22
Jan 2012

More Improvised Exercise Equipment

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Remember when I told you about the walker I started using as a dip station for my Bodyrock workouts?  Well, I have another inexpensive, DIY piece of workout equipment to share with you.

They use sandbags as weights on Bodyrock all the time.  The one they use sells for about $100.  Of course there was no way I was going to spend that sort of money on one.  So I’ve been using the dumbbells that we’ve had for years, and they work ok most of the time.  But heavy metal dumbbells aren’t the most comfortable thing to have stuck behind your neck while doing lunges and squats.  They’re meant to be held in one hand, so it’s a bit awkward and uncomfortable to hold them by the ends.  I use a 30 lb dumbbell for squats, and I have to wrap a sweatshirt around my shoulders to keep the weight from digging into my neck.  Not to mention the fact that it’s hard to get a good grip on a dumbbell if you’re holding it with two hands – and I don’t like the idea of possibly dropping a 30 lb weight on my head or toes.

So I thought about that sandbag some more.  And then I made one.

I went to Goodwill and found a sturdy duffle bag that has handles on the top and both sides.  It was $4.

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Next, I raided my fabric stash and found an old flannel sheet.  I cut five rectangles of flannel to make into bags, and I sewed around the edges twice to make them nice and strong.  I also had a couple of fabric bags that had once contained soap nuts – perfect, since all I had to do with those two was sew them shut once they were filled.

We have a pea-gravel driveway in our side yard, and I used our postage scale to weigh some gravel.  6.25 cups of gravel weighed five pounds.  So after I had seven open-top fabric bags, I filled each one with 6.25 cups of pea gravel.  Then I sewed the tops shut.  Easiest sewing project ever.  I triple stitched the tops closed, folding over the hemmed edges before sewing over them to contain loose ends.

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I put a sandbag (gravel bag?) in the zippered compartment on each end of the duffle bag to help keep them from all clumping together in the middle.  Then the other five go in the main compartment.  That gives me a 35 pound sandbag, and I can reduce the weight in five pound increments as needed.

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I used it yesterday for my workout, and it’s so much better than the dumbbells.  I was able to hold it behind my neck without it digging in, and it was easy to keep a good grip on the handles.  I love it!  The whole thing cost me $4, since the gravel and fabric for the bags were stuff I already had.  Even if you had to purchase the fabric and gravel, it wouldn’t be expensive.  The Goodwill store near here has 99 cent jeans days when all the jeans in the store are on sale for 99 cents.  You could buy a pair of jeans and chop the legs into sections to use as sandbags – all you’d have to do is sew the top and bottom shut.  And it doesn’t have to be pretty – you don’t even have to turn over the rough hems if you don’t want to.  Pea gravel and sand are both pretty inexpensive too.

This whole project took me about an hour, although that was with two kids “helping” me.  I’m guessing it would take less than 45 minutes if you were uninterrupted.

Hooray!  I now have a dip station and a sandbag!  They aren’t as pretty as the fancy ones, but they’re functional and that’s really all that matters – especially when they cost a fraction of what the fancy ones do.

EDIT:  For any of you who are also fans of Bodyrock – Zuzana has her own YouTube channel now, and is posting new workouts: http://www.youtube.com/user/ZuzkaLight?feature=watch  You can also follow her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ZuzkaLight  I think she’s great, but I’m also happy with the new team at Bodyrock.tv.  So I’ll be mixing it up with workouts from both of them.

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Category: health, just my life, the simple life  2 Comments
18
Jan 2012

Too Much Inspiration

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EDIT – just discovered the fitness and food sections on Pinterest.  I might have to up my time limit from five minutes to fifteen.

I have been purposely avoiding Pinterest for quite some time.  From what I had heard, I knew that it could be the sort of site that could suck me in and turn into a major time waster, so I just avoiding going there in the first place.  I don’t remember what convinced me to finally go check it out a few weeks ago, but I did.  And sure enough, half an hour later I was still browsing around.  Damn you, Pinterest.

I loved looking at wide-open, clutter-free rooms and clean kitchen counters.  I got some good ideas for food storage, toy storage and garage organization.  And seeing all of those neat spaces inspired me to get up and clean my own kitchen.  So I did.  After half an hour on Pinterest, I spent the next half hour making my kitchen sparkle and (sort of) look like the immaculate, minimalist kitchens that I had been eyeballing online.

But the next time I went to Pinterest, I found myself looking at all sorts of other stuff – crafty things like altered t-shirt dresses and refinished furniture and handmade birthday wall hangings.  They all looked cute and crafty, but – yikes!  I was over-inspired.  If that’s not already a word, I’m coining it now.  Inspiration is a great thing – if we put it to use and it makes our life (or someone else’s) better.  But over-inspiration seems like it could just lead to… nothing at all except more browsing around online once our crafty DIY to-do list gets too long and becomes paralyzing.

Simplicity is awesome.  But sometimes we tackle a DIY project in the name of simplicity and it ends up being way more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive (and maybe not as enjoyable) as we had planned.  If it’s something you truly love doing, then by all means – do it.  But if you’re forcing yourself to do crafty things because you think you should or because your friends are doing it, or because (fill in the blank)… you might want to ask whether you’d be better off without it in the first place, or looking on Craigslist or at a thrift store to see if you can find a used version of whatever it is.  If you love quilting, make a quilt.  If you just think you want to love quilting but actually hate it, go buy a quilt at a garage sale – if you actually need a quilt (that post is worth reading no matter what you think about quilts – and it’s funny!).  Otherwise, carry on without a quilt.

