My standard resolution for, oh, 10 years or so has been “eat healthier and lose weight.” So far I’ve only stuck with that resolution for 1 out of 10 years. Pfft. I suck.

I’m not giving up on that resolution. Lord knows I have more weight than ever to lose this year. But starting last year, I decided to focus on other things, too. Things that are easier, more fun to accomplish, and will improve my life in other ways. Here’s what I want to accomplish in 2012.

Organize paper clutter.

I have complained about the mountains of paper that stack up around our house for years. I need to finally find a way to keep them organized, keep paper off the kitchen table, and keep it out of my way. I’m working on an organizing station, and I’ll let you know what we come up with.

Start crossing off to-dos around the house.

It’s been over 6 months since we moved into our house, and we haven’t really done anything meaningful to make it our own. We haven’t painted, we haven’t begun any of the projects we’ve talked about doing, and we haven’t even hung anything on the walls yet (I know, it’s terrible). I’m not a good decorator, but I love this house, and I want to make it even better.

Get strong.

I’ve been attending a strength-training class at my gym three times a week, and I have really enjoyed it so far. I’ve never done any strength training before, so I want to stick with it this year so I can get stronger, feel better, and change my body. We’ll see what happens!

What are your New Year’s resolutions for 2012?

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I am embarrassed to admit that our son is almost a year old, and we’ve put this off until now, but right now we’ve begun the process of reevaluating our life insurance needs and writing our wills. Ugh, it’s the worst.

The truth is, applying for life insurance is a complicated process, and every time I sit down to actually do it, I start feeling overwhelmed and I hate the feeling I get in my stomach when I think about a situation where we’d actually need this life insurance and I decide to put it off for a little longer. I realize this isn’t a grown up way to handle the subject, but I imagine I’m not the only grown up who feels this way, so I’m admitting it now. If you’re feeling this way, too, I’ll tell you what I told myself: it’s better to get it over with, and then forget about it and hope that you never need it.

So. The big question: How much insurance do we need? For Tony, we’ll need a considerably higher amount of insurance since he is the primary earner. Tony already has a policy provided by his employer that equals two years’ salary. That’s certainly a start, and if we didn’t own a home or have a child, it would probably be enough for us. But in the event of the unthinkable, we want to pay off the mortgage, pay our remaining student loan debt, and provide enough income for me that I can continue to stay home with Judah and any future children until they’re teenagers.

For me, our needs are less. We’d basically want to pay off the house and remaining debt in the event of my untimely demise. We’ve chosen not to include education needs for children in our life insurance estimates at this time. We really just want to cover immediate needs. We may choose to increase our coverage later, but for now we think our money is better spent on accumulating savings and paying off debt rather than paying a high premium for a million-dollar life insurance policy.

Unfortunately, Tony has a pretty extensive family history of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. I have heart disease in my family tree, too. So our premiums may be higher than people without these family histories.

This calculator from the nonprofit LIFE Foundation is a handy way to calculate your life insurance needs from an unbiased source. Insurance salespeople earn commission on most policies, so you might want to determine your needs before talking with a sales agent.

I’m contacting a few sales agents this week for quotes, and I’m going to determine what we need to do to get the ball rolling. I’m assuming the most annoying part of the process will be medical exams to determine our current health.

As for our wills, our needs are very simple. Since we don’t have a lot of assets at this point in our lives — mostly just a relatively small amount of cash savings, two tiny retirement accounts, and a house with a big old mortgage — our most pressing concern in writing a will is who will take care of Judah if both of us were to die.

I’m looking into alternatives to hiring an attorney right now. A service like LegalZoom may be sufficient for us at this time since our will is going to be simple. I’d appreciate any experiences you can share about that service as I determine if it makes sense to go the super budget route or pay a couple hundred to an attorney.

I’m not going to lie, I feel a little sick just thinking about this stuff, but grown ups have to think about yucky stuff sometimes, so I’m sucking it up. I sure hope we never need to use ‘em.

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I’ve raved about inexpensive prefold diapers in the past, and I still think they’re a great entry into cloth diapering. They don’t require a huge financial investment, they’re easy to use, durable, and a snap to keep clean.

