Archive for January, 2007

January 31st, 2007 - M. Pollan article on nutrionism and eating right

Unhappy Meals is an excellent article everyone should read! It’s by the author of the recent bestseller (I think), The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s an excellent discussion of the problem we’ve got in the US of eating nutrients rather than food. It’s 12 pages, and definitely worth it. If asked for a login, try getting one from Bug Me Not.

Near the end, I learned I’m a “flexitarian”–or a near vegetarian. Woohoo! I have a title for being vegetarian most of the time but not always. LOL Turns out flexitarians are as healthy as vegetarians generally are. Unfortunately, I also learned that my vegetarianism isn’t necessary all that good. I eat too many seeds and lean towards monoculture. That is, I eat a lot of bread products (made from flour, which comes from grain, which is a seed, including bread, pretzels, etc) and not a large variety of other foods (in the winter, dairy, apples, bananas, oranges, peas/beans [seeds again, I think], cereals [seeds again], carrots, potatoes, and a few other things. Summer is better since I eat what’s in the garden as well, such as salads).

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January 29th, 2007 - My adventure or ours?

laplayer asked in a comment if this was a shared adventure with my husband. That’s a good question, and I’m not sure of the answer. It’s definitely my adventure. Eric is definitely involved, but he would never be on it if I weren’t around. I certainly get a kick out of finding frugal ways to do things, such as my new laundry routine. He’d much rather just throw things in the dryer. He’d rather not worry about where we spend our money or have a large spending allowance or have gotten a snowblower years ago.

But he does recognize the value in what I do and in what we do as a family. He is just as interested as I in paying off our HEL in three years. He was thrilled when our original second mortgage was gone. He’s proud of what we’ve done financially. He’s delighted with the extra cash from Amazon.

I don’t think he’d call it an adventure, however, he’s just along for the ride. Plus, he’s not writing this, so I can’t speak from his perspective. I’m recruiting my daughter to my side (which Eric thinks is great), but I won’t change it to “ours” for that either, unless she wants to write blog entries with me. Which she probably will one day. Once she starts talking, I’ll ask her to write some…..

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January 26th, 2007 - Kids clothes

Speaking of the consignment store: Why would I go when I buy clothes ahead at garage sales all summer?

Because my nutty kid has decided that this winter, she’s going to grow weirdly. Which I should have expected because she’s always done that. Only before, she fit into a size for a realllly long time. She was also the rare infant/toddler who actually fit clothes at her age size. Until a week ago, when all of a sudden her pants and shirts were too short!

I did discover that some of the pants were 18 month sizes and not 2s. But all her winter shirts and sweaters are all 2s. Luckily, I did find a good selection of shirts in size 3, although the sleeves are too long. She actually wears a size 4 shirt, too, the one that was her Halloween outfit! I need to go through the sweaters again–I thought her current ones fit until I watched her last night and realized that if she hadn’t been wearing that size 3 shirt, she’d have had about 2″ of belly showing! Unfortunately, she received a nice collection of 2T both shirts and sweaters for birthday/holidays, so it’s disappointing they only fit for 2-3 months. But, thankful now for my aunt’s gift for Christmas 05 of 3T clothes!

Pants are suddenly iffy. The 2Ts she got for her birthday: legs have to be rolled up. The 2Ts she had been wearing: too short. The new pants: barely fit her waist (and she’s SKINNY!) and only have a bit of elastic. The old pants: all elastic so fit her waist nicely. Will need to sit down this weekend and count out how many will fit both ways and see if it’s enough. Will see if she fits any of the 3T pants as well. I have the feeling I’m going to need to look for more 2T pants or else 3Ts with elastic and cuffing. (Most of her elastic waist pants are knit, either leggings or sweatpantish. Neither cuff well.)

She might also need new shoes. I checked a few weeks ago, but the growth spurt may have just happened (she was GOBBLING food for a few days in a row along with sleeping fully and heavily through her nap).

Posted in Kids | 3 Comments »

January 26th, 2007 - Once again, I am reminded….

Once again, I am reminded why I love keep my schedule simple and non-busy. Sunday-Tuesday, I was knocked out with a chest cold. On Sun/Mon I couldn’t talk above a whisper and stayed home sick through Tuesday. On Wed and Thursday, I went home early because I was exhausted. I’ve done almost nothing around the house and the only thing I’ve done out of the house is go out to eat on Wed.

My weekend? Free and clear. The only things on my schedule are cleaning the dehydrator (chore leftover from last weekend) and reading. I might go to the kids consignment store–winter clothes are reduced. But maybe not; depends on how I feel. And church on Sunday, of course.

