Enhancing Home Life With Creative Frugality

Ladies,







My observation about the last two comments in the previous post, concerning comparisons, i.e. wondering of if you would be "better off" having a career outside the home, are these:

Firstly, our goal is not to be "better off" than others, but to do what is good and right and to preserve the home. In the end, the family will be better off, because they will have good minds and good values.  That can be explained in another post. The important thing is that the homemaker is there to guide these people and look after the house. It is a shame to neglect the people in the home and the keeping of the house. The Bible says it brings shame on the Lord and on the Word of God. Obviously, it brings shame on the provider, the husband, or the father, if women neglect the home.




The working women are not doing any better than the housewives. They do not necessarily drive better cars, wear better clothing, have better vacations, better furniture, or better food. 






They may acquire more things, newer, faster, but they also have to spend a long time working to pay for it all.






The homemaker might have to put up with some inconveniences at first, but at last, she might get something new and nice. Her frugality will pay off, and she will not have the double burden of both working for a living and taking care of the home.






Envy and comparisons are really deadly. There is a way to get everything you like, if you will shop the discount stores. Chances are, your working sisters are buying "high-end" and paying a lot more. Go to T.J. Max, Ross, Dollar Tree, Good Will and De Pauls. Get signed up for the Joann Fabric coupon sale and there will be a half price coupon in it every two weeks or a 40 percent one. Before you consider buying anything, check all these stores, starting with the cheapest ones first. The other alternative is to make it yourself, or do without it completely.






For example, if you run out of stationery to write on, for correspondence, look around you at all the alternatives, before you buy. Sometimes that paper costs quite a bit, so before you buy something, look around for interesting types of writing materials that are already in your house. I knew a girl who used the blank side of her father's junk mail, and pasted the typed side onto a sheet of colored paper. Other people have used the white side of gift wrap paper. Others have found blank sheets of paper in packages they get in the mail. Use printer paper and rubber stamp it with pretty things. Use cardboard from things you have bought--nylons, etc. usually have something blank, and glue on a pretty picture. A thin grocery sack --or even a gift bag with a pastel color, can make a nice card or letter. I am not suggesting we get so ridiculous that we emphasise poverty, but I am saying train your mind to be resourceful. Every time you go out, you spend at least 20 dollars, so if you can stay home and dig a little further, you can avoid spending. But, when you are out, stock up on inexpensive supplies so that you can manage at home without spending more at the last minute.






At home you learn to make home made clay for children, homemade paste, even home made paper, and it is so much fun, so fulfilling, such a joy!!






Online there are instructions to make your own paper.






Paper is just one example I am using here. Your working woman friends are buying things like this at a high price because she is too busy to make things and too busy to save money. She will be on a never ending cycle of making money to buy things. At home, you dont have to buy everything. You have resources. I know I am ridiculed online for this kind of thinking, but I am not having to work outside the home to pay for everything, either.. I recycle several times. I have friends who, when they are ready to get rid of things, recycle them to me, and after I go through them, I pass them on to someone else. On the homestead we had stacks of books and magazines that went from one homestead to another. Whoever bought the original subscriptions was paying for a whole population of people living in the sticks, and did not know it.






If you dont want to do that, at least, know a bargain and compare prices and enjoy shopping for that reason. We found sweaters not long ago at JC Penny that were $8.50 for a button down, bulky knit cardigan. When we got home, and read the receipt, it showed a place online where you could get a 15 percent coupon on the next purchase, even if it was already on sale. By doing this, we were able to get one sweater in each color, each for $7.00. You remmber all those summer dresses I showed here--the sweaters came in the same colors: turquoise, plum, red, white, green, etc, and by matching them up with the dresses, I turned all those summer dresses into winter garments for indoors.






The working women are burning the candle at both ends. They are regulated by a time schedule that is not flexible and they are losing time in the home. The key to avoid envy if it looks like someone is really doing well and you are not, is to be extremely preoccupied in what you are doing, and fully absorbed in something that makes home living better and wonderful.

To address the "are you better off" question, I must emphasise that it is not important. What is important is to do the right thing. Having more material gains is not necessarily the point. We stay home because we believe in it. It is not a matter of economics; it is a matter of belief.  There are rumours that you have to be rich, in order to stay home. Women of the past did not believe that. It was the rich who were so bored and idle that they felt they had to be fulfilled outside the home. Inside the home, we are not so bored and idle that we long for entertainment or fulfillment elsewhere. It is the poor that are the most blessed, for they will not have so much money as to be freed of their work and responsiblity to neglect it. They will tend to matters at home: the character development of a child, the homeschooling, the ironed shirt for the husband and the hot meals and warm home. They are there all day preparing a place for their loved ones. The homemaker is available for company, unlike the working woman, ever having to catch up on her laundry, grocery shopping, and her rest.  The homemaker fills in a great gap in society. The Bible says, "My little children, keep your self free from






Lydia