My Quarantine Life: Week 50


Simon is sleeping all nice and warm.

Wow. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been in quarantine. I’m not allowed to be indoors with any other people. I am not allowed to go to the grocery store or pharmacy. I have had one in person doctor appointment where someone touched me for a blood draw. All my other appointments have been virtual.

The pandemic has been challenging on so many levels. We are still experiencing food and supply shortages. Right now, I am having difficulty getting cat litter. It has been a year since I have been able to get retail toilet bowl cleaner, so I have just been using baking soda to clean my bathroom. 

Prices on everything have increased significantly. This year, effective January 1, 2021, my municipality decided to raise my property taxes by 20%. Yup, you read that right, 20%. My mortgage increased to cover the escrow and I am now paying thousands of dollars a year more in taxes. 

I am now paying 3-4x more per month for food and supplies. I am doing everything I can to try to keep my expenses down. I am using a lot of cloth items and drastically reduced my use of disposable paper products such as paper towels, toilet paper, and tissues. 

I have also been concerned about my utility bills. My idea was to reduce my utility bills by turning my heat down. This was a great idea in theory, but did not work well in practice. Here’s why:

There is at least a 5 degree difference between the upstairs and the downstairs in this house. When I turned the heat down, the downstairs was tolerable, but the upstairs temperature dropped into the 50s. This made me concerned due to plumbing. I did not want pipes to freeze with indoor temps in the 50s. I get squeamish about pipes if the temp dips below 60. So I had to turn the heat up enough so that the upstairs would be at least 60 degrees.

Second, I am home all the time now. Last year, there was a huge difference in working all day in a 68 degree office and then coming home at night to a slightly cool house. It did not bother me one bit. But now that I am in the slightly cool house 24/7, it’s chilly. 

Being chilly also makes me feel guilty about the cats. I had the office to go to last year and only came home to a cool house at night. For the cats, this is their entire world. I feel so bad I left them a bit chilly. Now that I am home all the time, I understand more what life is like for an indoor cat.

I turned the heat back up to 68 degrees. That’s where it’s going to stay.

I have no idea how I’m going to afford the utility bills when my heat is on 68 degrees, but we have to be here all the time, so we need to be comfortable. I also have to keep the heat in the house at a reasonable temperature for maintenance reasons.

It helps a little that student loan payments have been suspended right now. Since my mortgage, food and utilities have all gone up, not having a student loan payment takes a little bit of pressure off. Not much, but a little. When student loan payments resume, then we will definitely have to take more drastic measures to reduce our utilities somehow.

So the lesson for this week is that our thermostat is staying on 68 degrees. We just couldn’t stand having it on 63, especially with the upstairs piping being much colder. 

With all of the power outages and everything else going on in the country right now, we are very thankful to have power and heat. 

My Valentine


Jude with his birthday banner. He turned 9 on February 14, 2021

Last Sunday was February 14, 2021. It was Jude’s 9th birthday. It was also his Gotcha Day. Jude has been with me for 7 years. He will always be my valentine. He did indeed come into my life at a time when he “took a sad song and made it better.”

Birthdays are my favorite holiday. Every time I get one, it is a celebration that I was able to survive another year of whatever life threw at me. Birthdays in the pandemic are an even bigger deal. 

Jude received birthday cards from the vet office and from chewy, where we get our cat supplies. We also got a birthday box from Chewy that had an assortment of toys and treats. It was a fun day for all of us. 

My goal in this pandemic is to survive for the next 15 or so years so that I outlive the cats. I am worried about what would happen to them if something happens to me. I am their home and their forever family. I don’t want them to have to go back to a shelter and I don’t want them to be separated. 

We had a great time celebrating Jude last weekend and playing. We listened to music and had some quality family time. I plan on celebrating all of our birthdays this year in much the same fashion. Life is much too short to not celebrate a birthday. 

Jude will always be my valentine. 

Use It Up


Snow after once of our recent storms

The widespread food shortages we have been experiencing throughout the pandemic continue. Sometimes it changes, what is available and what is not. Some items have been consistently unavailable. For example, I have not had a banana in over a year because there are none to be had anywhere. 

In addition to the widespread food shortages, there are shortages of supplies also. I have been unable to obtain toilet cleaner since running out. I now go “old school” and use baking soda to clean my toilet since cleaners are not available. Lately I have had extreme difficulty in getting cat litter. That is something new. You never know what is going to be in short supply. Last spring I was able to get allergy-friendly pasta but not allergy-friendly flour. Now I have plenty of allergy-friendly flour and am unable to get allergy-friendly pasta.

Combine the shortages with my precarious financial situation and No Spend 2021, I am having to get creative on some things. I have taken to looking around my house to see what I have that is not being used and trying to figure out how to use it. As I mentioned above using baking soda to clean the toilet, I didn’t realize how many uses there are for baking soda until now. 

During this time of The Great Depression 2.0, I am going by the old adage: use it up, wear it out, make do or go without.

Today we are highlighting Use It Up.

I have always been one of those ones that when I start to get to the end of a container will turn the container upside down or use some sort of tool to try to get it all out. I do this with body lotion, shampoo, etc. I try to use it all and get what I can out of every container. 

There are some things that I do keep in “stock.” For example, all of my allergy-friendly toiletry items come from a company in California. Ut typically takes 1-2 weeks for my order to arrive. I typically place two large orders per year from the company so that I can get free shipping and also to be sure I have plenty of toiletry items on hand. I get all of my shampoo, soap, lotion, sunscreen, etc from this company, as they are the only company in the country who makes items completely free from my allergens. It’s not fun to go into seizures in the shower just because your body wash contains almond oil (yes, I had that happen prior to finding this ONE allergy-friendly company I now use).

As far as toiletries, right now I have plenty of shampoo, soap, sunscreen, bug spray and body lotion. However, I just opened my last bottle of conditioner. I use hair conditioner for shaving, as there is not a single company in the entire United States of America that makes allergy-friendly shaving cream or shaving gel. So, I use a hair conditioner for shaving.

I do not want to place a large order from the allergy-friendly toiletry company when I technically only need one item. So I decided to look around the house and see if I could come up with anything else that could do dual purpose and act as shaving cream.

I am trying to literally use up everything in my house. So if something is lying around unused, I am actively trying to find a way to use it.

I read online that coconut oil can be used for shaving. I currently have three jars of coconut oil. I had originally purchased them to use for body lotion before I found the allergy-friendly company in California. The downside to using coconut oil to moisturize is that it completely ruins your clothes, sheets, and basically every single fabric it comes into contact with. So I have 3 jars of coconut oil in my cupboard that are not being used.

Since I have one bottle of conditioner left to use for shaving, I am going to rotate in coconut oil for shaving on a trial basis to see if it works for me or not. If it does, that’s great. I can save money by not putting in a toiletry order. I can use up the conditioner I currently have and then use the 3 jars of coconut oil that I have. Not to mention, coconut oil is cheaper than the allergy-friendly conditioner I buy. We will see if coconut oil for shaving actually works or not.

If, for some reason, using coconut oil for shaving does not work out, then I will have to find another use for the coconut oil. I will have to place an order for allergy-friendly toiletries because I will need conditioner. That is a worst case scenario. I am hoping that coconut oil for shaving works out for me. That would be the best case scenario. 

I will continue to look around the house for things that I am not using and try to figure out how to use them. In this case, I am saving money on cleaning supplies by using baking soda to clean since traditional retail cleaners are unavailable. If coconut oil works out, that is an allergy-friendly option that will save me money from having to place a toiletry order.

What items do you have that you are trying to use up? Have you found creative uses for items to try to save money in the pandemic?


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