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January 26th, 2007 - HEL money, update 1a

So that I don’t have to keep track of the notepaper I wrote this on, here’s where I’m hoping the money will come from over the year:

Test supervising: $300, 6 at $50/each (F, M, A, J, S, N)
ERewards GC for Mother’s day: $25 (May)
My Points reward: $25
Memolink reward: $10 (Feb)
FusionCash: $25 (Feb?)
DBP: $20 (Feb)
BP credit card rewards: $125 minimum (have been getting $25 about every other month)
Target: $60 gift cards in hand. Oddly, we’ve spent nothing at Target this month!
Motley Fool credit card reward: $9 (Jan)
Amazon: $26 (Jan)
Global Test Market surveys: $50 (May?)

Total: $650

I will also work on some additional rewards throughout the year from survey/reward sites, and I will try to sell more at Amazon (listed a dozen books this morning, so we’ll see). On the other hand, I might not be able to get all the test supervising gigs.

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January 25th, 2007 - HEL money, update 1

As discussed previously, we’re trying to pay off our home equity loan early. As part of the plan, we reduced our household and grocery budgets. As these have been chronically difficult to keep within budget, I made a concurrent goal of bringing in an additional $50/month to put towards these areas.

Some of the ways we’ll bring in extra money include test supervising, credit card rewards, points/survey rewards, rebates, and who knows what else. I want to keep track of how well I do with this. Here’s my first update.

January [updated again]
Motley Fool credit card reward: $6
Mattel stock dividend: $7.80
BP credit card reward: $25
Amazon Marketplace: $28
Anchor Bank: $40
Total: $104.80

Amazon: I decided to try posting some of the DVDs we’d put aside for charity. I sold 6 of them in 2 days already. The money is being split 25% Eric (their mostly his), 25% me (since I did the work), and 50% house. This is split after Amazon fees (which are frankly, high, but the process is so easy), shipping, and packaging. After selling 5 immediately, I went through the boxes looking for more. Unfortunately, we didn’t have more DVDs, put I tried the CDs. Only 4 or 5 were worth putting up and one sold already! I’m going to go through the books next. [As of Friday afternoon, we’ve sold 7 DVDs and 1 CD.]

Anchor Bank: We got an offer in the mail just after the new year for $50 free if you open a checking account and keep $100 in it for six months. I usually ignore these offers, but it’s actually a good deal. $50 interest on $100 for 6 months? Only $40 is listed above because Eric is getting $10 for doing the work of opening and closing the account. That might seem like a lot, but we aren’t in dire straits and we want to encourage each other to continue to earn extra money this year. There’s a number of free trials I could do…except I hate calling to request account closings. Maybe I should extend this split the money deal to myself as well…. I just wish you could close these things via email or webforms. I just don’t like talking on the phone. But I can do things in person, like return items, which Eric hates doing. He’s better on the phone than I am. (Hmmm, maybe I get him to close them?)

I’m thinking about doing some new credit card offers as well (I’ve read of a few that give $100). Our credit rating is quite high right now, and if we just do one or two it shouldn’t be a problem.

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January 24th, 2007 - Why Do You Blog? | Are You a Blogger?

If you write a blog, you might be interested in the Why Do You Blog? | Are You a Blogger? survey You will be entered to win a prize if you answer it. And if you blog about it (as I am) to encourage others to asnwer the survey, you will be interested in another sweepstakes. No clue who’s doing it, but I thought it was interesting.

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January 24th, 2007 - Beans

Having bought some cheap beans at the bargain grocery store, then finding out I had even more than I’d thought at home, we made cuban black beans from Frugal Veggie Mama last night. To our surprise, Eric loved it and I thought it horridly bland. I did forget the salsa, however, and he added plenty of hot sauce to his (he likes things far hotter than I). He says it’s a keeper–and this is one of the few recipes I’ve tried that he likes when I didn’t! We’ll have to play with the spices a bit to warm it up a bit for me.

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January 18th, 2007 - Aack. another (2 actually) reason I’m glad I don’t want TV commercials

Emme shares the horror of some recent TV viewing over at Simple Living: Generation of Shoppers.

I love my TiVO. Absolutely adore it. It now irrates me to listen to commercial radio because I have to listen to ads.

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January 10th, 2007 - Help the Environment update

Followup on the energy company credits: The water heater credit is only for those with electric ones, and ours is gas. And it was perfect for us. Oh well.

Still need to think about the time of us rates. I don’t think they would work for us with a stay at home parent, but not sure.

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January 10th, 2007 - Year in review 2006

Last year, someone else did this and so I did it, too. Here it is again–the first sentence of the first post of each month of 2006.

