Frugal Lesson of Passover - The Value of Doing Without

It is incredible to me that Passover is less than 3 weeks away (the first seder is Monday, April 18th, for those of you who just felt a little panicked and maybe didn't know they exact date?  Hmm?)  Of course, like the obsessive Jewish home manager that I am, I follow a million and one blogs that are all telling me how PASSOVER IS COMING!!! Do I have my shopping list?  Have I started cleaning yet?  What is my menu for all four yamim tovim?  What about the Shabbat that falls in between them?  Have I started to stockpile?  Have I started cooking yet, because I could, you know (oh, Lordy)?  Unlike the obsessive Jewish home manager that I am, my answer to all of these questions, given the insane transition going on in our lives, is - NO!!!

For those of you who aren't familiar with the rules of eating Kosher for Passover - The Torah commands Jews to refrain from eating, owning, or benefiting from chametz (anything leavened) for the week-long festival of Passover.  "Chametz" was determined by our rabbis and sages over the years to include not only things that are leavened, but things that may become leavened, and, for some Jews, things that look like things that may become leavened.  So, anything containing or anything having come in contact with: wheat, spelt, rye, oats, barley, rice, beans, corn.  Finding food products without those ingredients is pretty much impossible.  Even ketchup and Coke have corn syrup in them.  A lot of Jews even have separate dishes, pots and pans, and utensils.  

Think about the cost of food bought special-for-Passover, not to mention duplicating everything in your kitchen (times two, one set for meat and one for dairy), and your head is probably spinning.  Even those of us who have been doing it for years and years find the whole undertaking stressful to say the least.  And while I don't want to speak for my fellow Jewish home managers, the COST of all this is by far the most stressful element.

Just as the requisite complete and total panic was tugging at the edges of my brain, threatening to make me completely insane, driving me to fill my parents' basement with 30 pounds of matzah, two new sets of pots and pans, and a dozen jars of gefilte fish at whatever price I could find them, because OMIGOD PASSOVER IS COMING AND MY FAMILY MIGHT STARVE,  my dear friend Mara over at Kosher on a Budget hosted the incredible Susie Sharf of Cheapskate  for a series of guest posts on "How to Shop for Passover on a Budget" .  Susie had a lot of awesome tips on that post about responsible shopping for Passover, arguably the only tips one could ever need.

 The one that really stuck with me and that has been knocking around my brain and turning over and over in my heart, however, is #2.  This rule of thumb for Pesach prep is so priceless, and it's only eight words long.  Are you ready?

It's only eight days.  You can do without.


Three Mondays from now, Jews all over the world will sit around a beautifully dressed table surrounded by friends and family.  There will be one platter more beautiful than all the others in the middle of the table, and the food it bears will be covered by an ornately decorated cloth.  Sentence by sentence, the people seated around the table will read the story of the Exodus from Egypt as it has been handed down generation to generation.  About a third of the way through, the plate will be uncovered to reveal a plate of large square crackers, and the reader will announce:

This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in Mitzrayim.
Let all who are hungry come and eat.  Let all who are needy come and celebrate...
At present we are slaves.  Next year may we be free.

This is matzah.  It is central to our celebration for a very simple reason - we are commanded to make it so.  Exodus 12:18-19 tell us in no uncertain terms to remove all leaven from our homes and possession during this holiday, but it isn't until verse 37 that we are given some insight, the feeling behind the instruction, the heart-wrenching reason that it is so important that we eat matzah, announce it with sacred words, year after year:

³⁹ And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they had brought out of Egypt; for it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared provisions for themselves. 


Our ancestors had to leave the land that, however awful, had been their home suddenly.  They had less time than it takes to let bread rise, as tradition tells us, less than eighteen minutes.  Can you imagine having to pack up your home, your children, and anything that is important to you in the space of eighteen minutes?  Can you wrap your head around what it would mean to prepare enough clothing and food to sustain them for an unknown number of years wandering through the unforgiving desert?


Thinking about this, I feel pretty silly stressing over kosher-for-Passover cake mixes and new food processors.  To say that our ancestors in the Exodus from Mitzrayim "did without" would be the understatement of the century.   Not only did they not have tasty treats and expensive kitchen gadgets, they didn't even have substantial bread to fill their children's growling stomachs.