However. As many of you seasoned cloth diapering moms warned me, prefolds have become cumbersome as Judah is getting more mobile. I don’t think they’re interfering with his ability to move around (obviously), but I do wonder if they’re as comfortable for him now that he’s moving. And let’s be honest, wrestling a mobile baby into a prefold, Snappi, and cover while he twists and turns and moves is a lot harder than snapping him into a single diaper.

One other slightly TMI confession: I am not as wild about cloth diapers since we introduced solids. Prefolds were simple for an exclusively breastfed baby. Now not so much. I’ve tested some of the pockets I already have on hand, and I was amazed at how much easier it was to deal with solid waste with the fancy microfleece lining compared to the cotton prefolds that are folded to fit him. Let’s just say all those folds and creases make it a lot harder to dispose of the waste before washing. Moving on.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from prefold diapers. They have worked fabulously for me, and I will continue to keep them on hand and probably continue to use them under certain circumstances. I don’t regret buying them. I didn’t want to invest hundreds of dollars into a cloth diaper stash before I knew if it would work for us, and the initial investment to use pocket diapers full-time for a newborn who needs 10-12 diapers changes a day was just too much for me.

I’m just starting to wonder if I should add a few more pocket diapers to my stash to make things a little easier on all of us (and future babysitters). Now that we’re past the newborn phase of 12 diapers a day, I could probably make a dozen diapers last two days, especially if I had some prefolds on hand to fill in the gaps if he needs a few extra diaper changes on some days.

I have a BumGenius 4.0, a FuzziBunz Hemp Organic, a BumGenius all-in-one, and a SmartiPants pocket diaper. I like all of the pocket diapers a lot, but I haven’t used them enough to develop a preference.

I wanted to get opinions from my cloth diapering readers: do you have a preference for a certain pocket diaper? Which works best for toddlers? Judah is slim and small for his age (10th percentile for weight, 50th for height at his last appointment three months ago), so I suspect he will stay that way for the foreseeable future. He’s probably around 18 pounds now, so I don’t think fit will be a problem for a while. We hope to use cloth until he potty trains, so I want to make sure they diapers I buy now will fit a 3-year-old if necessary.

I like the idea of FuzziBunz hemp diapers, because they’re made from organic, natural materials. But they’re more expensive. I’ve also developed some brand loyalty toward Cotton Babies products. My favorite covers are Flips and Econobums, so I’m thinking I’ll be just as happy with the BumGenius. So I’m torn. Tell me what you think!

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3. How much money do I “earn” by living frugally?

All-natural, organic whole food is all the rage these days. If you’re introducing your baby to solid foods, you’ve probably wondered how you can avoid feeding him pricey, pre-packaged, preservative-laden baby food. Well, I’m going to tell you.

Here’s what you need:

• Fresh, organic fruits and vegetables
• A food processor, food mill, or blender to puree them

That’s seriously it.

The best thing about making your own baby food is that there is no tutorial necessary. There’s nothing to learn. If you can buy produce and puree it, then you can make baby food.

Of course, some foods are just a little more complicated. If you want to feed your baby something that easily oxidizes, like apple or banana, you’ll want to add a little vitamin C to the mix so you can freeze or refrigerate some. If you don’t want to mess with all of that, you can do what I do: cut the banana or apple in half, puree one half for baby, and eat the other half or serve it to an older child immediately. That way you’re not wasting any of it, but you don’t have to store it.

Judah hasn’t tried many foods yet. We’ve given him bananas, apples, carrots, and mangoes. We steamed the carrots before pureeing them, but the apple, banana, and mango were served raw. We tried to freeze half a pureed apple, but without vitamin C, the brown gook that we thawed was pretty inedible. Steamed carrots and fresh mango didn’t look or taste any different after thawing.

In addition to being healthier for baby, homemade baby food will save you a ton of money. At $1 or $1.25 each for two 4-ounce jars of organic baby food, it may not seem like you’re spending a lot. But when you consider the fact that you’re paying a whole dollar for a small amount of processed produce, it’s a lot more expensive than you think. Not to mention the environmental effects of the packaging and shipping.