I’ve been back to Pinterest a few times since then.  I set a five minute time limit for myself, which keeps me from browsing around for ages (Why is it that time goes by so fast when we’re online?  Why does it not go by that fast when we’re stuck in traffic?  Questions to ponder…).  And I focus on areas that can help me organize and simplify the life I already have/want.  For example, I’m looking for good ways to organize toys in our playroom.  We don’t have any furniture or shelving in there, so everything is on the floor.  There has to be a better way.  And of course, knowing me, it will have to be something I can buy used that won’t cost a lot of money.

But the problem with browsing around and looking at toy storage ideas is that it can easily lead to browsing around and looking at all sorts of other home improvements.  Which can lead to jealousy or a desire to upgrade things that really don’t need to be upgraded.  As an example – my kitchen is fine.  It’s clean and orderly (and no longer contains a yeast packet that expired 8 years ago).  My counters are clear (well, most of the time anyway) and I have ample space to work.  My counters are laminate and my cabinets are plain light-colored wood.  My stove has metal coil burners, and while I prefered the glass-top stove that we put in our old house, the one I have now works just fine.  Nothing in my kitchen is fancy, but I’m able to cook all sorts of awesome food there, and everything works just the way it should.  I could spend a ton of money making my kitchen look like something from a magazine.  Or I could spend a ton of hours replacing the fronts of my cabinet doors with old barn wood and painting our dining room table to give it a crafty “distressed” look.  But I’m not going to.  Because I would rather spend that money and time doing something else.

So while I think it’s awesome to see all the crafty, amazing things people have done on sites like Pinterest and BetterAfter, I think it’s just as important to remind ourselves to be grateful for what we have and to allow ourselves to stop improving when everything is fine the way it is.  So instead of browsing Craigslist to find a dresser that I can turn into a craft storage area, I’ll read this post and remind myself that my house feels much better with less furniture in it – even if it’s impossibly cute, crafty furniture.  And I’ll keep getting rid of clutter instead of trying to organize it. And I’ll find some second-hand shelves that will work just fine to store toys in the playroom.  They probably won’t be amazing or worthy of being featured on a home-improvement website, but they will get the toys up off the floor, and that’s really all that I’m looking for.

I know a lot of my readers are big DIYers and into crafty stuff.  So tell me.  Do sites like Pinterest inspire you?  Or do they just make you look around at your own stuff and feel like you need to change/upgrade everything in sight?

As an aside, I found this cookie recipe yesterday on Pinterest.  They are amazing.  They took five minutes.  And our son loved squishing them with a fork to make the lines on them.  I subbed walnuts instead of peanuts and used sunflower seed butter instead of peanut butter, because that’s what we had on hand.  They turned out fantastic.

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Category: home improvement, just my life, minimalism, other bloggers  27 Comments
16
Jan 2012

Give New Life To Empty Glass Jars

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Several years ago, I got rid of nearly all of my plastic food storage containers.  I have several pyrex dishes with lids and lidded casserole dishes that I use to store large quantities of leftovers.  But most of the time, I use empty glass jars. 

My freezer is full of repurposed glass jars holding things like flax seeds, chia seeds, and hemp protein.  I order stuff like that online in bulk and it comes in big plastic bags that can be a bit unwieldy.  So when it arrives, I dump the bags into several jars and stash them in the freezer.  Much easier to dump chia seeds out of a one-quart jar than a five pound bag. 

My fridge is also full of glass jars.  I buy nuts and seeds from the bulk section of our grocery store, and store them in the fridge in glass jars.  When I make salad dressings and smoothies and soups, they get stored in glass jars (if they make it as far as the leftover stage!).

I use empty glass jars to store stuff in my pantry too. 

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Remove the labels, wash out the jars, and glue on new labels.  Easy and free and much better for keeping track of everything than it would be if I kept them in the bulk bags from the store. 

Jars are also a great way to shake up protein supplements or any other powdered drinks.  I mix things like powdered greens, probiotics, spirulina, protein, etc. with water every day.  I use my blender for smoothies, but when the ingredients are powdered, shaking everything together in a jar is a quick and easy solution.  Much faster and more effective than stirring them in a glass with a fork (always ends up chunky.  Spirulina chunks?  Yuck.) and less expensive than one of those purpose-made “shaker jars” that some of the protein powder companies sell.

Another way I love to use empty glass jars is for giving edible gifts.  I enjoy cooking and baking, and food is always a welcome gift.  I don’t ever want to give people food in containers that they feel they need to return.  And I don’t like the idea of buying disposable food storage containers just for the purpose of giving food to someone – seems like a waste of money and resources.  So instead, I save the nicest of my empty glass jars for this purpose.  Large, wide mouth jars make great containers for soup.  Smaller jars – especially if they have interesting shapes – look great filled with bite size cookies (or dough balls!) or spiced nuts.  Fill jars with layered ingredients for “soup in a jar” or “cookies in a jar”.  Use your imagination!  spruce them up with some pretty fabric glued to the lid.  Tie a ribbon around the top with the recipe attached.

One caveat.  Please don’t use this as an excuse to have 100 empty jars cluttering up your shelves!  I have a lot of jars in use in my pantry, freezer and fridge.  But that means I don’t really need any more.  I save the nicest ones these days to use for food gifts, but I make liberal use of the recycling bin for most jars we get these days.  Save the jars you can use right now or in the immediate future.  Recycle the rest.  And enjoy your recycled, frugal, plastic-free food storage!

