|
We did something a bit similar for two years back in '98-99. Dh was unable to work for a while, so we couldn't afford our rental house, but we owned a piece of relatively secluded raw land. We purchased a dump of a mobile home and had it hauled onto the site. We had a creek, so during warm weather we washed there, and there was a nearby spring for drinking water. The trailer wasn't hooked up to any utilities. We had one income when dh started working again (which wasn't all that long after we moved, but we kept living there so we could pay off the debts from his time of not working), and five kids, aged 1 to 10.
We put a bucket under the trailer, below the toilet, and we kept a bucket of water in the bathroom to flush with, though we had to ration flushing so the bucket on the ground wouldn't overflow . . . then we moved the waste away from the house where we'd dug a pit, and buried it there. That wasn't a great solution, but it wasn't too long before we rented a port-a-potty, which was surprisingly inexpensive, including their weekly pickup and cleaning. They even supplied toilet paper, LOL.
I used a cooler for the food. I created a weekly list, including some frozen food, some fresh food, and some canned food - same stuff every week (I had also worked it out to be a very tight budget - about $40/week, in MD, which has a fairly high cost of living). Early in the week, the frozen food (a box of frozen chicken parts) helped keep the other foods cold. After a day or so when the chicken had thawed we ate that, and late in the week we ate canned foods. That plan kept down the trips to the store for ice and cold items. We loved the colder part of the year, when we didn't need to buy ice! I cooked (outdoors as long as the weather permitted) over a Coleman camping stove or a fire pit.
For keeping the kids (and ourselves!) clean in the winter, we paid for membership at the YMCA. With a family membership, the kids all got two free classes each session (they all learned to swim, which was a blessing a few years later, when we moved to an island in the Caribbean and mostly travelled in boats), and we all took showers there, at least once a week. Dh, who gets stinkier than the rest of us, and is also lots tougher, kept washing off in the creek even in cold weather, or we heated water on the stove for him to wash with when the temps got low enough that even dh wasn't crazy enough to go in the creek.
We always planned trips to town so that we could get food, ice and such when we were already going somewhere like a church event or the YMCA.
Oh, I used a laundromat once a week (I had a ton of laundry with all those kids, and dh working construction), but brought it all home wet and hung it on the line at home. I liked to go to an all-night laudromat, so I could do the wash at night when the rest of the family was asleep.
Some of these weren't the most frugal choices, but with so many small children I had a limit on time I could spend on frugality - we were also homeschooling. For instance, I could have heated water from the creek and washed the clothing by hand, if that had been necessary, but it would have taken up so much more time that we made the choice to pay for the laundromat for washing.
I'd like to say that the kids who are old enough to remember living there think of it as the best time they ever had. It was totally worth it - after the two years we were completely debt free (after taking a bit hit in a recession that hit dh's industry a few years earlier and then going through a few months when dh couldn't work) and we were able to move on to our longtime dream of living internationally as missionaries, which we've done ever since.
__________________
Appearing for a limited time only - my teensy-tiny family!  My blog - about living, working and raising a family in rural Western Honduras
Last edited by Honduras Trish; 08/20/12 at 01:11 PM.
|
19Likes
