It's been an interesting month!  I wrote about it here, at the beginning of the month, but to recap:

Three of my friends and I decided to try a one month consumerism diet.  Two for purely financial reasons, and two of us just as a bit of a social experiment.  My goal was just to try to take one step back from our consumerism culture, just to see what kind of impact it had on our finances over the course of one month, and to see what changes I made to my spending habits, overall.  I didn't really want a major upheaval for the family, but I wanted to eliminate all the $5 odd items that seem to regularly turn up in the cart.  All four of us made exception lists.  Mine were:
Groceries.
Basic cleaning supplies - detergent, etc.  No "I wonder if that really works..." purchases.
Date night.
Eating out one lunch per week, M-F.
Emergency clothes for the boys.
School supplies.
Renovation related expenses, closing costs for HELOC

So how'd we do?

Several months ago, I heard a segment on NPR about a couple who had recently had their second child.  They were deep in credit card debt, but the woman wanted to be a SAHM.  Their solution was a year-long consumerism diet where they bough only the bare necessities.  They bought groceries, hygiene and child-related necessities, and the adults each got one new pair of shoes and new underwear ONCE during the year.  At the end of the year, they were debt-free and being a SAHM was economically feasible, without all the financial restriction.

At about the same time, I went on a major cleaning rampage in our house.  It sounds great to have a lot of closet space, but I seem to create reasons to fill it up.  I was disgusted with how much "stuff" we have that is completely unnecessary or never really even gets used.  Never mind the extra work I seem to keep creating for myself, trying to keep everything organized and clean.  Not that I'm a clean freak by any means, but I can't stand the constant clutter and shifting of junk because nobody knows where to put it, where it came from, or why we have it in the first place.

I've commented on a few posts, but never actually introduced myself.  I'm Kerry, SAHM to two boys, a five year old who just started kindergarten  Monday, and a 3 1/2 year old who is having a really hard time with his brother gone all day.  We live in a semi-rural small city about an hour south of Alanta.  

In many ways, it's a great place to live.  It's fairly close to Atlanta, which my husband and I both love, we live in a great neighborhood, in a very good school district (dispite the county's diheartening statstics, overall), and it's been an amazing professional opportunity for my husband.  But I really struggle with a huge, for lack of a better way to describe it, cultural divide.  So... I really need to vent about thie one.  

On Wednesday, I commented on Colleen's post about the kindergarten teacher fired for her discipline practices.  I criticized a nearby county for having an opt-in corporal punishment policy that is pretty widely used and supported.  Teach me to throw stones... Yesterday afternoon, I opened my kindergartner's backpack to find my copy of the policies and procedures for  elementary school students.  Acceptable discipline practices include, yep, you guessed it, corporal punishment.