September 16, 2015
Everybody likes hanging out with their friends! This is true for human beings aged toddler to grandparent (and hounds too!). We all enjoy carousing, playing, and fraternizing with our buddies. But what happens when you’re a devout frugal weirdo (à la moi) and you still want to spend quality time with your chums? Brace yourselves because the answer…
September 14, 2015
I wasted years talking about how much I wanted to be a writer, but not actually writing anything. Even though I felt compelled to write, I had a litany of excuses for why I wasn’t: I was too busy, I didn’t have any story ideas, I had nowhere to publish, it’d be a waste of…
September 11, 2015
I’m currently experiencing a simultaneous nest and de-clutter phase. While half of me is wholly dedicated to arranging, assembling, and acquiring hand-me-downs for Babywoods, the other half of my manic pregnant brain recently declared war on junk. I’ve become a one-woman chaos annihilator. Let’s preface this with the fact that I’m admittedly the worst minimalist out there. This has become…
September 8, 2015
Quick sidenote: I was on Farnoosh Torabi’s So Money podcast yesterday chatting about our uber frugal life. If you’re interested, you can give it a listen here! It’s not just about the money. Although the most obvious destination of frugality is having a bunch-o-money saved up, this is by no means the only benefit frugality…
September 4, 2015
Last month, Mr. Frugalwoods and I made a startling discovery: we’ve been harboring an energy hog in our basement. When we bought our home three years ago, it came outfitted with a behemoth, aged refrigerator in the basement in addition to the newer, smaller fridge on the main floor. Huh, we thought at the time,…
September 2, 2015
I’ve dubbed August “Babywoods Preparedness Month” since much of the month was devoted to readying our abode for the newest, tiniest Frugalwoods member. Though she’s not due until late November, I’m what you might call a planner (to put it mildly… ) and for me, seeing our physical space transformed into a baby-welcoming zone helps me process and internalize…
August 31, 2015
Let’s banish guilt. Far too often, I turn myself in knots trying to quell my feelings of guilt over not doing something quickly enough or frugally enough or environmentally-friendly enough or creatively enough. Why do I torture myself? There’s always room for improvement in every endeavor in life–I know this–and guilt only serves to steal my…
August 28, 2015
It is 100% possible to live frugally anywhere. Of this, I’m convinced. I often hear folks bemoan our high cost-of-living city as thwarting frugal endeavors, to which I say preposterous! For all of our post-college years, Mr. Frugalwoods and I have lived in notoriously expensive locales: New York City, Washington, DC, and Cambridge, MA (twice). And we’ve…
August 26, 2015
*well sorta, keep reading… So what’s a frugal weirdo to do when you want something that costs money, but you don’t want to pay for it? Get creative. I wanted to go to grad school. Since graduating from undergrad in ’06, I had this overwhelming desire (delusion?) to get my master’s degree. I like school and…
August 24, 2015
I’m willing to bet that your goal in life isn’t to move to a homestead on 20+ acres of wooded land in southern Vermont by the time you’re 33 (although if it is, email me since clearly we have a lot in common). But I’m also willing to bet that you have a higher purpose guiding…
August 21, 2015
Clothes! We’ve all gotta wear them, but we don’t have to spend a ton doing so. While I don’t think Mr. Frugalwoods or I have any clothes quite as ancient as our venerated 19-year-old Frugalwoods-mobile (whose virtues I extolled earlier this week), we certainly have some, ahem, mature threads. Since not consuming is a huge part of both our…
August 19, 2015
Oh Frugalwoods-mobile the oft-mentioned, but rarely glamorized, work horse of the Frugalwoods family. Today, I dedicate a post to you. Fear not, this isn’t a eulogy for she’s not dead (yet), but rather this is a reflection of gratitude for the tremendous schlepping performed by this fossil of a vehicle. While certainly it would be thriftier to…