We hold matzah aloft, sing about it, and experience its crunchy bland dryness between our teeth because tasting its sparseness, its simplicity, is to experience in some minuscule way what our ancestors did.  This is the very definition of  "doing without."  If, during Passover, I go for eight days without my favorite condiment or soft drink, I'm fulfilling part of the intention of this whole rule against chametz - To experience.  To identify.  To remember.  To pass along the story to the next generation by way of a dry cracker, with nothing to dress it up or make it more palatable. 


This year, Susie has done much more than give me something to consider when doing my Passover shopping - she has inspired me.  While, of course, we should honor Passover with our finest foods for the Seder (I'm making my famous brisket, and that's just the beginning,) this year our family will be celebrating Passover by "Doing Without."  We're not buying special cereal or cake mixes, duplicates of kitchen gadgets or Coke with a yellow cap.


If a food we want to, or would normally eat has chametz in it, do you know what we're going to do?  We're not going to eat it.  We're going to have a lot of fruit and veggies, matzah, cheese, and a bit more meat than normal.  (Full disclosure - our family does eat kitniyot.)  After all, our ancestors schlepping their stuff and their whiny kids out of Egypt had to go through a lot worse.  


It is my prayer that by "Doing Without" this Passover, I'll experience the holiday on a bit more spiritual plane than I have in the past, elbow-deep in macaroon tins and $6 pancake syrup.  Every time there's something I want that I "can't" have, I'll look at what's on my plate, and what's not, and remember "This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in Mitzrayim."  And I'll take a deep breath, and be thankful to them for what they endured and the faith that they had so that I and my family can make the purposeful, proud choice, to remember them in this small way one week every year.  And not to waste our money on food we don't really need.


How is your attitude toward food - and what you do or don't buy - making you a more mindful person, whether you celebrate Passover or not?  I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

On Jewish Day School (vs.? and?) Jewish Camp

In our home, this conversation is about a year older than our oldest child:

Jewish day school is an incredible thing.  Children get Judaic and Hebrew studies right along with their regular school subjects, many times beautifully integrated (a science lesson about recycling is connected to the Jewish value of shemirat hateva, for example.)  They are part of an everyday Jewish prayer and learning environment that also imparts a strong sense of community and love for your fellow Jew.

We are definitely sending our children to Jewish day school.  It is important, and we are very principled about that.  Wait.  It costs how much?

We kept having the conversation about whether to send them to day school, until we said the one thing that pretty much ended the conversation for me: "Maybe we should just stop at three children, so that we can (maybe?) afford Jewish day school." Uh, what?  Was I seriously letting the cost of Jewish day school dictate the size of my family?  This was the turning point for me.  Now, whether we go on to have a fourth child, obviously, remains to be determined.   We did conclude, as a result of the fallout from that comment, was that we believe it is possible to raise happy, Jewishly-identifying and knowledgeable children without sending them to day school.  So, here are the three reasons we are okay with not sending our kids to Jewish Day School:


1.  You can give your kids much of the Jewish education and experience that Jewish day school can.

I truly believe that any family can impart a sense of love for being Jewish and tidbits of Jewish and Hebrew learning in their home if they are even a little bit determined.  It takes hard work, yes:

• You have to to celebrate Shabbat - every week.  
• You have to read Jewish books and listen to Jewish music - all the time.  
• You have to take your kids to shul, and not just for their friends' bnei mitzvah.  
• If you keep kosher, you have to pack lunch for them - every day. 
• Jewish values language has to become part of your everyday vocabulary.
• You have to make a big deal about preparing for and celebrating the holidays - every holiday.  
• You have to prepare yourself to answer your kids' questions about Judaism and God, or at least know how to find the answers with them.
• When you send your children to Hebrew school, you have to make it a priority, take it seriously, review/reinforce at home, and  make sure they attend - every class.

These are things I would like to see every Jewish family doing regardless of whether they choose to send their children to Day School.  (I'm not saying that Day School families don't do these things, and in fact, when Day School families do them, their children's takeaway from Jewish Day School is that much higher.)  


