When push came to shove, I discovered that we could get by on meals with what's on hand (or mostly so)

I'm now half done painting the main deck railing. I will still need to paint the railings for 2 sets of stairs. But I'm not counting that part just yet. This is very slow and very hot work. Our deck is on the south side of the house. When the air temperature for our area is around 82 or 83, the deck is around 100. And since I'm painting black over white paint, it's taking several coats of paint to achieve complete coverage. Slow and hot work.

Anyway, I thought it best to skip my big, two-week stock-up shopping last Friday and focus on painting all day. One daughter was going to Walmart for something for herself. I asked her to pick up a gallon of milk and a small block of cheese for the family. And that was it for shopping for the week for me. So, a grand total of $6.90 spent last week on groceries.

If I'm going to skip a stock-up shopping, this is the time of year to do it. We have so much fresh produce coming in right now. I eat several figs, apples, and tomatoes each day. In fact, when I'm outside painting and hungry, I pluck a fig off one of the trees or pick a handful of cherry tomatoes to snack on without even going indoors.

Here's how our kitchen fridge looks without any meaningful shopping in a couple of weeks. Don't ask me to tell you what's in all of the jars. We have a couple of mystery jars lurking in the fridge right now. I'll deal with those in a week.

As you can see, no one is in danger of going hungry any time soon. It's probably a good thing I didn't go shopping last Friday, don't you think? 

I have a dentist appointment mid-day tomorrow, so I won't get a full day of painting in. Which means I need to work as hard as I can on painting Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Monday. This will give me a few days of cure time before the next forecasted precipitation. 

I'll skip major grocery shopping this week, too. Perhaps I'll ask a family member to go get more milk and cheese for us. Any Labor Day celebrations at our house will use what we have on hand -- meat from the freezer, produce from the garden/orchard, grains and other baking ingredients for dinner rolls and a pie. 

So, what have we been eating since Friday morning (when I would have done the big stock-up shopping)? 

We've had versions of cabbage/carrot/green onion salads (cabbage and green onions from garden), apples, pears, figs (all from orchard), blueberries and blackberries (from berry patch), peanut butter, cheese, tuna salad, frozen sausage, frozen beef, homemade bread, homemade pizza, various frittatas, oven fries and baked potatoes, Spanish rice, cooked garden vegetables, tomato/lettuce/cucumber salad (from garden), smoothies, cooked oatmeal, blueberry pancakes. 

As it turns out, we have lots of food in my house. Not that I ever doubted that. But we're no where near boring or repetitive meals. I think those would begin in about a month and a half to two months (as the garden harvest and our meat supply began to dwindle), if I did minimal grocery shopping of only milk, cheese, and eggs.

This will make my August grocery spending total rather low, with just one big stock-up shopping at WinCo and a few small stops at Walmart. The great thing is I've been able to put more hours into my painting project, hopefully finishing up well ahead of any rainfall.

Here's my question to you -- how long could you make interesting meals with just bare bones grocery shopping (like my milk, cheese, and eggs)? I know many of us could eat for a couple of months, but I imagine the last couple of weeks would consist of redundant ingredients.

Perseverance

I began repainting the deck railing last summer. I fell and separated my shoulder and had to delay finishing. So here we are, getting near the end of this summer and I'm just now painting the vertical parts of the railing. 

There are 13 sections to the railing, and I've mostly completed 3. When I began yesterday, I was grumbling so much to myself. Things kept going wrong. But I kept telling myself to be grateful I had work to do, and I was capable of doing such work. I grumbled on, all while working at the painting job before me. It was a day of me complaining in my head while reprimanding myself. It feels like this is an enormous task.

This morning, I wasn't looking forward to painting, but I no longer felt the need to grumble to myself. I don't enjoy this work, but I was able to do what I needed to anyway.

I think that's what perseverance is all about. Spending a vacation being entertained and fed wouldn't take any perseverance. The days would pass quickly, and I'd be feeling pretty pleasant about my vacation. Perseverance is when you continue on with a lengthy and often times burdensome task. You may not enjoy it very much, but you continue on nonetheless.

Saving for a big financial goal takes a lot of perseverance. My husband and I were extremely frugal for the first 8 years of our marriage. It was tough at times. We didn't take vacations, not even to camp. We paid for necessities and put the rest of our income into savings. It took 8 long years to save enough for a sizable down payment on our house -- 8 years of being extraordinarily frugal. But we persevered.

My progress on the deck rail painting job feels now much like it felt when we'd been saving for about 2 years of the 8. At that time, it was hard to see our progress. It mostly felt like we were working hard for little gain. As I look at all of the railing sections left to paint, it feels like I've made very little progress so far. But I know that in just another couple of days, the progress will be so much more evident. I remember a specific day during year 6 of our savings for a house journey. My husband and I were totaling our various savings and investments. We realized that we had saved a very big chunk of our goal amount. We could see on paper that our hard work was paying off. Buying a house was no longer just a hope, but something that would most certainly happen. That's the feeling I expect to have someday early next week. I will have completed enough of the railing to see that my hard work is paying off and it will most certainly be finished this summer.

In the meantime, I just need to persevere. I'll check back with you on the finished railing in a week or so.

Have a great weekend, friends!