About

You can call me K. I’m a thirtysomething editor and writer living in Portland, Oregon, with my husband, B., two cats, three chickens, a Chilean rose tarantula, and our used-to-be-famous dog, Bruce. son, Baby F. (Sadly, Bruce and F did not get along.)

You know that scene in Office Space when Peter Gibbons announces that he hates his job and just up and decides he’s not going to go anymore? I actually did that. Well, minus the embezzlement and gutting a fish on my desk. It wasn’t anything I had ever planned on doing or thought I was even capable of doing, but some rough years in the personal-life department eventually culminated in me walking into my boss’s office and doing exactly what anyone who has ever worked a 9-to-5 for more than a decade thinks about doing at least several times a week.

I fully expected to lose everything—my house, my career, my dignity—but as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, that didn’t happen. I learned to live on next to nothing, and by the time I got really good at it, I had another job (several, actually) and realized I could parlay all the things I’d learned about shaving down a food budget into something that might help other people, whether they themselves are without work or just looking to downsize. I know there are a lot of people trying to do the “live on a week of food stamps” thing, or undertaking this kind of challenge temporarily, but my goal is to live on $35 a week indefinitely. keep our food budget as low as I possibly can with 3 people while still eating healthfully and incorporating enough produce.

Here’s a primer on how we’re getting it done. By shopping smartly, eating seasonally, using produce from our garden, and getting creative, we find it totally feasible to stay within our budget each a week. If we can do it, you can too.

Contact me: admin [at] 35aweek [dot] com.

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