I know you guys have plenty of other ideas for repurposing glass jars around the house.  Please share!

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Category: clutter, just my life, organic living  18 Comments
10
Jan 2012

Saying No – So That You Can Say Yes To What Matters

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I’m a people pleaser.  Always have been, probably always will be.  I want to make people around me happy, and that means that saying no is not my strong suit.  If people ask me to do something or go somewhere or help them with something, I usually say yes.  That’s fine most of the time, but sometimes I’d prefer to say no.  And that’s harder than it sounds.

My husband is very good at saying no, and very good at putting his family first above all else.  If something is going to interfere with his time with us, he says no, and it doesn’t bother him at all.  But for me, I find myself saying yes more often than I’d like, in order to avoid the guilt that sometimes goes along with saying no.

I’ve always been able to say no to things like girl scout cookies and the guy who comes to the door selling magazines to pay for his spring break trip to Mazatlan.  But it’s much harder when it’s someone I know.

I’ve been getting some practice with saying no lately, and although it’s still not easy, it feels much better afterwards, knowing that I’ve stayed true to myself and the people who matter most to me.

One of our neighbors brought over some cookies at Christmas with a note saying that she was starting a monthly ladies card game night at her house, and was inviting all the ladies in the neighborhood.  Her husband passed away last year, and I can definitely understand where she’s coming from.  But I’m in a very different situation.  My husband and I both work (from home, but we’re still working), and we have two little boys.  We’re also in the middle of finishing our basement and the yard is an ongoing project.  When I have free time, I want to spend it with my husband and our boys, or with our extended family and a few close friends.  I don’t want to make new friends right now.  That might sound selfish or odd, but I just don’t have space in my life to add anyone else right now.  Give me a few years, and things will likely be different.  The boys will be in school, our basement will be finished – by then, I might have room for new friendships.  But for now, nurturing the relationships I already have is my priority.

Anyway, I opted to not attend the first get-together, and figured that was the end of it.  Then a couple weeks ago, the lady who was organizing the whole thing stopped by our house to ask me again if I wanted to join.  I politely told her that we were just too busy with the boys and the basement, and thanked her for inviting me.

A few days later, another lady stopped by with her pre-teen daughter and said that the first lady had mentioned that we’re too busy with the boys and she was offering her daughter as a babysitter so that I would be able to attend the card nights.  Again, I politely said thanks, but no thanks.

Then yesterday, another lady from down the street contacted me to see if I was aware of the ladies night plans and would I like to come along?  My husband said I must be the coolest lady on the block, since everyone is trying to talk me into joining the card game.  He’s sweet.

Anyway, I told the third lady that I’m just not taking on any more commitments right now, and thanked her for contacting me.

In all three cases, I used strategies that my husband and I learned a long time ago when we read The Power of a Positive No – definitely a good book if you have a hard time saying no.  Add it to your library list!

And in all three cases, even though it was a bit uncomfortable for me to say no at the time, I felt good about myself afterwards.  If I had said yes in order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling, I would have been bummed afterwards, thinking “what did I get myself into?!”  I respected myself and my own desires and my commitment to my family and friends.  I avoided spreading myself too thin.  Even though the card game night would only be once a month, it’s easy for once a month things to spawn other commitments too – especially when lots of people are involved.  One of the ladies sells candles at house parties, which means that there would likely have been more uncomfortable moments of feeling obligated to do or buy something in the future if I had become part of that group.  Which would have been a bummer, especially since it’s not really a group that I want to be part of in the first place.

Anyway, I’m feeling good about saying no.  For some of you, this might be second nature.  But I know that there are plenty of you out there who have the same struggles I do when it comes to saying no.  It’s definitely a skill worth building though.  Remind yourself to be true to what really matters rather than what’s right in front of you at the moment.  Make a list of what’s important to you and tape it to your bathroom mirror as a daily reminder.  And then focus on those things.  Don’t sacrifice them in order to please other people or avoid temporary discomfort.

Leo Babauta wrote a post recently about making room for a new year, and the second item on his list involves clearing his schedule as much as possible, which he noted often means saying no to people.  His list is great, and I would add to it a reminder that January 1 is a very arbitrary day to make changes in your life.  You can make changes any day – any hour of any day, really.  And an uncluttered schedule is a beautiful thing.

Before I go, I want to share this DIY post with you.  Three pieces of homemade furniture from one piece of plywood.  Pretty awesome.

 

 

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Category: family, goals, just my life  8 Comments
05
Jan 2012

Kitchen Decluttering

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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I’ve done a lot of decluttering over the past couple years.  I’ve taken numerous carloads of stuff to Goodwill, and have (except for last month when I was on a mission to find stuff for our son’s play kitchen) mostly stopped going in to shop when I drop stuff off.  I got rid of about half of my craft supplies, and I’ve cleared out closets and cupboards all through the house, tossing or recycling or donating stuff that we didn’t need anymore. 

I had already made one pass through the kitchen a year or so ago, getting rid of stuff that we weren’t using.  But I mostly focused on gadgets and excess glassware rather than food.  Last night, I was browsing around online and I came across this awesome blog written by a lady who has managed to get rid of 10,000 things by purging 100 items at a time!  Pretty inspiring if you’re thinking about getting rid of clutter.  Christine’s writing had me laughing out loud, and then it got me up off my butt and into the kitchen to do something about our too-full cupboards. 

