(Written Jan. 31st, posted Feb. 1)

Starting tomorrow, Wed. February 1^st I embark on a month-long quest to attempt to keep my purchases to mainly essential items.  Inspired by the book, “Not Buying It” by Judith Levine where the author actually devotes a year of purchasing only essentials, I figured I could try something similar for one month.  Notice I choose the month of February which is the shortest month of the year, a mere 28 days.  I figure if Judith made it for a year, I can make it 28 days.  My boyfriend is going to attempt this feat with me so luckily I have some moral support from him.    

My goals are yes, to save money, but also to find a little extra time to devote to things I never seem to have time for.  I also hope to find some sort of spiritual realization that the important things in life are not things we buy and that happiness can be found in simple things if we take time to slow down and enjoy them.

The rules I’ve come up with thus far: 

1) 3 of the 5 days of my work week I must get myself to work, not using my car.  Since I work just over a mile from where I live, I can easily walk, ride my bike, or even hitch a ride with my co-worker or boyfriend.  Now a mile walk may sound easy enough, but remember, it’s February and I live in North Idaho where it can be a chilly and snowy more often than not. 

2) I can only use my car to run errands (get gasoline, groceries, run to appointments) 1x per week.  So I’ll have to do a little bit more planning to consolidate my errand running or choose to walk or ride my bike somewhere if I’ve all ready used my 1x per week car allotment.

3) No buying non-essentials.  No clothes, no gifts (I can make gifts if necessary), no household items (I should have plenty to make it through the month with what’s in my house).

4) To avoid going cold-turkey crazy on this “non-spending month”, I’m giving myself a $50 weekly budget to spend on non-essentials.  This budget has to cover any food I eat outside of the house (going out for dinner or a cup of coffee), entertainment, say if I want to go out to the movies or go snowboarding, and anything else.  For example, I am pretty sure I will need a hair-cut this month so $27 of my $50 that week will be spent on getting my hair-cut.  That leaves $23 left for that week…ouch. 

5) I have to blog about this experience 3x or so a week.  At this point if I cannot figure out how to make the blog live, I will at least will document it to later post online for my friends and family and anyone elses reading pleasure.

That the gist of my experiment.  I have a feeling it will be a slightly frustrating yet eye-opening experience for me.  So here goes nothing and bring on Frugal February 2012!