The Cost of Raising Kids for $3000/year--Can We Do It? Yes We Can!

I've been getting away from my quilting articles to talk about other things. Don't worry if you like quilts. I am working on some projects right now.

There has been a lot of talk about the article put out by the Fraser Institute article regarding the costs of raising children in Canada. In the article, the author, Chris Sarlo, suggested that it cost $2100 for a four-year-old and $4100 for a 12-year-old. I don't have a 12-year-old yet, but I feel that the cost he quoted for a 4-year-old to be reasonable.

Guess how much this cost? It was free! (Minus the cost of sunscreen.)

Apparently, I am the only one who thinks this. There has been a deluge of parents and experts claiming that this amount is totally unreasonable. For example, this author sees the estimate as foolish particularly because it doesn't include childcare costs. (He also admits to spending $4000 for a week of dance camp for his daughter which screams EXCESSIVE!) According to Sarlo's report, less than 50% of Canadians use any kind of paid childcare. (This includes me--I don't even use babysitters! I would also say that a majority of my friends don't have paid childcare at all. But maybe we are the rich elite? My little bungalow might suggest otherwise.)

So I started to look around on the web to see if there was anyone who agreed with this report. I couldn't find anyone. I did click on a promising link by Frugal Edmonton Mama, but she didn't really seem to agree. Although she did omit things from her calculation like (my comments follow):

- preschool (not a necessity)
- swimming lessons (we've been personally experimenting with just taking the kids to the pool during free times and they are all learning to swim quite well)
- preschool gym (maybe try the playground? Even McDonalds has a nice playground in winter which you can put all your kids on for the price of a small coffee and muffin--$1.39)
- horse-back riding lessons (?!)

she did include RESP contributions and her larger house. (I'm amazed at how many people think RESPs is a necessity. Although I admit it would be nice, I do not think that it should be taken out of money that would otherwise go towards food. Now, if you discontinue horse-back riding lessons and use that money for RESPs, then that would be another story.)

Anyway, the frugal in Frugal Edmonton Mama is a misnomer. We are definitely raising our four kids on less than $2500/year each (what we actually spend) and we even plan crazy, epic vacations--like the one we are planning for Florida in February. (Regina is cold in winter.)

Here is his chart from the Fraser Institute report:

Spending         4 year old child (G)        12 year old child (B)

Food                          $1,638.60                           $2,517.12

Clothing                        $332.33                              $519.04

Personal care               $114.05                              $222.64

Household supplies      $127.68                              $127.68

Personal allowances,
recreation,

religion,
school supplies              $51.72                              $728.56

Total                          $2,264.38                            $4,115.04

FOOD:
According to his calculations, it costs $1.50/meal for a 4-year-old and $2.30/meal for a 12-year-old. My personal calculations say that we spend about $1.40/meal for each member of our family (or $700/month assuming exactly 3 meals a day). I think we eat quite well, but I also feel that I am quite careful about our food spending. We also eat at home 90% of the time.

CLOTHING:
I rarely buy clothing for the kids. I "put the word out" and now have a deluge of people giving us clothing. I wouldn't be surprised if we spent about $332.33 (the 4 y/o rate) on all four of our kids in a year. Not shopping is the ultimate in being frugal. There are so many perfectly good clothes that are used. And no kid needs more than two pairs of jeans. I'm sorry. Please read my post minimizing clothes here.

PERSONAL CARE:
I'm not sure what this would include other than soap and sunscreen? This seems like a lot to me as a result. (Or maybe it would include diapers, but I do cloth. And really, a 4-year-old should not still be needing diapers, so that doesn't make sense either.)

ETC. CATEGORY:
Maybe this is low as it would barely cover the cost of a bicycle (at the 4 y/o rate) and is only $14/week for the 12 y/o. But he did outline that this is the basics. It certainly wouldn't include ANY type of lessons taken over the year (eg: piano costs $15-20/week), but would pay for a few rounds of swimming lessons ($42/session).







Am I crazy here? Am I the only one who agrees with the Fraser Institute's assessment? Let me know your thoughts...

