Frogdancer has inspired me with her Skinflint Sunday posts and her wealth of ideas on how to maximise the bang for her buck. In preparation for my upcoming maternity leave we have been trying to take a more disciplined approach to budgeting. That involves actually paying attention to the money we spend, setting a budget, and – here’s the bit I’m not so good at – not spending the money if it isn’t available.
The kids have been needing a haircut. Normally I would take them down to the shopping centre and pay Just Cuts $16 each for a trim.
Just by virtue of being at the shopping centre we would probably eat lunch in the food court, buy a few things that we otherwise wouldn’t have thought of and generally waste time in a large commercial building with artificial lighting instead of enjoying the outdoors.
So today I thought – no – it just can’t be that difficult. I watched a few youtube clips on how to cut children’s hair, then pulled out the hairdressing scissors.
And it actually wan’t hard. I don’t think I’ll be winning any hairdressing awards, but they looked less scruffy afterwards and I saved myself at least $32.
Now while I was cutting hair, P was mowing the lawn. I was actually using him as a distraction for Little D to keep him entertained while I was spraying and snipping. Our neighbour happened to be edging his front lawn at the same time, and when it came to edging ours he offered to lend us his petrol edger so P could try it out.
Up until now he’s been using an electric whipper-snipper style thing for the edging, and it goes through its rubber blades really quickly.
It obviously takes a bit of practice, but his conclusion was that eventually it would save a lot of time and yield a better result. A bit cruel of me to post this picture, isn’t it? This was his first attempt, just as he was lining it up for the first time.
I couldn’t help but see some parallels in our activities…
500m2 in Sydney 