Hi everyone! I hope you are doing better than I am. As happens almost every year, I’m suffering from “post-Christmas hangover”, which includes being sick and sleeping a lot. I hope some healthy food and rest will have me on my feet soon.
As I promised last week, I’ve done a bit of reflecting over the last year and some goal setting for 2020.
The last six months have been—well, let’s just say it’s been a growing time—for me. I cut back on blogging during the summer, and it was a good chance to think about my future plans for this site and my little writing side-business.
After the major work was done on the house, I got back to regular weekly blogging (more or less… haha) in October. Every week there are two or three things that I’m really excited about sharing, but my daily “frugal accomplishments” have been few and far between. After we moved into the house, I had an insatiable desire for the fun stuff that I’d been putting off all summer: reading books, starting new projects, crafting, sewing, writing. I was able to do a lot of these things, but they didn’t fit into my neat little box of frugal accomplishments. Here are some examples:
-Started reading an encyclopedia of world history. Right now I’m stuck in the middle ages.
-(Almost) finished painting two new peg dolls for our daughter.
-Grew sprouts in a new sprouting setup.
-Successfully grew fall garden crops.
- Read several books about teaching preschoolers (aka my daughter) and books on other interesting topics.
-Took a trip to New York to see my brother-in-law, and also did some local history research while in the area.
-Hosted family for Thanksgiving and many other times.
-Took a weekend trip to Texas.
-(Almost) finished potty training my daughter.
-Decorated our house for Christmas.
Then there are the daily chores that I (mostly) like doing, but they take up a lot of time. Our new house takes 3x longer (or more) to clean, even if half of it rarely gets used. Dust and dead flies still accumulate. With a bigger house comes more sheets and blankets to wash, more rugs to vaccum, more furniture to extract toys from beneath. More windows to wash, more baseboard to clean, more appliances to wipe off.
One of the main reasons we wanted a bigger house was to be able to host people. And host we have! But hosting, too, means more cooking and cleaning and time spent talking. None of which I’m sorry for, but they’re not really frugal accomplishments that I can write about.
And then, of course, are the daily parenting routines. Dressing, eating meals, cleaning up spills, fixing broken things, calming “big feelings” (as millennial parents would say), bedtime routines, buckling into carseats, baths, potty breaks. Even as I write this article, I’ve had to stop no less than four times. Everyday tasks seem to move at a glacial pace. Again, I’m not sorry for it: it’s just a fact of life around here.
All that to say, we have been doing a LOT, but the “more things to blog about” I hoped to have after moving are just not there. If I do accomplish some great feat of frugality, there is an 80% chance that I won’t record it, and a further 50% chance that I won’t even remember it by the end of the week. And most of the time, I have “frugal attempts” rather than accomplishments. Like yesterday when I bought two huge containers of laundry detergent, and was so frazzled by the time I got to the checkout counter with $226.00 worth of stuff that I completely forgot to use the $1.00 off peelies on the detergent. Frugal fail.
What I HAVEN’T done a lot of in the last four months is work on decorating and tying up loose ends on our house. The windows don’t have curtains, two or three more rooms need painted, we need to get new area rugs, set up a more functional entry way (like, one with coat hooks…), and a dozen other small things that just haven’t got done. As I’m sure happened with many of you this year, Christmas hit me like a fish in the face. Still decorating, still wrapping/buying/making gifts, and with an unfinished gingerbread house on Christmas day. Well, better luck next year.
In looking forward to 2020, I just can’t imagine having a lot of time to dedicate to this blog. Right now I only have about an hour per day to write. If I spend it working on this blog, I will never get around to writing more books (the real goal) or doing personal writing for friends and family.
So I told myself, “I will just cut back on the blog, and write once a month or something.” But do you know what happens when bloggers start writing once a month? Or once a quarter? Readers stop reading. And thus, there is no more point to keeping up a blog.
Because of that, I’ve decided to take a big step away from The Renaissance Housewife. I will still be doing Youtube videos, and I’ll keep this site up just in case I want to post something written out (math-related articles or written recipes) but even the Youtube channel, I think, will morph into a personal channel and less of a “all things frugal” channel. I hope the content will still be useful to some of you.
