How To Have Christmas When There is Very Little Money

Image from The Graphics Fairy

I have been there, in years past, when money was very, very tight and there was no way to make things stretch to the big, wonderful Christmas I had planned.  My goals were reasonable - a few gifts per child, a nice festive meal, decorations, sending out Christmas cards...but they were well beyond my budget.  Of course I realize that Christmas is ultimately a Christian celebration, but you still want to make it a 'feast', for the eyes and the palate, in addition to experiencing and celebrating the birth of Christ.

Here is a great article with some ideas on just that.  And I'm going to add a few of my own (and repeat a few already mentioned) ideas to this!

First off, decorate, decorate, decorate.  Buy a bag of popcorn kernels and pop them on the stove and string them on strings, or hang up pine cones, put a few pine boughs in water and hang whatever decorations you have on them.  Make paper chains and paper snowflakes and pompoms!  Whatever you can manage, do it.  If the house looks festive, it will feel like Christmas.

Play Christmas music!  Sing carols at the sink doing the dishes!  Get as much Christmas music into the season as possible to build the mood.

Make Christmas outings and events an important part of the month.  Take an evening to walk or drive around and look at the lights and decorations.  Watch old Christmas movies on the sofa.  Have a 'decorating' day.  Buy an Advent calendar at the dollar store if you can, and open up a cheap chocolate every day of Advent.  If your local church has something special like a Christmas Eve candlelight service, consider going.

Consider your gifts carefully.  The most important people to get gifts are the children in your immediate family - your cousin's kids you see once a year don't HAVE to have a gift.  If you're in a position where you must buy for people outside your immediate family, either let everyone know that you are working in a budget this year or else just send something small and let the chips fall where they may.  Don't be embarrassed to say you have a budget, everyone should have a budget!  Simply say something like "With the children getting older (or whatever reason you would like to use) I think that this year we should keep the budget at X per child.  Would you like to send me some gift ideas for Sally and Jimmy or do you want me to surprise them!?"

Cut the Christmas cards to the bare minimum.  You don't need to send a card to everyone at church, just wish them a Merry Christmas.  You don't have to send Christmas cards to relatives you see all the time.  You don't have to send cards to people who have never sent you cards!  You can just choose to not send the cards!  In fact, if you take an evening to make a 15 minute 'Merry Christmas' phone call to your nearest and dearest, they would likely appreciate that much more anyway.

When you do buy, remember to wrap absolutely everything you possibly can.  Buy a roll of lifesavers and wrap it.  Buy a pair of socks - wrap it.  Wrap everything in the stockings and everything under the tree.  Wrap things in fun ways - newspaper funnies and sheets of old music and pillowcases with lots of ribbon.  Wrap something in string and elicit all the laughs.  Wrap something in box after box so the children have to unwrap layer after layer to get to the chocolate bar inside!  Wrap gifts and then tie strings to them and let the kids 'find' their presents.  Or use a treasure hunt with clues.  The gifts may be small in price and in number, but the wrapping will be utterly unique and memorable.

Think outside the box to find presents.  Wrap stuff you already own for younger children.  Seriously, take a bunch of trains from the train-obsessed 18 month old's stash, clean them up, and wrap them again.  Wrap hand-me-downs from other families that you had put aside, wrap toiletries you would need to buy anyway for a child or even beloved foods and beverages.  If your child loves a certain kind of cereal, for example, buy them a box 'all their own'.  Look through second hand stores for gently loved books, toys and clothing, of course, but also advertise on buy and sell sites.  Often people are getting rid of things before Christmas.  Try saying something like "Does anyone have Lego they are thinking of purging before the holidays?  Looking to spend no more than $5 but open to any and all pieces!"  Sometimes people have things they just don't even realize someone else would want, so they never bother advertising.

The Christmas meal can be made more special with a well-dressed table.  Fancy Christmas napkins from the Dollar store, or a pretty Goodwill tablecloth.  Candles go a long way to making a table beautiful, and dimmed lights.  Invite guests!  Every meal looks more festive if someone else is there.  Simmer a cinnamon stick and a few cloves in a pot on the stove to make the house smell 'Christmassy' while you cook.  No matter what you serve as a meal, offer a special drink and a dessert.  It can be anything - some shortbread cookies with a little piece of maraschino cherry on top, or red and green jello in a glass with a spiral of whipped cream, but dessert makes a regular meal festive and a sparkly drink (ginger ale mixed with cranberry juice is always a good bet) is unusual for supper, so it adds to the feeling of 'special'.

I love what the blog above mentions about Christmas Day - keep the nice holiday feeling going through the day so that it doesn't feel like when the gifts are done, everything is done.  It's a good time to go sledding, or arrange a visit with a neighbour, or go to church in your very best clothes, or serve at the soup kitchen, or walk around handing out dry socks and new toothbrushes to the homeless, or go see a matinee.  Whatever you do, make sure there is something 'next' on Christmas Day after the presents are done.

So there you go!  I know that for many people, Christmas is an entirely secular time of year, so I hope I've included lots of ideas for the non-church people who celebrate.

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

Inspired by The Prudent Homemaker blog, here are the things I did last week to be frugal and save money!

I aimed for a 'zero food waste' week and managed to only throw out one bag of kale that I forgot about in the back of the fridge.