2.  It is just not in the budget.
We simply don't have the cash to send all three of our kids to Jewish day school.

I've personally lived in cities where Jewish day school tuition (as advertised) runs from around 7K (yay, Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy!!!) up to 15K and beyond.  Per child.  And that's before the expected additional donation.  Per child.  I'll let you do the math.

Most schools do have a generous scholarship system, but we wouldn't qualify. My husband makes a very generous salary, but the monthly take-home pay reality is much smaller because of the payments we are making on the student loans that it took to get us the education we have.  

We scrimp and save - eating beans and rice-type meals most nights, for example - just to get some cash into savings.  After almost a year and a half of working on it, we are still only halfway to building our minimum emergency fund.  We're not even close to being able to put a down payment on a house - a dream three to four years off, at least - and those student loans?  We'll have gray hair before they're paid off.  


At the end of the day, it is more important to us to provide a strong financial foundation for our family and teach our children about financial responsibility - not spending beyond our means - than it is to keep up with the Cohens and spend more than we can afford sending them to day school.  Financial responsibility is just as important a Jewish value as providing a Day School education.


3.  When forced to choose between Day School and Jewish Camp, Camp wins hands-down (for our family.)

Jewish camp costs about one thousand dollars per week per child, making it about as expensive as Jewish Day School at the very low end.  So, obviously, it's a luxury, right?

Well, to us, no.
We have slowly been realizing just how expensive child care is.  When there are two work-outside-the-home parents (and I hope to be one of those again sooner rather than later,) you have to pay someone to take care of your kids during the summer, because school isn't in session. Day camp is nearly as expensive as sleepaway camp, and doesn't offer the same Hogwarts-like magical experience.

Kids almost never L-O-V-E going to school every day.  Almost every kid I've talked to who went to sleepaway camp L-O-V-E-S camp and everything about it.  Forced to choose, I would rather pay for my kids to have an intensely positive takeaway from the Jewish educational experience I pay so many thousands of dollars for.  And I do believe that Jewish camp is an seriously educational endeavor, for all the reasons Rabbi Sommer discussed in her post here.

I am 100% that the Jewish Camp we've chosen for our children will give our kids a rich Jewish experience, teach them a lot, and go a long way towards making them into adults who are knowledgeable and strong in their Judaism, respect others, and, above all, love their fellow Jews.  What more could you ask for?

And now for the big fat final disclaimer, copied from my friend Mara's post that inspired this one and discusses almost-the-same-but-totally-not topic:
Hopefully I didn’t step on any toes. Obviously the conclusions that I draw are for my family – and my family alone.  I’d love to know how you all are dealing with Jewish Day School (vs.? and?) Jewish Camp decisions. 

Food Waste Friday: Moldy Chickpeas and Pumpkin Pie

Every Friday I post a photo and little story about food my family has wasted in the past week.  Why do I do this? To make a long (Jewish) story short, the mitzvah of bal tashchit (don't waste stuff) plus the Jewish value that G-d is HaZan et HaOlam (The One who provides enough food for all of His creatures) equals any food waste being a total slap in the face to both my tradition and HaShem. Not okay in my book.  This is my self-imposed accountability.

Woe and shame, shame and woe.  Three separate food wastes for three separate reasons.  Let's examine and learn the lessons they have to teach...

Kiddie Pasta. 

 I cooked this for the boys one night and they barely touched it.  I served it to them for lunch the next day, and noses were upturned. I put it back in the fridge one more time so I could put it in front of them the requisite third time (I have a three-times-then-throw-out rule,) but totally forgot about it.
Lesson learned: Next time, cook less pasta.  This waste probably only amounted to $.50 or so, but it was still unnecessary.

Moldy Chickpeas.

I cooked an entire pound of these a couple of weeks ago for inclusion in a chickpea-and-orzo dish and didn't use the whole pound.  David will usually snack on these, but for whatever reason these remained languishing in the fridge.  I wouldn't be surprised if they were waiting to become a snack for a month.
Lesson learned: Cook only half a bag of chickpeas at a time, or freeze them for hummus.  Again, about a $.50 waste, but still a shame.

Pumpkin Pie.

