Hi there! I have some frugal accomplishments for you all.

1. Groceries: I spent $21.49 on groceries this week at our local Spartan-Nash store. We were very busy over the weekend and I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time to cook. My sister came over to babysit all day Saturday, so I bought some snack foods for her, plus convenience food for that day as well. It turned out that we didn't need the bagged and boxed meals, so I put those in the pantry for another busy day.

2. Garden: I brought in all of my sweet potatoes this week. I harvested tomatoes, beets and basil cuttings. I also weeded the giant strawberry patch. I started radish, lettuce, kale and beet seeds indoors. The kale seeds have already sprouted!

3. Recycling: Picked up cans on a walk.

4. Writing: Last Friday I sent out the final sections of my book to beta readers. Many thanks to those of you who gave and are giving feedback!! Now there are just a few small changes to make and it will be ready for a final edit. YAY! 

5. Christmas preparations: I've been trying to get a head start on Christmas preparations this year; choosing recipes, writing down gift ideas, DIYing some gifts and decorations. This week we had a family photo taken, which will be used on our Christmas card. Instead of doing ALL of the Christmas things after Thanksgiving, my goal is to do a little bit each week so there's not as much chaos during the season. Things like Christmas cards can be done far, far in advance. If I know what recipes I'll be making and what gifts I want to buy, I can watch for those things to go on sale, instead of buying them at full price last minute.

Well, I think that's about it for this week. 

Til next time,
-Bethany

​Hi everyone! We just finished up "Birthday Week" here, starting with Baby's birthday last weekend and mine this weekend. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE this time of year? Hubs took me shopping to my favorite store and out to eat at my favorite restaurant. On the way, we stopped at a cemetery and found my great-great grandparents' (our daughter's great-great-GREAT grandparents!) headstone, which I'd never seen before. Cemeteries are often so quiet; it's like touring a museum of stone artwork. The occasional stroll through a graveyard is a good reminder of how short life is and how long eternity is. Plus... they're free! And it's even more fun when you can find your relatives!

Anyhow... onto frugal accomplishments.

1. Writing: I've been spending a lot of time editing and coming up with marketing materials for my next book. 🙂 🙂 I took a rather long break from writing after Baby was born, and it feels good to have another project nearing the finish line. I'm hoping it will be published by the end of this year.  

2. Cooking: I made a pumpkin roll, cookies and chili for Baby's little birthday party. We had some other things as well that were not homemade, and I made her a tiny birthday cake. I used half a 10 lb. roll of ground beef for the chili, so I used the other 5 lbs. to make a double batch of meatloaf and freeze several pounds of cooked burger. I figure if you have to repackage and freeze the meat anyway, you might as well cook it or mix it in with other things and make it a "freezer meal".

3. FREE BOOKS! While we were on a bike ride, I stopped by the side of the road to dig through a trailer pile of free stuff. Most of the time we just come home with empty beer/soda cans, but this time I brought home nine books!!! Some of the books were in fair or poor condition, but to me a free book is a free book. "The Prize Winner's Handbook", "The Art of Italian Cooking" "The Bicentennial Cookbook" and "Everything You Want to Know About Feet" were some of my finds. I also got a little book about how to save money on groceries (which included no less than 18 hot dog recipes) and three homemaking humor books. 

My favorite finds were two vintage magazine-style books. One was a McCall's Cookie Collection book from 1965. The second was a "Learn How Book" with instructions for knitting, embroidery, crochet, and tatting from 1941. I wanted to learn crochet on my birthday, and the book provided some good tips. I have another book with crochet instructions, and I've watched various Youtube videos, but have only slightly got the hang of it. The hook and yarn are still clumsy in my hands, and my work doesn't look consistent. I think I'd benefit from having an in-person lesson.

4. Birthday: I picked up a free personal-sized pizza for my birthday. I also received some mums and an orchid as birthday gifts. Two gifts that keep on giving! My grandparents also got me a cinnamon broom—something I'd never seen before. It makes our house smell wonderful! 

5. Cloth diapers: As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we've been battling smelly diapers and diaper rash for awhile now. Rash is not uncommon when cloth diapered babies transition from exclusive breast milk to solids, but it's certainly not pleasant. I invested in some buffalo/Native American polar fleece to make larger fleece liners to use with her diapers. The other roll of fleece in the clearance bin was printed with the presidential seal... I had to chuckle to myself at the thought of using it for diaper liners. Out of respect for the current President and all that came before him, I left that roll for someone else.

