Monday Q&A | Aldi Ethics plus Homeschooling

Every Monday, I answer a few questions from my readers. Well, at least most Mondays I do. Except for when I have a raging case of conjunctivitis.

If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future edition of Q&A, you can leave a comment here on this post, or you can email me (thefrugal girl {at} gmail {dot} com). If you choose to email me, I’d love it if you would put “Q&A” in the subject line.

Therese sent this question to me.

When doing your grocery budget, how do you balance cheap food with `good’ food (substitute for `good’ whatever your personal preference may be: organic, local, fairtrade, ethically grown, fair working conditions etc.?)

I’ve been tracing my food budget for a while, and we appear to be spending about $700 per month on groceries (for a family of five.) But really, I don’t think I could do much less without sacrificing some of the above. (We buy about 75% organic and 75% local, and in my experience organic costs about twice as much, especially for meat and dairy.) Also, I don’t buy at Walmart or the $-store, and I’d hesitate to buy at Aldi if I had one here, because I’m doubtful about their employee practices.

I wrote about the organic/green versus cheap dilemma a little while ago, and you can read that post here. In a nutshell, I think that if you can manage to afford organic and local food, I think that’s a very worthy thing to spend money on. It’s certainly better to buy peaches from a local farm than to buy yet another purse made in China. And on the other hand, if you can’t afford to be that choosy about what you buy, there are a myriad of ways to live responsibly that don’t require a lot of money (things like line-drying, bringing reusable bags when you go shopping, and saving electricity).

I do want to address the comment about Aldi, though. From what I’ve read and heard, Aldi seems to be quite employee friendly. I think they pay their employees a fair wage (although of course there is a limit to how highly paid a grocery checker will be), and I’m guessing that their pared down business model allows them to pay more than the average grocery store. My particular store has only 7 employees, including the manager.

Since I received this question, I’ve made a habit of asking the employees how they like working at Aldi. So far, I haven’t gotten a negative comment, and more than one employee has mentioned that their work experience at Aldi has been a lot better than at other grocery stores.

I can’t speak for every Aldi store, as I’m sure the environment varies from store to store, but I feel just as comfortable supporting my local Aldi as I do supporting most any other grocery store. In fact, I feel better about supporting Aldi, since their business model is far less wasteful than other stores. Among other things, they save electricity in a variety of ways, they reduce waste by stocking a limited number of fast-selling items, and they don’t hand out paper or plastic bags for free (having to pay for bags encourages people to bring their own).

I do shop very occasionally at Wal-Mart, but mostly I avoid it like the plague. That’s not so much out of a virtuous desire to support other more worthy companies, but is motivated more by my dislike of the crowds, the lines, and the big-ness of the place. I like Aldi so much better…it’s smaller, I can park right by the store (which is a huge boon when you are trying to herd four children safely through a parking lot), and there are never long lines.

This one is from Melissa.

I’ve been following your blog for awhile now and have picked up that you homeschool your kids. I have a 6 month old at home right now and am considering homeschooling him (and his future siblings) when he gets older. I was wondering… How long have you been homeschooling? How did you get started? Did you (or do you) face any opposition from family, friends, husband, kids, school district, etc? Do you have a separate “school” room in your house? Do you have a set schedule that you follow every day? And lastly about what you teach…how do you handle teaching different aged kids? Does each child have their own lessons or do you do some together?

Lots of questions! I’ll try to answer them one by one.

1) I’ve been homeschooling since my oldest started kindergarten back in 2004. However, I was homeschooled from 1st-12th grade, so homeschooling is in my blood! I would probably have been more confused about how to get started with sending them to public school. 😉

2) I’ve faced very, very little in the way of opposition, since my family is quite obviously in favor of homeschooling. Although my husband is not from a homeschooling family, my in-laws haven’t had any objections to the way we’re raising and educating our kids either. And my husband was actually in favor of homeschooling his future children before he even met me, so thankfully that never been an issue.

3) I live in a state that is quite homeschooling friendly, so the school district has not been a problem. The laws on homeschooling vary widely from state to state, though, so you’d want to research the laws in your home state to see what they require.

4) We don’t have a separate school room, mostly because we don’t have an extra room! The kids do school at the kitchen table, in the office, in the living room, in their rooms, and sometimes even outside. We don’t do a really formal type of homeschooling, although I know some homeschoolers operate sort of like a one-room-schoolhouse. We’re just a little more relaxed than that.

5) While we don’t have a set schedule, I’d say we have sort of loose routines. Generally speaking, we try to start school right away after breakfast, and we usually get math out of the way first. However, on the days that I teach piano in the mornings, we don’t start school until the afternoon, and sometimes we go grocery shopping in the morning and do school later. I do make school a high priority, though, and the kids are not usually allowed to play and go outside until their work is finished.

6) The question about teaching different age groups is a good one. If I had to function like a regular school teacher while managing multiple grades, I would probably go crazy! Once my kids can read, though, they can do a lot of their work on their own. They read the book, follow the instructions, and if they get confused, they come and see me for help. This way, only the youngest kid needs my full attention. I think that learning to read the book and figure it out for themselves is a really helpful skill that will serve my children well in their college and adult years. I know it has been for me.

7) My kids do a lot of their work individually, but we do some things as a group. I read out loud to them all together, we do our catechism work together (even Zoe joins in), and this fall, I plan to do a study of the 50 states with all three kids (Zoe is not old enough for school yet, although I’m sure she’ll participate with us to some degree).