How I Coupon

I go by my father-in-law's guiding coupon principle:  it's only a good coupon bargain if you were going to buy that item anyway.

Ergo, I clip coupons for things I am likely to buy.  I am not brand-loyal to mass-produced things because there's rarely a locally-produced alternative, so I just try to get the best bargain.  We try to eat local food, and there aren't usually coupons for that.

The only sorting I do is keeping food and non-food coupons separate.  I keep my time on coupons to a minimum.  Most of the coupons I clip actually expire before I use them, but sometimes I hit a big deal with coupons, so I don't mind clipping and keeping them just in case.

Every day on the school walk, we pass a national chain drugstore on the way.  It's very convenient, although I do use a small local pharmacy (also 2 blocks away) when we have prescriptions.   So I watch the store circular and match up coupons to its store sales for toiletries.

For example, recently there was a sale on Tom's items at 2 for $8 and then you got a $2 store gift certificate. I had a $2 coupon for Tom's. I bought a deodorant and two bars of soap for $6, minus the store gift certificate, which brings it to a $2 deodorant and two $1 bars of soap.

I also bought Tresemme 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner and hairspray, a brand I have never used.  I bought it because there was a sale, a coupon, and a store gift certificate, bringing my total cost to $1.

To put it simply, I paid $4.54 for a Tom's deodorant, 2 bars of Tom's soap, Tresemme shampoo/conditioner, and Tresemme hairspray. I think that's a great deal!

The store gift certificates, totaling $5 from both purchases, will be used to buy things that don't go on sale very often.

Most stores have their weekly sale flyer/circular online.  However, I also get the "guts" (as my dad says) of the Sunday newspaper from my parents.  They aren't interested in the coupons and circulars, and I'm not interested in the so-called "news."  We've had this arrangement for several years now.

Talk to me about how you coupon, please.

Tending Houseplants in Winter

When we heat our homes in winter, our houseplants can suffer from the hot, dry air.  Most plants like humidity.  This winter, I took some extra steps to help my plants.

I set a tray of water close to the rosemary plant to put humidity in the air.  I bought a cute little vintage mister and tucked it into the windowsill corner next to the Norfolk pine.  I showed the children how to mist the pine and the rosemary, while avoiding the nearby jade plant who doesn't like water on its leaves. They love this little task. 

When there are small pieces of wet laundry or wet gloves, I lay them on the top of the radiator so the wetness evaporates right next to the plants.  In fact, I air-dry most of our laundry on drying racks to try to keep a comfortable humidity in the house.

So far, my plants are looking really good!  

Genevieve planted some dill seeds in December, which I thought were probably too old to sprout, but dang if those little seeds don't keep stubbornly growing!  I had told her they were her responsibility, but she has totally forgotten about them and I, for sheer joy of green, growing babies, have been watering them and turning their pot so they grow up straighter. 

I recall how my houseplants suffered through previous winters, and I'm pleased to see mine looking so healthy right now. Are your houseplants looking good?

June Days

I've stopped counting how many days off from school my children have due to bad weather this winter.  These are not "snow days," I tell my children, but "June days" because these days will show up on the end of your school year in June.  Buy now, pay later.

Ben with his collar popped, eating breakfast.

We don't drive anywhere on June days, but we do walk downtown to run errands or go sledding in the park.  Sometimes we have playdates with friends.  We've cooked and baked together and I've been working on my job search, taxes, health insurance, and photo storage at the odd times I can snatch at the computer.  We do not have cabin fever and we have plenty of projects yet to explore.  In fact, one of my goals this week is to tidy up my sewing space because there are several interesting projects spread on top of each other and I  work more effectively if my space is tranquil.

I'm happy with the weather - it's wintry as it should be in these parts, not like the mild, wet winters we've had for a few years.  I'm not juggling a job with childcare, so altered schedules simply mean slower mornings and pajamas at home.  When the kids fight, I send them outside, separate them, or get on the phone with a friend (using my lifeline - isn't that from a game show?  My scant TV knowledge is showing.).

Keeping Ben company at breakfast while sewing on a button and discussing the straightest thing I ever saw (his question).

Are you at home because of bad weather? What are you doing?

Batch Cooking For the 6pm Days

My schedule changed overnight (okay, one week from job offer to start date).  Suddenly, two days a week, we all screeched home at 6pm, supperless.  And typically, we start the bedtime drag at 7pm, with the schoolkids in bed by 8pm.  So, it didn't make sense to start dinner preparations at 6pm. We needed something to - poof - appear on the table at 6pm, ready to eat.