I went through the children's clothing and pulled out the stained and ripped stuff to dispose of - but first I cut squares of fabric from them for the girls' quilts.

I rooted a bunch of green onions to get a second crop from the same bunch.

I did what I could to remove some stains from a blouse my daughter wears to church and had a good deal of success.

I was diligent in keeping the heat low and the lights turned off when I could.

I bought lemons on sale for a very good price and used some sugar from the last sale to make five jars of marmalade.  Each jar cost just under a dollar, excluding the jars which I already own.

I like to keep track of the things I do to save us money and still give us a full and happy life - maybe posting these on the blog will help.

Purging!

I woke up early this morning, way too early (thank you, small people in my life, for ensuring I never miss a sunrise) but I tried to make the best of it by purging some of the children's clothes.  A big pile gone now, mostly of baby stuff.  Clothing in this house has a tendency to get a stain and then continue to rotate through the wash-dry-put away cycle over and over again.  Anyway, a bit less of all of that after this morning.  And then since I was on a role, and up anyway, I re-organized the homeschool cupboard as well.  All the workbooks that were being stored in other places are nice and neat and in the cupboard.  I've started a list of Things I Will Need For September, but you can probably guess that I'm a fairly minimalist homeschooler.  The list will be small.

And hey, since we're purging, why not feed everyone the collection of leftovers!

This week...

It's been a housekeeping sort of week.  Yesterday I caught up on the laundry, and today I tackled cleaning out Lillian's dresser drawer.  I realize that doesn't sound like a big job, but it really is for me, and I was talking to a friend today and trying to figure out why that is.  Here's what I've decided:

I can't throw things away.

Revolutionary, I know.  :-)

Why is this?  I think it's a combination of the old 'it still has use in it and I can't *waste* something that is still in the category of perfectly good' and 'I have an emotional attachment to this item because my child wore it'.  Whatever it is, I have trouble getting rid of clothes.  So today I worked on L's clothes and passing along the ones that were too small, disposing of the clothes that were too stained, and packing up the rest.  Now, on to the rest of the clothes....

This afternoon I made ginger rhubarb jam, which is just one of my absolute favourite preserves.  And again, I think I make jam because I can't bear to waste all the rhubarb!  Clearly this frugality thing is deep in my bones.

Soap, foggy days, book rethinking

So I made soap yesterday and I didn't die or horrifically burn myself or anything.  It all went smoothly and I am the proud possessor of about a dozen bars of oatmeal bath soap that I can start using in about 4 weeks.  It was fun!  Alright, it was a little stressful but overall it was fun, and informative, and my arm is sore from whisking and whisking to get the mixture to 'trace'.  See, I'm already using the lingo - sure sign of a professional there.

Today was supposed to be sunny and unseasonably warm, but instead it was foggy and cool from yesterday evening all the way until noon today, which kind of ruined our plans - I had big thoughts of putting on the sprinkler and breaking out the popsicles - instead we have been stuck inside all day, tired, crabby, chilly.  Now that the sun is out maybe we can go outside and play.

I gave Ramona the Pest a good shot, but the children aren't feeling it.  I'm not sure if it's just a bit too far out of their realm of experience for them to enjoy it, or if it's simply not their cup of tea right now, but we've had no luck getting any interest in the book.  So I closed it up and tried Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (which I know is so much older) but the language wasn't doing it for them.  It's a challenge.  I've taken Gooseberry Park by Cynthia Rylant out of the library and I think it might have just the right mix of gentle adventure, short, simple story and nothing too old or too young.  We read two chapters aloud today while sitting under the lilac bushes outside.

While David is working, we're puttering around.  I managed to get two good sized mason jars of homemade chicken broth in the fridge, and the small stock pot is on a back burner and full of beef bones and a little lemon juice.  I have no idea if this works, but I always add a little acid to my broth as it cooks to help leach out the calcium.

I'm grateful that yesterday I had the foresight to make a double batch of spaghetti sauce, which we will eat with garlic bread and a lot of cheese before we all hit the hay early.  This spring cold has worn out its welcome.

Coupons

How dull is it to hear about someone else saving money with coupons, or whatever?  Well, actually, I don't find that sort of conversation all that dull, but in a third-person 'put yourself in someone else's shoes' type way, I can understand why it would be.

I'm mentioning this because I've started clipping coupons occasionally, and today we're heading off to the store and getting what I think are some really quite good deals.  99 cent toothpaste, for example.  I'm not a huge fan of coupons for food because I find that most of the food is very over-processed, but coupons for toiletries and cleaning supplies are great.  I struggle with the desire to 'stockpile' necessities, and the equal and sometimes stronger urge to throw away everything I own and live a minimalist life.  I think, I hope, I'm achieving some sort of balance.

I try to live frugally, while still having a good life, and I think we do fairly well at that.  I know that I have the skills to run this house on very little if necessary, but I also know that forcing my family to live in 'survival mode' for the sake of saving money is mean spirited.  And yet, I do enjoy aspects of the frugal life a lot.  I like making the 'best' decision - finding the best price or even choosing to spend more with the knowledge that a product is higher quality.

My competitive nature wants me to push myself, and I have to find grace in life and realize that the struggle to be the best at saving is as bad as wanting to be the best at anything.