I love to cook.  And to shop for groceries.  We eat all of our meals at home (and I do mean all… we took a friend out for his 90th birthday last month and he chose Olive Garden.  But before that, we hadn’t eaten out since September).  That’s how I justify our full pantry, freezer, and cupboards.  But I had noticed lately that there was stuff at the back of the cupboards that I was never using, and it was just serving to make the cupboards a little less useful than they would otherwise be.

So at about 11pm, I was standing in the kitchen surrounded by boxes and jars and bags of stuff that I didn’t need.  Some of it was a wee tad bit expired and went in the trash:

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Yes, we moved to a new house in 2009.  I vaguely remember being in a big hurry to clean out the old house and I think I tossed everything from the fridge and pantry into a cooler and boxes without paying much attention.  But you would think that I would have noticed this when I unpacked.  Or at any time during the past 2.5 years.  Anyway.  Moving on. 

In addition to a couple of seriously expired things, I also found a few duplicates.  Two bags of dill seed (that’s going to take a while to use up…), three containers of cardamom, two bags of ground ginger.  Good thing I like to cook from scratch and use a lot of spices. 

By the time I finished consolidating, purging and cleaning, I had quite a pile on the kitchen table.  All of this stuff will either be donated to family or friends who will use it, or trashed if it’s expired, or recycled if it’s an empty container (I was able to consolidate a lot of stuff so that it takes up less cabinet space.  Three honey jars are now combined into one, for example):

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I also found a few more gadgets and dishes that I didn’t need.  Three baby food grinders?  I think we’re fine with one. 

I came across a few nearly empty jars of cocoa butter and coconut oil that I had used a while back to make lotion.  So I dumped them into a saucepan, melted them down, and filled a container with my newly-minted lotion.  That meant I was able to recycle three containers that had been taking up space in my pantry.

I ended up getting rid of everything in that picture plus about half that much again by the time I was finished.  So much better.  I don’t have to root around in the cupboard to find what I’m looking for.  And everything in the cupboards is stuff that I use on a regular basis.  And none of it expired when I was in my 20s. 

Anyway, I hope Christine’s blog inspires you and makes you laugh.  And if you have anything in your kitchen that expired in 2004, please tell me about it to make me feel better!

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Category: clutter, food, other bloggers  15 Comments
02
Jan 2012

Small Steps To Create A Great Year

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Happy New Year!  I hope that 2012 got off to a good start for you.  I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions, simply because the date seems so arbitrary.  I prefer to make changes throughout the year as I think of them, and January 1 is no different from any other day in that regard.  One difference is with financial goals – it’s handy for us to start over on January 1 each year with those, simply because accounts like IRAs have annual maximum contribution amounts, and we like to get going as soon as possible when the new year starts. For most things though, we make changes as we go and focus on our goals throughout the year.

But I know that the new year inspires a lot of people to make changes, and I get that.  It’s a new beginning, a blank slate for the year you want to create.  And in keeping with that, I thought I’d share some of our favorite habits that help to keep our life happy and smooth.

Notice I said “habits” and not resolutions or fads or quick-fixes.  Resolutions have a dismal success rate, simply because people tend to make big plans and then let them go by the wayside soon after (ever visit a gym the first week in January and then the first week in April?  Notice a difference?).  Fads and quick-fix solutions are similar – if it’s not a sustainable, long-term change in habits, it’s not going to stick.  Not only will it not succeed, but it will probably set you back even further because you’ll be dealing not only with the original problem, but also with the sense of failure that goes along with not succeeding at sticking to whatever resolutions you set for yourself.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about my favorite habits:

