Frugal in the Fruitlands

I successfully completed my restaurant-free month yesterday! All in all I was incredibly successful. I avoided the urge for pumpkin lattes, asiago cheese bagels, and bloody rare steaks for an entire month. Caveat: I did once use a vending machine, and once hit up a convenience store when I forgot my lunch in the fridge; and I was treated to a meal at the Culinary Institute of America as part of work. All in all, however, my pocketbook - and my goals list - thanks me for my turn toward the abstemious.

My goal for November is to implement my evening routine daily. It will be a point-based system, where I have a list of 7 evening tasks, each task confers one point, and I will require 5 points in order to consider that day a success. These tasks are:
- Pick out clothes for tomorrow
- Pack up lunch/bags for tomorrow
- Kitchen cleanup
- Clean up one “hotspot.”
- Take medications
- Brush teeth
- In bed by 10:30pm

To further close out October, here are my better posts from this month:

• I asked myself the question: Will My House Keep Me From Being Rich? I had a lot of input on the LJ side of things, and the consensus was that I should keep doing what I’m already doing. Husband and I also chatted about it, and decided that we needed to make home maintenance a bigger part of our life.
• I explain how veal saltimbocca can fit into a frugal meal plan with Luxury is the New Frugality (Frugality is the New Luxury?).
• I talked about the times when it’s hard to be frugal in When Frugality Gets Derailed.

Grayson at Modern Worker has graciously allowed me to write a guest post for his blog - so look for that in the next week or so!

And, as always, if you wish to subscribe, here’s the link to the Frugal in the Fruitlands RSS feed.

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