Frugality and Abundance

Hey y’all!

As many of you know, I’m a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) to a young toddler and (soon) an infant. I’m also a very frugal person. My blog name is Frugal Tree Hugger for goodness’ sake! But I am learning a lot about the law of attraction at the moment.

A major component of the law of attraction is that when you hold on to a resource (just in case), it puts out the vibration that you don’t have enough. It sends out vibes of lack, and I don’t know of anyone who wants more lack in their life. You attract more of what you are, so the question becomes, ‘How do I remain frugal and not feel any sort of lack?’

So, I’m not fully sure of the answer to that question, but what I’ve been doing over the past week is to not worry about using up ingredients or food or other items. A month ago, I wouldn’t have used that last cup of GF flour that I had, and I wouldn’t have eaten all the holiday leftovers in one sitting. Because, what if? What if I need it later? What if I want to enjoy it later? If I use it right now, I won’t have it later if I need it.

I still spend my money frugally, but I comfortably use what I have available rather than scrimping on it. I don’t know at this point if that will follow me through to the future, but I think there is a nice middle ground where I can use frugality to enable me to be abundant.

The only person (that I know of) who talks openly about this is Kate Singh. She has a YouTube channel called Coffee with Kate, and I love it. Most people either talk about money and flaunt it, or they ignore it completely. But Kate talks about how she and her family is frugal but they live an abundant life.

A big thing with Kate is that she (and I’ve heard other frugal people say this) has been teaching herself constantly to find joy in simple things. For example, she makes her own coffee every day. But she makes it tasty and warm, and she drinks it in the mornings when the light is soft and the house is quiet. Not only is her coffee incredibly inexpensive, but she creates an ambiance around her coffee that is really relaxing.

My goal is to create that kind of ambiance for my own life.

But I keep thinking about the whole abundance through frugality thing. The things that I would put in this category are things like, if you enjoy cooking, you can make several tasty meals from home for the price of ordering a single meal at a restaurant. If you do the coffee at home, you can have a lot of coffee for a lower price and in a more peaceful environment than Starbucks. If you love being at home, maybe you can find a way to be a frugal stay-at-home person rather than hustling off to work every day (parents can often stay at home with their kids instead of paying for daycare – daycare costs will often nearly equal out to any money made from a job, unless it’s a super high-paying job).

At this point, I do want to bring up matresses. Matresses is a French term (I believe), and it’s basically a mom-form of puberty. A pre-teen girl goes through puberty to become a woman, and a new mother goes through matresses. Just because a woman has pushed out a baby (or another person has brought a baby home), she hasn’t become a full-fledged mom yet. There’s an adjustment period to get used to the baby being there… all the time. And this period can take years. My son is nearly 2, and it took me about 15 months to be able to weather the crying and the tantrums with a smile on my face for the entire day. For most of my son’s first year of life, I got a job outside of the house. I could not take the thought of being the boy’s primary caregiver every day. But we eventually clicked, and I feel fully equipped and blessed to be around him all day. I had the ability to not pay for a daycare service due to my family but some people don’t have that. If your child is overwhelming, getting a job just to pay for daycare may not be a bad idea. Even though well-meaning people would say that it’s not “frugal,” do that if you need to. If daycare gives the parent some peace, then you’re not just paying for daycare – you’re also paying for self-care, and that’s like a sale.