Author Archives: Karen

Simplify your work-at-home life

This post will speak to a limited part of my audience, I know. But when I began working from home almost two years ago (seriously? has it been that long?), I made a lot of mistakes. It would have been nice to have some tips and advice from someone who had worked through all the challenges.

I have it much easier than many work-at-home parents. I don’t earn a full-time income. I earn money through advertising on this blog, and beginning in March, I will earn money as an adjunct instructor at the local college. Only four hours a week will be spent in the classroom; all of my class prep, grading, and other duties will be performed from home. While I can’t speak to the challenges of working full-time from home, I can share what’s worked for me when it comes to keeping work and home life separate when your home is your office.

Set boundaries.

When your desk is just a room or two away from your bed, it can be difficult to set limits on your work schedule. It’s easy to feel like you should be working all the time, and feel guilty doing anything that won’t contribute to your income. However, when you work from home, it’s more important than ever to create a schedule and stick to it. Carve out times for work, family life, household chores, and downtime.

I’m serious about the downtime.

Several months into my work-at-home career, I started to feel seriously burned out. Part of it was that I was caring for a newborn, but a lot of it was that I felt like I had to be on-call 24/7. I was checking my email day and night. I was staying up until all hours working on projects, caring for my son whenever he was awake, taking care of things around the house when he napped, and not taking a single second to just be. That kind of breakneck work schedule just isn’t sustainable, but it’s easy to fall into that kind of schedule when you work from home. Because you don’t have set “office hours,” it’s easy to feel like you have to work all the time. Be sure to schedule time off for yourself. At least a few hours a week should be spent doing something for yourself. Watch a movie. Take a walk. Get a hobby (and no, work doesn’t count as a hobby). Don’t feel like you have to be tied to your email all the time. You’ll return to your work feeling refreshed and more productive after you take a break.

Put yourself in “work mode.”

Just as it can be difficult to remember to schedule downtime for yourself, it can also be difficult to focus with home distractions. Television, kids, spouses, chores, personal phone calls, that bottle of red wine you’re supposed to be saving for the weekend but you really want to drink right now — all of these things can create distractions that make working at home challenging. The best way to combat this is to separate work from home as much as possible.

Ideally, you have some sort of space that functions as your “office.” Even if it’s just a desk in the guest room, when you sit down in your office space, you know it’s work time. Set specific “office hours” when you plan to be productive in your office space. Turn your phone on silent just like you would at the office. Turn off the television. Plan to work during a time when your children are napping, playing, attending school, or when your spouse can manage their needs. The freedom of working from home makes it easier to plan for productivity, because you can plan around your own circadian rhythm. If you’re a night owl, work late. If you’re an early bird, get to work at dawn.

Get out of the house.

I am not ashamed to admit that between taking care of my son, working, and keeping house, sometimes (especially now that it’s cold) I easily go through an entire day without setting foot outside. This isn’t good for me or my son’s sanity. As a rule, I try to get dressed in the morning (even though it’s usually jeans and a t-shirt), and get out of the house at least once a day. When the weather is nice, we went to the park. Now we go to the gym or the library or run some errands. If home is particularly distracting one day, head to Panera or Starbucks for a few hours. Even if you’re just getting out of the house to get out of the house, it’s important to feel like you’re a member of society sometimes.

Take a day (or two) off.

Unfortunately, one of the things you give up when you’re self-employed is paid vacations. But the nice thing about working from home is that you can work from anywhere. In a perfect world, you can afford to take time off for a vacation at least once a year, even if it means you’re answering emails on the beach. Even if you have to work on your vacation, one thing you shouldn’t compromise is a weekend. Most people don’t work 7 days a week, and neither should you. Take a real day off at least once a week. You may not be able to escape your inbox entirely, but you can spend time with your family, tackle personal projects, and recharge without feeling shackled to your desk.

How do you balance work/home life as a work-at-home parent?

