The 2021 budget is wide and vast, some area’s are super lean, some area’s are like a fat cat that wants heavy cream and the good fatty fish.. Thankfully some are one off’s! Other area’s are unknowns..

Budget/Frugal or Fat Cat..

Lets break that down a bit and see how we did in Jan..

Our one off was the vet bill for having Uther altered, chipped, his cone and pain meds etc.. Tax in at $405.. Thank goodness for my vet.. friends in the city are reporting that the same size male with both boys down can easily cost upwards of 1000 or more..

Our Frugal Wins for Jan..

We did not buy any cloths, I did get gifted cloths though a community program.. and they are wonderful, got 3 new bra’s (with tags still on) 2 new shirts and 2 pairs of summer to the knee pants.. All from Pennington’s and all with tags still on them.. (someone got them on sale and then did a purge, lost weight, I am not sure) I have put the summer cloths away and the fancy bra as well but the work out bra is awesome.. its got hold power, I will for sure pick that one and try it for when I am riding this spring and summer..

I got two lovely winter vests but I gifted them forward to a lovely older lady who will put them to good use.

We did our own hair cuts (but of course) and I dragged out my curlers so that I can get some lift to the top of my now longer hair (its to short for the pony, but to long to just hang there lol)

The only cloth/wear buy was a pair of heated gloves for hubby, he has been having really hard time with cold hands, I mean really bad and even with double layers and heavy duty really wam glove it was just not doing it.. now he has rechargeable battery heated gloves with four heat settings and his hands are much better.

When it came to household goods, we bought nothing this month that was extra.. (we will get to the greenhouse/gardening stuff further down) so that was a solid win. The farm was the same.. we have everything we need and you just keep moving on.

Now the FAT CATS..

Grocery bills..

O my.. O my.. $394.00 was spent in the month of Jan on outside food..

this includes my 2X a month fresh fruit/veggie/a small amount of grains sometimes basket, the box of pork puffs that is hubby’s favorite snack that he rations (but man they are crazy good) and pretty much extras like nuts, mixed nuts and other trail mix types and seeds like pumpkin/sunflower and a few other extras for his new diet and coffee. There was a bit of smaller household items in there as well, a extra bag of toilet paper, a new tube of toothpaste, a box of q-tips and another bottle of shampoo

In 2019.. my food/household budget for “out” was 50 every 2 weeks.. for a flat hundred or under for the month..

That means for 2021.. my real life spend in Jan 2021 is just shy of 4X the amount or looking at it the other way a increase of 300 percent.. OUCH!!

The Second FAT CAT spend item this month.. anything and everything related to the seeds, garden, fruit production, propagation, trays, labels, soil and so on.. now I know that when this is spead out over the year itself its not to crazy and some things should get a 5 to 10 plus year spread cost out..

BUT.. I have spent $639 in Jan of 2021 on a host of different garden stuff.. stuff for the indoor greenhouse, stuff for the big seed starting push for the 3 season greenhouse, new kinds of seeds for different flavours and textures for the main garden, items for creating new plants, items for working in the food forests, and the list goes on..

On the flip side as the Indoor Greenhouse is gearing up, we did grow/harvest and eat $51.50 worth of green salad greens, pea shoots, Mung bean sprouts and micro sprouts.

I am looking forward to seeing what we can do in Feb in this regards..

Now I expect I need another 100 yet to finish out the garden/3 season greenhouse and then I have everything I need for the garden/food forest and so on.. so lets round it up to 200 to safe.. so that puts me at 839.. so lets round it up to o.. $900.. (what you know its going to happen, I am going to find something that has broken and needs to be replaced)

Which still even if you only break it down over the 2021 year comes in at 75 per month, it would put me under my normal “garden allowance of 1500 max” per year.. but that typically covers my garden courses, books, tools, seeds, and so

The yard rebuild was a whole different budget.. and the indoor greenhouse/lights and flooring went into the 2020 budget and be glad of it or that would be alot higher.

Moving on to the Declutter..

I have done two drawers, one big closet and some general all over the house this and that.. we have thrown out, put into the recyle or giving box or re-gifted out a whopping!

WAIT FOR IT!.. 178 items.. of my ideal 365 items for the year or 2021..

Now I admit that i counted small stuff but if it was a little kit or bundle, it was only counted as one item.. it was crazy how fast these things added up.. and I need to clean my junk drawers more often..

Now the great thing about this was finding “keep” stuff and being able to sort it and still get it out of the house.. Small box of screws size.. to the build it area in the one outbuilding.. New bottle of cement glue.. to this house repair kit box.. so many things we got extra’s of, so that we know we have backups but many of them ended up on the main floor of the house, when they should have been sorted and put into working areas, working kits and so on..

This is also proving to be a boon, in figuring out what we should be adding to our lists.. example.. shower cocking replacment tubes.. great.. when was that last done.. ok, lets add that to our winter to do list and use these, and add these to the “replace/increase the backups” shopping list for when we come out of lockdown before the next “varient” wave lockdown hits in march..

I figure we will locally in my area have around a 4 to 6 week open window to get everything we could need for the next 3 to 8 months and or next 1 to 4 years depending on what it is..

So the declutter is going amazing but I did bring items.. so I am not going to count the little compost seed starters or seeds.. but if you are just looking at trays, garden related items and so on.. I added in 47 items.. 47!!! can you believe it.. and I am not even going to touch the 500 plant tags.. because then it would be 547 items.. did you just laugh.. I did.. add in the 500 plant pots and I added in 1047 items..

Opps, going the wrong way lol..

I am only giving myself credit for 131 items of my required min of 365 for 2021.

as I am taking off the bring in items.. If you bring things in.. its not decluttering lol

or if you want to count the 500 tags and 500 pots, then I am in the you suck at this.. so bad! its not even funny! (ok its funny)

There you go.. my end of Jan round up.. I truly hope you did nto see a 300 percent increase your grocery bill from per-pandemic spending.. I hope if you are decluttering in jan that it went better for you..

Onward and Upward!