We can get four 4-ounce jars of baby food out of one organic mango for $1.50. That’s 37 cents per jar. Organic mango is one of the fancier, more expensive foods. Organic bananas usually sell for around 69 cents a pound at my grocery store. A rough estimate is about 25 cents per banana. I feed half the banana to Judah and eat the other half, so 4 ounces of homemade mashed banana costs about 12 cents. Apples and carrots cost about a quarter per serving. Based on these very rough estimates, you can cut your baby food costs by 50 to 80 percent.

You can save even more (and be greener) by growing the food in your garden. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to plant my garden this year, but my next baby will eat organic produce from my own backyard.

If you plan to make large quantities of baby food, buy some small mason jars or Tupperware containers. Freezing or refrigerating excess will make homemade baby food almost as convenient as the store bought stuff. To thaw frozen baby food, put it in the microwave for a minute or so. Be sure to stir the puree well and test the temperature for “hot spots” caused by the microwave before serving to baby.

If you’re like me and you don’t have a microwave, put the jar of frozen baby food into a bowl with hot water and place a coffee mug on top to keep it from floating. Leave it on the counter for 10 minutes. If there’s still a frozen chunk in the middle 10 minutes later, stir the puree, refill the bowl with more hot water, and leave it for another 10 minutes. If you just want to warm up refrigerated food, it will obviously take much less time.

I found a lot of great ideas and instructions on this wholesome baby food site. But honestly, once you get the hang of it, it’s as easy as perusing the organic produce section at your grocery store, buying whatever looks good that week, and buzzing it up in the food processor. No further instructions necessary.

What are your baby’s favorite homemade baby foods?

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I grew up in northern Indiana, where tornado warnings rarely mean business. Tornadoes touched down in our area a handful of times when I lived there, but they were always weak storms that caused superficial damage at most.

Now we’re living in southern Indiana, which is on the outer rim of tornado alley. The deadly storms in the south and Midwest over the last few weeks have served as a wakeup call for me. I’m taking severe weather warnings a lot more seriously these days.

Several weeks ago, before we moved into the house, we were living in a second floor apartment during some pretty severe storms. It was thundering and raining hard and the wind was heavy. The power went out. We weren’t really sure what to do or whether the situation was severe enough to warrant taking cover somewhere other than our second floor apartment.

We decided to stay awake, hang tight, and take cover if things seemed to get worse outside.

The next morning, we awoke to the news that a weak tornado had touched down just blocks from our apartment. It damaged some houses, knocked out some power lines, and downed trees. Thankfully, because the storm was weak, no one was hurt and no serious property damage was caused. But I felt uneasy knowing that a tornado had been so close, and we had no idea.

Our situation is a little safer now that we live in a one-story brick house, but I want to be sure we can keep up with weather alerts, especially if the power goes out or a storm hits in the middle of the night.

I did some searching for solutions, and last night I downloaded an app for my smart phone that works like a weather radio. It will buzz and notify me if severe warnings have been issued for my area. Because it doesn’t depend on my home Internet connection, I’ll receive alerts even in a power outage as long as my phone is charged. The updates come directly from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

At $3.99, the iPhone version is a good value for the money considering the fact that weather radios cost anywhere from $30 – $100. You can download the iPhone version here.

This particularly dangerous storm season isn’t over yet. Please stay safe, and be aware of alerts in your area, whether you use a smart phone, traditional weather radio, or local news reports.

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I’ve made no secret about my struggles with anxiety. I worry. Constantly.

Less than two weeks after moving into our new home, and I’ve come to the conclusion that homeownership, while wonderful, has extended my list of worries by about a mile.

At the top of my list? A MOUSE. In my kitchen. At least one, probably more, likely living behind the dishwasher. Tony came face to face with it last night before it scampered under the counter behind the dishwasher.

After the mouse encounter, I seriously considered packing up and moving in the middle of the night like the family in “The Amityville Horror.” Because seriously. IT WAS A MOUSE.

So far it’s been suggested that we get a cat or set up traps. But the idea of finding dead mice freaks me out way more than a live mouse. I mean, I used to have hamsters when I was a kid. This is no different, right? Except he feeds himself. And doesn’t require a cage.