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Simplify your menu

Menu planning is one of those things I take for granted now. For as long as Tony and I have been together, I have always sat down and written out meals for each day of the week, and then shopped based on that meal plan. It wasn’t always this way for me. In college, when I lived with a roommate and planned most of my meals for myself, I didn’t really plan at all. I went to the grocery store, picked up whatever looked good, spent way too much money for one person, and felt like I had nothing to eat two days later. I don’t even remember what that’s like now, but it sounds like chaos!

Even if you’re single, menu planning is crucial if you want to eat healthy and frugally. Poor planning is one of the main reasons people end up spending money on unhealthy food at a drive-thru in the middle of the week. Either that, or you end up like me in college with a cart full of expensive food and “nothing to eat.”

There is most certainly room in the menu plan for eating out if you like, but the point is to plan for it. Know when you’re eating at home, what you’re eating, and when you want to go out for dinner.

Here’s my simple menu planning system. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments!

Start with the sale ad for your local grocery stores.

If you get a Sunday paper, chances are the ads are included. If not, check the grocery store’s website. Our local stores are Kroger and Meijer, and both stores offer easy online access to their weekly sales ads. I pull them up and look for deals that pop out at me and inspire menu ideas. Meats, cheeses, and produce items can all inspire menu ideas. If beef is on sale, I’ll make spaghetti with meat sauce. If chicken is on sale, I plan for chicken dishes and stock up my freezer. If cheese is on sale, it’s homemade mac and cheese or broccoli cheddar soup. Not only does buying what’s on sale save money, but it can make coming up with meal ideas easier if you’re inspired by the sale items.

Plan around your weekly schedule.

I always keep my weekly schedule handy when I’m planning meals for the week. If it’s going to be a busy day, I plan an easy meal. For laid back days, I may plan to try something new and a little more complex. This also prevents me from planning a meal for a night that we have dinner plans. If your menu works with your schedule, you’re more likely to stick to it instead of abandoning the plan for pizza.

Keep a list of tried and true favorites.

Even though there are some dishes we’ve been cooking forever, I always seem to get a form of writer’s block when it’s time to plan the menu. To combat this, I keep a list of our favorite dishes saved on my computer with links to the recipes. Some simple meals get repeated a lot (homemade pizza, burritos, roasted chicken, and grilled cheese sandwiches, for example). Some are reserved only for special occasions (like my mom’s delicious but labor-intensive lasagna). Keeping the list handy makes it easy for me to write a quick and dirty menu if need be.

The Internet is your best friend.

I am not exaggerating when I say that every time I plan a menu, I marvel at how people did this before the Internet. I guess that’s what all those cookbooks collecting dust on my bookshelf were for? Sites like AllRecipes, Food Network, and Pinterest make it incredibly easy for me to search for meal ideas and try new things.

I must confess that Pinterest (follow me here) has replaced all other recipe sites for me in the past few months, though. I have separate boards for Main Dishes, Crock Pot Meals, Side Dishes, Snacks, and Desserts. Every time I see something that looks good, I pin it on the appropriate board. I also pin recipes I see around the web on my own boards. When I’m looking for ideas, I just have to scroll through the Main Dishes board.

A word of advice: I see lots of people splitting their food boards into incredibly specific categories — soups, sandwiches, entrees, etc. I don’t recommend doing it that way. One board with all of your dinner ideas makes it easier to scroll through without clicking around to several different boards and looking for what you need.

Share the menu with the whole family.

Since my husband and I are currently the only family members who get a vote, I always email the menu to my husband right after I finish planning it. I also write it on a dry erase board that hangs in our kitchen for easy reference. This may seem redundant, but you would be amazed how often we completely forget the menu we just planned within minutes of returning from the grocery store. Displaying the menu lets everyone know what you’re eating and when, and serves as a reminder when you need to thaw the meat or begin preparing dinner earlier for more complex meals.

When all else fails, eat leftovers.

If money is tight or you’re struggling to come up with a meal, leftovers night is a great way to clean out the fridge without emptying your wallet (heh, see what I did there?). Let’s be real, though: leftovers night is also a great excuse to order a pizza.

