Living with less...

Almost every day, I encounter people trying to live with less.  Less money to pay bills and put food on the table.  Less time to spend with family, cook, do home projects.  Less chemicals in their homes and bodies.  Less space to live in.  Less impact on the planet.  Rarely do we hear someone complaining about how difficult it is to adjust to having more.  Well, children, maybe.  Fleas.  Laundry.  The real struggle is trying to maintain a life you'd consider normal or acceptable, with less resources.

When I first started making a real effort to live on less money, it was out of complete necessity.  My husband had changed jobs to work for Voldemort (i.e. The Boss Who Shall Not Be Named), and suddenly we were struggling to feed a family of five, pay bills, and put gas in the car, on one paycheck of about $300/week.  It was bad.  It was really, really bad.  Unfortunately, the best advice I could find on shaving living expenses and cutting food costs amounted to:  Make coffee at home instead of buying Starbucks; Cancel the gym membership and buy an elliptical instead; Shop the sales at grocery stores; Cook at home instead of dining out...

DUH!  From my perspective, people who could afford daily Starbucks, gym memberships, and regular dinners at restaurants were RICH compared to me.  Why did they need help saving money, and were they really so stupid that they never considered cancelling their gym membership until a magazine article told them to?  Those articles were absolutely no help to me, and I'll bet there are a great many more people looking for frugal living options because they NEED them than the magazine editors could even imagine.

What I'm hoping to accomplish here is to offer REAL and PRACTICAL solutions for living with less.  I want the Random Reader to understand that I've fed my family from the Food Pantry and food stamps.  Before my husband left Voldemort, I'd shaved our family food budget to under $75/week.  We have a lot more wiggle room now (thank heavens), but I remain on a Quest for Less.  I want to share my hard-earned knowledge so others can avoid a lot of my own struggles, but I also want to learn from others.  I'll post my tips and thoughts, as well as anything great I happen upon elsewhere.  Please feel free to comment or email with your own ideas too.  While I don't believe you can never be too rich or too thin, I DO think you can never live with too little.  Well, love, maybe.  Air.  Chocolate...