This is probably without a doubt the saddest of the bunch.  Asher had some idea that he wanted to eat pumpkin pie after trick-or-treating, (yes, we trick-or-treated, and I don't think we're cofers, so let's just nip those comments in the bud right now!)  so I grabbed a frozen one since it was so much cheaper than the bakery version.  Turns out that it's tougher to cook a frozen pie appropriately, and it takes a lot longer, than I thought.  An hour and 15 minutes later we had a hot pumpkin pie (yuck!) and a disinterested boy.  The next morning, my rogue fork revealed a disgustingly undercooked crust.  I resolved to at least eat the outside edges and felt better.  The next morning, however, precarious food-stacking practices in the fridge landed this sucker on the floor, which marked its final pathetic end.
Lesson learned:  Just buy the pie from the bakery.   This one was a doozy - $5.79.  Oy, oy, oy.

Food Waste Fridays: Half Piece of Schnitzel

Food waste.  We all do it.  When I find something rotting, molding, or otherwise inedible in my fridge, freezer, or pantry, I guiltily slink it over to the trash can, chuck it in, and make a silent vow - "That's not going to happen any more."  Only one problem - I keep finding myself guilty of food waste. 

Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland, recently stated in an interview that Americans waste enough food to fill the Rose Bowl Stadium every. single. day. I don't know about you, but that makes me want to at least take my family's little plateful out of that sum.

On top of all that, to make a long (Jewish) story short, the mitzvah of bal tashchit (don't waste stuff) plus the Jewish value that G-d is HaZan et HaOlam (The One who provides enough food for all of His creatures) equals any food waste being a total slap in the face to both my tradition and HaShem.  Not okay in my book.

So.  I've been putting it off for awhile (honestly, because I'm just so embarassed) but I'm finally going to start linking up to the Frugal Girl's "Food Waste Friday" post.  Each week she posts a photo of the food she's wasted that week.  She figures the potential embarassment is an opportunity  to use every last bit of food in her fridge, plus her accountability to not waste food goes through the roof.  And I agree. 

So here it is: my inaugural "Food Waste Friday" post.

Please join me in a moment of silence for this half-piece of schnitzel that was left over from Erev Shabbat dinner.  David thought I was going to eat it, I thought he was going to "feed it to the kids" (translation: make it a midnight snack.)  You know how the sob story goes.  It was discovered on Wednesday morning.  I called my dad, whose job was food safety inspections for years.  His verdict?  I could either cook it down to chicken jerky and then eat it, or toss it.

You Yidden reading this post will feel the pain that much more acutely when you think of the price of kosher chicken cutlets.

*sob*  *weep*



I'm pretty sure every time a piece of schnitzel is wasted, an angel loses its wings.  Or something.

Frugal Jewish Education: Using the iTunes store to build your Jewish music library

The book of Proverbs teaches us, "Chanoch L'Na'ar Al Pi Darcho" - "Teach your child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."  This is one of the bases for the mitzvah (commandment) to Jewishly educate our children.  According to traditional interpretation, the commandment "P'ru Ur'vu" - "Be Fruitful and Multiply" is not only an imperative to have children if we are able, but also to raise and educate them. 

Throughout the life of this blog I'll be sharing some frugal tools and methods that I've found for Jewishly educating my children.  This is in no way intended to be a slam on formal Jewish education - I believe that formal Jewish education, such as Jewish preschool, supplementary religious school, Jewish day school, and Jewish camp - are powerful and important tools in educating and socializing our children in a Jewish communal context, among other things. 

As a Jewish educator myself, however, I understand that formal Jewish education doesn't tend to "stick" as well unless those ideas and lessons are somehow reinforced at home.  While I am an ordained rabbi and have an extensive education that allows me to someday (G-d willing) teach my children very in-depth and detailed lessons, you don't have to be a rabbi to instill a love of Judaism and Jewish learning and a sense of Jewish commitment in your children.  There are tons of great things you can do in your home that require little to no knowledge of Hebrew or Jewish anything to reinforce what your kinderlach (kids) are learning at school.  This series will highlight those as I encounter them myself.