In addition to adding fleece liners to the diapers, I increased the temperature of our wash water and started changing Baby more frequently; every two hours or so. While the additional changes are annoying, they do cut down on diaper rash. Unfortunately it meant I had to buy some more diapers to stretch the stash.

Since I needed some extra inserts anyway, bought a pack of flour sack towels from Walmart to try as boosters for our Alva pocket diapers. I really like them. The cotton doesn't hold stink like microfiber does, and the flats are so, so fast and easy to dry. If nothing else, the flour sack towels will give me an extra day to dry the other inserts. When we first started cloth diapering, I purchased what I thought were "bamboo" inserts at $2.00 a piece. Last week I cut one of the inserts open and discovered that they're actually three layers of microfiber sandwiched between two layers of bamboo. No wonder ALL of the inserts stank! I'm going to stop using those for a while and instead use the flour sack towels as boosters. If I can do without the "bamboo" inserts, I'll try selling them. There's no reason to keep around a bunch of additional, stink-holding microfiber inserts if I have perfectly good hemp and cotton inserts to use.

I think that's about it for the week's accomplishments! I hope you are all having a lovely September.

-Bethany

1. Groceries: we bought a block of cheese for $12.00, and a half-bushel of peaches for $18.00.

2. Cooking: I froze most of the peaches, froze some Chinese long beans, made one batch of wine from our own green grapes, plus made three pints of tomato sauce.

Hubs and I had a great conversation last week about canning. I expressed frustration at spending my two free hours every day canning tomatoes, only to save $5.00 or less. Not only that, but my tomato sauce never tastes as good as the store sauce, or even sauce I can make from tomato paste that costs $0.40 per can. I asked Hubs if he had any ideas about how I could make the sauce better without spending even more time cutting and canning tomatoes. I wondered if we should buy a Kitchen Aid Victoria strainer attachment.

“You know, I don’t really like canned food,” he said. At first, I was shocked. There was no amount of work I could do to make my canned tomato sauce perfect. I would never win the battle for a perfect sauce! “What I like about having a garden is how fresh the fruits and vegetables are, and how good they taste,” he continued.

Suddenly, I had an epiphany.

“So you don’t like canned food. Come to think of it, I actually don’t love canning," I said. "What I like is the gardening! Why don’t I work on extending the garden season instead of planting so much to freeze and can?”

A weight lifted off of my shoulders. I’m not going to throw away my canner, but for this season of life it doesn’t make sense for me to do a lot of canning, especially for low-value products like tomato sauce. Why not spend time doing something I enjoy—gardening—and create food that my husband also enjoys? Nowadays there are all sorts of ways to grow things early in the spring, late into fall and even through the winter if you are willing to invest in a hydroponics or aquaponics system. I am so excited to be shifting my focus with the garden.

3. Thrift store: I bought some things at the Volunteers of America 50% off sale. I got a wicker tray for $1.50, a water container for $0.75, a book for $0.30, baby shoes for $1.00, a bowl for $0.50, brand new muffin cup liners for $0.30, and a belt for $0.50. The water dispenser and basket tray work great for a kitchen station that I’m working on for Baby (who is quickly becoming more of a toddler and less of a baby… sniffle!).

4. Collected cans to recycle on several bike rides.

5. Rearranged my recipe cards into days of the week and months of the year, rather than in categories of “Drinks,” “Soups,” “Desserts,” etc. I hope this will help me to have a more seasonal menu plan, while not changing the basic plan much. This system is a lot like the Sidetracked Home Executives plan for cleaning, except I’ve used it for cooking instead. My goal is to find specific recipes for each month that will utilize fresh, in-season and on sale ingredients as much as possible. The rotating menu plan is something I’ve wanted to implement for a long time, but wasn’t sure how to organize it. If the note cards work as planned, I’ll refill the “weekly” tabs once a month with new recipes. Then when I go to cook each day, all of the recipes will be in one place. I’ll also be able to peek at the next day’s note cards to see if I need to thaw out any meat or start cooking anything the day before.

6. Cloth diapers: I tested our water for hardness, and it came out at an average hardness of 250. I’ve been trying to resolve ammonia stink issues that developed over the last eight months. I stripped the diapers, which seemed to help a lot but didn’t entirely take away the stink. Supposedly your wash routine is not optimal if the diapers ever have stink issues, so I want to fix the problem and not have to strip again. Stripping isn’t particularly expensive or complicated, but it’s a hassle. It cost $5.00 for the bottle of Calgon, plus at least $1.00 for disposables that I had to use while stripping.

