Green Your Nest with a Household Budget
April 11th, 2010 CarrieRussoThere is nothing like putting a budget together and then sticking to it. First of all I feel very rewarded when I have committed myself to any particular self-discipline and actually follow through to the end or at least maintain that discipline. At the start of this year we created our first in-depth budget that looked at all of our spending and gave us a good idea of how much money we need during a months time. We were interested on slimming down on what we use and saving some cash while we are at it.
Just by looking through a few older but still recent receipts I determined how much money we spent on each thing in our house. I had a long list. We’re talking shampoo, lotion, razors, dish soap, bananas in a week x4. You get the point. I added it all up and gave each category a dollar amount. Diapers, razors, shampoo, etc. all went into personal care. Dish soap, toilet paper, etc. belonged to household supplies. In the end our categories that were not fixed amounts for the most part were:
Groceries
Personal Care
Household Supplies
Clothing
Housecleaning
Childcare
Kids Activities
Healthcare (supplements, remedies, naturopath visits, etc)
Gym/Sports
Entertainment
Car repair/maintenance
Fuel
Gifts/Crafts
I keep an envelope for each category and I have the amount budgeted written on the front of the envelope. After each purchase I put the receipt in the envelope and write a new amount available on the front of the envelope with the month and day. All I ever have to do is look at the last entry to see what can be spent. With this method you can choose to continue to use a debit card or you can even use cash and store the cash in the envelope as well. Either way it gives a good visual perspective to the money that is flowing out of the house. We budget pretty tightly so there typically isn’t any money leftover from any category as that is the point but any money that is left over gets moved to a savings account and is an added bonus.
So how does budgeting relate to reducing? Over the last three months I have experienced first hand how quickly needs and wants get separated when their is a definitive amount of resources available during a particular time. For example, if I have budgeted $50 for household supplies and I’m in the third week of the month and only have $15 of it available and I need toilet paper and some toothpaste but see a storage container on sale that I could use but don’t most likely don’t need, I immediately have to sort my need from my want because I surely don’t want to go without toilet paper. I guess I could take reducing a step further and use cloth wipes but…um…yeah. Not happening right now.
When I am faced with an item on clearance I like to remind myself that there will always be another sale. Usually the sale price isn’t even that awesome and if it was then the purchase would probably fit into the amount of money you have left while still getting the much needed toilet paper.
The thought of the storage container brings up the idea of how resourceful a person can become when on a pre-determined budget. Maybe some items can be off-loaded to free up storage space or a cardboard box in good condition can be cut and even decorated with fancy paper to make a storage container. I actually sort some of my pantry items in boxes like I mentioned only I haven’t decorated them although I do have some storage box making on the agenda but it’s not a priority.
I love having a clothing budget because it has actually made me feel so much better about any clothing purchases that I do make because I have really been below budget for a long time and now I can feel free to get something that I really want without feeling guilty. I still sift the racks at my favorite thrift stores though because I especially do not like paying full price for children’s clothing.
Passing something up in the store is the first step to reducing but what about at home? I have found that having a defined budget set in place keeps me mindful of how much of something I am using. You better believe I am getting out the funnel to get every last drop of dish soap out of that bottle! And this goes for just about everything from the toilet paper to the food in the refrigerator. We even bought an extra set of glass containers (that I love by the way) so that we weren’t spending money on the little wax paper storage bags anymore.
The biggest waste reduction in our home that I notice is with food. Ugh…I despise throwing out food. It really ruins my mood and so when I shop strictly by the weekly for food with a grocery list that is specific to my menu we toss out far less food than we do when we are wandering through the week searching for meal options and the mama is much happier. It’s amazing the circumstances that we can change if we just consider what we would like things to look like and do a little problem-solving.
Do you have a budget in place? If you do does it help you reduce your overall consumption and waste of products?

assume this balance exists because the majority of gardeners in our neighborhood would presumably be choosing organic and alternative gardening methods that omit the use of pesticides. I feel safe to say this seeing as I speak with a lot of them and the culture tends to have a strong lean in that direction in the first place.
project for young children because sunflowers grow so fast you can almost watch it happen before your eyes. I have a hard time taking credit for the how great the sunflowers are doing….the fact that we have cool temperatures and the occassional rain shower has helped them grow strong.
the sunflowers will have created the walls that will make it the magical sunflower house we have been waiting for and I know all children will be drawn to the door so they can walk inside…..I’m sure we won’t have to worry about them trying to walk through any walls.



