Tonight is August 31, 2006.

Tomorrow is the start of 30 Days of Nothing for our family.

I learned about it at a friends blog: Amy Able

Basically, what we've decided to do, is to go 30 days without buying anything we don't 'need'.

What one family feels they need may be different from what another family feels they need.

I feel we need fresh fruits and veggies, so we won't be skimping on those. I feel we need nourishing meals, so again we won't be skimping on those either.
I don't feel we need chips, or chocolate bars or another 10 yards of fabric. LOL (That's for ME, I AM a fabricaddict!)

My children don't 'need' treat day every Friday, although it is fun, and it's a great reward for keeping their rooms tidy and such, they really don't need this.

I don't 'need' to buy anymore books, sewing things (including fabric, did I mention I like fabric?) or hair thingys. My kids don't need any more movies, whether purchased used at the video store or rented, we don't need them.

I do feel we 'need' some snacks like homemade popcorn, homemade cookies, banana bread and other yummy, healthy snacks!

We don't 'need' to eat out. It's fun sometimes, but it's not needed at all.

One thing we do need to do though, that will blow our 30 days of nothing for one day, is to take our children to the fair. We like to go to the fair each year, one particular fair, and that was Alesia's request for her 15th birthday (which was on Monday by the way, she's FIFTEEN now!!!). So on Sept. 9th, we will take our children to the fair. They have been saving their money for cotton candy and an all day rides pass. So we will go to the fair, and we will have FUN, and they are SO excited because they know they will have NO treats from Sept. 1st to Sept. 9th. LOL I love that excitement. The anticipation of something special coming up. Our children in today's spoiled-quick-fix-society often miss out on that great anticipation of something special. Most kids have treats all the time, at least once a week, some kids have treats every day! What's special about that?

So tomorrow we begin. I will put a halt to any shopping, at all, except for neccesities. We will buy only what is needed to keep our fridge stocked with good, healthy foods. We will spoil ourselves by making homemade pizza's and homemade burgers on the BBQ with homemade fries. These are SO much better anyways because we make our burgers with lots of extras including garlic buns toasted on the grill. Yummy! Where will you find that on a fast food menu? lol

The timing of this couldn't be any better.
On Tuesday we begin school. I've been wanting to find ways to keep us more focused on our goals. We all want to learn so much this year, and often our focus can wander and we get distracted by other things. I think changing this one thing will help us keep our focus. That may sound silly. What does cutting out junk food and extra spending have to do with keeping focused on schooling? To me, it's about more then that. It's about keeping focused on everything that is TRULY important in life, and taking our focus OFF all the extra's.

Things have been going well. We have not bought any coffee out, have not eaten out or purchased anything we don't need for the past 15 days. I did cave in today and purchased some fabric from a co-op because they were selling corduroy and I had already planned to buy some to make the youngest three some winter pants.The price was too good to pass up, but I still feel like a naughty girl though!

We also did take the kids to the fair as planned per my 15 year old's request before the 30 Days of Nothing began. We had a great time and ate lunch before we left so we would only need to buy dinner at the fair rather then 2 meals. The children all earned money for their ride passes, and we sold some eggs during the week and dh sold some parts from our workshop, so all in all, the fair only cost us 20$ from our budget! Not too bad!

This change in our habits actually started before we heard about the 30 Days of Nothing. Dh and I had been discussing how often we were purchasing Coffee's out (for him it's tea) and how much it added up to over a year's time. This happened around the beginning of August, and at that time we decided to cut down coffee buying to once a week or less. By the time September rolled around, we had stopped buying coffee out all together, so that step wasn't too difficult.

Recently we've decided not to shop at a certain large department store, or a certain fast food place any longer because of some changes they have made, and some groups which they support that we do not agree with. This made the decision to stop spending extra money even easier! It's been amazing how all these things have just been falling into place.

In the meantime, the main reason we began all this was because we would really like to get our home and property fixed up so we can sell and move to a larger farm. On our property we have a large workshop and a cabin above it. We have had to completely gut the cabin down to the bare studs, including removing all the windows, insulation and drywall. We've had to re-wire the entire building as well. All this takes money, and time. If we were to get things done at the rate we were going, and earning funds, we'd be living here at least another 5 years. We wanted to figure out how to fund the project more quickly, and cutting back on spending was the only plausible thing to do. I've also upped my productivity with my business as much as possible to help fund the project as well. It's not really possible for my husband to work more to raise money because he's the one that's doing all the work around here! So this is our solution. So far it's working well. We plan to continue on with this journey long past the 30 Days of Nothing is over.