You Are What You Read

I am a huge Dave Ramsey fan. Lately on his radio show he has been talking about the importance of reading and constantly educating yourself. His premise is that the only difference between the way one is now and they way one will be in five years are the books one reads and the people one associates with. I am a firm believer in both these principles.

I've spent the past month reading several books and then making big changes in my life. Here's what I've been up to:

One of the things I've really wanted to work on is food storage and economical ways to feed all my hungry mouths. I've never been able to figure this one out. About a month ago I was at the library with the kids and this book jumped out at me as I was walking past the shelf. It is called, "Beating the High Cost of Eating." I've been trying to trim our food budget for years so I snatched this book right up and came home and read it. Here are the basics:

1. Inventory your current food

2. Plan a menu based on what you already have in your pantry

3. Make a shopping list for what you need that week and decide on a food budget.

4. Use whatever is left over in your food budget to stock up on foods that are on sale at the stores.

This has been such a great solution for me. Every Wednesday the ads come in the newspaper and I peruse them trying to find the best deals on food that we use. It's become a fun hobby for me and I'm building our 3 month supply at the same time. I am guessing I've trimmed at least 40% off my food budget just by shopping the sales. Last week I went to Albertson's and spent $65.00 and saved $107.00. I used to hate and I mean HATE the grocery store. Now I love it and can't wait for my weekly grocery day. Dinner has also become a piece of cake. No more running to the store for a quick purchase at full price of something we need for dinner. It feels great to solve both my food storage problems and reduce what we spend on food.

Organization:

It's so hard to keep up with my active little family and all their stuff. Over the past couple of years I have trimmed our wardrobes down, gotten rid of toys, and come up with lots of great systems that keep me sane. But I've still been overwhelmed trying to keep up with everything. I also came across this book by accident, "It's All Too Much" by Peter Walsh. I'd heard a lot about Peter and his Oprah appearances so I decided to check out this book. It was such a quick, easy read and the biggest epiphany I had from it was when he talked about the kitchen junk drawer and his theory is there should be NO junk drawer in the kitchen. Well, not only do I have a junk drawer but I have two BIG storage rooms in my basement that were overflowing with junk. I decided that we would have no junk rooms in our house and I spent all of last week cleaning out the rooms. I emotionally detached myself from everything that I've been holding onto and went through every momento, souvenir, holiday decoration, clothing, bedding, etc and trimmed everything to the nubs. I now have a room dedicated entirely to food storage and the other room I turned into our family craft room. One of the points he makes is that our stuff can prevent us from doing things we want to do. I believe this. Even though our storage rooms were closed off to the rest of the house I can't believe the difference in our home since cleaning them out. Another great point he makes is that we don't have to hang out to objects to keep a memory alive and this was great for me to realize. I had loads of stuff that I was hanging onto just because of the memories.