The Joy of Less--Supplement for Kids (Part 2: Kids' Clothes)

Kids' clothing must multiply inside their drawers. I don't know how else to explain it. Last year, when I took out all my daughter's clothes from her drawer, I found 18 t-shirts. I don't even have 18 t-shirts and I don't change sizes every year. Could she be using 18 t-shirts a year? This sounds excessive.

With kids' clothing, it is best to take every item of clothing out of the drawer and closet and hook near the door and count. Just start by counting it all. You will probably be amazed by how many outfits each child has.

Then make a plan for how many outfits a child will reasonably need between laundry days. With four kids and a healthy dislike for laundry, I like to have a week supply of clothes fit into one load of my high-capacity washing machine. This means that we can't have a ton of clothes in our drawers or the load will get too big. (I quit sorting the laundry years ago with no noticeable difference. If you're feeling extra brave, you could try this too.)

I have decided that my children (aged 6 and under) each need about four or five complete outfits for a week. (Maybe you will judge that you need seven. This just means more laundry.) For my daughter, this would include dresses. Because the kids are small, I help them to make less laundry by judging their clothing from the day before: if it's not too dirty, they can wear it the next day.

(My own philosophy is that kids are quite dirty all the time. If they have a small(ish) stain on their shirt, no one can tell if this stain came from a week ago, yesterday or thirty seconds ago. Maybe some people think that my kids are little street urchins, but I generally believe most adults (a) don't look at kids clothing very critically and (b) generally assume that the stain was recent instead of from yesterday. Maybe my policy on wearable clothing is too liberal for some, but it works for me and my laundry habits.)

Each child gets one (1) drawer in the dresser where all their clothing goes. If it stops fitting, then I have to look at why. There might be toys jammed in there, or it might be that there are a bunch of clothes that are now too small. (They also get one (1) very small underware and sock drawer.)

Pajamas
Each child gets two (2) pair of pjs. I am almost at the point where I think one pair would be enough. If they have more than that, little kids are not thoughtful or careful about where the pjs go from the night before and they will end up on the floor and likely in the laundry. At nighttime, I say, "Where are your pjs from last night." If they only have one (or two) pairs, then it is easy to remember what they look like. I exchange summer and winter pajamas as necessary.

Specialty Outdoor Clothing
We live in Saskatchewan. It is cold here. In winter, we need a lot of gear just to take the van to the library. Snow pants, mitts, toques, winter jackets, fleece lined jeans, sweaters, etc. are necessary for the six months of the year we have snow and bitter cold. This takes up a lot of space. What we do not have is rain gear; it rains rather infrequently here. It is never "drizzling" like it does on the coast. It rains and then it stops. We rarely go outside when it's raining. As a result, I got rid of all our rain gear including rain jackets. If it's cold, we wear our winter jacket. If it's summer, we run. A little rain didn't hurt anyone. I don't even have umbrellas because there were more inconvenient to store than the value they provided. If you live in a warmer climate where it rains a lot, adjust your clothing stores to reflect this.

Shoes
I limit my kids (and myself) to four pairs of shoes: sandals (worn almost exclusively in summer--this also reduces the number of socks that I have to wash); runners; rain boots (we do still have a "set" of these that the kids rotate through as necessary); and winter boots. For the kids that are interested, I can bring out slippers, but for some of my kids, they don't care and I don't need extra shoes to find during the day. (We also got electric heated floors in part of our house which really reduces the need for slippers.) There is no reason to have shoes for every occasion! I don't have "fancy" shoes for the kids--instead they wear their sandals. My oldest son's runners are black and quite discrete when it comes to formal occasions.

My pseudo-rule (for other things as well) is that I want the drawer to be mostly empty by the time I get to the laundry. If there is one outfit left there, then I know I have judged the amount of clothes that my kids need correctly. If there are still tons of clothes left, then more paring down can be done.

The Joy of Less--Supplement for Kids (Part 1: Kids' Toys)

(I love the book "The Joy of Less" by Francine Jay. Unfortunately, you can tell that when she wrote the book, she didn't have children. Here are the parts she missed for anyone who is interested.)

Although kids can be small, they somehow fill their space better than adults do. Maybe it is because they feel the best place for their toys is spread completely over the entire area of the floor. Or maybe it's because they move more quickly than adults do that they take up more space. (Similar to how gases take up more space than solids or liquids.)

