feeling frugal

I just made some homemade laundry detergent using grated ivory soap, borax, washing soda, and baking soda. I wanted some detergent that has no dyes or perfumes for the baby’s diapers, but laundry detergent is really expensive, and for some reason the less stuff they put in it, the more expensive it is.  ???  Also, the Dreft brand “baby” detergent they sell is not only ridiculously expensive, but also has perfume in it!  It might have dye too, I’m not sure.  Two completely unnecessary ingredients that many people find irritates their skin.

I’ve been wanting to try making this for a while and finally got around to it.  When I run out of regular detergent I will use this stuff for our clothes too. Well, provided that it works -I haven’t tried it yet. But the recipe has good reviews.

It’s so cheap: I just made a gallon ice cream bucket full of it for about $4, and you’re only supposed to use 1/8 cup per full load, so this batch I made is 72 loads. That is about $0.06 per load.
Compare that to Tide powdered detergent at about $0.25 per load, or All liquid detergent at about $0.20 per load, or Dreft liquid detergent at about $0.30 per load.

It doesn’t seem like much when we’re just comparing pennies but when you compare the price of 72 loads worth, it’s really obvious how much cheaper it is:

homemade: $4.32
Tide: $18.00
All: $14.40
Dreft: $21.60

So, if you use homemade detergent instead of Tide, for example, and you do two loads of laundry every week, you will be saving about $20 in a year!

lol, maybe that’s not really that much, but I think it’s cool.  And I have always been kind of annoyed whenever I’ve had to buy laundry detergent because if you look at the recipt it is like four times as expensive as most of the other grocery items you bought, so it seems really expensive.

This is the recipe:

3 c borax (found at Walmart or Dillon’s in the detergent aisle)
2 c washing soda (the only place I found it was Dillon’s detergent aisle)
2 c baking soda
2 c grated bar soap (two bars of Ivory soap)

Technically it has perfume in it from the Ivory soap.  Next time I think I might try Fells-Naptha bar soap.  It is supposed to be good for laundry.  Also, if you make this detergent, use a food processor thing to grate the soap.  It is really easy and fast!

The other frugal thing I did today was make some cloth baby wipes.  I figured if I’m going to do cloth diapers I might as well do cloth wipes too, and just throw them in the diaper pail with the diapers.  I cut out wipe-sized squares from a couple white t-shirts (knit fabric so I didn’t have to hem the edges).  As soon as I buy a little squirt bottle I will make the soap part (water, castile soap, and tea tree oil) to squirt onto the wipes when they are used.  Or you can just use water from the sink, but I like the idea of having a squirt bottle handy.

Other news:

Samuel spent aproximately 10,000,000 hours stooping over some pieces of wood and some nasty chemicals so he could strip, sand, stain, and varnish a headboard and footboard for (me) our bed.  The headboard and footboard look FANTASTIC, just like I wanted, but when we put the bed together, the side rails were too short for our mattress by about three inches!!!!!!  Boy, I am surprised one or both of us did not have a nervous breakdown.  I felt so bad for Samuel, who really, truly hated the project (the bed has those fiddly little turned spindles on it, which were ridiculously hard to strip and sand) and I know he was really worried that I was going to break down crying, because this was truly a nesting disaster.  The baby is coming any day now, and my mattress is on the floor, and there are pieces of a bed lying around my house.

So we went to the thrift store, and they had dozens of bed rails, but none that were the right type and length (hook-on rails, 80-82″ long).   But today I did some online research and found some that will cost about $50 including shipping, so I think I will use some birthday money that I got, and buy those.

UNLESS SOMEONE HAPPENS TO HAVE SOME TO GIVE US????

I just thought I’d throw that out there because you never know.

forgive me this one whiney post

samuel just got paid for the first time today.  the school district pays once a month.  and, judging by the amount on the paycheck, he is only getting paid for the first two weeks or so on this paycheck, because of how the dates and payroll work out.

so now we have to figure out how to survive for another month without buying anything.  gaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

it is really crazy how this summer money has seemed to magically appear in the perfect amounts (just barely enough).  each month when it has come time to pay the bills, i have worked the books and there is magically just enough to pay it all.  and only one of those times was it a loan of money we have to pay back eventually.  the rest of the time it was just magical hidden money showing up just for us.  I’m serious.  i just finished figuring out how we were going to survive this month with a tiny paycheck, the first paycheck in five months, and i think it’s actually going to work, just barely.  and just in time for the baby to come.

at least the baby won’t cost much.  free breastmilk, free healthcare (i have NO idea what we would do without medicaid) and cloth diapers.  we’ve got the essentials.  a loving mom and dad, a doctor, food, and diapers.  hehehe.  plus more thanks to generous friends and family.  i think i have spent a total of about $3 for this baby, on some snaps for the clothes i made.  I guess if you count the rocking chair and lambskin that is about $100.  plus maybe $25 on used maternity clothes.

the only thing that will cost more than usual is laundry for all those diapers.  lol.

