It’s been an interesting exercise. At any rate, I found myself trying to describe our family as financially responsible and frugal and trying to give realistic examples to back it up. I kept wondering what other people do to be cheap. After all, one person’s frugal is another person’s extravagance. One person’s necessity is another person’s luxury.

I want to share a few areas where I think my family is being cheap—not to brag, but to share some thrifty ideas. I hope you’ll share your thrifty ideas in the comments. It’s kind of a touchy subject because everyone has different values (cable TV may seem like an extravagance, but if it’s your only entertainment expense and you never go to the movies or buy DVDs that might be pretty economical), but I hope maybe we can learn something from how others have done it. Saving money is always good, but especially in this economy.

Here are a few of the things we do to be cheap:

• One car. Except for a brief period when we owned a junker (literally, we traded an air conditioner for it—guess which one still works), we’ve been a one-car family. Especially with two kids it makes life more complicated, but the savings are significant when you consider all the extra expenses that go along with car ownership.
• Technologically immobile. I’m a pretty tech savvy guy, but I could care less about mobile technology. An iPhone is tempting, but I don’t need one. We don’t even spring for the unlimited text message plan. When I’m out of the house I don’t need to check my e-mail. I just can’t imagine paying the monthly fees for a data plan. Considering all my Facebook and Twitter friends who talk about these technologies I feel like the odd man out, though I suspect that’s a reality distortion.
• Cheap entertainment. We try to keep our entertainment choices pretty cheap. We rarely go to the movie theater (maybe 3-4 movies per year, depending on what big movies are coming out), we don’t have cable TV and we don’t do Netflix (we had it, loved it and cut it to save money). We occasionally rent movies from the $1 rental machine at the grocery store or the library (free!). We also watch a lot of stuff online (go Hulu!) and watch DVDs. We have quite a DVD collection, though we try not to spend too much on DVDs (most of them are gifts).
• Clothes. Clothing always seems like an area where you can find a lot of savings. I used to scout the clearance racks pretty regularly and prided myself on finding $3 jeans. I haven’t been able to do that lately, but Abby does try to shop second hand stores and make the most of deals. I’ve also been patching my jeans to make them last longer, with decent success. It also helps that I work at home and don’t need a stockpile of dress clothes.
• Food. Grocery shopping is always a tough one. It seems like everyone has their tips and tricks for saving a little money here. I’m always amazed at the people who clip coupons and somehow seem to save gobs of money. We shop at Costco and take advantage of buying in bulk, though I’m always trying to compare prices and make sure we’re really saving money (and not letting things go to waste). We’ve probably saved the most money on produce and meat. We also try to stock up when stuff is on sale and buy generic as much as possible. This is probably an area we where we could better.
• Monthly payments. This one is more general, but I’m always leery of anything that has a monthly subscription fee. $10 a month doesn’t sound bad at all, until you consider how quickly that adds up. Five years later that’s a big chunk of change.
• Lawn care. I’m notoriously cheap when it comes to yard work. I use a me-powered reel mower. I hemmed and hawed about buying a weed whacker. I don’t bother with fertilizer or pesticides or killing weeds. Bring on the creeping charlie! My neighbors must hate me. But frankly, I’ve got better things to spend my time and money on.
• Holidays. I’ve talked before about redefining Christmas. We try to do something similar for Valentine’s Day and not spend money (though be careful with that one guys—this isn’t an excuse to cheap out; you usually have to put in more effort if you’re not going to spend money).

And a few areas where we fail:

• We’ve had a family cell phone plan with the lowest possible minutes for almost four years now and I don’t think we’ve ever used close to our total allotted minutes per month. We love the convenience and safety of it, but I’m beginning to think it just isn’t cost effective. When our contract is up next month I think we’re going to switch to a pay-as-you-go phone. We could easily save $50/month.
• Eating out. This is a hard one. We can be pretty lazy when it comes to cooking and it’s often easy to just go out, whether it’s to a restaurant or just fast food. Not only is it expensive but it just isn’t healthy. Thankfully having little kids has minimized this one, but we always need to do better.
• New car. As much as I think our one-car approach has saved money, the fact that we’ve bought new cars probably hasn’t helped (though getting the family member discount has been a huge plus!). I’ve always wanted to be a member of the Junky Car Club, but if you only have one car it’s extremely important that it be reliable. As our current car approaches the end of its loan period I’m really salivating at the idea of no car payment.
• Pop. I grew up drinking a lot of soda, so I was always a bit shocked that in college my cheapness really minimized my pop intake. For a while when we were first married we never kept pop in the house. But I’ve slowly fallen back into pop drinking and currently nurse a one can per day addiction. OK, sometimes two. I suppose it’s not that bad, but the expense certainly adds up.
• Books. Being a teacher and a writer books are easily a soft spot. We used to be regular visitors to the used section at Barnes & Noble, gobbling up books at their half off and $1 sales. The result is a library that easily exceeds 1,500 books. In the past few years I’ve realized I’m never going to read all these books and have really cut back on the purchases. I’ve been doing a lot more library borrowing and realizing that I just don’t need to own every book out there.

