Affording Such A Large Family: Clothing Edition

Our kids must all be wearing clothes with holes in them and ratty shoes. There seems to be an idea that clothing children is expensive. And, yes, I guess it could be. That depends on you. We chose to shop yard sales, thrift store, clearance aisle and totally accept hand-me-downs.

Yard sales are great to find mostly springs and summer clothes. At least around here, you don't find a lot of pants and long sleeves a lot. But you can find crazy amounts of shorts and t-shirts and the occasional new with tags shoes. I buy our clothes here as well. Two of our kids are in "teenage sizes." I do have trouble finding trendy young men clothes at yard sales but that's where thrift store come in.

Thrift stores are awesome for finding non clothing items as well, but that's not what we are talking about. I find handbags, shoes with tags, teenage boy clothes, junior miss clothes for me (too young to wear misses and too old to wear juniors... the struggle is real!), I have even found make up that is still seal and in date.

Clearance items are amazing. I don't have a lot to say about this but use coupons and store rewards to make it last.

Hand-me-downs. I am very lucky to have some amazing friends who pass their kids out grown clothes on to us. We do the same in return. We hold the outgrown clothes out until the next kid can wear them and when DS4/5 out grow them. We see if we have any friends who need them. After our friends pick through them the rest we put in a yard sale and what doesn't sale goes to Goodwill.

Gifts. We ask family and friends for Christmas and birthdays to please not get the younger guys clothes because they honestly have so many. For the bigger guys we ask for gift cards so they can buy their own clothes (they are at that age).

On average we spend about $200 clothing and shoes.
Here are a few of my tips:

• Find a good stain remover!
• If stains don't come out or the idem cant be fixed, throw out, repurpose or compost if you can.
• Fix small things like missing buttons.
• Vacuum bags are amazing.
• Repurpose clothes into cloth grocery bags, cleaning rags or even family cloths.
• Look for events at local thrift stores... a couple times a year our thrift stores will do free or donation "fill-a-bag" events. We each get a bag to fill so we often end up with more than we can use so we donate it.

Food Waste Friday

So I didn't get a picture this week of food waste Friday because I am simply horrified. This week we had a full trash bag of items thrown out. We had half a watermelon, a whole cantaloupe, 4 heads of cauliflower, two chicken legs, half pint of strawberries (because the raw chicken leaked on it), two onions, two bulks of garlic, 6 apples, a container of beans and rice and about two cups of mac and cheese.

This is ridiculous and I am so embarrassed. We have to do much better, but at least our compost is banging this week.

Refurbished Patio Furniture

So I got a sewing machine for Christmas. Between kids, moving and life in general I haven't had a chance to use it until recently. My mom is trying to salvage her patio furniture and make it last one more year... that is when the brilliant idea was born. She bought sturdy table clothes at the dollar store and we used the tattered cushions that were already on her patio furniture and we refurbished them back to life and now they are water proof.

So we measured the cushions to make a pattern. Since each of the cushions were slightly different in shape and size we could not use a standard pattern.

After we cut the fabric to match our needs. We folded them inside out and sewed them with a straight stitch leaving one open wide side. *Double stitching was used for durability.

We then turned the covers right side out and stuffed the cushion in. Once we had placed the cushion in and made the material smooth. We made it too tight to be reasonably stitched on the remaining open side. We used gorilla glue to seal it shut.

This was a fun and simple project that was relatively inexpensive. Cushions for her patio furniture was pricing out around $20-$30 per cushion. The total project cost $20. That's a huge win!

Banana Ice Cream

DS3 has had a dairy allergy up until recently. This limited us on what we could cook or eat. I have found several alternatives to ice cream that I will be happy to share. One of our favorites is super simple. Banana ice cream as I mentioned in my Meal Planning post.

Banana Ice Cream:

What you need:
Bananas
Blender
Ice

Instructions:
Peel bananas... I do one per person
Freeze bananas. A couple hours work, but honestly I just peel and freeze in a bag as they are about to go bad and pull them out when we have enough.
Put in blender and mix until creamy. If too runny add a few ice cubes.
Enjoy :)

Pretty easy right!? We use this with the kids for cooking lessons. Ok who am I kidding... we are homeschoolers, its cooking, math, reading, economics and science and possibly greenhouse.

Food Waste Friday

This week is more realistic...

What got tossed out this week:\

• 2 20 ounce diet cokes that one of the kids opened and refused to fess up to
• half of a hamburger
• half of a petro
• a full plate of spaghetti
• a hamburger bun
• two half sandwiches

Menu Planning

With a big family comes lots of hungry bellies and lots of running around. I love to keep life a little more simple. Hey, mama's got to have her time too, right? Our kids will eat pretty much anything that doesn't eat them first and that is a bit of a burden on the budget but also not good for some of them. We have two of our precious boys that are heavier. We don't want them to struggle with their weight so we are trying to teach them to eat healthy. I have turned to meal planning and grocery booking (price book) to come to the rescue.

I do my meal plans a little differently that other ladies I know who meal plan. I use a word document and divide up to breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.  I have it on four 4 week cycles... one for each season. We do more soups and stews in the fall and winter and more salads and grilling in the spring and summer. I include a weekly shopping list for each weeks menu. I then go and check the sales ads as to where I need to go. I laminate them so I can cross what I already have or have already put in my cart off the list. I like to be able to reuse my list and menus.

I include two left over days on our menus. One is always Thursday for dinner. We have scouts that night and really pushed for time that day. It is so much easier for us to do that. The other day is Sunday lunch time. That way we can all come home from church and relax and it clears the clutter for where I make a large Sunday dinner. Plus I hate food waste. It is a major pet peeve for me! I actually save left over veggies and fruits out of the serving bowl, bones, soups, broths, meat, and grains without sauce. I put them in separate bags in the freezer. I use leftover bones, onions, carrots, celery, peppers to make bone broth. I save left over broths and veggies, grains and meats for soups or casseroles. I save fruits for smoothies or compote. I will freeze yogurt and milk right before it goes out of date and will mix it will the fruit and some ice to make fruit sherbet or ice cream (we love banana ice cream).

I use a lot of ziplock bags. I do rinse and reuse until they are on their last leg. Once I realize I am only going to get one more use out of it, I will use it for raw meat. I do not reuse bags that have contained raw meat.

What are some of your meal planning tips?

Food Waste Friday

So I don't actually have a picture this week for Food Waste Friday! We had a tight week and nothing got thrown out. This is definitely not the norm for us. I wish it were though!

Tune in next week for a more realistic picture.

Journey to Zero Waste

My job as a mama to all of my little lovelies is to try my best to make this world a better place for them. That is one of the main reasons I am a passionate activist. I once saw a video of a woman who could fit all of her landfill destined waste in a jelly jar. Wow! A jelly jar. No this is not a realistic goal for our family but we can significantly reduce our waste! I attempt live green. We cloth diaper, recycle and reuse when we can. I personally would like to family cloth but Brad is a no go on that. Haha. We clean naturally. We fix what we can before tossing it and buy a new one. But I am learning there is still so much more we can do! 2017 it is going to be my personal mission to find more ways to reduce waste and save money. Join me on this journey.

One problem I see where our family is concerned is how much food goes to waste! We are going to challenge ourselves to not waste food. Money is tight for us...as it is for most. We will compost what we don't consume, but the goal here is to remove the waste. We will start doing Food Waste Fridays for accountability. I have asked for a food recycler for our kitchen for my birthday, but I don't see that happening unless we get a house first!