Living Simply

This is a new concept to me. The last 4 years of my life I did not have to worry about money, school, bills, and etc. Everything was provided for by my loving parents. This was truly a blessing and has helped our marriage start off well financially, but I have had to learn a lot of new things! I have learned a lot of ways to save money and really enjoy spending less. When we first got married I felt like we were spending too much on things we didn’t need and felt a very big nudge from God to go on a spending fast for 2 months. We could not buy anything we didn’t need. For my husband it was things like hair gel, for me its crafty things, clothes, & face lotion, and for Kaia (the puppy) its treats and toys. This was a great lesson that we needed to learn! Everything we wanted to buy we used my mom’s saying “is this something we need or something we want?” Usually it was something we wanted and we had to learn to do with what we have. And geez you can learn to make a lot of stuff out of nothing (there is a ton of uses for coconut oil, but that’s a later post). Even though the spending fast is over and we can spend a little more we have become wiser and have learned if we don’t really need it we don’t need to buy it! So, this is an adventure in learning to live without lots of luxuries and being content with what God has given us! Like great friends and family!

Some ways were saving money:

Home:

-use cloth napkins. We rarely ever use paper towels

–homemade laundry detergent

-homemade cleaning products

    -All-purpose cleaning scrub for sinks, showers, toilets, you name it

       -mix baking soda & liquid dish soap together until you get a thick paste. That’s it!

–homemade bread

-cook at home and bring lunches to work

-keeping the house warm or cool depending on the season. If my husky can stand it being almost 80 in the house during the summer so can you J

Body/hair:

-make our own soap and its awesome!

-stopped using lotion and just use coconut oil for my face and body

-rarely use a blow dryer (save electricity)

–homemade deodorant– it works! Haven’t lost any friends yet

-homemade chap stick

-stopped coloring my hair which has allowed me to stop using products in my hair since its not fried and frizzy from bleaching.

Hopefully this has inspired you to live more frugally. Also, check out Becoming a Proverbs 31 Women where my great friend Sarah talks about our fun morning we had yesterday.

-Amy