A lot of this comes down to living simply. It’s something I’m always trying to learn and always realizing how far I have to go. Sometimes we need to march against ourselves. There’s so much we really don’t need, and when we’re able to go without it frees us up to do so much more. As Johnny Cash says, “Every possession is just another stick to beat youself with.”

You could spend a fortune on books about being frugal, but sometimes it’s easier to hear it from a friend. So what do you do to be cheap?

You always hear about the ridiculous real estate prices in Detroit (one NPR story mentioned a $500 house) so I decided to see how crazy it the market really is.

It’s crazy.

While I searched I found listing after listing for beautiful homes for well under $100,000. OK, the mansions were under $100,000, the homes for the rest of us were under $50,000. The home pictured above is a four-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,000-square-foot house built in 1931 on the east side (technically the Morningside neighborhood, but that means nothing to me). The price? $19,900.

That’s crazy.

I used the mortgage calculator just for kicks (would they even give you a 30-year mortgage for a $20,000 house?). Your mortgage would be $117 per month.

All of which makes me want to move to Detroit.

We’re not moving to Detroit.

But the possibility is kind of intriguing.

I realize the reason these houses are so cheap is the wretched economy in Detroit. Sure, you could move there and get a cheap house, but you’re not going to find a job (unless, like me, your income is not dependent on your geographic location). There are also issues of saftey (you might find a job in the private security industry) and convenience (no Target, WalMart or even a grocery store within city limits). But those might be balanced by food (the locally grown options would make a foodie drool) and artistic green spaces (Art! Trails! Score!).

As Detroit slowly deflates like a day-old balloon, I see possibility rather than just a sad balloon.

They even threw in a dozen fresh eggs from the free range chickens that were wandering the yard. Oddly enough it was a pretty swank neighborhood for free range chickens.

If I have to buy firewood I’d rather help a couple kids help people in need.

Here’s the breakdown of when we turned on the heat the last few years (I don’t know why I find this fascinating, but I do, so roll with it):

• 2009: October 2 (inside temp: 63)
• 2008: October 16 (inside temp: 61)
• 2007: October 11 (inside temp: 63)
• 2006: September 21 (inside temp: 64)
• 2005: October 24 (inside temp: 55)
• 2004: October 5 (inside temp: 58)
• 2003: September 29 (inside temp: 58)

Growing up we always had real Christmas trees. On the day after Thanksgiving we loaded into the truck, drove out to the Christmas tree farm, rode a wagon out to the field and chopped down a real live Christmas tree (after rejecting plenty for being too fat, too thin or too bare).

It’s a fine tradition, but I’m happy with a fake tree. It’s cheaper, you don’t have to pick up all the needles, and you don’t get stabbed by all those needles when you’re putting the ornaments on. Plus we travel so much at Christmas it doesn’t make any sense.

It also seems like a lot of effort to chop down a real tree every year just to put it up in your living room for a month. Real trees can be recycled, but there’s still a lot of energy and effort that goes into that industry. The fake tree can at least be reused every year—and they’re used so infrequently they could easily last 20 or 30 years.

So call me a Scrooge, but I like my fake Christmas tree.

Maybe someday we’ll have a digital Christmas tree and then it’ll be even easier!

• 2008: October 16 (inside temp: 61)
• 2007: October 11 (inside temp: 63)
• 2006: September 21 (inside temp: 64)
• 2005: October 24 (inside temp: 55)
• 2004: October 5 (inside temp: 58)
• 2003: September 29 (inside temp: 58)

It might help that I’m going to be homeless tonight and the thought of a warm house is more than enticing.

The fence looks pretty amazing. Sure beats chicken wire.

It’s really small, basically one 26-foot section and two short sections (5 and 7 feet). Not a lot of fence, but just enough to close in the yard and be a lot of work. What’s a lot of work? Well, there was a lot of concrete buried in the back yard. Then we hit what I can only assume was the foundation to an old garage.