  • Make your bed every morning.  I started doing this around the time I turned 32.  These days, I can’t believe that I spent so many years with a bed that was only made about two days a week.  It takes about 30 seconds each morning to make the bed, and it changes everything.  It makes the room feel clean and put-together.  It makes me feel ready for the day.  It makes me much more likely to keep the rest of the room (and the whole house!) tidy, since the bed looks nice.  Honestly, if you’re not already making your bed everyday, this is an easy habit to establish because it takes so little time.  I’m not talking about hospital corners here.  Just pull the sheet up, pull the comforter or blanket up, and put the pillows where they belong, either under or on top of the comforter.  Done.  I’m serious about it taking 30 seconds.
  • Exercise every day.  How much is up to you.  If you don’t exercise at all right now, five minutes a day will make a difference.  And I’m not saying go out and lift weights for two hours a day – moderation is important, as is “active rest” (which means that even on a rest day, you still go for a walk, for example).  I honestly believe that some sort of activity or exercise every single day is far better for setting the exercise habit than scheduling a specific workout Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for example.  Things that we do everyday get etched into our brains more permanently and become habits faster and easier than things we only do sporadically.  So commit to at least some exercise every day.  Walking counts.  So does five minutes of push ups on your living room floor.  So does a game of basketball with your kids at the park.  Do whatever you want.  Make it fun.  Tailor it to the equipment and gear you already have (or do bodyweight exercises that don’t require any equipment at all – no excuses!).  Don’t worry about finding just the right plan or just the right shoes or just the right gear.  Improvise.  Did I already say make it fun?  I’m repeating it because it’s so important.  I remember taking a kick boxing class at the gym several years ago.  I hated every minute of it.  Same thing with a step aerobics class that I took when I was in college.  If I had based my opinions on exercise on what I thought of the step aerobics class, I’d have quit right then.  But instead I found all sorts of exercise that I love.  Personally, I much prefer solitary sports and things that require strength, flexibility and endurance rather than teamwork or coordination.  Someone else might have exactly the opposite preferences and would be much better suited to daily pick-up basketball games.  It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do something every day.  For the last 8 months, I’ve been using Bodyrock.tv for my workout inspiration, and I love it.  It only takes 10 – 15 minutes most days.  It’s free and you can do it in your living room (hooray for not trying to find space in a crowded gym right now!).
  • Eat right.  Skip the fads.  Skip the drastic elimination diets or anything that calls for dramatically different eating patterns for 30 days or something like that.  Sure they’ll probably “work” in the short term, but what happens when you’re allowed to go back to eating something other than celery and yogurt?  Different eating habits work for different people.  Meat, dairy and grains are controversial subjects in the discussion about healthy eating.  So do what feels best for you.  There are some non-grey areas though:  sugar, processed food and soft drinks come to mind.  I would say that the more you limit (or eliminate all together) those, the better off you’ll be.  Prepare your own food.  It doesn’t have to be fancy or take a long time, but eat stuff that doesn’t come out of a box or a can.  Oh She Glows has amazing recipes almost every day, and they’re pretty much always a hit when I make them.  Her site appeals to me because it’s vegan and she cooks everything from scratch, but that won’t be for everyone.  Search around a bit.  Find a cooking site that inspires you.  Subscribe to the feed so that the new recipes show up in your inbox.  Create a way to save the ones that you want to try and to keep track of the ones that get rave reviews.  I have a simple Google Docs sheet where I put links to recipes that we love.  I’ve been using it for about a year, and it’s become a great resource.  I can scroll through it and be reminded of recipes I’d have otherwise forgotten about, and it always provides ample inspiration for what meals I’m going to make in the coming week.  We never have “what to make for dinner?” dilemmas anymore.
  • Spend less than you earn.  This is another one that has become cliche because it gets tossed around so much.  How exactly do you do it, especially if you’ve never done it before?  It’s all about habits, and spending is one area where computers and automation have made it very easy to stick with a goal.  Set up an online savings account.  Don’t spend so long comparing interest rates that you stress yourself out and abandon the whole idea.  Just get it done.  Then schedule an automatic contribution to the account – even $50 or $100 a month adds up over a few years.  The key is to not touch the money once it’s in the account, unless it’s a bona fide emergency.  The definition of that will be different for different people, but I’d say that the more strict you are with what counts as an emergency, the better off you’ll be, and the faster your emergency fund will grow.  If you have trouble with charging more on your credit card than you can pay off each month (without touching that emergency fund!), you might want to consider ditching the credit cards.  Personally, we put everything on a credit card and pay it off every month.  We’ve been doing that for years, and it’s the method that works for us.  Our American Express card puts 2% of our spending into an IRA, and we don’t pay any fees or interest charges.  It works for us, but that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.  Switch to a cash-only method if you find yourself unable to pay off your card in full each month.
  • Start saving for your future, beyond the basic emergency fund.  Again, automation makes this easy.  If you have access to a retirement plan through your employer, make sure that you’re contributing enough to get the maximum employer match.  Beyond that, if you can contribute the maximum allowable amount, go for it.  You can also set up an IRA on your own and arrange to have contributions made automatically throughout the year (Optimize.com has some good tools you can use to make sure you’re making the most of your savings).  You’ll thank yourself some day.
  • Slow down.  Actively work to reduce the amount of commitments you have and the amount of time you spend multi-tasking.  Are there things in your weekly schedule that you do because you feel like you should, but they aren’t really adding anything of importance to your life?  Try cutting them out and see how you feel.
  • Try going without TV for a while.  This is one area where you might want to do a 30 day challenge or something like that.  Put your TV in the garage or somewhere else out of sight for a month and see how it goes.  If you’re unhappy with the arrangement at the end of the month, by all means move the TV back where it was.  But you might surprise yourself and find that you love all the extra time you have in the evenings.  Netflix and all the other online streaming programs make it easy to catch up on your favorite TV shows (without any commercials so an hour-long show only takes about 40 minutes), and you can always watch movies on your computer too.  We got rid of our TV a few years ago, it was definitely a good decision.  My husband listens to football games on the radio while he works on our basement, and we use a laptop for Netflix.  The monthly fee for Netflix is a fraction of what it would cost to have cable TV, and we never feel like we’re missing anything.  Again, this might seem like something that you’d hate, but you won’t know until you give it a try.
  • Stop buying stuff for a while.  30 days, six months, a year – whatever feels good to you.  You have enough shoes.  And clothes.  And kitchen gadgets.  And furniture.  Truthfully, most of us (including my own family) have far more than we need, and should probably be getting rid of stuff in addition to not buying more stuff.  But we can at least start by stemming the flow of clutter into our homes.  Don’t shop for fun.  Don’t open catalogs that come in the mail (and ask to be taken off their mailing lists so that no more arrive).  If you browse around in a store or page through a catalog, you’ll definitely find stuff you want.  Whether you need it is a whole different story, but wanting things we don’t have tends to lead to dissatisfaction.  And we don’t want any of that.
  • HAVE FUN!  Focus on things that make you happy.  Find pleasure in small stuff.  Don’t wait for the weekend or for your vacation or for a special day… just enjoy today.  Remind yourself of all that you have to be grateful for.  Don’t compare yourself or your life with others (remember, when we do that, we usually don’t know the whole story and we’re comparing our strengths to their weaknesses or vice versa).  Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you.  Smile.  Hold the door for someone.  Shovel your neighbor’s sidewalk.  Be kind without expecting anything in return.  Tell yourself it’s going to be a great day.  Then make yourself right.

Here’s to a great 2012!