I’m not sure a cat would help anyway. My parents live in front of a corn field, and they used to get field mice in the basement in the fall when the weather started turning colder. We had a cat — a very lazy cat who didn’t seem to mind the mice. In fact, my bedroom was in the basement, and I distinctly remember waking up to see a mouse getting into the cat’s dish while the cat lazily slept next to me.

I like the alternative even less. A cat who actually hunts mice? When I was a kid, I had a neighbor whose cat was a skilled mouse hunter. It wasn’t uncommon to find a random mouse head on the porch. No thanks.

Not to mention, my husband is deathly allergic to felines, and it stands to reason that our son will be, too.

I don’t suppose there’s any magical, humane solution, is there? Because I was just kidding about letting the thing roam my kitchen as a pet.

Please, help, Internet! I don’t want to move again. But I also don’t want a mouse for a roommate.

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Let me start this by saying I would never condone risking the health of yourself or anyone in your family to save money, no matter what the cost. My family’s health is our top priority, and we will spend whatever is necessary to keep all of us well.

That said, emergency room visits are outrageous. Even with good insurance, our copay is $200 for an ER visit. If we were uninsured or paying 100% out of pocket until we hit our deductible, a single trip to the ER for something simple could easily cost over $1000. Not to mention, you’ll often sit in the waiting room for hours. Before spending that kind of time and money, you need to know that the injury really does warrant a trip to the emergency room.

Last Friday while packing some glasses, Tony accidentally broke a glass in his hand, and it cut him. It was deeper than the average “put a Bandaid on it” cut, but it didn’t look deep enough to require stitches. Again, if I really thought he was seriously injured, I wouldn’t have questioned taking him to the hospital. But we just didn’t know.

Judah was already in bed, and we were in the middle of packing and moving. The last thing either one of us wanted was to sit in an ER for hours for him to be bandaged up and sent home.

Both of our moms are nurses, so I put a call in to each of them. The consensus seemed to be that based on where the cut was on his hand and the fact that it wasn’t terribly deep, he would probably be okay with some butterfly bandages.

I’d never done anything like this, and I was incredibly nervous. The last thing I wanted to do was screw it up. My husband is better at this sort of thing than me, but he couldn’t do it one handed, so it had to be me. We put pressure on it with a clean towel, and he sat with his hand elevated for about 30 minutes to stop the bleeding. We cleaned it well, applied the butterfly bandages, and put Bandaids over it to keep it clean.

I think the bandages could have been applied better by someone with more experience, but it seemed to be good enough, because a week later it’s healing well. He will probably have a scar, because I didn’t get the butterfly bandages quite tight enough. But because of where it is on his hand, it won’t be easily visibly.

Would they have given him stitches? Maybe. Now that it’s healed, it looks a bit deeper than we thought. But it seems that in most cases, the only reason a clean cut with no jagged edges or increased risk of infection would need stitches is to stop bleeding or minimize scarring. If you can get the bleeding to stop and it’s not in a place where a scar would be noticeable, a butterfly bandage will fix the problem most of the time. If you’re skilled at applying butterfly bandages, scarring can sometimes even be reduced with a butterfly bandage because there are no jagged Frankenstein lines from the stitches.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I need to take a first aid class. Part of our problem is that we were clueless. We could tell the wound wasn’t too bad, but we still weren’t sure if stitches were necessary. I can see how that doubt and fear would be even greater if the wound had been on our young son.

I’m sure we’ll encounter many bumps and cuts as Judah gets older. I want to know more about first aid not only so I can know whether professional medical care is required, but so I can provide him with basic first aid instead of rushing to the ER for every little thing.

When I was a kid, my dad was excellent at patching us up. He was an expert butterfly bandager. When I was 7, I busted my chin on the side of a dresser when he was out of town on a business trip. He later said he probably wouldn’t have bandaged it himself, because the chin is such a tough place to heal without stitches. My mom rushed me to the ER. We waited forever, and I was panicked and scared after my sister jokingly told me they were going to stitch me up under a sewing machine. She was trying to make a joke, but I took it literally, and I was terrified.