My children are very young, which means that while they can't grasp detailed or in-depth lessons, their little brains are forming a mile a minute.  That also means that they respond to the most basic of lessons, internalizing things like language building-blocks and melodies to songs at an astonishing rate.  We have a CD of Jewish camp songs that we play in the car, and the first track is "Modeh Ani," a Jewish prayer said upon waking up.  I was astonished that, while Asher cannot read or speak Hebrew, he could sing back not only the tune, but most of the words to the song.  Little children learn through repetition, and while Judaism does not value rote recitation of the prayers without understanding the words, I think it's really good for my kids to know how to say the prayers and understand their basic meanings. ("We sing 'Modeh Ani' in the morning to thank G-d for another new day ahead of us.")  Now I know they're capable of learning to say a prayer like "Modeh Ani" even if it contains more complicated Hebrew and ideas.

This motivated me to have even more Jewish music on hand to play for my kids.   With Chanukah just around the corner (at the beginning of December this year!  Yikes!) I wanted to employ the "listen to a CD over and over again" technique to help my oldest learn the blessings for the candles and some other songs (and my littler ones to become familiar with the tunes.) 

This is where iTunes came in.  I knew I wanted some specific songs, like "Maoz Tzur" and the Candle Blessings, but I didn't know which versions both my kids and I would want to listen to over and over and over again.   A quick search in the iTunes store gave me a list of songs I could sample.


I really liked the sound of one version, so I clicked over to the whole album ("ShirLaLa Chanukah" RULES) and bought a bunch of songs I liked. 


Pandora Radio is another great tool for this.  You can "create your own radio station" to listen to songs of a certain genre.   Type in "Chanukah" to listen to full songs.



This is where the "frugal" part comes in.  iTunes lets you, in most cases, purchase one song at a time, so if you're looking for 3 specific songs, you pay your $3, your kids learn the prayers, and you're done.  I decided I really liked the whole CD, and I bought it (19 songs) for $10 - around $.50 a song, or a great bargain.  Or, if you're using Pandora, you listen to whole songs for FREE.

My kids are already listening to the songs in the car and learning about Chanukah.  Asher can tell you the story of the Maccabees and the oil that lasted for 8 days, and he knows the basic tune for candlelighting now.  I dropped $10 and I only have to spend as much time as I would spend in the car anyway on this little piece of their Jewish education.  It may be obvious - but I'm learning new tunes too!  This is a great way to not only teach your child, but learn together with him.

Stay tuned for more Frugal Jewish Education posts!

My Frugality: Why is Frugality Important to Me?

I'm going to start a "My Frugality" series on Mondays.  It will address a different way in which our family has chosen to spend - or chosen not to spend - and how that reflects our value of frugality.  Before I launch into that, I want to do a post explaining what frugality means to me and why frugality is an important value to me as a Jew.

What does "frugality" mean to me?
The concept of "frugality" is very simple - making the most of what we have to build the best life we can.  Money, like anything else, is not unlimited.  Frugality is about putting each dollar to its best possible use for my life.  A simple example:  I am not a "foodie."  To me, some of the best, most enjoyable meals are comfort-food-style, made-in-the-crockpot, beans-and-rice type foods.  I also don't really like to eat out - I'd much rather curl up on my couch with a bowl of something delicious.  So I don't spend a lot of money on food, because that would be a bad use of those dollars for me.  If I spent my dollars on fancy groceries and eating out, I wouldn't be able to spend them on other things I really value and enjoy.  Not only does that not make sense, but it's deplorably wasteful and irresponsible.  Which brings me to....


Why is living frugally important to me as a Jew?
I believe that, as a Jew, I am commanded to do or not do certain things.  These commandments - or mitzvot - encompass my relationships with God, with my fellow human beings, and with the world around me.  (I will address/refer to these mitzvot in much greater detail in other posts.)  In short, how we handle our money touches on each of these relationships:.

• My relationship with God:  I believe that God provides us with everything we have and everything we need.  To be wasteful, or to abuse the things that I have, shows that I am not grateful for or mindful of all that God has given me.  

• My relationship with my fellow human beings: I believe that we have a responsibility to care for our fellow human beings.  From supporting our family to the best of our abilities to giving tzedakah (charity), what we do with our money shows how seriously we are taking those responsibilities.

