Big Changes

It’s been just over four years since our first post here on $30/Week.  Over that time, this project has turned from a short-term experiment into a lasting part of our lives.  Though we’ve had some ebbs and flows in our blogging consistency, and we’ve been more careful about keeping to our budget in some weeks than in others, this site has definitely led us to some long-lasting and pretty fundamental changes in the way we shop, cook, and eat.

As a result, the experiment that we were chronicling on this blog has sort of just become a part of how we live our lives, which has made it a bit more laborious to keep writing about.  Here and there we’ve been thinking about how we could start a new experiment and get ourselves more enthusiastic about the site…and $15/week didn’t seem like the right direction to go.

As it happens, the $30/Week household is going through some big changes right now.  After living in a series of New York City apartments for over 10 years (and in Brooklyn for most of that), we just bought a house in Poughkeepsie, NY, where we’ll be moving at the end of November.  Our new home is a 1910 stone house which is going to require a fair amount lot of renovation – mostly aesthetic but also some mechanical – and since we are both first-time homeowners with almost no direct experience in home repair beyond installing dimmer switches, this seemed like a thing that we’d be really excited to write about.

And so we’ve started a new site, Minnisingh, where we are going to write about the process of fixing this place up and making it our home, as well as our experience living somewhere other than New York City for the first time in over a decade.  Plus we’ll probably end up writing about some other things like books and movies that always seemed out of scope for this blog.

For those who are really just interested in recipes and cooking, not to worry – we’re definitely not going to stop writing about food!  One of the things we’re most looking forward to as new homeowners is having a bit of land that we can devote to some more substantial gardening projects, plus a basement that we can use for a root cellar, and other semi-urban (don’t make me say “suburban…not yet) homesteading projects.  And of course, with the new financial responsibilities of home-ownership, frugality and a DIY ethic in food (and everything else) will remain one of our key priorities.

We’ve been pretty amazed and really grateful at how many people have kept with us over the years – locally, across the country, and overseas.  We really hope that you’ll follow along as we move on to this new phase.

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