I also spent $29.00 on five new diapers from the Alva factory in China. We had some diapers poop out (haha) due to delamination, so I wanted to buy some more. I looked into some other different diaper options, but none were as cheap as the Alvas. Plus, I like the prints and how they fit.

As I continue to do cloth diapers, I hesitate to recommend it as a frugal activity for anyone besides first-time moms. At this point, I’ve spent at least $300.00 on cloth diaper related supplies—some of which worked, some of which didn’t. Diapers, inserts, pail liners, a sprayer, gloves and a spatula, more diapers and inserts, store-bought laundry soap, stripping supplies, special cloth-friendly clothing and clothing patterns. I’ve spent hours and hours crunching numbers, checking for deals, trying to fix issues like the ammonia stink one. I save less than $30.00 per month. Every time I buy new stuff for the stash, it cuts into savings. For example, I spent all of August’s savings on new diapers. Not only that, but I’m not saving 100% of the time because I still keep a small number of disposables on hand for road trips, stripping, severe rash, etc. Now I'm looking at adding water softener to the list, which would cost about $2.00 per week. I’m not saving as near much money as I originally thought I would. 

I’m convinced that the big savings from cloth diapers come mostly from use on the second child, and subsequent children; after you’ve worked out a lot of the kinks in your system, and when you’re not burning through diapers from misuse or buying accessories willy-nilly to find what works best. That means that the key to saving money with cloth diapers is to make your diapers last as long as humanly possible, while carefully limiting the ongoing costs of laundry detergent, disposable liners, etc.

So yeah, I’m feeling a little burnt out on canning and ambivalent about our cloth diapers. But excited about other things, like fall and new gardening projects and my birthday coming up. It’s important to re-evaluate what you’re doing at regular intervals to see if it’s still a good fit. Why settle for good when there is a “best” still out there?

Til next time,
Bethany

Hi everyone! I had a great week. 

1. Groceries: I spent $38.26 this week on groceries. I spent $35.76 at Walmart for staple items. We also stopped at a mom-and-pop grocery store, where I found some brown bananas. I bought 19 bananas for $2.40. 
   
2. Cooking: I canned a lot of tomatoes this week; some from my garden, and some that were gifted from my mother-in-law. I canned salsa, tomato sauce, and diced tomatoes. Most of my free time this week was spent canning tomatoes. I didn't mind since this was the main garden "project" I had planned for the year. I also froze more Chinese long beans and some sweet corn that we were gifted. My sweet corn failed this year, unfortunately.
   
3. Gardening: Apart from canning tomatoes, I spent the rest of my free time weeding strawberries. Little by little I have been chipping away at that enormous patch. Thanks to some help from my husband, I think I can finish the rest in decent time. Just when you have one end of the patch weeded, the other starts to need it. Gahhhh.
   
4. Personal care: I used coupons to get shampoo and conditioner for $0.53 per bottle. I used another coupon to get Hubs' favorite (only acceptable) brand of deodorant for $1.48 per stick. Lastly, I got some free toothpaste at Kroger with a store coupon, or "Best Customer Bonus." But you know what was truly a bonus? I found a manufacturer coupon in my purse for the same brand. I used both coupons then, and earned $2.00 by getting the free toothpaste.

5. Storage: Hubs made me several new wooden crates. Then he screwed them together to create a storage shelf. For the past year, as Baby gets bigger and leaves more stuff in her wake, I've been struggling to find storage space for everything. The crates are perfect because they are sturdy and you can arrange them however you want to make a piece of furniture. We tipped the boxes on their sides and screwed them together to form a tall shelf. I put Baby's eating and cleaning toys on it. The best part is this: When I don't want her (or any other kids) getting into the toys, I just turn the whole shelf around so it's facing the wall! Then you can set things on top of it like books, baskets, etc. When we move out of our current home, we can unscrew the crates from each other and use them like... well, crates. Hubs makes all of our boxes out of scrap lumber, so they're practically free. Plus they're sturdy and will last for years, unlike some of the pressboard furniture we have.

That's all for this week folks! 
Til next time,
​-Bethany

1. ​Groceries: I spent about $12.00 on groceries last week. I bought two mangoes in the marked down bin ($1.00), a free protein bar, and 2.5 lbs. of shredded cheese. The half-pound bags of cheese were supposed to be $1.00 each, but I apparently didn't download the coupon and ended up paying $2.00 per bag, for a final price of $4.00 per pound... which is FAR more than I usually spend. We were in a hurry, so I didn't bother to return the bags. I feel like this story repeats itself every time I walk into the grocery store unprepared and in a hurry.