So what I do is cook double the amount of food I normally cook on the days I'm home.  Some of it hangs out in the fridge for the 6pm days, to be reheated in the microwave, and the rest is packaged into the freezer to be defrosted for other 6pm days.

I've read where some people do an enormous batch cook on one day a month and make their meals for the rest of the month.  That alternately overwhelms me and bores me.

Here, I am making a double batch of BBQ (as it's called around here - the rest of the world calls it sloppy joe).  I subbed in cooked lentils for the fourth pound of ground beef.  I also experimented with putting all the ingredients in the slow cooker, not pre-cooking or frying anything first, and cooking it on high for about 5 hours.  The texture was very soft and soupy.  Not terrible, but I now know I prefer the stovetop method.

Mennonite Community Cookbook

I split it into four portions, and we had one for supper. The other three went in the freezer.

All the schedule pieces that flew up into the air in August are slowly settling into place.  We are happy.  We generally have homemade, hot suppers that almost appear on the table at 6pm.  There is generally clean laundry. The house generally gets vacuumed. I get time at home alone while the rest of the family is out in the world learning and working (bonus:  with everyone away more, the house is less dirty!).

But I'll take any 6pm supper tips you want to offer. . .

Summer Goals 2013

This is the structure that we established this summer:

Monday - library with Dad
Tuesday - market with Mom, vacuum, clean kids' room
Wednesday - G cooking lesson with Mom, Mom pay bills/desk/inbox
Thursday - sketching with Dad
Friday - vacuum/dust house, day of reckoning for stuff, G piano lesson with Mom
Saturday - change sheets, clean bathroom

Daily: G feed rabbit, fold laundry, quiet time, help Mom and Dad with other chores, set table, clear table, clean up toys

(Last summer's schedule and some more explanation is here)

 

The notable changes:
1.  Genevieve and I are doing cooking lessons together.  More on that tomorrow.
2.  I separated cleaning the kids' room from the rest of the house cleaning.  I was getting too frustrated and it was getting short shrift.  I would really like to be more patient and detailed in teaching the children how to sort and organize their desks this summer.
3. My husband wants to teach the children some drawing principles. 
4.  We've always gone to the library randomly, usually when the adults needed something.  But now, we are experimenting with a regular library day because Genevieve has turned into a voracious reader.  It's exciting!  And way more economical to keep her in books by checking them out from the library.

Other than cooking lessons, I didn't make a list of specific tasks I want to teach the children this summer.  It might come to that, but for now, they are both handling the tasks we give them pretty well.  They are also both very grateful for quiet time after the obligatory kick-and-fuss-for-a-few-minutes.

This schedule will probably wiggle around some to accomodate lots of swimming at the pool this summer, but for now, we are really enjoying our relaxed, yet purposeful, days.

Water Usage Math for Washing Dishes by Hand

We don't have a dishwasher because we stopped short of putting in our planned kitchen island 7 years ago.  We were tired of renovating and the accompanying drained bank accounts.  Instead, we kept on washing dishes by hand as we had in the years before we were home owners and home renovators.

In the meantime, with all that time spent in the dishpan, I have been thinking.  And then I did a little research.

I figured out how many gallons of liquid my dishpan holds without messy pouring of water:

Length in inches x width x height = X, then X/231 = volume in gallons

14" x 11" x 6" = 924"  and 924/ 231 = 4 gallons

My dishpan was 3/4 full after washing that full dish-drainer-load, plus a pan on the stovetop (we use the stovetop like an overflow dishdrainer if no one is drying dishes) and the bag-dryer.

I figure I routinely use about 3 gallons of water total to wash a small dishwasher load of dishes. I've been around dishwashers enough to know their general capacity.  In my research, I read that the average Energy Star dishwasher uses 4 gallons of water per cycle and the others use about 6 gallons (although Energy Star says it differently).  And here is another article with food for thought.

The way I use so little water to handwash that many dishes is thus:

1.  squirt dish soap in pan and run in an inch or less of hot water.
2.  Wash a dirty something and turn the water on over the dishpan briefly, rinsing the soapy thing.
3.  Place the clean wet thing in drying rack.

See, I capture the rinse water right in the dishpan and use it to build up my dishwater. One of the things I didn't see addressed in the articles is that if you ideally wait to run the dishwasher until it is full, then you might need to have more dishes than I do.  I can wash a small load, and often do if I'm clearing the decks for a canning or baking project, with the same efficiency as a large load.  I also re-use dishes for several projects rather than getting a clean item every time; for example, tonight during supper prep, I used the same glass measuring cup for milk for biscuits, cream for a pie, boiling water for the same pie, and tomatoes for a soup. 

