When a person thinks of “being frugal,” it is often in terms of saving money or time in whatever we are currently doing. A good employer (or employee!) is frugal with the use of resources and personal time management. It is the ability to do much with little. 

Truthfully, it goes much deeper. Yes, the core of frugal living is all about “It’s what you do with what you’ve got!” But it also is all about getting back to the basics and simplicity of life and learning to be frugal, not only with money and time, but also with health and relationships!

Our great, great grandparents had the “secret” of having a simplistic, healthy and wholesome frugal life down pat, and it’s high time we started learning from their example!

When we think of “simple living” our minds go a different direction. We think about cutting away the hectic rush, hassel and crazy busy stress that hammers down on us daily. We think about the absence of clutter, and the presence of only the truest necessities.

The key is to combine both being frugal AND being simple when it comes to being a homemaker… and in doing so we get the benefits and best of BOTH worlds! Who wouldn’t want that!

By means of introduction, we will cover five basic steps to launch our journey, and whether we are man or woman, boy or girl, these small steps for us personally will be one giant step in our quest to be simply frugal.

Tip #1 – Seizing Simplicity

This is probably the most challenging step, and that is to make a conscious choice (with witnesses if we can!) that we will no longer be slaves to the crazy in our lives, but will specifically focus on ways to simplify our lives.

Here’s a challenge, let’s sit down and make a list of all the things that make our lives complicated, it is easy to see that much of it is from a lot of back and forth. 

Here is an example…

Things that make me feel stressed/overwhelmed/complicates life

• Knowing I want to eat healthier but only having time to make pre-made packaged dinners
• Going into the city EVERY DAY for something, either for my husband, my kids or groceries!
• Wasting time looking for things

Tip #2 – Perks of Planning

One of the biggest culprits of our over-stressed, over-complicated life is simply because there is no solid structure to it. We have our basic daily routine of things that absolutely MUST be done every day or our entire world will collapse on top of us… but that is literally causing us to feel like every day we are living on the edge of our sanity.

The good news is that with proper planning, we can go from being run ragged by our lives, to actually doing the managing ourselves. (Scheduling/planning/life management tools and tips coming soon!)

On a more basic note, let’s go back and take a look at our list of things that make our lives complicated… what are some ways we can avoid some of that through careful planning?

• Find quick to fix meals that we can prepare ahead of time, such as casserole dinners or crock pot dinners. Things like this only take a few minutes to pull together and we can choose to do them when we have the time, so we have a fresh and healthy meal even when we don’t have the time to fix it!
• Make two lists to keep on the fridge or next to the door. One is for items needed from the store, another for other errands or things to drop off/pick up. Put a date on the list of when we’re going into town, and whatever anyone needs, they put it on that list. If they forget to put it on the list, they have to wait until the next trip! Resist the urge to compromise and go to town simply because someone (ourselves included) “needs” something VERY BADLY! If the sun can go down without it, we don’t have to get it TODAY. 
• Set up a system to keep track of papers (more on that coming soon!) and gradually work through organizing things in the house, labeling where things go. If other people in the house won’t put things where they belong, either gather it in baskets and put in on their beds or have a coin jar where they have to put a certain amount of change for each time they misplace something. 

Tip #3 – It Saves Time to Take the Time

One of the biggest challenges with getting started is setting aside the time to actually sort everything out. One thing that we must keep in mind is that it will ALWAYS save time, money and stress in the long run if we are good about setting aside the time to figure it all out to begin with! This is also called working smarter, not harder.

Tip #4 – Knowing What We WANT

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is actually one of the most motivating exercises we can do! Sitting down to make a list of what we WISH our life looked like goes a long way in helping us to actually achieve that goal. It helps us to keep in mind what is important to us, and gives us an end goal that pushes us to keep going, there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

Here is an example…

What I want:

• To actually HAVE personal time
• To have a more calm and balanced approach to life
• My family to grow closer
• To have time and resources to do special things for the people I care about
• Our family to be able to sit down and actually have meals together
• A healthy, balanced life!!

Tip #5 – Choosing Where to Start

For many of us the hardest, most scary step is actually the first one. This kind of ties in with the first point… it is one thing to mentally choose “we’re going to do this!” and it is quite another to actually toe the mark and start the race! 

It can be quite overwhelming to see ALL the changes we need or want to make, but the key is this. Start small. Choose one or two things to implement this week, and hey! Go for something that is easy to change! As we go into next week, pick one or two more things to add in, and so on. Some people have the guts, time and resources to make huge changes all at once, but that’s not most people.

If we can do big and drastic changes, awesome! If we can only make a couple at a time, AWESOME!! 

As we wrap this up one thing to keep in mind is that it’s okay to be flexible! If we planned our day to go a certain way, and something came up to totally wreck those plans… it’s okay! We can start over again tomorrow! The point is that we are actually DOING THIS THING!

One step at time, one day at a time. We ARE making change, and we ARE becoming more and more simply frugal homemakers! 

What are some things that you have been doing to add simplicity and frugality in your lives? Share them with me below!

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