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Category: goals, health  4 Comments
26
Dec 2011

Great Deals (And A Coupon!) At My Favorite Online Health Food Store

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Good morning!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  We had a great day surrounded by family, and our son loved his kitchen and felt food.  We set it up in our dining room, and as I’m typing this he’s got an entire meal prepared and served at the dining room table.  And as predicted, our baby had all sorts of fun with the boxes and wrapping paper.  My parents brought over my new walker, and it works perfectly for dips, reverse push ups, and all sorts of leg/knee raises.  I love it!

Now that Christmas is over, a lot of us start thinking about the new year and what we hope to accomplish or change during it.  We don’t do resolutions per se, but we do set goals for ourselves and make plans for what we want to do in the coming year.  For us, 2012 will be all about our basement – we’re hoping to finish it entirely by the end of the year.  And of course we have our standard financial goals of maxxing out our IRAs, contributing to our SEP IRAs, and putting aside money to eventually pay off our mortgage.  One of the best things about automatic contributions to savings accounts, retirement accounts, college savings plans, etc., is that you don’t really have to think about them.  If you’ve been meaning to set up an automatic savings contribution, do it now so that you’ll be off to a great start in the new year.

If any of you have plans to eat better in 2012, you might want to take advantage of a special sale coupon valid until the end of the year at The Raw Food World.  This awesome online store is owned by Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes-Monarch.  They recently had a baby who was born at home in their tub – of course I loved that story!  I’ve been ordering stuff from their store for a while now, and it always arrives with samples of things like chia seeds or Supergreen powder, along with a photocopy of a handwritten note from Matt.

From now until the end of December, you can use the code HOLIDAY18 when you checkout at The Raw Food World online store, and you’ll get 17.5% off any size order (the coupon code works for everything in the store except appliances and exercise equipment, so they’re also offering another coupon – HOLIDAY12 – that you can use on some exercise equipment and some appliances.  Check out their store for more details).  It’s a pretty awesome deal, and I’m definitely going to be stocking up on some stuff this week.

In addition to the coupon, they have some awesome at-cost specials going on at the moment – I got an amazing deal on a bag of 1000 chlorella tablets last week.  And the best part?  Our three-year-old chomps on a chlorella tablet every morning with his breakfast and says he likes the taste!

I buy our chia seeds from them too, and we go through a lot of chia seeds around here.  Our Christmas morning breakfast was overnight oats/quinoa/chia in a mixture of almond milk and coconut milk eggnog (an amazing seasonal treat from the folks at So Delicious).  I had leftover quinoa in the fridge so I dumped it into a bowl with raw oats and a bunch of chia seeds.  Then I added the almond milk and a bit of the eggnog, stirred it around, and let it sit overnight in the fridge.  We had a great breakfast the next morning without any effort at all.  I make all sorts of chia puddings – they’re like magic!  I usually start with 1 part chia to 2 parts liquid and go from there, adding more liquid if it seems too thick.  I blend up nuts and fruit (cranberry chia pudding is a favorite around here) to change the flavor, and we always love a bowl of chocolate chip mint chia pudding during the summer when our mint plants are bursting with leaves.  Chia seeds are a great source of calcium, so if you’re looking for alternatives to dairy, these might be a perfect solution.

One of our new favorite foods – which we also found at The Raw Food World – is kelp noodles.  For about six months now, we’ve been eating very little wheat (or grains at all, other than oats and seeds like buckwheat and quinoa), and I’ve been searching for substitutes for pasta.  We used to eat a lot of whole wheat spaghetti, and I had replaced it with zucchini noodles (made with a spiralizer) in the summer when our zukes were in season, and spaghetti squash in the fall.  I thoroughly enjoy both of those options, but while my guys didn’t mind them, I don’t think they loved them either.  Then I found kelp noodles and my husband and son are coming back for seconds.  They are more expensive than spaghetti, but I’m able to stretch a single package into two meals for our family by adding tons of veggies.  That makes the cost of the noodles much more reasonable (and I love leftovers, since it means I get to skip cooking a meal).  Kelp noodles have almost no calories (6 calories per serving), but they provide calcium and a little iron too.  Their flavor is neutral, so they absorb the flavor of whatever you put on them.  Our favorite thing to do with them is sautee a ton of veggies (broccoli, onions, garlic, carrots, bell peppers) and some tempeh, and then make a variation on Gena’s awesome Asian sauce (I use less oil and more water, but you can tweak it however you like).  Then we mix the sauce, noodles, tempeh and veggies and have a fantastic dinner that comes together quickly and leaves us feeling satisfied but not overly full the way pasta sometimes does.

Anyway, if you’re looking for some inspiration and excellent deals on super-duper food to start off the new year, I highly recommend The Raw Food World.  Everything I’ve bought from them has been great, and they have a huge selection of products.  There’s a link at the top of their left sidebar for “at-cost specials” and they have all sorts of great deals there (like 1000 chlorella tabs or 1000 chlorella/spirulina tabs for $15.95, and those amazing kelp noodles are also in the at-cost specials list right now).  Or you can just browse around the site and know that you can save 17.5% on whatever you buy this week.  They really do have an amazing selection of stuff, which is especially helpful for people who don’t live near a health food supermarket.  In addition, they sell products in all sorts of sizes, so you can try a little of something new or purchase a bulk size if you already know it’s something you love (that would be an especially good idea this week, with the HOLIDAY18 coupon code).  Have fun, and here’s to a happy and healthy 2012!

