Adventures in Frugality, Part 2: Challenges

There never was an adventure without challenges. Trouble, danger and fear are part of adventure. With nothing to be overcome an adventure becomes merely a journey, and it’s likely to be a tedious one. It is challenges that bring excitement. They stretch us beyond our limits and force us to learn and to grow.


I’m feeling very challenged these days. The prospect of losing my job is frightening. I’ve had it for nine and a half years and, even though I have little love for it, its loss will be wrenching. The rhythms of my life that have been built around my job are comfortable from familiarity even if they are sometimes irksome. It will be hard finding the new patterns that I will need to succeed in my life going forward.

Money is an issue, of course. I’ll have to give up some things I enjoy. So will Jennifer and so will Maura. I hate having to tell her that she can’t have something or do something because we don’t have the money for it, but I know she understands. We’ve never been rich so Maura is used to not getting everything she wants. It is just as well. If she had had all she wanted before she would take it harder now that she certainly can’t.

I’ve come to see the upcoming loss of my job as more of an opportunity than a disaster. My job in retail bookselling has been a side job for years. I hung onto it for the money while I spent more effort on other, more important things. The trouble was that it took too much mental energy and distracted me from what I needed to do, which was to write and to sell my writing. I’m not going to be unemployed. I may, unfortunately, be unpaid. My hope is that my time working without payment will be brief.

Adventures in Frugality, Part 1

Recently I learned that I will soon be losing my job. It wasn’t a good job. I won’t miss the work much. I will miss the people I’ve been working with, some of them for more than nine years. I’ll miss the money too. Even though I haven’t been well paid, selling books has contributed to our household needs.
I’m confident that in time the money issues will work themselves out. I’ll sell some of my work or I’ll find another job. In the meantime my goal is to spend as little money as possible, to stretch what we have as far as possible. I intend to have a good time while I’m doing it. It’s time for adventures in frugality.

For a start, I plan on driving the car less. Gas is expensive these days and likely to get more expensive. I can’t afford to burn any if I can avoid it. I’ve started walking Maura to school again now that the snow has melted off of the sidewalks. The mornings are brisk but if the weather is clear the walks are still enjoyable. The birds are singing in the trees and the first flowers of spring are blooming. I also walk to the library often. I can use the exercise; the library is often a good place to work and its services are still free.

The dinner table is another place we’ll be enjoying frugality. I’m trying to find ways to make inexpensive meals that please my family. No one in our house is a vegetarian but no one is a determined carnivore either. Meatless meals have always been among our favorites and I plan on making more of them. Made from scratch, they should be healthy and cheap. The challenge is to be creative enough that no one gets bored. I have plenty of time for cooking most days and I enjoy being creative in the kitchen.

I also don’t want to waste anything I can use. We already make homemade stock out of our vegetable scraps and bones. In the past leftovers often went to waste but I’m going to try harder to make sure edible leftovers get eaten and scrap paper gets used again before it gets recycled.

Our need to be thrifty will probably keep us close to home this year but Maura and I are still planning some adventures that will start as soon as the weather allows. For a school project on animals Maura researched lemmings this year. One of the things she learned was that the Southern Bog Lemming lives right here in Massachusetts. We’re planning on being amateur naturalists and searching them out in their natural habitat. While we’re at it we’ll get to know some of the other animals and plants that inhabit our local bogs and fens. I’ll write more about hunting for lemmings when we’ve made our first expedition. With luck we’ll find them close to home but I expect it may be a project that takes a good part of the summer.