2. Garden: I harvested Chinese long beans, Borlotto beans, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, cucumbers and basil from the garden. We also ate some grapes from the orchard. The Borlotto beans don't taste as good as regular green beans, but the actual bean seeds are lovely.

I've also been attacking the weeds in my strawberry garden. It's hard, thankless work. By the time you finish weeding one end of the patch, the other end is in desperate need of it. Next year I think we will till the walkways and mulch the beds.  

3. Clothing: Our wardrobes have been slowly failing. A lot of our "good" clothes were becoming tattered and worn, so I separated the nice clothes from the work clothes, for both Hubs and I (we both work at home, so "work" clothes are second-quality). The good clothes pile was disturbingly small. For date night, we went to the mall to look for some new clothes. We bought two shirts for Hubs. I didn't like any of the womens' styles that we saw. Actually, there was one store that I liked- Christopher & Banks-, but the prices were shockingly high. I wasn't surprised to find that the target market was 40- to 60-year-old ladies. I guess I must be a middle-aged lady at heart.

I did find some quality swimwear that was 50% off, so I bought two pieces. Swimwear, like underwear, is something I prefer to buy new. 

4. Garage Sale: A church down the road had a free garage sale. I found five shirts and one pair of pants for myself, which was great since I didn't find anything at the mall. I also found two toys for Baby, several books, beautiful old handkerchiefs, a travel bingo game and missing Scrabble tiles for our board. Now all I need is a Q!

1. Shopping: I spent $10.01 on groceries for us this week. We bought 4 lbs. carrots, 10 lbs. flour, one cabbage, and 5 lbs. brown rice. I also spent $10.00 on a "new baby" meal for some of our friends. I would consider new baby meals, large party meals, and other highly irregular spending as part of a "hospitality" budget though, not a regular grocery budget. 

2. Gardening: I harvested beets, peppers, Chinese long beans, tomatoes and basil this week. I tried some different varieties this year. I bought the long bean seeds thinking I would save a ton of time on snapping and picking. I did!! The purple long beans were definitely a winner that I'll plant next year. Not only are they 3-4 times the length of regular green beans, but they are a climbing bean, so the fruits are a lot easier to find and pick (if they're climbing a trellis, which mine are).  

3. Cooking: I figured out this week just how awesome beets are. Not only are the roots edible, but the leaves and even the stems are edible as well! We ate the stems in a hash-style meal, and I dried the leaves to use in greens powder.

​I also experimented with baby food pouches. Now that Baby is old enough to be eating a lot more "real" foods, I find myself scrambling to find snacks and mini-meals to take with us when we leave the house. Normally I feed her what Hubs and I are eating, but when we're out and about I don't take snacks for the adults, and if we do have food it's often junk food or dessert. We keep a bag of freeze-dried baby bites in the car for "emergencies," but those that bag was crazy expensive! My sister-in-law uses baby food pouches, which are very convenient for on-the-go meals because you don't need a spoon. They're also not messy like crackers. Unfortunately, they cost over $1.00 per pouch, which is a bit expensive for how often I need them.

I found some reusable pouches on Amazon for $1.00 per pouch. These seem to work quite well. You can put regular (homemade or store bought) baby food in the pouches, or you can make a kind of smoothie with yogurt and other ingredients. That's what I did for our first pouch. Baby seemed to like it, so I will fill up the rest of the pouches and freeze them. Hopefully these will make for a quick, easy, cheap last-minute snack.

4. Replaced missing buttons on a pair of shorts and a skirt.

5. Tricked out my bike! I added a mirror to one side so I can see cars coming from behind. I also figured out how to fasten a plastic bag on the back of the baby seat, so I can still collect cans. In fact, we found over $0.50 worth last week!

​6. Garage sales: I packed up Baby and we went to a nearby town for their annual garage sale event. I put Baby on my back in a carrier, and we walked to the different sales. This is nowhere near as efficient as carpooling and driving to each garage sale, but it's the best way I know of when it's just her and I. I definitely got in my workout for the day, plus we came home with a few bargains. You can see what I bought below:

Picnic basket ($5.00). This was on my list of things to buy. It came packed full of new plastic cutlery, which wasn't on my list but it was a nice bonus. 🙂

Wooden tray ($0.50) to store Baby's cleaning supplies. 

