Insourcing....my value in the home....modern day family life...

 

Insourcing is my way of putting a dollar value on what I do around the home. It's easy to forget that we Homemakers contribute enormously to the family budget, the difference being that much of what we do is kind of invisible! Oh the irony!

 

Long gone are the days when an aproned Mum met you at the door after you'd walked home from school. In your school bag would be a plastic lunchbox that had held a peanut butter sandwich, an apple, a slice of homemade cake, and a flask of tap water, now empty of it's contents. You'd play in the back yard for a while, then do your homework. You'd be expected to help set the table for dinner, and possibly dry the dishes after Mum washed them up in a sink full of frothy water, but the rest of the evening was your own.

 

These days Mum is still at work when you get home, you probably had Sushi from the canteen for lunch, along with a bottle of water that you had to pay $2 for, a piece of pre-packaged cake that set you back another $2, and added to the Sushi and whatever else you had for morning tea and lunch, likely set your parents back around $20. If you're lucky, Mum finishes work at school pickup time, and collects you to take you to sport or other extra-curricular activities. Otherwise, you catch a bus or a train to get to those things, but you DO have extra-curricular activities. Which cost maybe $500-$1000 a term at least.

 

When you all get home, exhausted from work, school and play, often it's takeaway for dinner, or at least something pre-packaged, pre-marinated and sliced, or ready made. There's another $20-$30 minimum.

 

You get up the next day, and repeat.

 

It's a new kind of tired, isn't it?

 

I know. I've done it. I've done it both ways. Neither is necessarily better than the other. But for sure the modern day version is more exhausting, more expensive, and fraught with greater expectations.

 

Here's what I do now.

 

I DIY as much as possible. Not just crafty things, although I do love that. I DIY pre-prepped meals, lunches, dog washing, home renovations, mending, sewing, upgrading, repairs. Whatever needs doing, our first question is always whether we can do it ourselves, and how much money can be saved by doing so. This is both a lifestyle choice and a money saving strategy, and if you've followed my Insourcing posts for any length of time, you'll know that we've saved literally tens of thousands of dollars by doing so. So much, that I do not need to have a job outside of the home. My job is INSIDE the home, generating the equivalent of a full time income, with the savings I am able to make by being here instead.

 

Here is just a small sample of my Insourcing for this week.

 

I made a large batch of Crepe batter. A Crepe is a paper thin pancake, which you can eat as a sweet or as a meal, depending upon what you serve with it. We had these as breakfast on four consecutive mornings and for dessert two nights. All from one batch of batter. The great thing about Crepe batter too, is that the quality of the crepes improves the longer the batter stands. So by Day 4, they were sublime. There are a couple of tricks to making perfect crepes.

 

 

1. Make the batter ahead of time. It needs to stand for at least an hour in the fridge, and overnight or longer is better.

 

2. You need a smallish non stick pan. Don't even try to make crepes in anything else.

 

3. You need a stainless steel egg slice with which to flip them. Trying to flip a crepe with a thicker non stick spatula, is a fools game. Sometimes you need to very carefully lift the edge of the crepe with finger and thumb to get the egg slice under it too. Just take your time, practice and you'll be on your way to perfect lacy crepes in no time at all.

 

4. Keep the pan on really hot for the first couple, then reduce the heat to medium hot for the rest.

 

5. Keep the crepes small, and don't use too much batter. I pour mine straight from the large jug in which I mix the batter, and I usually pour no more than a couple of tablespoons full of batter into the pan, then swirl it quickly to take up about 3/4 of the base of the pan, continuing to swirl so that some batter coats the frilly edges as it cooks. This makes them easier to flip.

 

6. Don't even try to flip them until they're are basically dried out on the top. Then you're really only flipping them to brown, not to cook.

 

My batter is just for each cup of flour (I use gluten free flour and it's fine), add one egg, a tablespoon of melted butter, and enough milk to make the batter about the consistency of pouring cream. Not thickened cream, pouring cream. Stand for at least an hour, and off you go.