The hidden problem in my dishwashing scenario is that it takes a long time to get the hot water up to our kitchen faucet, so sometimes we run the water for a while to get hot.  In the right mood, I capture this water in my houseplant watering can.

Actually, I'm not a militant water-saver.  I started researching dishwashers vs. handwashing out of curiosity and it suits my personality to discover how little water I use in contrast to what the bigwigs think I use.  Humph.  I like the intricacies of kitchen life, that's all.

Storing Extension Cords a Better Way

I won't show you a before photo because it's just unpleasant to look at a tangle of cords in a plastic bag.  I had seen and pinned a tidy box full of toilet paper roll tubes holding cords.

Below is my good-enough version.  I'm pleased.  It took me less than 10 minutes to sort and bundle up the cords and label the box.  Back to the closet it goes and I get a little thrill of pleasure at having yet one more detail nailed in my house.

The only catch to this project is that you have to patiently set aside t.p. tubes and conceal them from crafty children in such a way that you remember where they are when you want them.

One last thought:  so many of the projects I see on Pinterest rely on an abundance of a certain material to make an impact:  hundreds of pennies for a backsplash, 20 old doors for a neat wall, 15 old buckets for a planter display, etc, etc. This is a design lesson.  If you don't have a lot of money to decorate, buy one inexpensive something and buy a lot of it (yellow mums, for example, or yards and yards of sheer curtains). I want to look around and see what abundant odd materials I have and make a design statement in that manner.  Ahem.  Toilet paper tubes.  Right.

I'm Never Scheduling Anything For the End of August Again

This is a note to myself:  the end of August and the beginning of September are full enough, do not add anything else that can possibly be avoided.

 1. Children start school. That means groggy adjustments to bedtime and morning rush, plus the previous weeks of figuring out what school things needed to be bought or made.

2. We have an anniversary to celebrate. Our mothers have birthdays.

 3. The tyranny of the produce is at its height. My preserving notebook has proved this over and over, and these red peppers were no exception. Rebecca called with a note of hilarious panic in her voice. Well, shoot, I want to eat pimento cheese in the dead of winter, so yes, Ben and I went at it. Bless his heart, he tried very hard to wash the jars like his big sister who was away at school.

 

Add to this a number of social and church obligations that I should have put off until other weeks, and it has been exhausting. I think, maybe, I'm on the other side now.

 

 

The wash is on the line, I've got yogurt to make and chicken breasts to poach (for this salad), and I'm hoping to pick up my repaired sewing machine today.

 

How to Replace Paper Towels with Rags

Keep the rags where you would keep paper towels, and then put the paper towels in a less-convenient place or get rid of the paper towels entirely.

Toss rags in with appropriately-colored wash loads; sometimes I quarantine extra-dirty rags with the diapers, or throw out rags used with grease, paint, or the like. I throw rags away without compunction. Every time I turn around, someone is wearing out a piece of clothing around here that I cut up for rags.  I do not fold or iron rags, or even bother to cut them very straight.

rags (and hearing protection!) on the washline

Make sure your family knows where the rags are, especially the children who probably make most of the spills anyway.  Teach them to hang wet rags over the side of the hamper so they don't mildew the other dirty laundry.

Here are the three places I keep rags at my house, all handy to the kitchen and dining room where most spills happen:

1.  In the pull-out just in front of my sink.  I do also keep some scrubbies in there, but this is the first place my kids look for a rag to mop up a spill.  The roll of paper towels is tucked away under the sink and they do have their uses: layering between berries and on plates of fried foods like bacon and fritters.  I also keep a paper towel in my shortening can, for greasing cast iron and baking pans.

2.  In the bathroom cabinet with the bathroom cleaning supplies.  It facilitates cleaning to have the supplies in the room where they are used.  We use newspaper when we clean the mirrors, not paper towels.

3.  The general catch-all for rags in the hallway closet.  After the other two places are supplied, any extra rags go here.  I also keep large rags like old towels and sheets in the back.  I use towels for big spills or to roll up hand-washed sweaters to speed up drying.

Tell me about rags and paper towels at your house.  What's your system?

The Best Way to Handle Family Napkins (at last!)

I have found it, people:  the perfect solution for keeping cloth napkins personalized for more than one meal!  It's easy for children to understand, fun to customize, easy to implement (you probably don't need to buy anything!), and above all, very very very cheap.

The clothespin.

I got the idea here, and while I admire the tags, the fact remains that I already have clothespins in my house and the children can handle them more easily than pins.

Andrea making the special Lebanese dumplings

I told the beach girls this genius idea, so that's what we did for the days we were together.

I have tried several solutions for our family napkins without breaking down and buying personalized metal napkin rings.  I'm tickled with this cheap, effective solution!