Oh my gosh i will be SO happy when i can buy stuff again….next month samuel should get a nice fat paycheck.  and a new baby!  wish us luck surviving until then.

finally, a job!

Yay Samuel got hired yesterday!  It’s kind of a glorified sales job which we’re both vaguely ashamed of, but it’s really not bad at all.

1. he has to sell the product to people

2. but he doesn’t go door-to-door.  the interested customers call in and say when they would like someone to come visit them. then workers like Samuel look at the list of people and times and choose who they want to visit.  then he visits them and tries to sell the product.  so he doesn’t have to go bug people.  they are asking for him to come sell them the product.

3. and he doesn’t have to sell things to make money.  if he visits 40 people per month, he is guaranteed to be paid a fixed amount, which will cover our bills.  if he sells something, he gets more. they expect the average worker to make a sale at least 10% of the time.  also, they are looking to promote people really soon, which means you get more money.  they claim they are having to turn down tons of customers (which is why they are hiring) so there should be no shortage of people to visit.

4. there’s no contract or down payment or anything fishy like that.

all in all it seems good and I think Samuel will be good at it too.  and one of the best things is that he went to work TODAY!  it is for training, which we are not sure he gets paid for because he forgot to ask, but I would be surprised if they didn’t, because he has to do training for 60 days and that would be a lot to ask of someone who doesn’t have an income, which theoretically the people they are hiring don’t.

also, they pay weekly!  so, as long as they pay for training, we will have money soon.  we can buy things like groceries, lightbulbs, dish soap, and so on.  and we can start saving money again.  we are so relieved.

I just ate breakfast with my husband and then he went off to work, so I’m feeling all hausfrau right now and I’m going to go clean or something.

an optimistic update

Sorry I have not written in a while.  Whenever I felt like writing recently, I also felt like complaining MAJORLY.  So I thought it would be better to just not write.  Today, however, I’m feeling pretty optimistic.  We can pay our rent and bills coming up this week!  Granted, we will have about $100 left to our name, and it will be impossible to pay bills next month unless Samuel gets hired, but I feel like things will start looking up very soon.  Samuel has applied to over a hundred jobs.  Every weekday morning he spends a few hours applying to new jobs, both online and in person.  Something has got to come up eventually.

ETA: I thought I should clarify that, though we cannot pay our bills next month unless Samuel gets a paycheck, we do have Other Resources in the form of Family that can lend us money to get by.  So don’t be alarmed!  We are not going to be homeless.

Sorry for talking about our money in such detail, but I personally do not feel like it is inappropriate to talk about money unless you are whining, begging, or bragging.   So I try really hard not to do those things.  In fact, I think it is important to talk about money so that people can have a realistic view of it, and can learn from other people’s examples.  Also, I think it is important for people to be ok with using the words “we can’t afford it.”  Just matter-of-fact “we can’t afford it.”  Not “we can’t afford it don’t you feel sorry for us and want to give us money?” or “we can’t afford it and thus we are depressed.”  Just plain owning up to what you can’t afford and not being upset about it beyond reason.  So that’s why I am talking about this.

I am really excited about this baby.  I have been reading up on how to guess what position it’s in.  Now whenever it kicks, I try to determine what body part(s) is(are) kicking.

This morning Samuel looked at our phone bill and noticed that they were charging us for things we don’t want and didn’t ask for.  We seriously can’t afford that, so he called them, and they fixed everything and are going to pro-rate our account so that we will be refunded!  Samuel is my hero!

We got church callings.  I am the Relief Society Music Committee, which means I pick the songs and lead the music and also do the practice hymn and arrange a Relief Society musical number and stuff.  At one point in my life I said this was my coveted calling, so I’m pretty happy.  Samuel is a Sunday School teacher for the 14-15 year olds, including my sister Emma.  He is excited about that too.  After working with teenage sex offenders at his previous job, there is basically nothing these kids can dish out that he can’t handle.  They are all good kids; their only problem is that they don’t talk much in class.

