Fairly Frugal February

If you know me very well at all you know that I'm always fairly frugal. This month, however, I resolved to outdo myself. February is a short month, even in a leap year, so it seemed like the best time to attempt "Buy nothing new," a challenge I'd seen floating around the internet for ages. 

'Buy nothing new' was never intended to exclude food or gas, nor would it exempt us from bill-paying. Those were sort of given. It was meant for non-essentials only. It lasted exactly two weeks. On February 14 I bought two heart-shaped cookie cutters to make roasted heart-shaped potatoes and beets (heart beets, get it?) for our Valentine's dinner. They were 0.79 each. They ALMOST didn't count. Right? I mean, I'd found that much and more on the ground before. I wasn't really undermining our budget... 

Then, for some reason, after months of unseasonably warm days, February decided to get really, really cold and snowy. And I started missing my outdoor runs even more than usual. And I realized that I wouldn't be able to run with two little ones come spring because we didn't have the stroller capacity. A friend had previously offered to sell me her double stroller when she was done with it if I was still interested, and I certainly was. Brand new, including the infant car seat adapter and taxes it would have cost over $1000. I paid $100. Back in January we had sold a classroom quality sand and water table given to us by our neighbours for $150. It wasn't as though I was spending Martin's pay cheque. (Are you beginning to detect a pattern of justification?) I had Eleanor and Ethan covered but not Emilia, whose running shoes had been too small for some time. Finally, back to Salvation Army. Strange to think how much I'd missed it. (I'm mildly addicted to thrift shopping, but only for items we'd otherwise purchase elsewhere for more.) While I didn't find running shoes there, I did find my voracious reader a bunch of great chapter books. And myself two very practical tops. All for under $10. Over at the consignment store a half-price fleece for Ethan and a gender-neutral pair of Aesics running shoes, an investment in the future. The total was a bit steeper ($14.50), but I had almost $60 in consignor credit. Later that week, reaching for a book from the mantle, Emilia accidentally knocked over and broke one of our bookends. This prompted the one truly frivolous purchase of the month. I kid you not, I considered digging two heavy rocks out of the frozen tundra that is our property, but these cast iron bookends spoke to my heart. I gritted my teeth and hit 'submit' on a $44 order. 

I have not purchased anything non-essential since. We've enjoyed free skating and a free movie (on Family Day) and additional free skating (home school group) since. I've made gifts for friends and skirts for the girls (and Emilia has made gifts for friends) all from materials in my stash. Otherwise we've done without, per usual, and not particularly noticed. 

I did find $20 on the floor at Walmart last week. It was lying about four feet from where a man was standing, so I held it up and asked if he had dropped it. He took it from my hand and said in a very insincere voice, "Uhhh... yeeessss... it surely is!" On hindsight, it wasn't his any more than it was mine and it would have made the bookends that much easier to justify if I had kept it, but that's not what happened.

So... 

$1.79 (cookie cutters)

$100 (secondhand stroller)

$10 (books and tops)

$14.50 (fleece and running shoes)

$44 (bookends)

-------

$170.29 ($150 of which covered by the sale of a gifted sand and water table and $14.50 not charged) >> $5.79 total out-of-pocket discretionary spending for February. 

In conclusion, I didn't meet my objective and I introduced a fair bit of justification to my calculations, but I still think I did okay. I was accountable to myself, per usual, for every penny spent and saved and the girls were aware of my aims and rationale. They also saw me instinctively try to return something I believed was someone else's as much as I would have liked to keep it. So all is good.