I Don’t Want Your Free Stuff

Please stop giving me the stuff you no longer want. I don’t want the free t-shirt with entry. I don’t want the pen from the bank or the cheap umbrella that comes free with purchase or the gift bag. Please save me from the gift bag. The overly perfumed soaps and the vouchers for so

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Should You Keep Your Fat (or Thin) Clothes?

My husband lost 50 pounds recently. Ironically, his health quest started almost to the day that I found out I was pregnant with our second child. In six months he lost 50 pounds by watching his diet and running and lifting weights. At 43, he is in the best shape of his life. It’s been

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The Super Simple Cloth Diaper System

If you’ve wondered how do cloth diapers work: this post is for you. I’ll share the easiest cloth diaper system, kind of a cloth diaper 101 if you will, that I’ve used a variation over the years with my three kids. Plus how many cloth diapers do I need and the best types of cloth

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Are you FOMO-ing your life away?

Two and a half years ago I deleted my personal Facebook account. Biggest reason for the change: I was wasting a lot of time reading about other people’s lives instead of living my own. I’ve had fleeting thoughts of opening another account since we moved overseas. I know it’s an easy way to be ‘in

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Living Without: A Microwave

photo credit: Micheal Cote Have you ever made a cake in the microwave? I’m a child of the 80s and I still remember the excitement in our house when we got our first microwave. It came with a cookbook and there were instructions and recipes for using your microwave to boil eggs and bake cakes.

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The No Spend Vacation

  Congratulations to Bettina who won the Versalette 2.0 and Carrie who won a copy of Minimalist Parenting. A post from the archives today on how we shop less for and on vacations in recent years. Topical for families gearing up for summer getaways. When you calculate the cost of your vacation do you add

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The Value Buy: Our French Roller Skate

My mother related our new car to her first car when she was a teenager in Glasgow: a Lada. Yes, it was a value buy. There is nothing cool about our car. For the record it is a 2000 Citroen Saxo. I call it the French Roller Skate. It was a bargain, drives well, was

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Decision Fatigue

  One strong reason to simplify: decision fatigue. The more we have to decide in our life, the stronger the chance we’ll make poor choices. This article in the New York Times, Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue, gives a good overview of how decision fatigue affects our modern lives. There’s a reason we find

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