General updates

We’re moving on May 19th.  We wanted to use a Relocube but they were all out! So we got one of their shared trailers instead.  Same price, and same amount of space.  But now we can’t just put it in our parking space, because it’s a huge trailer -we have to have them park it on the other side of the parking lot, quite far away.  So that makes me a little grumpy.

We will probably get in to the apartment we applied for.  It’s about a mile away from my parent’s home.  It costs about the same as Wymount, plus more for utilites, and has twice as much space.  I’m so used to being a BYU student.  Now that I’m not anymore I have to buy a landline and internet! Internet is soooo expensive.  I believe trash and water are included in the rent price though.

I’m going crazy looking at furniture on craigslist.  We will need couches, a dresser, and some other things.  I really don’t want to buy ugly things just because they’re cheap and available.  I would rather wait and find something nicer.  If I find something on craigslist while I’m still out here, my parents could pick it up for me, but they only have small cars so it’s a bit difficult.  So I don’t know why I’m still looking.  It’s addictive.

Plus we are rapidly running out of money, so it’s really hard to find furniture that I like that is still cheap.  I’ve been working nearly full-time this week and will next week.  Then they kick me out because I’m not a student.  Working full-time is a lot harder now than it was when I wasn’t pregnant.  I get tired fast!  Sometimes it’s like my arms and legs are super heavy.  I’m glad I am only working for one more week.

In really awesome news, I found a freestanding birth center in Topeka, an hour’s drive from Manhattan.  The website is here. If you don’t know what a birth center is, check out their FAQ page.  Check out their c-section rate in 2007: 3.6%.  That is just phenomenal.  The national average for 2006 was 31.1%.  Outrageously high.  The W.H.O. recommends no higher than 15%.   The other nice thing about this birth center is that they charge $4,100 total for prenatal visits, delivery, and a few postnatal visits.  This is a very good price.  If a patient ends up with an emergency hospital transfer (4.8% did in 2007), they will cancel the birth center fee and charge what it would cost for them to do a hospital birth.  So what that means for us, is that if Samuel doesn’t get a job with maternity coverage, and we don’t qualify for Medicaid (both of which are likely) we will either  pay $4,100 or the amount for the hospital birth (anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 and up, just for the delivery).  We were thinking of doing a home birth with a certified midwife ($2,000-3,000) but then if we ended up having a hospital transfer, we would have to pay the hospital bill on top of that.  So not only does this birth center have good statistics and a philosophy that meshes with mine and Samuel’s, it also is the least risky financially.  And if Samuel does get health insurance, we will get a plan that pays for a certain percentage of the bill from whatever doctor we choose to see.  So potentially it could be much less than $4,100, which as it is is cheaper than we would have paid in copays with our BYU insurance.

Sometimes we just want to move to Canada and have the baby there.  Health insurance is so blankety-blank complicated.  But I am really excited about this birth center.

Finally we know!

FINALLY!  We know where we are moving next month!

Samuel got rejected by all of the grad schools he applied to, one by one.  He has a 3.98 GPA, decent GRE score, 2 years of work experience in the field, and still didn’t get accepted.  He’s feeling pretty down about that, but doing better.

So, since we aren’t moving to Boston, Richmond, Akron, College Park, or that one place in Illinois, we can basically move wherever we want and try to find work.

There is a very promising job opportunity at Ft. Riley, KS where my dad works.  It requires a bachelor’s degree in psychology and involves counseling family members of the soldiers there.  It pays REALLY well, (yay federal jobs!) and is a one-year contracted position (which means not many people will want it, probably).  Samuel is totally qualified for it and so we are going to move to Manhattan, Kansas next month so he can go after it.  If not that job, then any job he can find.  Of course I really like the idea because  it’s my home town, and I’m having a baby this fall and my mom will be there and everything.

If he gets the job, he can work for a year and then try to get into grad school again (for the THIRD TIME).  Poor Samuel.  I love him, and I, for one, know that he is NOT WORTH REJECTING!  Those grad schools don’t know anything!

Hmph.

Anyway, we will also be taking a long road trip to Tennessee, Ohio, and Virginia, and back to Kansas for our anniversary/because we want to see family.  We are really excited about that and hope our car will hold together.

I’M GRADUATING FROM COLLEGE IN SIX DAYS!  My whole family is coming for it.  My brother and mom are also graduating from BYU.  It’s going to be a HUGE PARTY!  Complete with people sleeping over, on our couches and floor.

When we move, Samuel will grow a beard,

And I will get my kitty back!

Baby News (now with pictures!)

