Weed out Wednesday

Sometimes you stumble upon a solution to a "house process" that really works. It doesn't need tweaking and you realize....this is it. I won't ever change it. That's how I feel about our donation box.
There is this narrow space between our basement steps and the wall. I got my hands on this tall skinny cardboard box and it fits perfectly there.

Whenever I decide something is donation- bound,  I immediately open the door to the basement and toss the item into the box. It's deep, it's dark and it's forgotten. When the box gets full, I just dump it out and begin itemizing the list so we can deduct it on the taxes.

Itemize and bag it up.  Easy Peezy.

It feels so good to see that bagged up and ready for the car.  Four grocery bags of stuff that will eventually show up in a new home for someone else to enjoy.  Where is your donation box?

I am not Cinderella

These babies sat on our street from Thursday to Monday.

Two oversized containers used for construction. They took up  5-6 parking spots.

The  sign ON THE CONTAINERS reads, "Do not place GARBAGE in the container."  The reason garbage should not be placed there is because they do not have lids. I repeat: NO LIDS.

And yet....there is what I have been looking at since Friday night.

Thank you so much for inviting every rat, possum, stray cat, bird and squirrel that lives in the entire city of Richmond to our street. 

I am not Cinderella, so I do not do mice and birds.

Let this be a lesson to everyone. Containerize appropriately.

9 to 5

My very overdue disclaimor:

I haven't been writing a lot lately.

That is because the primary way that I live consciously is that I go to work everyday.

And as of late, that job has been killing me.

Maybe one of these days, I can write regularly because I'll be a full time blogger.

But, I kinda doubt it.

Nonetheless, thank you for reading. It makes me happy.

Organizing baby

One of the perks of  writing a blog is the free stuff sent to you if you commit to reviewing a product. Recently, I was sent two products from PRK Products, Inc: the Universal Baby Food Jar Organizer and Universal Baby Bottle/Sippy Cup Organizer.

I'll start with the Baby Food Jar Organizer. I gotta say, the box is pretty convincing because the pictures on the box are fabulous. It boasts that it can store up to 16 jars of ALL stages of food.
I opened the box to find some assembly required, but for good reason. You can assemble your jar organizer to hold EITHER Stage 1 & 2 foods OR Stage 3. Pretty fabulous.

Those panels in the bag build the sides of the unit.

Here is a side view--it comes with those little feet that give it a slant, so the jars slide down, when you remove one.

Here is the look from my cabinet. Sorry, I have no baby so I have no jars.  My assessment---I love it.


Second item:  the Baby Bottle and Sippy Cup Organizer.  It is a two part deal, one basket to hold the nipples/tops etc as well as the actual bottle/cup holder. No assembly required for either.

I had one sippy cup leftover from my days as a foster parent and I tried it in the Sippy cup Organizer.
It didn't fit!! I was so surprised. And then, I realized....USER ERROR.

The unit actually expands depending on the size of your cups/bottle. I just had to push one button on the top of the unit and it released the unit to expand to the size I needed. Brilliant.  The box boasts that it is compatible with over 30 brands of bottles and cups. Again, no baby = no bottles. I'll take their word for it.

Here is a picture of the box, showing how the unit can fit in your fridge.

These products were apparently created by a mother of triplets. That is a good enough endorsement for me. All I can say is that I had every intention of giving this away to blog readers after I wrote about it, but I decided against it.

I am going to keep it and pray that one day I will have babies who  need a little organization.

Driest Summer on Record

Not to long ago, I posted this and encouraged you to "grow something and eat it".

I showed a picture of my dad's garden. He sent the data of what his garden yielded and I thought it was worth mentioning.  Here's a picture of the garden to jog your memory:




30 cabbage

353 Yellow Squash

50 Zucchini Squash

301 Cucumbers

27 Green Peppers

630 Tomatoes

94 lbs. of Green Beans

133 lbs. of Potatoes

540 ears of Corn

My dad ran some numbers, because he loves to run numbers, and estimated that the cost of buying those at your local supermarket would cost the customer about $1300.  The craziest part is that he and my mom harvested all of that but knew the garden could have given them so much more, if not for the fact that it was the driest summer on record in Roanoke, VA.

Although, something tells me they didn't go hungry this summer.

This week at the store

We left town for the holiday and so I just had to get a few things to us get through the week. This was a trip to Kroger and here's the breakdown:

-French's Spicy Mustard: Normally $1.99 but on sale for $.99. with a $.35 coupon that doubled, the mustard was $.29

-The Greek yogurt was $2.89 each, for a pack of 4. Saved $1.50 with a Kroger coupon. Since I had two of those, each four pack was $1.39.

-I saved $1.39 on the sausage combining a coupon with a store sale.

-The peanut butter was 50% off and I had a coupon that doubled.

-The provolone cheese and the peaches rounded out the purchase, with no coupons.

All in all it was a $9.29 savings, spending $10.02. Couponers have a reputation for buying a lot of processed foods, but I hope this reflects a different story. It's also a picture of what normal couponing typically looks like. Television shows lead you to believe that 90% savings is normal.  Saving 40-60% is fairly typical.

Happy Shopping!