Tennesseetransitions

Oh what a frugaltastic week it’s been for me! The man that owns several houses in my block had his trusty backhoe parked in the backyard while completing a job where he had used it to install French drains around his houses. I saw him working over there a couple of weeks ago and screwed up the courage to go ask him if he’d be interested in making some extra money with that backhoe. I have a total of 8 very large bushes across my foundation and 4 others around my yard that are WERE totally overgrown, inappropriate (read: NON food producing!) and hard to cut around. He said he would do it, and mentioned a price of $50 per bush. He said he would get back with me when he’d finished the job he was working on. He knocked on my door yesterday, and before I knew it we’d reached an agreement that he’d remove all the shrubs if he could have them to move down the street to plant around his other houses. For free. I was prepared to pay him his asking price to have this work done but knew I couldn’t afford to have them all done at once-(why do you think it hasn’t been door before now?) So, now I have large holes in the ground across the front of my house and I couldn’t be happier! Remember the post I’d made a couple of weeks ago about my free Japanese Maples that I’ve babied all summer? They’re gonna look great on each side of the front steps! Savings? Enough to buy Christmas gifts for my family in Ohio AND make a trip to deliver them in person!  AND we saved all the bushes from going to the landfill. Win, win, win, win!

Speaking of holes in the yard…I dug a hole earlier in the week in my side yard, and cemented a piece of PVC pipe into it so that I could then insert the pole to my new-to-me umbrella clothesline that a friend gave me when it wouldn’t fit in the yard of her new home…

I didn’t own an electric dryer for almost 15 years and always hung my laundry out to dry in suitable weather.  But when we moved to this house two years ago it had a dryer in the laundry room when we moved in. Yes, it’s been nice to have it, but I truly miss hanging my laundry out on a beautiful summer morning. I KNEW if I was patient I’d find exactly what I needed without having to spend a bunch of money. Yay for solar clothes dryers!  I spent about $5 on a bag of cement mix and the PVC pipe. Savings: at least $45 on the solar dryer, not to mention $$$ on my electric bill for years to come. I’ve also got a sturdy Amish-made folding drying rack that I can use inside during the winter months. I love no longer being dependent on the power company to dry my clothes. And as soon as I get all these holes in my yard filled with fruit trees and berry bushes, hopefully I won’t be dependent on the grocery store anymore for fruit either.

All this is to reinforce once again the premise of this blog: by finding ways to live creatively and sustainably, I reduce my family’s dependence on things that are out of my control… things like energy  supplies and rising electric rates (according to my local newspaper this morning), stock market ‘corrections’  (down about 500 points this week), inflation, foreign wars, questionable food grown by companies that only care about their bottom line, and more. Transitioning to this way of living is an incredible journey that offers a freedom that some people only dream of and lets us remain in control of our destinies. And that, my friends, is priceless!