So, if you didn’t see it on my facebook status, I am pregnant! I’ve just passed the first trimester and have about six months left till birth. The due date is October 23, but the baby could come on Halloween, or even in November.

I am so excited!!!!

We went to the midwives clinic today for my first appointment, and they did all sorts of unpleasant things to me, but one fun thing I was looking forward to was hearing the baby’s heartbeat. But they tried for a long time and couldn’t find it! This was a little scary because it could mean that the baby is dead. So they sent me to get an ultrasound so they could see the baby. At the ultrasound, the heartbeat was obvious right away! So everything is fine.

Samuel was more excited than I was, I think because I’ve felt pregnant for quite some time now, but today after the ultrasound it finally became real to him. We got pictures of it but need to get them scanned at the library.

I want to address two things in this post:

1.It took us longer than we expected to conceive

2.We were in fact trying to conceive, because, in fact, we want to have a baby

1. It took us eight months to get pregnant. Because of my parents’ extreme fertility, I was not expecting to wait this long, although I did know it was a possibility. What I didn’t consider was that it was totally normal to not get pregnant on the first or second try, and just because I didn’t get pregnant immediately didn’t meant I was hopelessly infertile. The first months were the hardest, strangely enough. After three or four months I had calmed down considerably.

Because I hadn’t gotten pregnant immediately, I started researching fertility. I was already charting my cycles using the Fertility Awareness Method (which I highly recommend for any menstruating woman, because it taught me a lot about my body and I really appreciate knowing what’s going on in there. I really wish they’d taught me FAM in Sex Ed. It would have been so much more useful to me than what they did teach).

I knew that I was ovulating and that my cycles were regular, so the infertility was kind of mysterious. But when I started researching fertility and conception, I realized that it is not actually rare to have to wait months to conceive.

Here are some basic things I learned:

-According to one study, 25% of couples get pregnant in the first month of trying, while 60% of couples trying to get pregnant do so within six months. On the other hand, 75% of couples get pregnant within nine months while 80% get pregnant within a year. Finally, some 90% of couples get pregnant within eighteen months of trying.

-On average, it takes couples 6 months or more to conceive a baby.

So basically, I learned that I am totally normal! This was really comforting during those long months waiting to get pregnant. I told myself that I wasn’t going to worry about infertility until 12 months had passed, or perhaps longer. I wanted to write this all out so that other women who are trying to conceive can know that patience is often necessary, and worrying is not necessary at all.

2.We wanted to get pregnant

Though no one has said as much to me outright, I know that some people who read this blog are going to wonder why we wanted to get pregnant so young, and before Samuel is done with school and everything. Maybe some think that our church told us to. This is not true. Though our church encourages having children, there is no “requirement” on how many to have, or when to have them. It is a decision between each married couple and God, and no one else has any say in it. Samuel and I simply love kids. We both grew up in large families, and want to have a large family together. So we decided we’d better get started! We also realized that it is rarely convenient to have a baby at any point in life, and we didn’t want to put it off until the non-existent “perfect” time. We felt that we would be happier having a baby now than waiting and working and saving money. We will probably be poor at first, but we will not be destitute. And we will have children, which, I hear, brings more joy into a couple’s lives than anything else possibly can.

Here are the ultrasound pictures from today:

just hafta get this out

So, we’re moving out by May 23.  Where to?  Good question.  We don’t know.  Somewhere on the other side of the country.  We are waiting for someone to accept Samuel into a grad program.  We have been patiently waiting since late January for their replies.  Well, January was patient.  February was, “Any time now! Isn’t this exciting?”.  March is, “I wonder if all three schools somehow managed to lose your application???”   Here are our possibilities:

1. Get accepted to Boston U and move to Boston, MA.
2. Get accepted to VCU and move to Richmond, VA.
3. Get accepted to Akron U and move to Akron, OH.
4. Get rejected by all three schools, move to Colombus, OH, because Samuel’s brother and family live there and we like them, and get a couple jobs flipping burgers.

We would take any of the first three options like a greedy child grabs for birthday cake.  Any of them.  We are not picky.  The last option we would take like a child receiving canned peas when they had asked for cake. (Except it would be fun to live near Avram and Thora.  But we could do that in Akron, too, and be going to school at the same time).

Can you imagine? Deciding where to move and moving across the country all in two months or less?  Are these people crazy?

