Real life frugal living!

"Use it up,

Wear it out,

Make it do,

or do without."

This gorgeous vintage Dodge is still good enough for Mr. Broome to haul leaves and
 branches every day of the year. Runs great.

     It's funny how disposable so many things were in our city life. Phoenix has a population pushing 7 million, and that population brings with it lots of amenities. We were a 20 minute drive from Broadway shows, major league baseball, science museums, zoos, world class golf, ice skating, indoor and outdoor water parks, tantalizing restaurants, and all the shopping we could ever want. I personally never thought twice about losing a shoe, or inadvertently breaking a dinner plate. It was no big deal to run to the skate shop for repairs to Mason's longboard, or the bike shop for new tires on the mountain bikes. School shopping was easy, sitting in the dressing room sipping my Jamba Juice while the Nordstrom sales ladies fetched sizes and colors and whisked the too long skinny jeans off for alterations. And with a Target on every corner, we never wanted for Burt's Bees lotions or furniture polish or batteries. Running out, wearing out, breaking down, getting lost were very inconsequential happenings.

     Not so in a small town. The rest of America cannot even imagine how hard it is to get little things like shoes or lawnmowers or (sorry to keep beating a dead chicken in every article) organic free range eggs. Our little town is hours away from Sam's Clubs and malls. What we do have is so limited that I recently ran into a friend who was wearing a dress that I had tried on from the clearance rack at the Stage store that afternoon. I knew exactly where it was from, and so did anyone else in town who wore my size and had a penchant for yellow. You know you're backwoods when the Duck Dynasty guys seem "big city" to you. Monroe has a mall and Five Guys burgers. Willie and those guys can buy new bandanas any day of the week without spending hours on Amazon.com.

     Replacing anything in our small town takes a lot more effort, and I've seen a wonderful shift in the attitudes of my family as a result. I used to nag at my kids for treating EVERYTHING like it was replaceable, like money grew on trees and nothing had real value. But I see now that it wasn't their fault. Everything WAS easily replaceable. Now I love to see how my little Mr. Brodes hoards his Trader Joe's snacks, knowing that he has to sit in the car for 6 hours to buy more in Dallas when those are gone. And how my girls find new ways to mix and match and accessorize the school outfits we bought so many months ago, knowing that Nordstrom and TJ Maxx and Tilly's  and Target are unreachable from here. We all reuse and recycle and upcycle everything now. 

    It makes me wonder if it's really healthy for anyone to be raised in a big city like that where there's no need anymore to squeeze that last little blob of organic toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. It doesn't seem like a perfect way to raise kids. It sort of numbs your natural instinct toward frugality and robs one of appreciation for what they have. I'm glad my girls rush home from school and head outside to find the neighbors for an afternoon on the trampoline instead of hunting for new shoes at the mall.  The simple life wins this battle for sure.

     

A treasured collection of toy planes.

Small town Camden survives a huge storm

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am NOT a local, nor am I from anywhere around here. I'm an outsider from the other side of America, staying for a couple years in this lovely little spot of the country. My family is new to the South, new to storms and small towns. This is my outsider perspective from my first-hand experience.

Camden, Arkansas is one of those towns that sometimes struggles to keep going. The proportion of middle-class incomes to poverty is sadly skewed and too many people are barely holding on. It's a little town full of the sweetest, most honest and humble people in the country, but too many of them have worry lines from the corners of their eyes to the tips of their toes. Holding on, raising kids, looking for work, struggling for good health and trusting Jesus to make all the ends meet.

    So Thursday night was a punch in the gut for our little town. I couldn't sleep at all, mostly because I had subscribed to FIVE, yes five separate storm alerts, and the iphone under my pillow kept buzz buzz buzz buzz buzzing to flash me FIVE individual tornado warnings and watches and thunderstorm upgrades. I've never heard nor do I have words to describe the air-sucking, mountain-shattering ungodly winds that pushed and bullied our helpless house and the miles of black forest outside. Around midnight the frenzy paused, then a pile of papers was catapulted from the headboard inside our air-tight room with all the windows closed. Paper flying across the room without a visible cause. I wrapped up in my husband's grandma's hand-stitched quilts while God commenced with His version of the Grand Finale at the Fourth of July fireworks show. Lightning crackled and sizzled across the whole horizon followed by thunder on the decibel level of a nuclear blast, inverted geisers of water drowning the ground, and above it all the tops of massive oaks and phone lines flipping through the neighborhood like terrible tumbleweeds. We don't have a shelter, and I'm trained in rattlesnake safety but unfamiliar with tornado warning protocol. In hindsight I should've stuffed the kids under mattresses in the hallway, but Jason assured me that everything was fine. 

     And so he thought until he went out for his Friday morning walk and found the world torn apart in our poor little town. Now the community who barely keeps up has been working to get back the power, and mend the windows and doors and roofs of our homes and schools. Camden was blessed to have very little injury considering the destruction. This was a tiny storm on the scale of storms, but a huge hole in the wall of a home you could barely afford is, well, HUGE to the family that had nothing extra to begin with. God bless our little town as they rebuild and help neighbors rebuild, all with smiles and faith and a humble can-do attitude.

Laci's shirt says "Got Hope?" She sure does after TWO big oak trees hit her house right over her bedroom after midnight. She walked out unscathed.

The house is under there somewhere

Laci's tree

Standing in a yard full of trees, his mind is really on Lockhead Martin and his young family who survived wi

Brynna in front of a giant root-ball

Where's the roof?

Oh, it blew across the highway

Camden Fairview HIgh School

Camden Fairview High School Principal Burton talks about optimistic plans to repair and rebuild

The backside of Cardinal Stadium

Every yard has at least 6 people working together, friends and neighbors helping each other

Hundreds of workers labor in dangerous and cold circumstances to give the town power and to
clean up all the debris.

Twisted boat

No power, no problem. Thank heaven for Chelle's catering truck
so we could have tummies full of catfish.

Still smiling after a long day of work. 

Dear hunting club husbands: the Wife Union has voted for a Strike!

We demand an attitude adjustment, boys!

We went to dinner  all week
with Jason looking like this.

Even Mr. Brodes has turned primal on me!

Jason killed 3 deer in the first two days this week.  

Dear Men of Arkansas,

It's been a long first week of gun hunting season. We've put up with the 4am alarm clock, unkempt facial hair, giant bottles of Scent Buster shampoo falling on our toes in the shower, bloody piles of towels in the hallway, antlers drying on the fence, muddy floor mats, nonstop episodes of "Bow Madness" clogging up the DVR, bullets, camo, smashed pop cans, and the odor of dirt and pheromones. While we love the freezers full of venison and all the jerky, we have one request: please clean up after yourselves. You may have gone all "Fred Flinstone and Barney Rubble" for the week, but we are not Wilma and Betty. We are more Jane Jetson and unless you plan on bringing in Rosie the robot maid to scrub the muck and pheromones out of the bathtub and load your dishes into the dishwasher, you might want to do it yourselves. If you chose to continue to be  cavemen INSIDE the house, we will have no choice but to devolve too. And trust us, nobody wants an Ice Age wife.

     

This is what you're used to. This is me with no dishes in the sink
thinking  about how much I love you, babe.

Me on strike. See that nutty look in my eyes? Don't make me go there.