World’s longest concert sounds second chord. I just heard AGAIN (this is probably the 3rd time in a month) that cats can’t taste sweetness. NRDC: A Shopper’s Guide to Home Tissue Products Made with Recycled Paper I plead completely guilty. I’ve been quiet because I’ve been so busy both at home and at work. Today, our house went up for sale! As long as I’m posting pictures, how about the bulb garden I keep talking about? Maggie joined me in the One Local Summer challenge earlier this week (July 1). From Sun-Wed, I was at a business conference in Guelph, Ontario. Last night, I made a lovely, delicious, beautiful vegetable soup! Moving Up Country: A Yankee Way of Knowledge by Don Mitchell did not meet my expections. We are going to have to, due to the cost of wood windows, install vinyl windows. On Saturday, Shmi-girl died.

Not a coherent paragraph by far! But definitely fun to do and to be reminded of. Most of my first posts are fairly boring (maybe they all are?), got more personal in the middle, then sad at the end.

I really aught to read my archives more often. Just ran across one that said “I better remember this in two years.” I’d forgotten, of course! LOL

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January 5th, 2007 - Turning off lightbulbs

The other day, Eric watched an episode of MythBusters that dealt with the “should I turn it off or leave it on” question. Their answer was: turn it off no matter how long you will be gone!

According to their tests, leaving incandescant and CFL bulbs on saved energy only if you needed the light off for less than a blink of an eye. (Flourescent tubes were 23 seconds, however.) The also tested whether turning them off/on more ofen would decrease the life of the bulb. This test consisted of turning bulbs on and off at 2 minute intervals for an entire month. All the bulbs indeed were dead at the end. They extrapolated this to lasting a 5-year period if you actually turned them off every single time you didn’t need them anymore. [Please note: my apologies if I miscontrued the episode. this is second hand as I did not watch the show. But Eric knew I was very interested in the information!]

I’ve started turning lights off more frequently.

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January 5th, 2007 - Speaking of laundry

I mentioned earlier in the week that we do less than one load of laundry a week. I wanted to clarify that that’s using hot water. We wash all our clothes in cold water. The hot water is used only on the cloth diapers and towels we use on the dogs, since they sometimes have poop and are always quite dirty. Except in spring and rainy times, we don’t use them up fast enough to do more than a load every 2 weeks or so.

I’m hardly using the dryer at all now. Drying with the laundry rack has been working wonderfully. Still worried about summertime however. Maybe in the garage? I recently saw a tip to reduce your heat level on the dryer to medium. The person claimed that the clothes would still dry in about the same amount of time. Scientifically speaking, I can’t believe that’s true. But I have turned the heat level down. But I keep forgetting to check the dryer to see how long it really takes! Before, it took about 23 minutes for Eric’s clothes to dry from a regular load. I’ll do some laundry this weekend and hopefully remember….

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January 4th, 2007 - Another benefit to having the windows replaced

[By the way, dear brother, we aren’t that weird. But yes, we’re weird. And proud of it!]

The porch windows were removed and the new framing put in yesterday. The advantage to having this done is that I now have two bean drying racks–the old screens! They are about 6′ x 4′. Perfect for drying beans. Last summer, I carefully placed them on a baby gate laid across the kiddy pool. I had to be very careful when chekcing them because a wrong move would send them down through the 2″ holes. They can’t fall through screens. Woohoo! They will, however, take up more room in the back of the garage; hopefully they will actually fit. There’s too much being stored there for the winter to actually check. I’m planting 3x as many beans for drying since I loved the ones I had last summer so much, so the extra drying area will be welcome. And since there are two screens, I can double the space without need more floor space.

We will need to paint the woodwork on them, as it is lead paint. I wonder if they are strong enough for potatoes as well? Probably not.

I actually tried to take the screens down in the fall when my beans had to come in at the end. I couldn’t get them down. Eric says they were nailed in, which was weird. I couldn’t tell. All I knew what that I couldn’t budge them.

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January 3rd, 2007 - Help the Environment (Wisconsin Public Service Corporation)

Go right now to your electric/gas provider and look at their energy programs. I was wondering if ours offered rebates for things like new windows. Haven’t found that yet, but I did learn about two other energy programs
. Two turn your AC off on hihg-use days (one has no monetary value, the other is $8/month for 4 months). The other is the same on your water heater, at $2/month all year ’round. I’m sure I’ve seen these before but never did them (or maybe they are new). So perhaps it’s time for you to check yours out again as well!

Since we don’t use much hot water (two showers, 4 dishwasher runs, and less than one washer load a week), I think we’ll be signing up for the last one. I’m hoping for the AC one that comes with money, but I’m not sure if Eric will go for it. He and the baby are the ones who will be worst hit by it happening during the day. Me–I’d live without AC 99% of the time if I had a choice. Plus, I get to work in a refrigerated office all summer long. [The heat/cool regulator is not on our floor. It’s an icebox in the summer. I walk around in sweatshirts. I look strange when outside because I never remember to take them off and walk around in 90 degree blaxing sun in a sweatshirt.]

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January 3rd, 2007 - contractors = simplifying your life

How does having work done around your house mean life is more simple? When you don’t what they are going to be doing so you don’t prepare for them, and they take down your Christmas lights for you!