• My relationship with the world around me: Our planet has finite resources.  Jewish tradition, from the Torah all the way down through Jewish legend and contemporary commentary, has stressed the importance of caring for our environment and stretching those resources as far as they can go.  Wasting those resources flies in the face of thousands of years of deeply held Jewish values.  The mitzvah of bal tashchit ("Don't waste stuff") is, at its origin, an environmental value.

 Now that I've given a basic rundown of my relationship with money as a Jew, I'm interested in hearing from you.   

How do your values, religious or otherwise, influence how you choose to spend?

Celebrating Shavuot the Fun, Delicious, Educational, and Frugal Way

I'm so inspired by the Creative Jewish Mom.  She's committed to teaching her kids about Judaism in a fun way.  Her crafts are always beautiful, kid-friendly, and most of the time are super-frugal to boot.   She made an incredible cake for Shavuot and it made me think of how I could do something similar and hands-on with my two big guys.

Shavuot is a great holiday for teaching little kids because the concept is simple (it's the day that God gave us the Torah) and the traditions for celebration pretty much revolve around eating dairy foods, which means excellent desserts are possible.

This year, to celebrate Shavuot, we made some cupcakes.

(Head on over to our family blog to read the full project explanation.)

The cupcake mix cost $.88.

 

(We already had the food coloring and muffin cups.)

The frosting (that included sprinkles) cost $1.50.

 

The chocolate wafers were (a completely riduculous) $1.69 - but worth it.

Total cost of the project was $4.07. 

Not too shabby considering The Frugal Ima is 3 weeks post-partum and kind of a sleep-deprived, cranky disaster. It was such a success that I'm motivated to think of other fun projects to teach my kids about the holidays, and hopefully supply them with some awesome childhood memories to boot.

By creating frugal ways to teach about and celebrate holidays, I'm hoping to do a few things:

• begin family traditions that are do-able each year, regardless of the financial circumstances;
• put the lessons of the holiday in the forefront, instead of the monetary considerations;
• and establish that Judaism and its celebrations are kid-accessible and friendly - who cares if my kids ruin cupcakes that only cost $4?

I'd love to hear about your family's holiday traditions and their frugal aspects.  What are you doing to celebrate this Spring?

Are You Attached to Your Stuff?

Because I am.

I thought I wasn't.

I received a very rude awakening yesterday.

David and I have been trying to sell the house for about a month now.  (You know, due to our moving to Kansas City and all.)   We only bought the house about 6 months ago, so we had very little wiggle room in terms of the price we could accept.  We also needed to unload the house FAST, since we have (relatively) very little in our emergency fund (Ugh...more about that in another post...).

We listed the house, and a few weeks later dropped the asking price down a dramatic $10,000, hoping to attract some attention.  We got a showing the next day - sweet.  Two days later, we got an offer - sweeter.  However, the offer was low - a full $15,000 below even our strategic price plunge.  We literally did not have the liquid funds to make this offer work, so we countered somewhere in the middle.

Then, we received a counter-counter offer that came halfway between the original offer and our counter (still with me?) but was contingent on us throwing in some of our stuff.

The buyer wanted our entertainment center, our flat-screen TV, and our elliptical machine.

And I sobbed.

Even as I was freaking out over the possible loss of our stuff, I knew that freaking out made no logical sense.  The stuff is only worth a couple of thousand dollars.  Every two months the house sits on the market, we lose more money than the stuff is worth, just because we're paying a mortgage on a house we're not living in.

But the tears kept coming.  What was going on?

I'm not quite sure to make of it, exactly.  I mean, I know why I want that stuff. 

• The elliptical machine represents my only opportunity to work out (or work out alone, anyway) and get my skinny-lady body back after having three kids in three years.  
• The entertainment center is pretty much the biggest piece of furniture in our house, and will be one of the major things that will make our rented Kansas townhouse feel like home.  
• TV in general is a great obsession of mine.  Stay-at-home motherhood involves lots of naptime home maintenance, and I was looking forward to doing it in the presence of a 42" showing of Twilight or Harry Potter movies.  Watching our favorite shows is one of the only things David and I do together just him and me - it definitely is the only "date night" type thing we can afford to do.

