Miss Boo and Brother were given a set of foam letters by their aunt and uncle a while ago, and while the letters have always been popular, lately Miss Boo has realized that you can sort them by color. She's been organizing them into little piles named Purple, Blue, Red, Green, Orange, and Lello.
Meanwhile I've been transitioning Brother back to cloth diapers and re-reading my copy of The Tightwad Gazette with pencil in hand, looking for ideas on how to save. For reasons that readers of this blog who are related to me either already know or will know shortly (Mom and Dad are bringing the news to the reunion, yo), we're going to need a new car here in the next few months.
I'm struck by how much of this stuff I know and just inexplicably stopped doing. For instance, the price book.
A price book is a little notebook (or Excel spreadsheet) which you use to track prices in your local grocery stores. For instance, I can buy groceries at Costco, Walmart, Albertson's, Safeway, the foofie health food store, and the dinky little local store. Some things are much cheaper at Walmart (canned veggies); but some things are not (bread products). Some things are cheaper at Safeway (grains), but some things are not (milk). Some things really are cheaper at Costco (milk, cheese, and cereal) but other things REALLY are not (pasta).
The idea of a price book is that you write down who has the deals, and shop in several stores vs. one, so that you get the lowest price on everything. Sometimes this isn't practical, but if you plan your grocery shopping for one a month or bimonthly, it's less taxing than you might think.
I know all this, but somehow stopped doing it consistently. Time to start again.
I know that line-drying our clothes saves quite a bit of power. Time to start again.
What is it that makes consistency so difficult? I'm convinced it's because we are designed to be eternal but we're trapped in time, so the closest we get to eternal is to keep trying, stumbling, and trying again.
So, look around your life, figure out what you already know--and start again.
Cheers,
Breanna
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