Actually, we’d planned to leave them up for weeks. And, had I known they would have been in the way, I’d have taken them down for them. I had no idea what they were going to be doing–well, not true, I thought they were going to work on the front porch but instead, they finished up indoors, but had I known they were going to be doing the staining, I never would have guessed the lights were in the way regardless.

The living room was dark last night and I had no light to guide me down the stairs this morning. Unfortunately, they also took our upstairs doors. Makes things a wee bit more difficult since a light in any room lights up the other rooms. Maggie had great fun with it while I was getting ready for bed. Since I kept going in and out of her line of sight, she thought I was playing peekaboo and laughed and laughed and laughed! I managed to not wake anyone up this morning, even while hanging clothes up to dry.

We probably should have left more shades up due to the stain, but we just couldn’t stand it last night. And, since there were no doors upstairs, we had to close the shade in the guest bedroom. Either that or not use the bathroom at all. Well, I think if you stood in the bathtub to change you’d be okay. Not able to use the toilet however. And the downstairs bath had the same problem with a shade, although it has its door.

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January 2nd, 2007 - House update

Much of the work has been done on the house in the last weeks. Everything’s painted and the windows are in. They came again today (as far as I know) to being working on the front porch. The cool, original (to the porch being build–don’t know when that was) windows are being removed and they are framing in 3 widows per area. Before, it was a big window that foled in three to open. Very cool windows, although awkward. Plus, only the front two were openable. Now, we’ll have 12 windows, all of which can open top or bottom. This will save our screens from the dogs!

I have been nervous about having all our home equity back in hock. So we have committed to paying off the loan ($18000) in three years instead of 6. Aside: My credit union is awesome–they had the best rate anywhere, only 7%, and gave me my choice of terms. I chose 6 because that payment was at the high end of the range I’d been looking for. And for only 6 years instead of the 15 I found elsewhere (at higher interest rates, too). But 6 years was an awfully long time, especially since our first mortgage is an ARM, due to increase in 3.5 years. Our original plan was to use the extra money from refinancing it to an ARM to pay off the original second mortgage, then to use that money to pay down the first mortgage. That got derailed last spring with the house we didn’t buy, and then completely shot with the need for a new HEL. I would love to have the HEL paid off in time to prepare for an increase in the monthly payment on the first mortgage.

We found ways to get an average of $250 extra on the HEL, which puts us neatly at 36 months. Since we’re starting a month late, that might actually be 37 or 38. It includes some from of our Roth IRAs, which saddens me. But I hate the idea of this debt and want to pay it off as soon as we can. Hopefully, I will actually get a semi-decent raise this year and then we can push the IRAs back up. (I recently discovered that I’ve averaged about 1.5% raise per year. That’s not much. And it’d doesn’t account for the increases in health insurance, either.)

Other ways: reduce groceries, household, and personal spending money. [We’d already committed to reductions elsewhere for the original payment.] Pickle jar fund (about $1200 is all; we didn’t put in nearly as much this year). Splitting testing money (I supervise tests like the ACT about 5 times a year; the pay used to be split between us adults for spending money. Now 50% will go towards debt. We still need the spending money portion–it’s not exactly a fun job.). Money from rewards sites will towards household instead of in our pockets (not much currently, but I might do a bit more on this vein). Christmas money goes towards household (we had a giftcard to Target; it was easy to do).

Posted in Money | 3 Comments »

January 2nd, 2007 - Thanks!

First, thanks for reading Lindsey! When you blog–unless you have a wildly popular blog of course–it’s hard to tell how many people are actually reading your thoughts and ideas. So it’s nice to hear from folks now and then. I know I don’t do it often enough on the blogs I read, either!

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My Adventures in Simple Living

Archive for January, 2007

January 31st, 2007 - M. Pollan article on nutrionism and eating right

January 29th, 2007 - My adventure or ours?

January 26th, 2007 - Kids clothes

January 26th, 2007 - Once again, I am reminded….

January 26th, 2007 - HEL money, update 1a

January 25th, 2007 - HEL money, update 1

January 24th, 2007 - Why Do You Blog? | Are You a Blogger?

January 24th, 2007 - Beans

January 18th, 2007 - Aack. another (2 actually) reason I’m glad I don’t want TV commercials

January 10th, 2007 - Help the Environment update

January 10th, 2007 - Year in review 2006

January 5th, 2007 - Turning off lightbulbs

January 5th, 2007 - Speaking of laundry

January 4th, 2007 - Another benefit to having the windows replaced

January 3rd, 2007 - Help the Environment (Wisconsin Public Service Corporation)

January 3rd, 2007 - contractors = simplifying your life

January 2nd, 2007 - House update

January 2nd, 2007 - Thanks!

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