The Thirty Days of Almost Nothing Experiment

I have been a bit of a frugal junkie for while partly out of necessity and partly because it is a bit of a challenge to see how little we can spend on things. I have always loved a good deal, a great sale and freebies are my favourite. Our family is big on the 3 R's of reduce, reuse and recycle but upon further self examination, I have come to the conclusion that I would much rather reuse and recycle than to reduce. Why is that??

My husband Jason and I have talked a lot about how God promises to take care of our needs and how we have seen that played out in our life. Lately, though I have been challenged with what I consider a necessity. Are some of my needs, really a need or are they really a want that I have justified into the need category? What would our lives and our bank accounts look like if we only used what we needed. Would we have more money and resources that we could invest in God's Kingdom? Would we become the kind of stewards of God's creation that he intended us to be? What would we learn about our resources and ourselves?

So for the next thirty days our family is going to try a little experiment that we are calling "Thirty Days of Almost Nothing". From September 1st to September 30th we will try to reduce first and in the process we are going to try to determine what are really necessities for our family. So before we buy anything including groceries, toiletries, school supplies etc we are going to ask ourselves is this really a necessity? Hopefully by continually asking this question even over our smallest expenditures we will learn something about what we as a family really consider a need. So stayed tuned as I post about what we are learning, new frugal tips and budget recipes over the next thirty days.

If you want to read more about my husbands thoughts on this topic be sure to check out Jason's new post at his blog.