February is coming up, and I’ve been thinking about sponsoring another No Spend Month challenge. February is an easy month to go No Spend, because it’s short. Twenty-nine (hey look, Ma, a leap year!) breezy days of enforced frugality to re-set the savings budget and rebalance the treat spiral entitlement curve. Homebrew Husband and I have…
Productive Home
Getting Out Of The Foodie Bubble
Every girl should have a friend who’s witty, opinionated, drives really fast motorcycles and is equally comfortable cooking French food with hand-foraged mushrooms or drinking wine out of a half-pint canning jar. For me, that friend is chef and author Lisa Simpson. Lisa was kind enough to contribute her thoughts here on the perils of…
That Awkward Moment When The Room Goes Quiet And You're Still Talking
Have you noticed that some of the Big Boys are pretty quiet right now? Have you wondered why? Well, let’s just say that if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the US Congress is one heckova brick-maker. This quick video explains the likely legislative consequences of the Stop On-Line Piracy Act (SOPA)…
Should You DIY or Hire A Pro?
Sometimes we face the question of whether to Do It Ourselves or cough up some cash and let a professional handle the particulars. Let’s say there’s a spectrum: make jam would be an easy DIY call. Perform brain surgery on your child would be an easy Hire The Pros call. In between, things are less obvious….
Build A Lower Waste Lunch
A friend asked for some tips on packing lower-plastic and lower-waste lunches for her school-age son. This rather surprised me, since this particular friend is genuine cloth-diapering, Keystone XL Pipeline-protesting, etsy-craft-selling kind of girl. And in fact, when further questioned, it turned out my friend was already packing a pretty green lunch, but was looking…
Avoiding Plastic Wrap In The Kitchen
I’m not dogmatically anti-plastic, but I try to be thoughtful about how and where it is used in my house, and I am trying to cut down. My garden at this time of year grows under a tunnel cloche of plastic. Freezer stuff gets entombed in plastic, because it’s the best at preserving the bulk orders of…
5 Solutions To The Kid Gift Problem
The problem: your kid has a lot of friends, and wants to give gifts to every single one of them. With your money. Of course, it is absolutely wonderful that your charming and thoughtful child is thinking of his or her peers over the holiday, and you want to encourage this independent spirit of generosity. You just don’t…
Are You One Of Those "Organic" People?
Some couple friends of ours came over last week and the wife of the couple mentioned that a friend-of-a-friend was, “one of those organic people.” At this point I had to say, “Well, I roll pretty crunchy-granola, too, ya know.” “Yes,” my friend responded, “but you’re not – you know – one of those ‘organic’…
Confessions Of A Total Garden Failure
A woman – a great photographer – came by and took pictures of my garden for a book she is doing on urban homesteaders. She was interviewing me and I said something like, “I think if I bought vegetables at the store at this point, I’d feel like a total failure!” This was one of these things…
The Political Act of Making Dinner
Emily Matchar recently wrote an excellent article for the Washington Post raising the question of whether the “new domesticity” was a step back for women. She asks if the burgeoning popularity of Gen-X jam making is a betrayal of the career-mom-and-microwave-meal life made possible by Baby Boomer feminists, and if radical homemakers risk setting our…
No Use For Coupons
I hate coupons. I consider myself frugal, and I love saving money, but grocery coupons just don’t do it for me. I’ve tried. About every 10 or 12 months, I forget that I hate coupons and decide that I could shave some money off our grocery bill if I just applied myself to couponing. So…
Autumn Decor, On Accident
Several weeks ago, I took the kids to the pumpkin farm, where I loaded up on edible squash to supplement to lackluster harvest I managed to home-grow this year. A bit after that, I asked my rural-living sister to pick me up a few bales of straw at non-urban prices when she came into town….