Bag of streamers ($0.25). I hope to use these for some birthdays coming up! 😉 

Ornamental pebbles ($0.25). The bag came with large and small pebbles. I used the large ones for Baby's water table (see the next frugal accomplishment!) and the small ones I might use for some of my houseplants.

Wooden bead toy ($0.50). Baby Girl loves new toys. It's so hard not to buy #allthetoys. But this was cheap enough, small enough and wooden/non-plastic enough to justify buying.

Star-shaped pie mold ($0.50). I bought this to add to my William Sonoma kitchen item collection. I'm not much of a pie baker, but I want to try this for savory meat pies, or perhaps puff pastries. William Sonoma things make me feel like I'm a rich person and a fancy, uppity cook (note that I said "feel" like... whether I am or not is questionable).  The pie mold increased my WS collection from two items (a spatula and a soup recipe book) to three. So I guess I'm well on my way to having my fantasy kitchen. One garage sale item at a time.

7. Toys: Hubs helped me make a water table for Baby with some scrap lumber and a plastic bin that I was going to donate. Entirely free! I also made her some hand kites. 

​To make the kites, I used wooden rings that I bought cheap from China ($0.39 each) and ribbons that I already had. I made the ribbons shorter than usual, so Baby wouldn't trip on them or get tangled up in them. Later on, I can replace the short ribbons with long ones, or change the colors if need be.

8. Diapers: Some of Baby's cloth diapers were starting to stink, so I "stripped" them (this is a special wash with laundry boosters and bleach). It worked like a charm! No more stinky diapers!! Now I'm trying to figure out how I can prevent ammonia buildup in the first place, and what is the cheapest way to do so.

So, that is all for the week, I believe. I wish every week were this productive!

Til next time,
-Bethany

​Hello everyone! We took a family camping trip with Hubs' side over the weekend, which was a lot of fun. I spent a good amount of time preparing for the trip; cleaning out our little RV, making lists of needed items, doing extra RV laundry and packing. Also: congratulations to Becky S., who won the July giveaway package! If you'd like to try your hand at winning a prize, be sure to sign up for my email newsletter.

 1. Groceries: We bought a lotttt of food, most of which was for the camping trip. Hubs decided to use credit card rewards to pay for it, so I don't know what the total was. Earlier in the week, I found a marked-down bag of avocados for $1.00, and some vanilla beans ($4.49 each!) and stevia extract in the bargain bin. Also... blueberries were on sale! We ended up buying a $5.00 2 lb. clamshell, then another $5.00 2 lb. clamshell, and then an $11.00 5 lb. box for the camping trip. So I guess you could say we spent most of our regular weekly grocery money on blueberries. Which was, again, totally worth it! I didn't freeze any because the price of already-frozen berries was the same as the on-sale fresh ones. But at $2.50 per pound or less, I couldn't resist binge-eating the fresh ones. I had wanted to go to a U-pick this year, but buying the berries from Kroger just as cheap (by the time you pay for gas to a U-pick) and just as tasty, with far less work involved. 

2. Cooking: I made yogurt with almost-expired milk and shredded some gifted zucchini for the freezer. I also saved some celery ends to dry and use in soup.

3. Garden: I harvested cucumbers from the garden. My mother-in-law gifted us the zucchini mentioned above and some sweet corn, which was super delicious!

4. Cans: I collected some recyclable cans while on bike rides with Baby Girl.

5. Personal care items: I found some of our favorite brands and needed items in the clearance bin at Kroger. They weren't the best-ever deal, but I did save about $10.00, compared to regular Walmart or Amazon prices.

6. Entertainment: We went to our local county fair to see all of the 4-H projects. Our fair is pretty toned down with just still exhibits and animals; there is no carnival or vendors. It is a lovely, family-friendly fair, and free to attend.

That is going to be all for this week. Thankfully our summer is beginning to wind down. I was tempted to write down some new frugal accomplishments from yesterday (Monday), but I am going to save them for next week. 

Happy saving!
-Bethany

​Hi everybody! Again, not too many frugal accomplishments this week (or, at least not many that I remembered to write down!) but still some worth mentioning. 

1. Groceries: I went to Kroger this week and scored some deals. See below:

2. ​Garden: I harvested raspberries, string beans and snap peas from the garden. 