 

 

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Category: food  14 Comments
20
Dec 2011

The Felt Food Project Is Complete

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Christmas is almost here, and I think I’m finally finished making felt food.   Here is the current food collection:

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I’ve already posted pictures and details about some of this stuff, but I’ve made quite a bit more since the last time I posted.

We now have a pizza that comes apart for lots of pizza-making fun.  The crust has a piece of cardboard sewn into it to make it rigid, and then the sauce, cheese, and toppings are all separate pieces so they can be taken apart and put back together any way he likes.  The pizza pan came from Goodwill.

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There’s also a banana that comes out of its peel.  I love this!

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For my first attempt at the banana, I used four elongated ovals, but it ended up looking more like a football than a banana (so I stitched some laces onto it and gave it to my boys).  For my second attempt (pictured – I’m very happy with how it turned out), I used just three pieces of white felt, and made them much longer and thinner than my original try.  It worked much better.  The peel is three pieces of yellow felt and three pieces of white felt (all the same size as the three pieces of white felt that make up the banana).  This probably took nearly two hours to make, including both attempts.  It’s one of the more complicated pieces I’ve made, but it turned out very cute.

In addition to the banana and the strawberries that I posted a while ago, I’ve made an assortment of other fruits and veggies.  A watermelon slice, celery sticks (two of them are stuffed with peanut butter), a cucumber slice, carrots and carrot slices, banana slices, several varieties of berries, spinach leaves, tomato slices, apple slices, a lemon slice, a broccoli floret, and some asparagus.  Some of these I came up with on my own, and a couple were inspired by other sites.  (asparagus, carrots).  I just found a tutorial for a broccoli floret that looks much easier than what I did, so I think I might have to add a few of those…

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I was browsing around on etsy looking for inspiration, and I found these adorable ice cream cones with removable ice cream and multiple flavors.  I had to make some.  So now we have an ice cream cone with four flavors of ice cream:  blueberry, spinach-mint (try it – it’s yummy!), vanilla, and raspberry. 

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I’ve made three eggs.  There are still a lot of spaces in that egg carton, but not a lot of days before Christmas.  So he’s probably going to get an egg carton with lots of empty spaces and three eggs in it.

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I found this adorable little Melissa & Doug muffin pan and oven mitt at Goodwill last week ($1.49 for the set) and couldn’t resist.  I made a banana muffin and a blueberry muffin to go with the cupcake that I made a while ago.  I may or may not get another muffin made to go in the fourth hole.  Our son has been using my muffin pans and filling the holes with blocks for about the last year (and then he sticks them in his “oven” which is the space under the coffee table).  So I’m thinking he’ll figure something out for that fourth hole if I don’t get another muffin made.

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A slice of bread and Swiss cheese were among the first things I made, but I’ve now finished the sandwich – it has a leaf (lettuce?  Too dark?  Let’s say it’s kale.  That would be perfectly normal in our house), a tomato slice, and cheese.

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And to round everything out, we have more felt dessert than we’d have in a whole year if it were real.  But it’s felt, so we can have as much as we want Smile In addition to the slices of pie I made when I first started this project, I’ve also made lots of cookies, a brownie, and a slice of mint chocolate cake.

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Cookies are easy and fun to make, so I made a bunch of them as Christmas tree ornaments for our nieces and several of my friends’ kids.

I’m pretty excited for our son to see all of this on Sunday morning.  And I’m proud of the fact that everything we’re giving him is secondhand or homemade.  The kitchen was a Craigslist find, and all of the pots, pans, dishes and utensils came from thrift stores.  And of course, I’ve made all of the food (and rescued some food containers from the recycle bin, like my husband’s half-n-half carton). 

In addition to the kitchen, we’ve got two other presents for our son, both from Goodwill.  I scored a large box of Lincoln Logs a few weeks ago, for three bucks.  They were in a generic brown cardboard box, but I happened to look inside and was thrilled to find them.  I had hours of fun playing with Lincoln Logs with my brother, and I think they’ll be perfect for our boys.  I also found a large box of Flexiwheels building blocks for $2.50.  They’re like Lego, but they can hook together lengthwise on hinges or be clicked together like Lego.    

This is the first Christmas that we’ve given our son presents, as it’s the first year that he’s really old enough to understand what’s going on.  We’re not giving our 8 month-old anything, although there are presents for him from Grandma and Grandpa.  He will be more than thrilled with the boxes and wrapping paper from his brother’s presents, and will likely spend Christmas morning snuggled up with us, clapping his hands and watching his brother.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend.  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice!  Remember to enjoy the simple things.

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Category: gifts, hobbies, kids  13 Comments
17
Dec 2011

A Walker As Exercise Equipment

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I’ve posted before about how much I love Bodyrock.tv and I’ve had several comments from readers saying that they’re also fans of the short, high-intensity workouts on that site.  I’ve been Bodyrocking for 8 months, and I’ve never felt stronger – I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a way to fit exercise into a busy life, and to shake up workout boredom – there’s no such thing with Bodyrock, since the workouts change every day.

One of the things I love about Bodyrock is the emphasis on bodyweight exercises – push ups, squats, lunges, etc.  Lots of exercises that you can do anywhere, anytime, without any equipment.  That said, they do use some equipment, including this dip stand.  I’ve seen it online for anywhere from $79 to $140.  I wasn’t going to spend anywhere near that amount of money for one, so I had been keeping an eye out on Craigslist for quite some time, but with no luck.