Still, I could go on brisk walks with the kids, two in our jogging stroller and one slung.  We still would have our couches and coffee table to make the new place feel like home.  And David and I could watch our shows on a little 19" dinosaur-TV, or even on our laptop.   

Losing any or all of these things would not be the end of the world.  Right?

Thankfully, thanks to our incredible Realtor/dear friend, we were able to make the deal work without forfeiting our stuff.  These things that help make our house a home and contribute to my stay-at-home-mom sanity retention will be coming to Kansas with us. 

But the question remains - why was I so upset?  Or, perhaps more importantly, why do I still feel utterly violated at this buyer's request for my things?  Here at The Frugal Ima, we're supposed to be celebrating moments, not things.  Right?

I'd love to hear your responses - are you, or have you been, attached to stuff?  

Reassurances, platitudes, and the sharing of personal experience all welcome. 

Your Kids Don't Really Need (More) Toys - The Exodus from Egypt vs. Our Kids' Stuff

Post-Edit Prologue:  

Dear Saba, Savta, Auntie Al, and anyone else who has lovingly lavished toys upon our kids,

We love every single toy you have brought our kids.  We appreciate that you love them so much and have thought so carefully about what they would enjoy, and then brought it to our house.  

Like the time Saba brought all of Uncle Steve's vintage toys (including He-Man, and a sweet castle and pirate ship,) Savta brought some really excellent puzzles and an awesome pre-loved parking garage she smartly picked up , and Auntie Al went to great lengths (including fending off Airport security, or schlepping around to every single McDonalds in town,) to bring the boys some pretty sweet stuff.

The boys LOVE all your gifts.  LOVE them.  And we love them too.  We just don't love having them take over our house.Which is why we box them up and rotate them - the boys are always overjoyed all over again when they see and remember the stuff you brought them.

We know you think carefully and lovingly about the toys you gift to the kids.  We know you don't bring over junk, or excess.  We know that you know what we're talking about when we bemoan toys taking over our house.  Which is why this post is *not* about toys that you've brought.

So, if you see a toy you brought in one of these snapshots, you should know - we only store stuff the boys love.  This post isn't about hating on toys - it's about hating on materialism  and toy excess and ridiculousness.  And I know that you know what I'm talking about, because as many toys as we grew up with as kids, we also were encouraged to make forts out of moving boxes, Halloween costumes out of felt scraps,  and pretend wedding bouquets out of fall leaves.  Which is what this post is all about, anyway.

