Our Frugal Lifestyle

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Passionate about eco-frugality. I used to party hard, clubbing my way from pay-packet to pay-packet. Never getting ahead, just getting by. Then came our much wanted baby with no savings in the bank - only an old car. Changes were made to our lifestyle and we didn't turn back. In the past 6yrs we purchased a flat, found employment, lived below our means, built an emergency fund, purchased a reliable car and saw the financial benefits of our frugal lifestyle. Our only debt is our mortgage. Our aim is to manage our cash flow wisely, pay off our home quickly and eventually work for pleasure, not necessity. Join us on our journey, share insights, tips and tricks to help us and others to get ahead while having a good time.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Family Crashing in Our Bedroom

My cousin, her daughter and friend came to our side of the world from France. To keep costs down they stayed with my mum in her tiny 1 bedroom apartment and (only) one night at our slightly bigger home due to me having to go to work most days. We freshly washed the sheets and had them drying in the sunshine all day so that they could sleep in sunshine smelling sheets; a treat they don't get in Paris.

I tried to have my messy cluttered home cleaned up before they came for the sleepover - I forced myself the tidy up 30 minutes a night for about a week - but I'm a little piggy and have a bad bad habit of dropping stuff at the nearest point instead of where it belongs. So I tidied and dropped, tidied and dropped. Our home also has very limited storage space for our STUFF. (I've been watching The Block to get DIY renovation ideas.) So it looked better but was still not clutter free.

The Parisian girls slept in our beds, in our room while the 3 of us squatted the office/clutter room and squeezed in on a smallish mattress. Dolly even fell out of bed in our home camping trip - luckily it was a thin mattress on the ground.

We Happily Gave Up Our Beds
And We Slept Amongst Our Clutter
Cousin Love Makes it, Worth It.
Our neighbour Mr T lent us the mattress that we slept on, that way we didn't have to sleep on the ground. I was going to go out and purchase one as I will need a new mattress for a long term guest in the near future. However purchasing in a limited time frame and under pressure usually means a fantastic deal is passed by for an expensive choice. So I was happy to borrow and will search around for a new mattress/bed calmly in the few weeks.

Do you have guests come and stay? Where do you put them?
Posted by Frugal Down Under
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6 comments:

  1. Miss Piggy BankAugust 22, 2011 at 12:46 PM

    I only have a 2 bed house so usually no guests. If we had one guest my daughter could come in with us and they could go in her room, amongst her clutter ! We aim to get a 3 bed house when we move , whenever that may be

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  2. UnknownAugust 22, 2011 at 2:07 PM

    love it!

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  3. AnonymousAugust 22, 2011 at 7:56 PM

    My hubby & I live in a one bedroom apartment. My hometown is 5 hours away, so I sometimes have friends visit. The girls prefer to sleep on an air mattress in the living room, and my guy friends prefer to crash on the couch. We would *love* to get a 2 bedroom apartment soon (we even have a spare queen size bed), but I can't fathom spending an extra $140/month for it just yet.

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  4. AnonymousAugust 22, 2011 at 9:21 PM

    You have such a sweet spirit of hospitality and honesty! I'm quite the clutter-bug myself, which is a nice way of saying I'm a slob. And sometimes I avoid having people over because of it! No spend the night guests here, unless my son has a friend over and they sleep on the floor in sleeping bags. We turned our guest room into an office so we have no extra beds now. If my mother-in-law absolutely must stay over she sleeps in my son's room and he has the couch. That doesn't happen too often, thank goodness, because I drive myself crazy with the cleaning!

    (Sorry for such a long comment!)

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  5. UnknownAugust 24, 2011 at 4:51 AM

    Hi,
    I've seen you around so thought I'd pop over and your blog seems very interesting.

    Our cottage only has 1 bedroom so we bought a 2nd hand sofa bed which guests sleep on. Solves the problem.

    Looking forward to reading more.

    Sftx

    ReplyDelete
  6. Frugal Down UnderAugust 24, 2011 at 6:16 AM

    Thanks for all your lovely and interesting comments.

    It's interesting how we love our friends and family but squeezing them in can be stressful.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting - I love getting feedback, sharing experiences and learning from you.

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