What does, “Living Small and Large” mean? Well frankly, I have no idea. I just typed in things that sounded cool until one of them was actually available.
Even so, I think the title is fitting. We are a family trying to find balance. We moved from a big house in a small town, to a small house in a big town. We have a huge yard and a huge dog. I’m pretty small and so are three of my other dogs. We are a two adult household with only one car, but its a big one. When we do something we go all in, we do it up, but at the same time we value simple living and quiet time at home.
We try to live big on a small budget. I budget and track every dollar we make and spend. This makes our small incomes go so much further (I love YNAB). We live big on a small budget by eating mostly at home, but not eating garbage. We spend our grocery budget on good stuff; lots of seasonal produce, pasture raised animal products, and high quality treats (that 80% dark chocolate is calling to me). We try to keep eating out to a minimum becuase the $25 dollars we spent on a pizza tonight can go so much further at the grocery store, even at an expensive store like New Seasons. But some nights I come home and Ace is in the middle of a deep cleaning project and the house is torn apart and we order a pizza. Its ok, I budgeted for a few of those nights.
We try hard to not waste time and money on things that aren’t important to us. We keep life simple, expect in the areas that are our passions. We eat off of handed down mismatched plates and bowls. I’ve only bought a few pieces of dinnerware in my life. Pretty much only the time when all the bowls were broken and I was going to IKEA anyway, so I grabbed two cheap bowls. We drink out of mason jars becuase they only cost one dollar each and they don’t break as easily as most glasses. We just don’t value those things. It doesn’t matter what my plates look like or what they cost? Do they hold food? Works for me!
We feel that way about most household things. The desk and chair I’m using were $20 (for both) at goodwill. Our living room table was $6 and was one of my best finds. When it comes to consumer electronics though we go for quality. This laptop was over two thousand dollars, but its 10 year old this year, and still runs great. It can’t play Cities:Skylines, but I can live with that. If I had bought a cheap laptop I’d have broken at least five of them by now. We are careful about our value to dollar ratio.
We do it up when it comes to our real passions. Ace has a studio full of instruments. I’m not even going to try and count or list them all. Just go watch a few of his videos and you will see what I mean. We have relatively large collections of movies, video games, books, and music. I spent about a grand building a mini ramp in my garage for skateboarding. When its something thats really important to us we do what we can to live large! When it comes to everything else though, we live small and I really like it that way. The title of the blog was picked on a whim, yet somehow it very accurately depicts our lives.