1. Reduce the amount of unnecessary items we purchase. Every few months I go through my whole house and send about two bags worth of stuff to my sister or Goodwill. This is a clear indicator of how we consume too much stuff. In many places of the world there are people who are barely surviving on less than what would be allocated for one person. Yet in the U.S. (Canada ranks a tiny bit better) people consume ten times what is allotted per person. I am sure that if you just take a look at your house you can see thousands of dollars of worth of rarely used items. Not only that, but most of those items are likely purchased using credit. This is a very unstable existence!

2. Borrowing more books/movies etc. from the library instead of buying them. Same premise as #1.

3. Reducing the amount of dining in/take out we participate in. Take out food is over-packaged with materials that aren’t always recyclable. This contributes to overfilled landfills. Also, any form of eating out is often unhealthy (especially compared to home cooked wholefoods meals) and far more expensive.

4. Trying to unload my plastic junk. Now this one requires some buying but it is a long term investment that is good for the family. Plastic is horribly toxic stuff and the sooner I can get it out of my home the better.

5. Using my computer and TV less and lowering my heat in the winter. This little effort can save hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. It’s funny that what benefits the environment often benefits my budget. I can’t lower my heat too much with a new baby in the house but I do try to lower it during the day. I also plan on spending much more time outdoors when it gets warmer out and that will mean a lot less time when the TV is on. We don’t have cable but we use it for watching movies and as a CD player these days.

6. Going fully vegan. The only vice left is cheese! We have given up all meats, eggs and all dairy except cheese. This will need to be a slow transition if we are going to stick to it but we will get there, so help me, by the end of 2009. The meat and dairy industry uses up piles of land and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions tremendously through all the different attributes of farming (from cow farts, to transportation of goods, to processing, to packaging).

7. Not eating any processed food. This is one that won’t be very hard for us to acheive. We didn’t eat much before. The processing of food often exposes it to chemicals and other garbage. It also reduces the nutritional value of many food items and makes them higher on the Glycemic Index scale. This means you aren’t nourished adequately and your body sends you signals to nourish it causing you to overeat and gain weight. Eating fresh foods means less packaging and less of a carbon footprint from all the over-packaging and processing.

8. Eating/buying items locally. Also buying organic food. I already boycott anything from Mexico (because of the pesticides) and try not to eat things from the USA either because of the GMO. The hardest will be giving up avocado but, I will likely allow myself to indulge in the healthy fruits and veggies. I want to start shopping at the Farmer’s Market more often too.  This also means that I’ll have to stop shopping at Wal Mart. Ha ha ha. I have hated shopping there but it is the closest store to my house and the prices are often what we can afford as a family of five living off of one income. But I am hoping that we can save a lot of money by changing our buying habits and can afford to shop in more local shops. Organic farming is much easier on the environment and the fruits/veggies from organic farms are often more nutritious and contain less pesticides. Another perk is that they cannot contain any GMO’d products.

9. Getting back to using cloth bags instead of taking plastic ones. We are pretty good about this one. When we do forget and are only buying a few, easy-to-carry items we often decline a bag and then just bag it in the car with one of our reusable bags. My goal for this year is to stop forgetting to bring the bags!

10. Streamlining our errands (ie. wasting less fuel because we go out to go get one container of soy milk).

Other, more personal goals:

1. Cheap dates. There are so many activities that are considerably cheaper than a dinner and a movie. We have thought of going swimming, going for walks on walking trails and playing tennis. There is also dancing at a latin club (we are taking lessons in the spring). These activities have the added benefit of offering quality time together and making our bodies healthier.

2. Exercising regularily and losing my baby weight.

3. Clearing out debt and not buying any large items with credit. Learning to have patience and save for the items we need.

4. Being more involved in my children’s education (see last post for details.

I saw an interesting video on YouTube the other day. It was an old woman who was sharing a recipe that her mother used to make for her when she was a child during the depression.

She made a meal that was basically sauteed onions, potatoes, pasta, canned peas and some tomato sauce all mixed in together.

The woman said that this meal was a staple in their home. This made me sad because the foods included in her average diet were not conducive to good overall health. It lacked the healthier vegetables which have the best vitamins and was full of simple carbs, starches and very low in protein.

I started to see why people seemed so hopeless back then. Since mood is deeply affected by our diet I can’t imagine anyone feeling happy or healthy after a week of eating like that!

The truth is that meat consumption was very low during the depression because meat and dairy are pretty much the most expensive food items at the store. Have you ever seen Cinderella Man with Russell Crowe? He played a boxer during the depression and his family used to share small pieces of baloney just so they get some protein.

I was looking at my grocery bill and thinking about all the things on there that are unecessary. Yes we do buy ourselves little treats (like Silk Chocolate Soymilk) but we can afford to because we aren’t burdened by the excess expense of buying meat and dairy. I remember when I was newly wed how frustrated I would get when a third of my grocery budget was going to meat and money was tight.

I can buy a block of organic tofu for about $2.50 and that makes two meals for our family. Can you do that with chicken breast? Or talk about lentils. Lentils from the bulk section cost pennies and they are super easy to assimilate in a variety of meals. I can make a meal with a can of organic beans for $2.20 or less and it’s even cheaper if you use dried beans and cook them yourself.

So by buying beans you end up getting an adequate source of protein that is very inexpensive, doesn’t clog your arteries and increase your blood pressure. Not too shaby.

And if you aren’t spending all your money on meat and milk (which is unhealthy anyways (see my post on milk)) you can afford to buy more fruits and veggies which will help you to maintain better overall health.

So with a depression looming in the US and a recession coming to Canada I have been thinking a lot about ways to recession proof our home. We have made some changes to our budget and have made some drastic changes to our consumer habits!

For starters we aren’t buying anything we don’t need. Our house is bursting at the seams with products that we bought out of seemed neccessity that we seldom use. I think it’s high time we stopped being so foolish with our money. We also have debts that need to be cleared off and we are tired of paying interest to banks for no reason. It’s time to clear off that debt and start living for ourselves. We have moved to a bank book system and have given the debit card the boot. Without its convenience we will be much less tempted to spend money on items that haven’t been budgetted for.

We are making more provisions in our grocery shops to buy foods that are easier to assemble (for example: I make these awesome bean burritoes in about ten to fifteen minutes) so that we have a fall back option when I am too exhausted to make a regular meal. This has saved us about $100-$150 in eating out costs.

We have started going on less dates and doing more family activities instead. For example, we’ll rent movies with the kids and settle on the couch with some goodies. That costs us $10 instead of $30 for a movie and $50 for a meal out.

And we have said kudos to our VISA and other credit sources. If we don’t have the cash, we do without. This will have us sitting debt free in two years maximum!

Can you think of anything better for your health than eating good food and being debt free…ahhhhh!