3. Garage sales: I went to some city-wide garage sales and picked up a few bargains. I spent just $9.05, plus a few dollars for gas to get there (it was less than seven miles away). Based on retail and/or thrift store value of the items I found, I saved over $50.00. In fact, we had just ordered a new $25.00 bike seat on Amazon, and I found one at a garage sale for $2.00! The garage sale seat is not as nice looking, but it will do the job. I plan on returning the new seat.

2. Cooking: I made ice cream this week with some Aldi heavy cream. Usually, I make custard-style ice cream with egg yolks and milk, but the cream was expiring soon and I wanted to use it up. I used the whole pint container of heavy cream, 1 cup milk, 1 TB vanilla extract, 3/4 cup sugar, and a pinch of salt. Total cost was $2.16, and the recipe made five cups, so the price per 1/2 cup serving was just under $0.22. That's more expensive than Great Value brand ice cream ($0.17 per serving), and only slightly cheaper than Breyer's ($0.25 per serving). So, it wasn't frugal. But it used up the heavy cream, plus it was some of the best homemade ice cream I've ever had!!

3. Garden: I've been harvesting red and black raspberries for the past week or so. I also collected mullein flowers and comfrey leaves to use in herbal remedies. My husband fixed a raccoon trap, so we can try and eliminate the predators that have been eating eggs and possibly chickens during the past week or so.

4. Cans: we picked up cans to recycle during several family walks. 

5. Reorganizing: Baby was starting to get into the books on my bookshelf, so I decided to move the contents of the two bottom shelves into our storage area and use them as storage for some of her toys. Since she was born, finding space for everything (extra furniture, outgrown toys or clothes, etc.) has been a bit of a struggle. I've already sold, donated or tossed a lot of our stuff, but I will probably do the same thing again in a few weeks.

Til next time,
-Bethany

1. ​Groceries: We spent $2.46 on groceries this week; a bag of freeze-dried baby food snacks at Walmart. I know, totes not frugal. But now that Baby is eating more solid foods, I thought it would be wise to keep some non-perishable food (that's not cereal or junk) in the car. I've been working on keeping our vehicle organized, which is easy NOT to do when you're going a lot of places and bringing lots of stuff to those places.

2. Cooking: I did better making actual meals this week instead of just eating cereal and junk food. Some of the meals we had were: lamb rice curry, chicken salad, hash, bagel sandwiches, turkey sandwiches, baked potatoes, ham soup and grilled chicken thighs. I also made a batch of kombucha (yay!!). I tried making pineapple juice in the Instant Pot, but it tasted too "cooked" to drink like juice.

3. Garden: I weeded a lot this week. Baby and I picked strawberries, mulberries and black raspberries for the freezer. I also cut some lettuce for salad and harvested some mullein for herbal remedies.

4. Thrifting: We went to the 50% off sale at Volunteers of America this week. I bought a baby monitor that didn't work ($1.50), a pair of jeans for myself ($1.60), and a swing-top bottle to use for kombucha ($0.75). I also bought some things for a Montessori weaning set that I'm working on (pictured above): two shot glasses ($0.50 each), two tray baskets ($1.50 and $1.25) and a small glass pitcher ($1.00).

5. Baby items: I sewed two bibs and two placemats for Baby Girl. I'm not quite finished with the placemats. I made each set of items with scrap fabric and bias tape that I already had. I used an old dishtowel on the back of the bibs to catch water spills. These will go with the weaning set. I hope to do a post about it when I'm finished with the placemats.

6. Computer desk setup: Last fall I threw out our old, broken hand-me-down computer desk to make room for a treadmill desk, which I thought would magically melt away all of the baby weight I had gained while pregnant. It didn't quite work like I thought it would. It was easy enough to walk while watching Youtube, but I couldn't multi-task well enough to write anything while walking. I ended up doing all of my writing on the kitchen table, while the poor treadmill sat unused. So, that was a waste of $80.00. This spring, I found myself more and more using my laptop on the kitchen table or couch, which is awful for posture, not to mention it clutters everything up.

We got rid of the treadmill, which turned my treadmill desk into a standing desk. I bought an external USB keyboard and mouse for $13.00, and Hubs built a second shelf out of free scrap lumber so that my hands can be at the proper 90-degree angle. Not only that, but I was able to point a set of external speakers into the kitchen/living room, so I can work and listen to audio without dragging the laptop over to the kitchen table. I love, love, love this setup. It makes writing so easy, especially with the external keyboard and mouse. I wish I would have gotten those two items years ago.

That's all, folks! I look forward to sharing more next week.
-Bethany