Practical Living in Hard Times

by Cheryl Moss - Site Owner
(All-Things-Emergency-Prepared)

Practical living in hard times... If you are running a household, how do you make sure the impact of a disaster, recession, or hard times, will not be too much to bear for yourself and your family?

Here are some simple and practical living tips that you may find useful during these tough times.

1. Grow Your Own Foods

If you have been relying on the grocery store for your daily meals, it may be time to consider growing your own food. Take advantage of any extra ground or yard space you may have, and avoid having to buy fruits and vegetables. There are many advantages to growing your own food. Here are just a few:

Eat healthy organically grown food.
Health benefits from the exercise.
Save fuel - not driving to the market.
Save money on rising produce costs.

If you do not have any yard space, you can grow vegetables and herbs in pots, which is also known as container gardening. Mint, sage, rosemary, basil and thyme are great herbs for container gardening. If you do not have a lot of time, opt at least, for some low maintenance vegetables. Examples of low maintenance vegetables include garlic, onions, turnips, cabbage, leeks and kale.

If you have a bigger backyard, think about growing your own fruits in addition to vegetables and herbs. This will require a longer time span since fruit trees can take at least two years to yield crops. You can also try gaining a wider variety of home grown produce, through trading your harvest with your neighbor's harvest of fruits, vegetables and herbs.

2. Make Your Own Meals

Learning how to bake is a great way to budget during hard times. Aside from saving money, it can also be a fun way to relieve your stress, and has numerous health benefits over prepared or fast foods. Fast food restaurants can be very tempting but if you have the skills (or not, since you can learn to cook), then why not prepare your own food from your own grown fruits and vegetables. Also, try baking your own bread, cookies and snacks, it's usually healthier for you too.

If you think your skills are too limited, the Internet offers millions of simple recipes that anyone, even kids can make. Also, making your own coffee at home instead of driving and spending extra at coffee houses, can really make a large difference towards your food budget.

3. Improve Your Grocery Shopping Habits

Prevent yourself from giving into impulse buying. With the right shopping attitude, you can reduce unnecessary cost. You can do this by following a few practical shopping tips:

Create a list of items to buy before going to the supermarket.
Do not go grocery shopping when you are hungry. (Yes, hunger causes you to buy items you do not need).
Buying all the items you need in one shopping trip can avoid using extra and unnecessary gas, and also gets rid of the temptation to buy more than you planned.
Also, while loading your cart, check again which items you can do without. Many of the items you picked up, you will find you do not really need.

4. Cut Back on Non-Essentials

You may like soda or quick-snacks, but ask yourself, if you really need them. Cut back on the non-essentials. You do not necessarily have to stop drinking soda or eating snacks, but do try calculating how much you can save without consuming many of these non-essential items as often as you used to. You will see that it's probably enough to allow other necessary purchases, that you would not have been able to afford otherwise.

I think the key to simple and practical living in hard times is, taking the time to realize exactly WHAT things really ARE the important ones... and focus on those that DO matter.

Author: Cheryl Moss
Article Date: January 5, 2010
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