Dumplings in their yogurt sauce - I'll pass on the name and the recipe when I get it from Andrea.

Now I'm off to turn out the napkin drawer and get rid of the latest try for napkin rings, whose Sharpie-d initials have been rubbed off.  Pfff.  I've got clothespins now!

Another Patch on the Sleep Shorts

I caught my shorts again on the same cabinet pull.  But it was fun to find another scrap of the sherbet pillowcase and put on another patch.  It's not just crafting and decorating for pretty's sake, it's functional. 

the underside of the patches

In other news, we have shut all the windows and put in 2 window air conditioners.  The heat was just too much - when it comes down to it, family life comes before environmental concerns.  I justified the air conditioners for the stretches of 90-degree days that do not cool off at night (81 this morning at 5:30 am), not for the whole summer.  We have the air conditioners set at 83 degrees.  Rebecca said maybe the new normal is huddling inside in the scorching summer and emerging for outside activity in the mild winter.  My energy and mood are improving already.

Keeping House in 5-Minute Slots

Before kids, I had long stretches of time for projects. (What did I do with all of it?  What?). 

Now my time is broken into fragments with family life.  What works for me is to use the little time slots for little jobs, such as:
1.  Fill the Brita water filter in the fridge.
2.  Put away dishes that have air-dried in the drainer.
3.  Fold laundry.  I sort the clean clothes and put them in a basket in the appropriate bedroom, so this is a task that can be done piecemeal.
4.  Open mail, tossing unneeded stuff in the recycling bin in the hall.
5.  Fold and straighten the quilt and blanket on the sofas.
6.  Empty the kitchen compost bucket into the backyard composter.
7.  Remove receipts from my wallet, recording or recycling as needed.
8.  Shake the sand out of the rug by the back door and tidy up the shoe rack there.

Sometimes I have a hard time switching off the 5-minute-slot mentality, and I find myself frittering away a long stretch of time that could be used for a project.

What do you do with your 5-minute slots?

Packed

By the time you read this, I will be in the air, heading to a convention for work. 

I've left my family a full batch of yogurt, several loaves of bread in the freezer, and a gallon jar of granola.  Inasmuch as housekeeping is never really done, I folded all the laundry, caught up on the ironing, and vacuumed one more time.  I like to think of this as one way I love them, smoothing their way through the days a bit.  Sure, my husband can run the house and wrangle the kids and find dinner. . .but. . .

I'll be back at homelife soon.  I'm ready to show you our new rooms.

How I Keep Files and Don't Drown in Paper

1. I established an inbox and outbox. The inbox is on the desk.  The outbox is next to the front door so we can check it on the way out (we forget sometimes!). 

2. Once a week (currently Thursdays), I go through the inbox.  I know the popular maxim to only handle pieces of paper once, but I find that there are some that just need time to figure out what to do.  So I may look at it, ponder, and put it back in the inbox. 

3. Because I'm doing it weekly, my inbox only takes an hour or two to get through.  There are usually a few bills to pay and file. Three checkbooks to balance once a month.  There are appointments and phone calls to make.

4.  However, in February, I clean out last year's files, so that takes a few hours longer.

a.  I remove all of last year's bills from our 2-drawer filing cabinet (but leave any documents in the file that pertain to more than a calendar year).

b.  I put it all in envelopes, labeling them with the year and the number of envelopes.  I've found that the times we've needed a paper from an old year, it was not too hard to find the stack from the file.  Therefore, I don't separate and label each individual file.  Most of the time, information we need is on our tax papers.

c.  Then I stick the envelopes in filing boxes in a closet.  I keep 7 years, which is the minimum the IRS wants for an audit.  I shred older years.  Today I shredded 2003, and found my summer paystubs that solved the mystery of what year it was that I worked at the Amish museum.

d. Two files are permanent:  our major home renovation with plans, receipts, permits; the list and paperwork of our former tenants.

e.  Then I say to myself, "self, what treat would please you, as a reward for all this hard, adult work?"

5.  In March (it happened this week), I organize all our receipts and deductions that were accumulating in the file over the previous year for tax purposes - another hour or so of work.  Then my husband takes it from there.

What I did in my inbox this week:
A. entered children's dentist appointments in online calendar - recycled card
B. opened mail - recycled envelopes and junk mail, set bills in inbox
C. entered automatic payments for phone and electric in checkbook register - deleted notification emails
D. renewed car registration online, filed paperwork
E. made half-hearted inquiries into preschools for Ben
F. wrote a check for a charitable donation - mailed it
G. filed statement for retirement account

How do you handle the flow of paper/mail/filing in your house?