I find it's best to start downsizing on a very messy day. Let your playroom get to the maximum messiness, then look around. Who is there to help you clean up? Why is it that the kids are no longer playing there once it hits what I call “peak-messiness”? It's because it's no fun to play when things are all a mess. Everyone knows that.

Let's start:

1. At maximum messiness, go into the cupboards or containers that you keep the toys and take away any toys that are still remaining. If they haven't made it onto the floor at this point, they are obviously not favourites. It will make your cupboards or toy box that much more spacious when you do decide what deserves to stay.
   
   
2. Look at how many “sets” of toys you have and how many of them are similar. At one point, we had Lego, Megablocks, Duplo, a set called “Build-irific,” another set called “Build-O-Fun” (neither fun nor very easy to build with) and Playmobile. Then we have a large selection of Polly Pocket, a game with little action heroes called “HeroScape” and standard wooden blocks. Was all this necessary? Definitely not! There were six different sets that were all effectively about building scenes. Polly Pockets was more about fashion, so we kept it (but if we had Barbies, we would have chosen between them). We ended up keeping the Lego (because we had a lot of it), a smaller amount of Duplo for little kids, and Heroscape because it is extremely popular with my 3-year-old. Everything else was taken away.
   
   
3. Define how much space you want your toys to take up. We have an old 6-drawer dresser which seems sufficient for my four kids. We keep the toys in the same room that our TV is in, so very occasionally when we have people over to watch TV, we can put all the toys away entirely out of sight! It is almost like we don't have kids here! (Except the crying and fighting that is not contained in a simple dresser.) We don't keep toys in the kids' bedroom except for books.
   
   
4. With kids, space is key! We keep our dining room completely clear of furniture (we eat in our kitchen) so we have plenty of space to wrestle and run around in. It has well-padded carpet, which is perfect for breaking falls, and other than the piano against one wall, is completely available to dance or do gymnastics or roll yourself (or siblings) into a blanket.
   
   
5. Baby toys require their own category. When I only had one child, I had a TON of baby toys. Now that I have four kids, even though I still have a baby, I basically have zero baby toys. Same goes for Exersaucers, boucy chairs, swings and the full size crib. My fourth baby is happier with one-tenth the stuff than my first was. He doesn't get his own toys and instead plays with the older kids' things which are mostly appropriate. (I am lucky to have a son who rarely puts things into his mouth. If your infant/toddler is of the put-it-in-your-mouth variety, you might have to modify your strategy.) Little kids love playing with things that aren't toys like clean yogurt containers and spoons. There is nothing more fun for my one-year old than to put my rice cooker pot on his head. Or play in the tupperware drawer. Or go through my laundry. :(
   Also, baby things are easy to acquire because everyone seems to buy tons of it and then realizes that you only need a Bumbo chair for 6 weeks or that loud musical toy gets too annoying after a day. Ask around if you think you are missing something. Borrowing is way more convenient than storing large plastic baby things that you only need for a few months anyway.
   
   
6. Craft supplies can quickly get out of hand, but the fancier the craft supplies, the more work it seems to be for the parent. I also realized that kids make an amazing number of crafts at other locations, be it pre-school, school, after school clubs, library programs, family drop-in centres and the like. In fact, I have come to rely on these places to satiate my kids' desire for “fancy crafts” (things involving, but not limited to, feathers, googly eyes, buttons, sequins, anything with foam stickers, popsicle sticks and sparkles). In my own home, I keep a supply a recycling paper (already printed on one side from work), felts, pencil crayons, and water colour paints in a block altogether. We also have tracing paper, scissors, pens and a few other art supplies like stencils, stamps and stamp pads that are very popular with the younger kids. I even realized that my kids don't really colour with wax crayons if there is any other option. So out the crayons went.

Once you have pared down your stash to a reasonable amount (or an amount that fits comfortably in your space), watch out because birthdays and Christmas are lurking to ruin your best intentions! I now talk to my kids before their birthday and Christmas about letting go some of their toys to make space for the new things they will certainly get. (Despite my best efforts to stop the flow.)