Why are we moving even if Samuel doesn’t get accepted?  Why not stay in Provo and spare ourselves the move?  Because:

1. Since I am graduating, we are getting kicked out of our apartment (on-campus housing) and we’d have to move anyway.
2. Since I am graduating, I am losing my job and our health insurance, so I’d have to find another job anyway, and health insurance, so we’d have to do all those things that go with moving anyway.
3. Samuel hates his job and has been wanting to quit for about two years now.  It’s very emotionally taxing, the hours aren’t fun, it pays decently but has no benefits and it just isn’t worth staying.
4. We have no family in Utah.  Utah is not our home.  We don’t want to live here forever.

PLEASE let there be a good letter in the mailbox tomorrow.  I don’t know if I could stand the agony of getting two rejections and then an acceptance.  At least let the acceptance come first.  Or maybe all three on the same day, with at least one acceptance.  Is that asking too much?  Wahh!

I must say here that though I am complaining a lot, I am very greatful for my hardworking husband.  He has already waited almost two years to go to grad school, because of me, and has spent those two years working full-time at a job he hates.  Because of him, we have a nice financial cushion in our savings account that, when we remember it, makes us both feel happy and secure in these uncertain times.  Even if he doesn’t get accepted to a school, I know life will still go on and we will be together and happy.

5 luv languages

Yay! Samuel and I took the 5 Love Languages Quiz, finally, and now I can write a long blog post about it!

Whenever I saw the 5 love languages

Words of Affirmation (compliments, verbal encouragement, saying “I love you” and “I missed you”)
Quality Time (having real conversations, going on dates, doing chores and projects together)
Receiving Gifts (gifts, whether purchased or not, cooking a favorite meal for them)
Acts of Service (doing chores for them unasked)
Physical Touch (sex, kissing, holding hands, hugging, arm around shoulder)

I would think to myself…I speak all of those languages! I want it all!  And I didn’t think that any one of them was stronger than the others.   But then I got access to the quiz and took it, and my love language was brought to the surface.  Samuel felt the same way, and the same thing happened to him.  Boy, I’m making this sound really serious!  Yes, it’s just a quiz, but it was a fun one and I think had some valuable insights to offer us.  Of course we both like all of those expressions of love.  But when given a choice between two of them (which is what the quiz is based on) there are some we would choose over others.

These are our results:

Aleatha
Physical Touch: 11
Quality Time: 9
Words of Affirmation: 7
Acts of Service: 3
Receiving Gifts: 0

Samuel
Physical Touch: 10
Quality Time: 10
Words of Affirmation: 5
Acts of Service: 5
Receiving Gifts: 0

As I had suspected, Samuel and I are pretty evenly matched.  That would explain why we havn’t had any misunderstandings beyond actually hearing something wrongly, as far as I can remember.  We both know what the other person wants, and what makes them happy, because it’s more or less the same thing we  each want for ourselves.

This also explains why I never liked those other relationship books that generalize a bit too much and claim that women would rather have their men do dishes or change the baby’s diaper than get some hot lovin’ out of them.  I’m sure my quiz results will change once we have kids and I have a lot more work to do, but for right now, give me the hot lovin’ any day.

This also made me realize that the way Samuel could hurt me the most would be to refuse hugs or kisses or things like that.  I would cry my heart out!

I have always been very sensitive to touch, as long as I can remember.  I’m really ticklish, to the point where people just brushing past me or playing lightly with my hair would make me all jittery.  I hated massages because people always did it too hard and it felt really seriously uncomfortable, and then when they softened up it tickled.  I never liked giving people hugs, except my family, but it was often more out of a sense of duty than because I love hugging. But now that I’m married, with my husband at least I’ve found that I really crave physical touch!

In other news, I’m writing my “College Memoirs” and debating whether I should put it online when I’m done.  It’ll be really long and have lots of juicy personal stuff in it….

Thank you, feminism

I’m going to graduate in April!  With a Bachelor’s degree!  I don’t plan on having a career, necessarily, unless Samuel were to die or become disabled.  But if that happens I should be able to at least make enough money to live on, however humbly.

It just occurred to me today that if I had lived 150 years ago or so, and Samuel died, I would (unless I were very, very lucky) basically have two options if I wanted to keep from starving to death: marry myself off or become a prostitute.  Really, as different as the two options are, they are still frighteningly similar!  Especially if I had children already, I would not be able to do much else.

There are many things about feminism that I don’t agree with, but I am so glad we now have an equal opportunity to get education and jobs.  And we can even have our own bank accounts and property!  What a wild idea!

Seriously, it boggles my mind how long it took the world to figure that one out.

Actually, technically the whole world hasn’t, I suppose….