Each one of us has a FI/RE journey that is exactly like this quilt – – a one of a kind. I can’t speak for anyone else, but like the strips and squares of colour in the quilt top, here are some of the things I chose to do each day to push myself along the path to FI/RE:
The most day-to-day decisions were all about frugality. I upped my income through the Thermomix side-hustle but I also deliberately chose to make the pool of money I had last a long time. I stretched my dollars any way I could. Some, like the quarter-inch strips, barely moved the needle. Others, like the big red and white polka-dot squares, covered much more ground. But they all contributed to the mindset of paying attention to the dollars:
When Tom13 started secondary school, he had to choose between learning French and German. The other boys didn’t have a choice. They all used the same textbooks – each book was used four times. Bargain!
Same with school uniforms. Everything was handed down from boy to boy and, wherever possible, bought at the school’s second-hand uniform shop. Boys are tough on their clothes, so why pay full price?
I bought grocery specials in bulk. If we ate it and it was on special, I bought up big. The aim was to eat as much as we could at half-price. Over time, that makes a difference.
If a cut of meat cost over $10/KG, I didn’t buy it. Even now, with only 2 of us in the house, I still look at the unit cost of everything.
The boys were all given swimming lessons. That’s a non-negotiable for Australian kids. But after that, each boy was only allowed to take ONE extra-curricular activity at a time. None of this running each kid around to forty-seven different gym classes, dance classes and sport clinics every week! At first they tried sport, but then over time, they all gravitated to music lessons. Instead of being ‘Jacks of all trades, masters of none’, they’re all very proficient in their instruments of choice. David27 has made a career out of it!
Once I found out about FI/RE, I read everything I could lay my hands on about investing. The share market was a big mystery to me and, being deathly afraid of numerals and maths, I had a lot of mental blocks to slowly overcome. It was hard, I won’t lie, but I knew that if I kept at it, blog post by blog post, book by book, things would slowly become clearer.
I kept food costs low by growing as much of our food as we could. I kept chooks, not just for the eggs but also for the free fertiliser they provided. If I grew it – we ate it.
I also grew the food that I needed to take to Thermomix demos as much as possible. After all, I was there to MAKE money; not spend it! My customers all had the herb and garlic dip instead of the hommus, (I grew the garlic, parsley and spring onions) , and they always had the rissotto (I grew the spinach.)
We were given free bread from a bakery every Tuesday night. We picked up everything they hadn’t sold that day for YEARS – all of their breads, pies, cakes and doughnuts. I stuffed my boys full of that free food – and I gave it away to friends and took the excess cakes and pastries into work every Wednesday. the chooks would also have a day of leftover bakery food each week. I made that free food COUNT!
I prioritised my goals. My first, most immediate goal was security for myself and the boys. Leaving a marriage with only $60 cash and 4 boys under 5 will do that to you! My over-arching goal was financial freedom, but I also had a life-long dream of going to England and Europe. In the end, I slotted that trip in between paying off the house and retirement. It cost around 30K and I thought it’d significantly delay my retirement… but I have never regretted going on that trip. It was truly a dream come true. And I never dropped my gaze from the FI/RE goal.
I took advantage when opportunity knocked. Obvously, making the decision to geoarbitrage and sell my original house was a HUGE clincher for my early(ish) retirement, but I also did smaller things, such as forming a close friendship with the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel breeder who bred my first bitch. For two decades, we had dogs from her kennels living with us. They were either older dogs who were past their breeding and showing days, or they were bitches I got for free on breeding terms. Poppy is the last of the line for this- I got her for free on condition Jenny could breed from her. (She ended up having only one litter. ) It was a bit of a shock to the system to have to pay for Scout!!
Every day there were tiny little decisions that on the face of it meant absolutely nothing and were noticed by no-one but me, yet collectively those tiny decisions swept me along the path to being financially free.
Many of you are in the boring middle part of the FI/RE journey. You’ve made all of the big and middle-tier decisions and put them into gear. It’s easy to lose heart and think that it’s all just too slow. But remember, just like piecing together a quilt, all of the little decisions and actions continuously help move the needle – and I’m here to say that a life without having to turn up to a job every weekday is a mighty fine life indeed.
Keep your eyes on what YOUR finished product will look like! Decide what YOUR little decisions and actions will be and then keep on doing them. Future You will thank you.
I have a friend who I’ve known for more years than I care to think about. She doesn’t live near me, so when we were in the midst of all the lockdowns we didn’t see each other for months. So once lockdowns were over I was excited to finally clap eyes on her in person.
She and her husband came over for a coffee. She walked into the house, dropped her bag on the table and went over to my pantry door, throwing it open and standing there gazing inside.
I looked at Ryan26 and he raised an eyebrow.
She stood there.
I knew she was probably waiting for attention, but I asked the question anyway.
“Beks, are you looking for anything?”
She turned to face me, saying, “I just can’t believe that you shop the way you do. It’s hysterical!”
Oof.
A bit of background…
I’ve always bought our groceries in bulk. Back when the boys were little and we were living hand-to-mouth, it was a survival tool. In the years before Aldi came to Australia, I used to shop the specials at the supermarkets and buy 5 or 10 tins/packets/jars of our staple foods when they were cheaper.
