Oct 25, 2010

The Effects of Becoming a Work-At-Home Mom: More shopping and a bigger stockpile

Ever since I quit my job, I feel like I have too many jobs to count: there's my "official" job of blogger, which is now my primary source of income; and then there are the roles in our home, including chef, chauffeur, housekeeper, laundress, etc.

One of my most important jobs has been to save even more money, since our income has been reduced so drastically. I'll admit that this aspect of the transition to being home hasn't been stress-free. Even though I know intellectually that we're fine, I do get a little panicky thinking about how much less we now bring in. So reducing expenses has been a big priority for me.

In the last month and a half, I've been making more trips to the store than I used to, and it shows. When there's a great sale, it's now easier to hit multiple stores or do multiple transactions in order to stock up more. In fact, I've found myself staring at something in the store that's at my target price, but which I have plenty of at home - and I realize that I can, and I should, wait for an even lower price. So I've forced myself to walk away, although it feels strange.

At the beginning of this phase of my life, I was hitting multiple stores almost every day and I started to burn out. Now, I make only one or two more trips to the store than I used to each week, and I'm feeling much calmer about my schedule and mile-long list of things to do.

My hope is that this way of shopping will result in a comfortable stockpile of everything we need at rock bottom prices. I can adjust my weekly menus to use what we have on hand, which will keep our grocery costs down.

And anything that keeps our expenses down is a good thing!

3 comments:

Jenna said...

I think that shopping online, ordering groceries for example, saves you money because you aren't as distracted by sales and other good deals.

Raleigh Mommy said...

Wondering if you could post a little more on how you arrived at your decision to stay home, and maybe too on the mechanics of blogging as a source of income?

Chief Family Officer said...

@Jenna - Hm, I'll have to think about that!

@Raleigh Mommy - To be honest, the topic of income from blogging has been covered ad naseum elsewhere, and much better than I could possibly do it. Money Saving Mom, for instance, has a nice series about it. But I'm happy to write about why and how I decided to stay home. Give me a few weeks!