I think in most cases, getting first aid treatment from a parent at home is less traumatic and scary for a kid than a visit to the hospital. If I can learn to provide that basic care for Judah myself, we can avoid putting him through a traumatic ER visit unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Learning first aid can also prepare you to provide first treatment for serious issues that require professional medical care. Driving to the hospital or waiting for an ambulance takes time, and it’s important to be able to take the right steps immediately after an injury.

I’m looking into first aid classes now. Even if we pay a good chunk of change to learn these skills, I think it’s valuable beyond the money we’ll save in ER visits.

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Ever since I started living frugally, one of the areas of my budget that continually leaves me feeling guilty is groceries. My husband is the cook, and he has extremely expensive tastes when it comes to cooking. I gave up trying to convince him to live on a beans and rice diet to save money a long time ago. To be honest, the idea of eating as cheaply as possible doesn’t appeal to me much, either. I absolutely admire those families who can feed four people for $50 a week, but we’re never going to be one of them. (We average about $60-$70 per week for the two of us. Judah doesn’t count yet.)

That doesn’t mean we’ve given up on saving money at the grocery store, though. We’re always finding little ways to cut costs without sacrificing the quality of our menus. Here are a few of the ways we do it.

Split chicken breasts

We cook with chicken a lot, because it’s versatile, healthy, and relatively inexpensive. We try to buy chicken breasts when they’re on sale, and stock up. A big way to cut costs on chicken breasts is to buy split, bone-in chicken breasts instead of boneless skinless chicken breasts. They require a little extra prep work, but they typically cost half as much as boneless skinless chicken breasts, so it’s worth the effort. Bonus: you can use the bones in homemade chicken stock.

Homemade chicken stock

At $3-$4 a quart, packaged chicken stock is one of the biggest rip-offs in the grocery store. For the cost of a bunch of celery, a bunch of carrots, an onion, some garlic, and discarded chicken bones, you can make gallons of the stuff. Just put aside the bones from split chicken breasts or the carcass of a whole roasted chicken. We keep them in a plastic storage container in the freezer until we’re ready to make stock. We make a few gallons every other month or so, and freeze them in 1-quart storage containers for later use. It is time-consuming, but not labor intensive. Just make sure you start in the morning on a day when you’ll be hanging out at home so you can keep an eye on it and skim it every so often. You can find our recipe for homemade chicken stock here.

Frozen vegetables

In the summertime, fresh vegetables are cheap and plentiful. This isn’t the case in the winter. You’ll pay a fortune for fresh vegetables that have been trucked from across the country. It’s bad for the environment, and they’re typically poor quality anyway. When vegetables aren’t in season, we buy frozen. They’re not mushy like canned vegetables, and freezing generally leaves most nutrients intact. Broccoli, corn, peas, spinach, cauliflower, and carrots are all delicious.

Spinach

Salads are a great way to sneak green vegetables into your diet, but Romaine is also one of the most expensive things per pound at the grocery store. Instead of paying for Romaine, we typically buy spinach instead. Unlike nutritionally void iceberg lettuce, spinach is full of vitamins and nutrients. It’s cheaper than Romaine, though. To save even more money, you can blend spinach and iceberg for a full salad that’s still nutrient rich. We also use spinach instead of pricey fresh basil for a milder version of pesto.

Tea

Water is the cheapest, healthiest beverage you can drink (especially if you filter it yourself instead of purchasing bottled water). If you want a little flavor, though, tea is an excellent frugal alternative to expensive coffee or soda. It costs pennies per gallon. For a little extra flavor, you can add some sugar or (my favorite) fresh lemon juice.

What are your favorite simple switches to cut grocery costs?

Photo by B tal

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I like to think I’m a pretty intelligent lady. And I know I’m cautious. Especially when it comes to my 3-month-old bundle of adorable, Mr. Judah Michael.

I read manuals. I always follow instructions. I take the rules very. seriously.

So when I installed Judah’s car seat back in November, and I couldn’t find a location in my area that did child safety seat inspections, I was extra careful. I followed all the instructions. I read the warnings and the rules. I felt pretty confident that Judah was safe and snug back there despite the fact that I didn’t get an expert to look things over. The seat we chose was super easy to install, and I didn’t think it was possible to screw it up too much.