This meant that, over time, we were eating a lot of our food at a discounted price. When you’re a struggling single mum with 4 hungry mouths to feed, not counting your own, every single dollar saved is worthwhile. Sure, it costs a little more up-front, but over time the groceries actually work out cheaper.
Having bought that food, it was imperative to keep track of it. No point buying bulk food to save money if you end up having to throw it out because you forgot about it! So my pantry was and is always well-organised. Everything stacked neatly, tins etc rotated with the newer ones going to the back so nothing goes out of date and labels to the front so you can see at a glance what and how many you have of everything.
I remember seeing an Oprah show back when the kids were small where she had a kitchen organiser go through people’s fridges and pantries. I remember him stuffing shopping bags full of one woman’s rotting produce from her crisper and saying, “If you don’t eat the food you bring home, you may as well take $50 notes and throw them straight into the garbage. It’d be quicker and it’d have the same result.”
I never forgot that.
I twigged pretty early on that the longer you stay out of the supermarket, the more money you save. It’s amazing how little treats get popped into the trolley whenever you go shopping. So if I make sure that my house is well-stocked with all of the things we use, then instead of going to the supermarket for inspiration each night for dinner, I can cook meals from what we already have.
Particularly now that there’s only 2 of us living here, I rarely go to Aldi more than once a week – and now that the garden is starting to ramp up, it’ll probably drift out to nearly once a fortnight. After all, if I don’t see those little treats, I can’t buy them! Money saved.
So my pantry has always been well-stocked. During lockdowns, this became a godsend. In between lockdowns, I’d drive to far-away shops like Costco and stock up on the essentials, which for this house is the Little Woofs’ dry and raw dog food, with coffee grounds and dried blueberries for the humans.
Sardines for the Little Woofs.
When I see tinned sardines in oil at Aldi, for example, I grab a heap because usually, only the sardines in tomato sauce tins are on the shelf. I feed the Little Woofs sardines every week… I’d hate for them to miss out because I didn’t think ahead. Tomato sauce with their sardines isn’t really their thing. (Is it anybody’s?)
What began as a survival strategy when the kids were small has morphed into a convenience thing now that I shop primarily at Aldi. There are no specials anymore, but the money and the time I save by not popping into the supermarket every day or so is worth the cupboard space I have for my zombie apocalypse stores.
Beks, however, is of a different mindset to me.
She and her husband are empty-nesters, so like my household, they’re also feeding just 2 people. The way we handle that job starts off the same, but then quickly veers apart.
We start off thinking about what we’d like to eat that night. Neither of us menu plans for the week or the month like some ultra-organised people do. We ask our husband/son their opinion (sometimes) and we make a decision.
Mine is usually based on what we have a lot of and what needs using up. At the moment, for example, we have a lot of diced chicken that I’ve put into 500g bags in the freezer. At least twice a week, I’ll be pulling out one of those bags to use.
Beks, on the other hand, decides what they’ll eat that night regardless of what’s in the house. She goes food shopping almost daily.
They also refuse to eat the same thing two nights running. Ryan26 and I have fallen into the habit of cooking one night, then eating the same meal again the next night, or freezing the leftovers if we need to. Beks just cooks half-portions of what she used to cook when the kids were home, so they don’t have m/any leftovers.
There’s no right or wrong to this. It’s just two different ways of tackling the “what will we have for dinner?” question that we all have to answer every day.
Beks turned away from my pantry and said, “I just can’t believe that you shop the way you do. It’s hysterical!”
I knew that there was no point in getting all riled up or defensive. She does her thing and I do mine. It’s all good. But I wasn’t going to let her get away with making a dig at me for no reason. A girl has to stand her ground in her own kitchen, after all.
I cocked my head to one side and said, “Comes in bloody handy during a pandemic, though. While everyone was dodging covid doing their shopping, I was here all safe and sound.”
The offending tub of Vegemite. She’s right – it IS big.
She looked back into the pantry and said, “It’s funny, the way you have a bucket of Vegemite here.”
I chuckled. “Won’t have to even think about buying more for years!”
Coffee grounds etc in the thermomix jug, ready to be blitzed for the worms.
She shrugged and I moved past her to put the kettle on. She saw the bowl of used coffee grounds and eggshells that we have beside the kettle. When the bowl is full I blitz the contents and dig them into the veggie gardens to feed the worms. In turn, they feed my veggies, which in turn, feed us.
Circle of life. Hakuna Matata.
“You DO know that it’s not normal to have coffee grounds just sitting there?” she said.
“Of course it is, Beks… when you’re a permaculture household,” I said. I don’t know if she’s up to speed on what permaculture is, but as her husband came in from outside the conversation moved on.
As I made the coffees, Ryan26 and I exchanged a simple shake of the head and a smile. Ahhh Beks. Every now and then she has to try and take a dig…
We know why we run the house the way we do, and we know that the things we do work well for us. For me, the comfort of having a well-stocked pantry and zombie apocalypse cupboard gives me a sense of security that is a beautiful thing to live with.
It’s simply another tool for designing my life so that my retirement is stress-free and comfortable. And yes; 11 months in, retirement is still bloody wonderful!