It has literally taken me years to convince friends and family that my kids don't require birthday presents and still certain members of my family ignore me. (Or they qualify it as “something small.” The size isn't really the issue, actually.) I have given up entirely on grandparents, which, according to my mother, is “just mean to say [they] can't get them gifts!” As a result, I have never bought the kids birthday or Christmas presents at all because I know that no matter what I say, my parents and in-laws will get each kid a large gift for all major holidays. Thankfully, my mother-in-law is a wonderful listener when I give her advice (one year, she gave my daughter a selection of brand-name toiletries—like a Dora toothbrush and Princess bubble bath. She was thrilled). My own parents are a little more rogue and once came with markers that write on glass. Gee, thanks. (There were even three markers. How extra thoughtful!) We have four kids, so we are generating a lot of gifts. Not only is it cheaper, but it prevents us from feeling bad getting rid of something "we paid good money for."

It is doubly hard if you've gotten rid of all your Megablocks and a new set comes in. What do you do now? I figure that you should let the kids play with it because it is shiny and new and when the novelty wears off, donate it. And then don't invite them to your child's birthday party next year—or not. (I have found some success with threatening members of my family with this up front—“If you bring a gift this year, you will not be invited next year.” It sometimes work.)

Slow Cookbook-ing

Since finishing up all my quilts last year, I decided to take a little break from sewing. Mostly this is due to my more active baby coupled with the fact that my sewing room is deep in the basement, about as far away from everything as possible.

Instead, I started reading more. And I read Francine Jay's The Joy of Less. What an unbelievable book! I would recommend it to anyone who wants to streamline their life. So I started to purge and downsize and generally question why I have so many things in my life. And one of the things that I have a few of in my life is cookbooks.

We all have them: cookbooks we like for only one recipe. Cookbooks with nice photos. Cookbooks that we got as a gift from our husband on an overnight trip to Denver about quesadillas when we really just like our standard quesadilla recipe with the cheese and salsa. Okay, he's a great guy, but maybe not the best gift giver. I am very happy with him.

So we have these cookbooks, but if we were honest with ourselves, we know that we really only use a few recipes and can chuck the rest.

Enter "Slow Cookbook-ing."

I am compiling all my favourite recipes (about 100 including 50 dessert recipes!) into one book that I will then get printed off. It is a full colour monster and I am about half done. To finish it off, I am going to write the most awesome index in the world so I can find all the recipes that I want instead of flipping through my hodge-podge cookbook with the glued-in recipes that I currently have.

It's a dream that's becoming a reality. Very slowly. Especially with the kids. But I plug away at it everyday and I'm hoping to be done sometime before my birthday in February.

Happy 30th birthday to me!

New stuff is always better than old stuff

My stuff ready to be shipped out.

A friend of mine from Toronto said this to me a million years ago and it has always stuck with me.

We were just sitting around one day and he told me he was going to take a bunch of CDs down to the used CD store to get credit for new things. I had this odd feeling of loss--why would he want to get rid of CDs that he probably once enjoyed and some would probably only get him 25 cents (the minimum they would pay for CDs at this particular place at Bloor and Bathurst).

"New stuff is always better than old stuff," he said like it was so obvious. And it is so obvious. But it is something that I have thought of extensively over the past number of years.

Embracing this has been a long process. I have tons of stuff. We all have tons to stuff. Stuff is cheap and abundant. In the same way that we crave sugar snacks, we also crave stuff. More than we could ever need.

I have been battling myself in this way. There are so many things that I never use, so many projects that I genuinely don't want to finish. And yet I hold onto them... is it my responsibility to hold on to them forever?

How does this relate to quilting? It mostly relates to slow quilting. I don't need to make a quilt every single week. There are many quilters who do and many of their things are beautiful. But I don't need one quilt a week. If I can make one per year, I will still have 50 quilts when I die (we'll see if that happens!). And 50 quilts is way more than any one person could ever need--even in cold, cold Regina.

But new stuff is always better than old stuff, even in handmade quilts. I should think about limiting the number of quilts I have, replacing old ones with news ones. In this small way, I might be reducing the amount of things that pass through me on their eventual trip to the landfill. My job as steward of the earth is to keep less stuff going to the landfill.

So here is my start: a pile of things going out the door. Thank you church garage sale. Now I can get some new and exciting things when I go to preview everyone else's junk!