When we installed his car seat base in our new car Tuesday, we were pretty frustrated with the thing. Judah’s seat has a handy level indicator built in. You know the seat is level when the bubbles line up between the little lines — like the level keychain everyone’s dad has on his keyring that he never uses, because seriously, how often do you need to level something? Unless you’re a carpenter. Or a professional picture frame hanger. In which case, you probably level things all the time. But I digress.

Anyway, we couldn’t get the bubbles to line up in the right place, and I was fairly certain it wasn’t installed correctly, so I made an appointment today and headed over to AAA, where car safety seat inspections are performed for free.

I discovered the leveling problem was one of many.

She showed me adjustments that I didn’t even know existed on the seat. She informed me that the seat belt securing it in place was WAY too loose. She adjusted the straps securing him, because they were a bit too slack. She reminded me of the dangers of unsecured debris in the car (this wasn’t a problem in my case, because my brand new car was free of any debris, but I know I’ve been guilty of this in the past.) In short, I got schooled on car seat safety.

All of this is to say: Even if you think you’ve been as cautious as possible, even if you followed every direction in your instruction manual, it’s worth it to make an appointment with a car seat safety inspector in your area to double check.

I know what you’re thinking. “Pfft. How hard can it be? This dummy just didn’t read the instructions.”

But guess what? 3 out of 4 safety seats are installed or buckled incorrectly. And the other 1 out of 4 people probably took the thing to an expert for inspection. Because I am telling you, I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. I have never willfully disregarded a warning in a manual ever in my life. And I still screwed up my car seat installation.

Don’t be stubborn. Just go get it checked out. It takes 15 minutes, and it’s totally worth it.

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It’s so overwhelming to consider cutting an entire food group out of my diet.

I was already struggling to meet my daily calcium requirements, especially as a nursing mother. This is just going to make things that much harder. Not to mention, I love cheese, you guys. Like seriously love cheese.  This dairy-free thing is going to take some serious commitment, and it’s going to be challenging. I never thought I’d voluntarily give up gouda. Oh, the things we do for our children.

To make things easier on myself, I’ve compiled some resources — many of them shared by my lovely friends and readers and some of them discovered through my own research.

It seems this dairy-free thing is quite common these days, and lots of women have been in my situation with a nursing infant who has a dairy intolerance. If anyone else is able to feel a little less overwhelmed at the idea of a dairy-free diet through these resources then all the better.

First and foremost, I found this list of non-dairy calcium sources to be incredibly helpful. Without milk, cheese, and yogurt, meeting your daily calcium requirement is a little more challenging, but it can be done! And don’t forget to take a daily calcium supplement just to cover your bases.

Kelly Mom also shares some tips on meeting your daily calcium requirements without dairy.

This list of vegan baking substitutions offers suggestions for what to use in place of milk and other dairy products in recipes.

I was absolutely thrilled when I discovered that one of my favorite recipe sites, All Recipes, has a special section for dairy-free recipes. Their search engine makes it easy find dairy-free recipes with ingredients you have on hand, and user reviews make it easy to find meals that actually taste good.

This handy cheat sheet outlines “hidden dairy” ingredients (pdf) that you should avoid on a dairy-free diet (it’s not as simple as avoiding foods with “milk” and “cheese” in the ingredients list.

There’s even a dairy-free diet page at About.com, which is a good place to find the basics if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

After several hours of research, I’m not feeling quite so overwhelmed anymore. I’m even somewhat excited at the prospect of coming up with new meal ideas to fit our new dairy-free lifestyle. I won’t lie; life without cheese and chocolate and the occasional decaf non-fat no-whip mocha will be a struggle, and I’m not convinced that almond milk and rice ice cream will satisfy my dairy cravings. But it’s temporary and it’s best for my baby. So I shall carry on.

All I have to say is, I better start losing this baby weight quick if I’m giving up ice cream, cheese, and chocolate, or I’ll be writing angry letters to the Weight Loss Fairies.

Photo by amuckin77

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