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Simplify your money

At the start of the year, my friend Kacie inspired me to explore new options for simplifying our finances and bill pay process. I’m still working out some of the details for these new systems, but I’m going to share them with you here, in addition to the systems we already have in place for simplifying. Be sure to share your ideas in the comments!

Go paperless.

If you haven’t done it already, chances are you think about it every time you open a paper statement and see the words, “Go paperless now!” My advice is to just get it done. To keep a record of statements, open the electronic version when it becomes available and save it as a PDF on your computer. You’ll feel better without all that paper mail bogging you down, and it will simplify your filing system, too.

Automate your budget.

Rather than manually tracking expenses in a spreadsheet or on paper, sign up for a service like Mint.com. Mint will automatically track and categorize your spending. With very little management, you can see a complete picture of your spending and budget categories as well as charts showing you whether you’re on track for meeting your monthly budget limits.

Automate your bills.

Kacie has been working on this herself, and it inspired me to figure out a system that works for us. Right now, I navigate to each bill’s website and pay each bill online individually. I like the immediacy of paying online through the site, because I receive a confirmation immediately, and then it’s done.

I don’t like automatic electronic funds transfer, because it basically gives the payee unlimited access to your account forever. (I learned this the hard way when our previous health insurance company continued debiting our account for 4 months after we canceled the policy despite the fact that I elected to stop automatic debit months before we canceled. I eventually had to file a fraud claim with my bank and have them blocked from my account, at which point they sent us a letter notifying us that they were canceling the policy due to nonpayment. PFFT. FINALLY.)

Check with your bank to see how their automatic bill pay system works. Setting up each individual payee will be a pain the first time, but then it’s done and you can pay each bill through your bank’s website with a single click.

Split your paycheck to even out pay periods.

My husband is paid twice a month — on the 15th and on the last business day of the month. I try to balance our bills so that we’re paying about the same amount in fixed bills from each check, but our mortgage payment really throws that off. If we were extremely disciplined, this wouldn’t be an issue. We could just leave the surplus from the other check alone, and use it in the next pay period. Unfortunately, that’s not usually what happens. What happens is we see that surplus in the first check, and we overspend for the first two weeks of the month. Then at the end of the month after the bills clear, things are really tight until the next pay day. It’s annoying.

Kacie came up with an idea that will remedy this problem, and I’m going to give it a try myself. She decided to add up all of her fixed bills (mortgage, utilities, etc.), and have half that amount deposited from each paycheck into a separate “bill pay” checking account. The remainder of each check will be deposited into a different account for daily expenses like gas, groceries, and other purchases.

For example, to make things simple, let’s say you earn $2000 a month. Your fixed expenses total $1500. Everything else is $500 a month. After paying your fixed bills, you have $400 left out of the first check and only $100 left out of the second check. Under Kacie’s system, you would deposit $750 from each check into the bill pay account and $250 into the daily expenses account. Now you have an equal amount for daily expenses each month, and your fixed bills are covered no matter when you pay them.

It might sound complicated, but I like the simplicity of having the same amount for expenses in each pay period. The symmetry will make budgeting much easier.

Pay the bills on pay day.

To combat the confusion of tracking a million different due dates, pay bills just twice (or once) a month. Every pay day, I go through and pay all the bills that are going to be due in the next two weeks. I have a list that I work from, so I know around what time the bills will be due even if the actual date fluctuates by a day or two. Once I pay all the fixed bills, I know that whatever is left in the account is available for day-to-day expenses.

How do you keep your finances simple?

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Simplify your household

I always planned to be a stay-at-home mom for the early years of my childrens’ lives. Back when I worked 9 to 5, I remember looking forward to all the downtime I thought I’d have once we had kids. After all, if I was able to manage all of our household tasks in the evenings and weekends when I worked 40 hours a week, how much time would managing a household take when I wasn’t working full-time?

I’m sure all of you find this very funny. I know I do. Because I was so wrong.