Sashiko Quilting; Decluttering My Life

Lone Star quilt with Sashiko pattern ideas

Sashiko Quilting

 I made this quilt last winter and it's been sitting mostly finished on my wall downstairs since then. I never felt quite done on it. After about a year of thinking about it, I decided that the quilt needed Sashiko quilting--a type of Japanese quilting that uses geometric shapes.

So I drew this up with three different patterns. I asked my kids which one they liked the best (steps, stars or strips) and they all said stars. My mom also voted for stars, so stars it is.

I stared working on it and I am intending to be finished it this weekend. I think I have bad sewing posture because it is really hurting my thumb... But I must continue. I have entered it into the Regina Quilt show here at the Conexus Arts Centre, so I really do need to have it finished.

Lone Star quilt, Winter 2011 before Sashiko quilting
The colours in this photo do not do justice to the quilt.

Decluttering My Life

 On a non-quilting note, but in an effort to reduce my clutter and increase my sanity, I have started to think a lot about the things that come into my home. My current peeve is the detritus that comes home from every single appointment you go to. And with four kids, I go to a lot of appointments.

I consider myself to be a new category of hippie Catholic (not an oxymoron), and the amount of paper and garbage that comes into our home is astounding. (I can't begin to imagine how much waste I would be getting if I sent my kids to school.)

Yesterday, we took the kids to the dental hygienist to get fluoride painted on their teeth. (Yes, I am a hippie, but science says fluoride keeps teeth looking good.) In addition to being one of the most plodding appointments, she practically gave us a shopping bag full of stuff. Colouring books, stickers, little sheets to put the stickers on every time the kids brush their teeth, a storybook about dental health, large stickers, information sheets about fluoride. I spoke very firmly to her to convince her that we had enough toothbrushes at home (anyone need kid toothbrushes?) so she eventually stopped pushing those. But come on! Enough already!

Every specialist has their own little do-dads that clutter up our lives. And many of these things are "responsibility-making." Stickers to monitor their teeth brushing? What a pain for me! I feel confident that the kids will survive P. and I brushing 80% of the teeth, 80% of the time.

But let's think of the steps required. My children are not at an age where they are really able to take care of sticker sheets like this one yet. So for me, I have to
1. Segregate the stickers from my general revenue of stickers
2. Hang up this piece of paper somewhere not too tacky
3. Brush teeth (okay, I am doing this anyway)
4. Remind child to put on sticker
5. Find new place for stickers and paper so that younger siblings don't go to town on the stickers and use them on something else (heaven forbid!)
6. Deal with fall-out when younger sibs do find the stickers and put them somewhere inappropriate ("He ruined it, Mom!")
7. Spend 7 minutes trying to pick off stickers and re-affix them to the paper (this I have done so many time)
8. Start process again.

I will be the first to admit that one sticker sheet is not the end of the world. But every specialist that you meet must imagine that you are only seeing them. If I only saw the dental hygienist once a year, then this would be okay. But I see dozens of people, all of whom are giving paper and junky toys and clutter to my children.

At the moment she handed these sheets to me, I literally thought about throwing them into the garbage. But that would be much too rude. So instead, I take them home and throw them out there. Is it necessary for us to go through this whole pantomime?

I wish I could just be honest with people like this. No, we don't want your little junky car.* Nor the diamond ring.** Nor the colouring book.*** Nor the fact sheet about why it's good that our kids won't get polio.**** The stickers I will take, but we really have thousands at home. Cancer society does a good job at mailing them to my grandma and her friends who save them all for us.

Can we end all this clutter nonsense--if not just for my sanity then for the environment as well?

*At the optometrist, we got a really cheap-o dinky car that one of the kids was driving on P.'s face and it cut him. A big cut down the side of his temple. Safe, hun?
**Also an optomistrist toy that G sucked on so much that the diamond popped of. Thankfully, she didn't swallow it.
***What type of kid enjoy a colouring book about dental health more than one with Disney Princesses? Any?
****Of course I don't want my kids to get polio. That's why I let you stick them with a needle. I don't need the sheet anymore; you've already explained to me the side effects. Email me if you must so at least I won't have to make more frequent trips to the garbage.