So, that’s the last two weeks in a nutshell. I hope you all have a grand year planned for 2020.
See you on Youtube!
-Bethany
As I promised last week, I’ve done a bit of reflecting over the last year and some goal setting for 2020.
The last six months have been—well, let’s just say it’s been a growing time—for me. I cut back on blogging during the summer, and it was a good chance to think about my future plans for this site and my little writing side-business.
After the major work was done on the house, I got back to regular weekly blogging (more or less… haha) in October. Every week there are two or three things that I’m really excited about sharing, but my daily “frugal accomplishments” have been few and far between. After we moved into the house, I had an insatiable desire for the fun stuff that I’d been putting off all summer: reading books, starting new projects, crafting, sewing, writing. I was able to do a lot of these things, but they didn’t fit into my neat little box of frugal accomplishments. Here are some examples:
-Started reading an encyclopedia of world history. Right now I’m stuck in the middle ages.
-(Almost) finished painting two new peg dolls for our daughter.
-Grew sprouts in a new sprouting setup.
-Successfully grew fall garden crops.
- Read several books about teaching preschoolers (aka my daughter) and books on other interesting topics.
-Took a trip to New York to see my brother-in-law, and also did some local history research while in the area.
-Hosted family for Thanksgiving and many other times.
-Took a weekend trip to Texas.
-(Almost) finished potty training my daughter.
-Decorated our house for Christmas.
Then there are the daily chores that I (mostly) like doing, but they take up a lot of time. Our new house takes 3x longer (or more) to clean, even if half of it rarely gets used. Dust and dead flies still accumulate. With a bigger house comes more sheets and blankets to wash, more rugs to vaccum, more furniture to extract toys from beneath. More windows to wash, more baseboard to clean, more appliances to wipe off.
One of the main reasons we wanted a bigger house was to be able to host people. And host we have! But hosting, too, means more cooking and cleaning and time spent talking. None of which I’m sorry for, but they’re not really frugal accomplishments that I can write about.
And then, of course, are the daily parenting routines. Dressing, eating meals, cleaning up spills, fixing broken things, calming “big feelings” (as millennial parents would say), bedtime routines, buckling into carseats, baths, potty breaks. Even as I write this article, I’ve had to stop no less than four times. Everyday tasks seem to move at a glacial pace. Again, I’m not sorry for it: it’s just a fact of life around here.
All that to say, we have been doing a LOT, but the “more things to blog about” I hoped to have after moving are just not there. If I do accomplish some great feat of frugality, there is an 80% chance that I won’t record it, and a further 50% chance that I won’t even remember it by the end of the week. And most of the time, I have “frugal attempts” rather than accomplishments. Like yesterday when I bought two huge containers of laundry detergent, and was so frazzled by the time I got to the checkout counter with $226.00 worth of stuff that I completely forgot to use the $1.00 off peelies on the detergent. Frugal fail.
What I HAVEN’T done a lot of in the last four months is work on decorating and tying up loose ends on our house. The windows don’t have curtains, two or three more rooms need painted, we need to get new area rugs, set up a more functional entry way (like, one with coat hooks…), and a dozen other small things that just haven’t got done. As I’m sure happened with many of you this year, Christmas hit me like a fish in the face. Still decorating, still wrapping/buying/making gifts, and with an unfinished gingerbread house on Christmas day. Well, better luck next year.
In looking forward to 2020, I just can’t imagine having a lot of time to dedicate to this blog. Right now I only have about an hour per day to write. If I spend it working on this blog, I will never get around to writing more books (the real goal) or doing personal writing for friends and family.
So I told myself, “I will just cut back on the blog, and write once a month or something.” But do you know what happens when bloggers start writing once a month? Or once a quarter? Readers stop reading. And thus, there is no more point to keeping up a blog.
Because of that, I’ve decided to take a big step away from The Renaissance Housewife. I will still be doing Youtube videos, and I’ll keep this site up just in case I want to post something written out (math-related articles or written recipes) but even the Youtube channel, I think, will morph into a personal channel and less of a “all things frugal” channel. I hope the content will still be useful to some of you.
So, that’s the last two weeks in a nutshell. I hope you all have a grand year planned for 2020.
See you on Youtube!
-Bethany
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