And let’s just say that me and manual labor don’t go well together. I work with my mind, not my hands, and it shows. Working with my hands more might be good for me, but I’m definitely not good at it.

Our big Memorial Day weekend was spent helping my brother’s family move. This is a borderline psychotic admission, but I think moving is kind of fun. Yes, it’s incredibly stressful (for those moving). But it’s an interesting opportunity to cram all your stuff into the back of a truck and redistribute it into a new space. It always makes me realize how much crap I own and wonder if I really need all that crap (and hopefully I spent enough time minimizing the crap before the move). All that said crap also makes me realize how unorganized I am, and how stuff I thought I needed so dearly I really don’t need. There’s plenty of stuff I haven’t touched since moving into our current home a little over a year ago, and that helps me let go a little bit.

We spent the drive down listening to Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. Fascinating stuff. Primarily it talks about how high school history courses tend to whitewash history, glossing over things like Woodrow Wilson’s racism, Helen Keller’s socialism and the genocide of Native Americans. It can be a bit depressing, though the point is not ‘feel bad’ history in place of ‘feel good’ history, but simply honest history. I’m not sure I swallow everything Loewen said—he tends to make sweeping statements and decisive arguments that make you wonder if he’s as biased as the textbooks he’s skewering. Though there’s no questioning the institutional racism that’s reinforced in the books as they set up what’s basically America’s origin myth, whitewashing and forgetting the crimes of European explorers and vilifying and ignoring Native Americans.

I think you can sum it up in the fact that humans suck at communication.

Finally, I’ve been taking in lots of art, as my Flickr account clearly shows. It’s taking longer to get it all into Start Seeing Art, though it’ll be there eventually (I’m guessing I’ll be woefully behind all summer). Though it was pretty hilarious when Lexi and I were running errands and she suddenly cried out, “There’s art! Take-ah picture,” as we drove past “Midwest Canto Al Pueblo Dos” on Robert Street.

This weekend it snowed.

That’s the way it goes sometimes (though not usually in April). It rained and snowed and blowed all day Saturday, so we had to set up inside. We had rummage on our porch, our living room, our kitchen and the garage was packed (furniture stacked on furniture).

People actually turned out on Saturday despite the weather. We did pretty well.

On Sunday I pulled out my long johns again for round two and we had some sunshine. We were able to spread out a bit, but the crowds were much thinner. We probably made three times more on Saturday (lesson: don’t do a garage sale on Sunday).

In the end the effort was very successful, but we only moved about a third of our rummage. I think we’ll probably end up doing it another weekend, hopefully a more seasonable weekend.

My favorite part of the weekend was a little girl who bought a mini stapler for a quarter and walked around saying, “Staple, staple, staple,” pretending to staple everything, and a guy who told me a story about a goat that liked to get drunk.

A big thanks to everyone who donated stuff and came out for the sale.

• The guys who installed our washer and dryer hooked them up wrong. Didn’t help that I didn’t properly install the drain hose on the first try. That was messy.

• The overflow drain in our jacuzzi tub failed, sending a ton of water seeping through the ceiling and dripping into the living room. We got it fixed easily enough, but we still have some stains on the ceiling that we don’t care enough about to fix.
• While removing wallpaper in the bathroom we had the window open and the hot water running, and were soon smelling gas. We thought it might have been something dangerous with our instant hot water heater, but turns out it’s normal. I suspect the exhaust may have been located too close to the window.
• Our doorbell stopped working.
• The toilet in our basement started leaking and soon we realized it was the main drain backing up to the toilet, the tub and the floor drain in the basement. It got to the point where nothing was draining at all. One Roto Rooter visit later we were back in business.
• When it got cold and we turned on our gas fireplace only to discover it wouldn’t stay lit. Definitely not a necessity, so we opted to ignore it for a while.
• Of course then the furnace went out. Those were a cold couple of days.
• Then our wood burning fireplace (yes, we have two fireplaces) decided to clog up. I can only assume the chimney is in desperate need of a cleaning (I suggested we call that friendly chap from Mary Poppins). Another expense we decided to forgo for a while.
• And now the toilet in the basement is leaking again and this morning I determined that it is in fact the main drain clogged up again. The Roto Rooter man said the guy who came out six months ago didn’t have a big enough machine to fully clear out the roots. But he supposedly got it. We’ll see in six months (when his guarantee expires).

So basically we’ve had a problem with every major appliance in our house, except the dishwasher. And if the dishwasher goes, well, then I give up. Have I mentioned that sometimes I hate being a homeowner? Yeah, I guess I have.