I don’t know how such a tiny person complicates things so much, but it seems like my itty bitty 1-year-old son has tripled my housework. Or at least tripled the amount of time it takes to get things done. We have more laundry, more dishes, more things to do during the day, and less time to get them done. I have to squeeze housework in between his naps and after he’s in bed, but it can be so hard to stay on top of things when I all I want to do when he falls asleep is crash myself, or finish work I need to do, or read that book that’s been staring at me from my bedside table, or sew something.

After Judah was born, there were a few glorious weeks when I parked my butt on the couch with my baby in my arms and didn’t worry about the housework. I realize that is probably the last time my butt will be parked anywhere for a long long time. Now I’m all about getting the housework done as quickly and efficiently as possible so there’s more time to chase him and possibly a little downtime for myself when he finally goes to sleep.

Here are some of the ways I’ve simplified my long list of household chores.

Cleaning

I quickly tidy the house three times a day — once during Judah’s morning nap, once during his afternoon nap, and once after he’s in bed. This tidying takes roughly 5 minutes. I whirl through the house picking up things that are out of place, and putting them where they belong. Dishes into the sink, random dirty laundry into the hampers, paper thrown into the recycling bin or neatly stacked, shoes lined up next to the door or put away in the closet. I also sweep around Judah’s high chair as soon as I get a chance after he eats, because those crumbs drive me bonkers. This keeps me sane throughout the day, because I don’t feel constantly surrounded by clutter. Also, keeping everything relatively tidy throughout the week makes deep cleaning much less time consuming.

At least once a week, I clean the house. Usually when Tony is home either in the afternoon or on the weekend, I let him take Judah into his room for some playtime so I can get the house clean as quickly as possible. I start on one end of the house, and work my way through each room. This is when I scrub the bathrooms, clean the floors, dust, and disinfect.

Thanks to this tidy every day, clean once a week system, our house never looks like a tornado hit it. Clutter doesn’t build up, and the house looks pretty presentable throughout the week.

Laundry

I am continually amazed at how much laundry there is now that we have a toddler in the house. When Judah was a baby, I didn’t think keeping up with the laundry was so bad. But now that he’s feeding himself and getting so messy, it seems like I’m changing his clothes two or three times a day and constantly washing everything.

Because I like to check things off my to-do list instead of keeping a revolving list, I don’t do laundry every day. I prefer to wash everything once a week or so. I do all of it in one day in the winter when I’m using the dryer. In the summer, I line dry the laundry, so I usually split it up into two days so there’s enough room on the lines.

I have three hampers in the house — one in the closet in the master bedroom, one in Judah’s room, and one in the laundry room where I throw miscellaneous laundry that I pick up around the house during my daily tidying sessions. Because I tidy every day, all of the laundry is condensed to these three spots, so I don’t have to run around hunting for dirty laundry. I dump all of it out on the floor and separate it into whites, colors, towels/linens, and jeans. I put each load into one of the laundry baskets and carry them all into the laundry room. Depending on how much laundry we have, the colors and whites are sometimes double loads.

When a load is dry, I fold it as soon as I can. I hate folding and putting away laundry, so I’d rather get it done in small chunks throughout the day than sit and fold everything for an hour. I separate and stack the folded clothes by person and by drawer. Tony’s sweaters in one pile, Tony’s t-shirts in another pile, my t-shirts, Judah’s pajamas, etc. I stack them in the laundry basket in order so I’m not running back and forth putting things away. I stop in each room once, put the laundry in the proper place, and move on.

I love the feeling of folding and putting away that last load of laundry knowing that I won’t need to worry about laundry again for another week.

Dishes

I used to be a firm believer in putting a dish into the dishwasher as soon as you were finished with it. Now I’m lucky if I have time to feed myself during the day, and half the time when I put a dish into the sink, I’m holding Judah with my other arm. I still don’t like to let dishes pile too high, though. It makes the whole kitchen seem cluttered when there’s a huge pile of dishes in the sink, not to mention those stuck on messes can be a real pain to scrub out.