In the meantime, I’ve been improvising.  I use two kitchen chairs as my dip stand, and it works fairly well.  For reverse push ups, I put a broom handle across the seats and through the back rails of the chair.  That works ok, but the broom handle is only at the height of the chair seats, so my reverse push ups don’t go as high as they would on a dip stand.  The backs of the chairs work fine for dips and knee/leg raises, although I’m sure it’s putting some excess strain on the chairs and the sharp wooden edges on the chair backs dig into my palms if I forget to wrap them with a towel first.   All in all, my two chair method was working, but wasn’t ideal.  But there was no way I was going to spend $80+ on a dip stand.

Then I saw a comment from someone on the Bodyrock site talking about how he bought a walker at Goodwill and uses that as his dip stand.  Genius!  I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.  Look at this basic walker and see how structurally similar it is to the dip stand.  And although I hadn’t been able to find a used dip stand, used walkers are pretty easy to come by.  My parents are out thrift store shopping today, and they just found me a nice sturdy walker (and no wheels or seat or anything that would interfere with using it as a dip stand) for $13.  I’m so excited to do my workouts with my new equipment!

I love outside-the-box solutions.  Many thanks to the person who originally shared this idea.  I thought I’d pass on the favor and share it again here for frugal folks who like bodyweight exercises.  And as an extra bonus, you get to repurpose something used instead of buying something new – better for your wallet and better for our world.

Cheers, and happy dipping!

 

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12
Dec 2011

Changing Our Mortgage Payoff Strategy

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Ever since we bought our first house in 2003, we’ve always paid extra on our mortgage.  Even in the early days of being self employed when we had barely any money, we always tried to put at least a little extra money towards the mortgage principal each month – even if it was only ten dollars.  When we bought our current house, we opted for a 15 year mortgage, and set a goal of paying it off in seven years.  So far, so good.  We’ve been here 2.5 years and have paid off a little more than five years on the loan.  Our current amortization table shows the house being paid off 9.75 years from now if we stop making additional payments and just pay the monthly bill as scheduled.

Our strategy with paying off the mortgage has always been pretty straightforward.  We just add whatever we can each month to the payment we make to our loan company, with instructions to apply the additional money to the principal balance.  That has always worked well, and in the last 2.5 years, it’s put us 33 months ahead on our mortgage.  Seeing the house become more and more ours instead of the bank’s definitely makes all of our frugal habits worth the effort.

But we’re changing our strategy a bit.  The goal is still to pay off the house within the next four or five years.  But instead of sending the extra payments directly to the mortgage company each month, we’re putting them into a municipal bond fund at Vanguard instead.  We’ve had the fund for nearly two years, and have always considered it an emergency fund.  Knock on wood, we’ve never needed to take any money out of it.  Starting this month, we increased our monthly automatic contribution to that fund to be roughly equal to what we had been paying in additional mortgage principal.  And we’ve scheduled our mortgage payment to be just the regular amount due with no additional principal payment.

Once the balance in the bond fund equals the outstanding balance on the mortgage, we can pay off the loan in one lump sum.  We’ll probably actually wait until we have a bit more in the bond fund, in order to still have an emergency fund in place when we pay off the loan.  But you get the idea.

The interest rate on our loan is 4.625% (and we take the standard deduction on our taxes, so we don’t get a tax break for our mortgage interest).  The bond fund is currently paying roughly 3.5% in dividends and had been very consistent over the two years we’ve had it (the money we earn in the account is exempt from federal taxes since it’s a municipal bond fund.  We do pay state taxes on most of it – except for the bonds that are issued in our state – but that doesn’t amount to much).  The one drawback to the bond fund is that it’s not FDIC insured, but we’re ok with that.  It’s diversified across municipalities all over the country, and we feel very comfortable with it.  As far as we’re concerned, the 1% difference in rates between the mortgage and the bond fund is more than justified by the fact that if we put the money into the bond fund, we can still access it in an emergency, even though it’s earmarked for paying off the mortgage.  Whereas if we just send it straight to the mortgage company, it can’t be used for anything else.

If everything continues to go great, there will be no (or very little) change in the eventual outcome.  We’ll pay slightly more in interest on our mortgage over the next few years, since the principal balance won’t be dropping as fast as it was when we were paying additional money each month.  But the dividends we’re earning in our bond fund will increase faster than they were in the past.  And a few years down the road, we’ll be able to just pay off the mortgage in one big chunk.

But what if everything doesn’t continue to go great?  What if our income drops significantly?  What if one of us gets sick or disabled? (we do have disability insurance and an HSA, but a little extra cushion can’t hurt).  We’ve been in the health insurance industry for nearly a decade, but there’s really no way to know what the industry will look like five years from now, between reform laws, elections, court decisions, etc.

Those what-if scenarios were the deciding factor for us.  We’ve proven to ourselves that we’re very disciplined when it comes to money.  The contributions to the bond fund are already set up to be automatically drafted each month, we we know we’re never going to just pull the money out to go on vacation or buy a boat.  We’ll still consider it off-limits, just as it would actually be if we had sent it to the mortgage company each month.  But if we were to truly end up between a rock and a hard place, we would be able to use the money for something else.  Like making mortgage payments each month if we were to be without an income, for example.

We’ll see how it goes.  Here’s hoping we don’t run into any of our what-if scenarios, and the balance in the bond fund eventually meets up with the principal balance on the mortgage.  But it will also be a good feeling to know that we’re better prepared to take on financial challenges if they were to happen.

If you’re paying off your mortgage faster than scheduled, are you doing it directly through the mortgage company, or are you stashing the extra payments in another account and waiting until you can make a lump sum payoff someday?

 

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Category: Debt, goals  7 Comments
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