 

Here's some that I made for breakfast on Sunday. These are topped with frozen mixed berries (thawed for 20 seconds in the microwave), home made lemon curd from home grown lemons, home made Greek yoghurt which I make in batches to last several days to a week, pistachio nuts and home made Cinnamon Sugar.

 

Here is the recipe for the home made Greek yoghurt.

 

Here is my recipe for Passionfruit Curd. Substitute the juice and zest of three lemons, for the passionfruit pulp. Or make the Passionfruit version. You won't regret it!

 

To make Cinnamon Sugar, simply stir two heaped teaspoons of Cinnamon through a cup of Caster Sugar. Decant into a jar. This makes a fabulous gift, along with the recipe and ingredients for the Crepes, and is also delish simply sprinkled on buttered toast. Yum!

 We made so many crepes from the one double batch of Crepe batter, that I lost count. If you wanted to impress a large group of family and friends for little money, crepes are the way to go. You make dozens out of a batch that costs about 50c, and with a few jams or spreads to serve them with, you're a legend!

 

In terms of Insourcing, that one batch of Crepe batter saved us two outings for Café breakfasts, three of us, at $30 each, so that's six times $30...$180. It fed my teenaged daughter and her friends for lunch on Saturday saving at least another $30 on fast food, and we saved another $10 maybe, on purchased desserts. So that's a massive saving of $220, just by whipping up a double batch of home made Crepe batter. Seriously...it really is that simple!

 

It was our 19th Wedding Anniversary this week, and in preference to a big spendup going somewhere where we'd be cold and uncomfortable (it's Winter here), we decided to stay home in front of the fire, and feast upon fresh crab and salad. A tray of shelled Sand Crab from our local seafood outlet, was $22, and coupled with lush freshly baked gluten free bread and some salad leaves, was the equal of a restaurant meal costing at least five times that much. I'm calling that a saving of at least $100.

 

I love doing my own floral arrangements too, both in vases and in florist foam.

 

Here are a couple I've done for friends recently...

 

 

Each of these would retail for $135. I made two for myself out of the fabulous flowers that Husband bought me. He spent $80 (gawd love him), and I generated two spectacular arrangements worth $270. That's a saving for him (lol) of $190!

 

Of course, the kitchen renovation is under way following my big win, so everything has been pulled out of the kitchen and we're cleaning, prepping and painting till we are blue in the face.

 

Now I'm a fastidious person, but I think the last time I cleaned inside these pot cupboards was about ten years ago. EEeeee-yew!

 

 Top pics are when the cupboards are emptied but not cleaned. Bottom pics are cleaned but not yet painted. The painting is being done today. Husband has repainted all of the kitchen cupboard doors in a flat white, and even the drawer inserts are being made over.

   

 

Thankyou to KMart for the bamboo cutlery drawer insert at right. $19. Nice.

 

Saving on a professional kitchen makeover....oh, I don't know. Maybe $8,000? Our only investment being paint and frippery like the $19 drawer insert. Maybe $200? Maximum?

 

Saving $7,800. Not to mention the $6,000 win on the kitchen appliances which is a genuine saving too. And really, I only got good enough at coming up with new recipes and photographing them, because I was at home and I had the time. So I can thank being a Homemaker for that win too.

 

That's a whopping $13,800 value generated just on the kitchen renovation. Can you see how this works for you?

 

So I can categorically call the value of my Insourcing this week, a grand total of $14,310!

 

Granted, this was an out of the ordinary week. I couldn't possibly accrue that under normal circumstances. But even if my only savings had been the $220 on the café breakfasts (which we have had, and which many of our friends enjoy almost daily), that would have been an eye opener!

 

This brings my total Insourcing savings for this year so far, to $33,600 just on the most normal of things like pre-preparing meals, washing the dog and the car myself, sewing costumes for my own child and for the school, baking and decorating celebration cakes, making gifts, altering clothing, and all of those things that if you know me, are just part of who I am.

 

For me to earn that, after tax, I'd have to be in a pretty high powered job, working long hours, and probably having to outsource everything I love to do.

 

No thanks.

 

What about you? What have you insourced this week?

 

...Mimi...