To stay on top of things, I wash dishes 2-3 times a day — when Judah is strapped into his high chair for his afternoon snack and after dinner — and sometimes while Tony is cooking if it’s a particularly messy meal. I wipe down the counters and the stove top every time I load the dishwasher. I am amazed at how clean the kitchen feels when I just keep the counters clean and the dishes in the sink to a minimum.

I run the dishwasher every night so the dishes are clean and ready to be put away in the morning. Sometimes if it’s a really light load, I wait and run it the next night to conserve energy and water.

Toys

Judah’s toys are the beast that I’m still struggling to find a good system to organize. His toys are scattered between two rooms — his bedroom and the guest room where we sometimes play with him when he’s bored with his bedroom. I try to keep the guest room pretty tidy. There’s a bin where we toss all of his toys when he’s not playing with them, and bigger toys just get lined up next to it. His bedroom is trickier, though. Since my tidying is almost always done when he’s sleeping, his bedroom often gets neglected. One of my big plans for early this year is to invest in some bins and organizers to keep things tidy in there, and move some of the furniture out to make the room more practical for a toddler.

Now share your ideas for keeping things simple and organized in your home. I wanna hear about your systems!

 

 

Simplify your life

I’m a sucker for New Year’s resolutions. It’s not necessarily that I think there’s something magic about the first of the year, and I’ll suddenly be able to start over again. It’s just that the start of a new year is a logical time to think about these things, and the time when I’m most likely to feel motivated to make changes, so I try to take advantage of that motivation.

Over the weekend, I downloaded Tsh Oxenreider’s (founder of SimpleMom.net) e-book, “One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler.” I absolutely love the idea of tackling one project at a time throughout the year. I read the whole thing in about 24 hours (mostly in the wee morning hours when Judah was asleep), and when I finished, I felt motivated and ready to make a plan of action.

All of this thinking about what I want to change reminded me of what we’ve already accomplished in the realm of simplifying our lives. I felt really good after I listed all of the goals in the book that I’m interested in taking on, and I realized that we’ve already put a good chunk of them into practice — or our own versions of them anyway.

In the hopes of keeping myself motivated and perhaps motivating some of you to do the same, I’ve decided to write a series of posts on some of the things our family is already doing to keep things simple and organized. Beginning Wednesday, I’ll be posting a 5-part series on simplifying your life — Simplify your Household, Simplify your Menus, Simplify your Money, Simplify your Work/Home Life, and Simplify your Health.

I would love to hear from you if you about your family’s systems for organizing these areas of your life. You guys have been so quiet lately, but I really want to hear from you in the comments, so I hope you’re join in the discussion. I’m feeling motivated to make changes, and hearing your ideas will inspire me to do even more.

Here’s to a productive and simple 2012!

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Because I need one more place to post things on the Internets

Since I launched this blog in August 2008, my interests have changed and grown. Because I love this here blog, I’ve just kept expanding its content to fit whatever I’m interested in at the moment. What started as a money blog has now become a money blog, a lifestyle blog, and a mommy blog all smushed into one little website.

I have no plans to make any major changes to my content. My apologies if you miss the days of yore when all I wrote about was personal finance, but I’m happy with the way things are here. I like writing about my baby and my life and my money, because I think they’re all connected.

However. I also like other things. Artsy-fartsy, crafty, quilty things. One of my unpublished New Year’s resolutions (if I had shared them all, the post would go on for miles) is to start actually acting on those creative impulses more. I want to learn to sew things that are practical and pretty. I want to use my sewing machine for more than just making quilts. I want to learn to knit and crochet and do all sorts of other crafty things.

Rather than cramming one more topic into this already overloaded blog, I decided to launch yet another place where I can share things with the Internets. BEHOLD!

I can’t promise that it will be updated with any regularity in the beginning. But when I’m feeling inspired or I’ve actually finished a project, StitchWit.org is where I’ll share it. Since I know a lot of you are into this sort of thing, I’m hoping you’ll subscribe to the RSS or pop over every now and then to see what I’m up to over there.