Now that that's been (hopefully) cleared up, here's our post.  And thanks, Auntie Al, for once again making me a better person through your superior sense of tact combined with, well, your superior sense of tact.  Love you.

~~~~~~~

The other morning, I used up a tray of eggs.

I was about to toss out the cardboard carton bottom, when I glanced over to see Asher playing with some of his zoo animal toys.
I cut a row off the carton and told Asher it was for the Hippo's food - which is, obviously, Cheerios.

He played with that thing for a solid half an hour.
Turns out the tray was really for *his* food - he ate all the cheerios and the babka I put in it afterwards.
So, after serving double duty as a toy and as a little plate, I just threw it out.
Because it was FREE.
Which was awesome.

This is not to say that our kids don't have toys. 

Oh, they have toys!

{An entire playroom for the express purpose of housing toys}


{Stacks of toy bins in our garage}

Most of these toys were slowly brought in over the past two and a half years by adoring family members and the occasional garage sale find. 

It's gotten to the point where we've started to store most of them in the garage and rotate them out, because there were too many toys for the children to utilize if we kept them all in the playroom at once.

This year, we've instituted a no-toy policy for birthdays. (More on that in a future post.)
We also regularly sweep the house and playroom, gather a box of toys in which the kids are disinterested, or have never taken interest, and donate them.

Why? you might ask.  Your kids might take an interest in that later, or they might grow into the toy.  You may as well keep it around.

Well, in large part, the kids just like playing with free stuff (like egg cartons, or, say, my wallet) better than they like those darn expensive, made-in-China, tons-of-frustrating-pieces toys.

On the Jewish front, we've recently ended the Passover season, and moved into the period of time where we remember the journey from Egypt to Sinai.  Many commentaries discuss the drastic change that the Israelites went through when they left Egypt.  They had homes, they had a reliable food source, and they had stuff.   (They also complained about the loss of that stuff quite frequently according to the Torah.)

A large part of the Passover experience is commemorating, and appreciating, that our ancestors who left Egypt could take nothing with them.  All they had was matzah they could bake quickly, and what they and their animals could carry.  In this season, where we count down the days of their journey from slavery (leaving Egypt) to freedom (receiving the Torah at Sinai) we are, in yet another way, forced to remember what's really important - family, community, our shared experience, and faith in something larger than ourselves that will ultimately supply everything we need.

This is a Jewish attitude that stretches from Passover throughout the rest of the year.  It translates to a focus on recognizing how rich we are in what we already have.  One small way we begin to cultivate that attitude in our children is by minimizing the importance of toys, and highlighting our own creativity and time together.  For two-year-olds, I think converting an egg carton into a hippo trough is a decent place to start.

Crystal over at www.moneysavingmom.com recently started a series of posts on this topic called "Dealing With Toy Overload."  Check it out here for more reading about why your kids don't really need (more) toys, and how to deal with the ridiculous amount they already have.

How the Frugal Ima Got to Be Frugal: An Introduction

Our Story:
David and I entered the full-time, for real, salary-earning work force just under two years ago.  Before that, we had been sweating our way through 5 years (each) of grueling graduate coursework, living on a scant part-time income and a mass of student loans (ugh - more about that in future posts.)   Of course, like most graduate students, we were barely making ends meet, and certainly not saving for the future.

Our lives seemed to get even more hectic once we started working.  David started at his firm in August.  I started work as a campus rabbi in September.  Rami was due to join the family in November.  Because of the move across states for our jobs, David had to take another State Bar Exam in February.  Between sleepless nights, stressful Jewish holiday seasons and legal projects, and keeping two babies fed and clean, it seemed like Crazy + Insanity + Ridiculousness had come to live at our house.  We were in Survival Mode. 

We bought prepared foods.  We bought a new car.  We bought new clothes and pajamas for the children.  We paid a cleaner.  We ordered takeout.  We bought a HOUSE.  We didn't think we were spending extravagantly - we just thought we were spending what we needed to spend.  And, like many Americans making more than respectable salaries, we were still just making ends meet.  We couldn't tell you where our money went at the end of every month.  

A few months ago, I got Fed Up.  I drew up a budget and a calendar of payments for each month.  We sat down together, went over it, and saw that all our money was being spent on things that we could identify, and that no money was being saved.

We were faced with a double-whammy of a reality check: 
1. We made what most Americans would consider to be a very, very good salary and
2. we had not saved a dime for our emergency fund or our retirement, let alone the children's educations.   

Something had to give.  Thus started our practice of cutting costs wherever possible and working together to live happy, fulfilled, non-deprived lives while doing that. Now, we're cooking from scratch, loving the heck out of hand-me-downs, clipping coupons, re-purposing whatever we can, avoiding any unnecessary purchases, cleaning our own house, taking advantage of free entertainment, and focusing on saving every month.

The Story of This Blog:
As I scoured the blogosphere for tips and tricks for running a happily frugal household, I began to notice a common theme.  The frugality bloggers who most inspired me, more often than not, were blogging from a religious perspective.  These bloggers, who were mostly women and mostly Christian, had found arguably one of the most compelling reasons to stretch their dollars and run frugal households - their faith traditions directed them to do so.  

"Hey!" I thought, "I'm a woman of faith!  I'm a rabbi, for Gd's sake!  Doesn't Judaism have something to say about this?"
And, as is always the answer to that question, I realized that, yes, Judaism has a lot to say: about money, avoiding waste, making the most of what we have, mindfully saving for the future, and being content with our lot.   
Not only that, but it has more to say - about how our actions surrounding money and how we treat the things we are lucky enough to possess impact our children and the world around us. 

I look forward to sharing our family's road to a financially - and Jewishly - responsible household.  I hope you find some inspiration, both spiritual and financial.   And, most of all, I look forward to growing richer in my understanding of money, wisdom, and good sense through our conversations here.