I’m feeling pretty motivated right now, so hopefully I can make this one stick. Writing about personal finance helped me learn so much about money, and I’m hoping a craft blog will have the same effect on my creative skills. We’ll see!

Now I’m looking for crafting and sewing blogs that will inspire me. What are your favorites?

Resolutions for 2012

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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Why my failed 365 Project was really a success

Last year aside from my standing resolution to eat healthier and lose weight (pfft), I resolved to take at least one photo every day. This is known as the 365 Project, and people all over the Internetz and Flickr participate in it every year.

My motivation lasted longer than pretty much any other resolution I’ve ever made. I took a daily photo (skipping a few days here and there) until the middle of July. Even though I only made it halfway through the year, I learned so much. Here are a few things I took away from the project, and why I believe everyone with an interest in photography should attempt to do it.

It made me a better photographer.

When I look at the photos I took at the beginning of the year and the photos I take now, I am blown away at how much better my photos have gotten. At the beginning of the year, I used the terrible built-in flash on my camera for indoor photos, which washed everything out. Now I shoot in RAW, color correct photos in Photoshop, and I’ve learned better angles and techniques for getting the shots I want.

I learned that special occasions aren’t the only moments worth capturing.

I had two goals when I started the project: I wanted to take better pictures, and I wanted to take more pictures. Judah was 5 weeks old when I started the project. I felt like he was growing so quickly, and I wanted to create a permanent time capsule to remember him at each stage. Because I was always on the lookout for a daily photo, I learned to view everyday moments as photo-worthy. Some of my favorite pictures were taken on some of our most boring days around the house. But those are the moments that we most easily forget, I think. That’s why it’s so important to photograph them.

I learned not to force it.

Some of my least favorite photos were taken at the last minute when I said, “Oh, crap. I never took a photo today!” When you’re trying to take a photo each day, there will inevitably be days when nothing photo-worthy happens, or when you don’t feel well, or you’re just too busy to remember to pick up your camera. I don’t regret taking these last minute photos, because it doesn’t hurt to have them, but I learned not to waste my time forcing photo shoots if I’m not feeling inspired.

I learned the importance of editing, deleting, and organizing photos.

I already had a pretty good process in place for editing and organizing photos before I began the project, but when you’re processing 100-200 photos a week like I was at the beginning of the project, you realize just how important it is to delete the doubles and bad photos, edit the good ones, save them in an organized way, and back them up in multiple places.

If you’re dumping every photo you take into a folder on your hard drive, I urge you to resolve to stop doing that in the new year! You are killing your storage space with photos that aren’t worth keeping, making it harder to find the good photos, and the more time passes before organizing them, the harder it becomes to delete even bad photos. Every photographer takes five or ten or even twenty bad photos for every good one. Delete the photos that aren’t worth saving, and organize the ones that are!

I learned that the secret of taking good photos is taking a lot of photos.

I am the first to admit that I’m not a great photographer, especially when it comes to my wiggly baby who refuses to sit still. Most of my favorite photos were taken by holding down the button, and taking 10 photos in a row while Judah runs wild. At the end of many photo shoots, I was convinced that I didn’t have a single good photo. But when I went through and edited them, I was surprised to find a lot of good ones. If I hadn’t taken a million photos, I wouldn’t have gotten those good shots. I am not ashamed to admit that many of my best photos are taken totally by accident. My New Year’s resolution for 2012 is to take more good photos on purpose. For now, I’m just happy to have some of the shots that I took accidentally.

If you’ve never tried the 365 Project, you want to improve your photography skills, or just force yourself to take more photos, I definitely thing you should do it! You will be amazed at how much you learn, even if you end up quitting halfway through the year like me.

You can see all the photos I took this year here. I’ll also have my yearly slideshow ready sometime after the 1st. :)

Have you ever tried the 365 Project? What did you learn?