Cheap, Cheap!

I have always been a person who likes to save money. I am not an extreme couponer by any means. I’m sure many of you know of more websites and apps than I do for electronic coupons. I’ve put my smart phone to good use beyond Words with Friends by downloading some apps of some the stores I frequently visit. They often offer great coupons and I don’t have to worry about clipping or forgetting anything at home.

Another way I like to save is to see if a broken appliance can be fixed by replacing a part. Let’s face it, household appliances can be expensive and often times “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” When we first moved into our house, the bake button on the stove wouldn’t work – making the oven pretty much useless. Instead of seizing the opportunity to replace the broken one with a sleek new stainless model, we used the one year home owner’s warranty that covered things like this. It was a faulty circuit board and was replaced in a matter of minutes.

A few years later, the hot water ran for a little bit and then would stop; offering only cold water. For me, that is worse than not having electricity. I’d much rather dine by candlelight than not shower for days on end. In addition to no hot water, small white bits were clogging the faucets and shower head. We thought they were hard water mineral deposits and that the hot water heater was having problems. The tank was a few years old which made me think a part was broken. Using the make and model, I discovered with a little research on the internet that a small part called the dip tube could be faulty which would cause the lack of hot water. Alan was skeptical but we ordered the part since it was under $20 and replacing the whole unit would be substantially more. When it came time to install the replacement part, we discovered the dip tube which was made of white plastic had completely disintegrated. Once it was replaced, long hot showers were much more appreciated.

Just recently the dishwasher started making funny noises and soon after it wasn’t cleaning the stuff in the top rack so well. I hadn’t been using any rinse agent so I thought that could have been the problem. I use a cleaning agent at least twice a year to help decalcify the mineral build up. Nothing worked and it got to the point where water wasn’t reaching the top rack and it looked like everything was covered in steam. I was disappointed that a product we purchased only 10 years ago was broken. Since we are planning to renovate our kitchen in the next year or two, Alan and I resolved to buy a new one along with matching stove/oven and refrigerator.

The kitchen is my girl cave so I was thrilled at the thought of this. But I had a tiny nagging thought – what if it only took a replacement part to fix the problem? I happened to mention the dishwasher plight to my friend Brent the Mechanical Magician Extraordinaire. (This is the guy who fixed a broken generator pushrod with the shaft from a long drill bit and saved my family from being displaced from our home after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the state. He’s the guy you want to have around when the Apocalypse happens.) Brent asked for the make and model and said he would look on internet forums to find posts of the same problem and how the people fixed it. Within five minutes, I got an email containing a link to The Handy Guys Podcast website featuring a blurb describing my exact dishwasher problem along with a how-to video to fix the problem.

I watched the video before beginning the actual work on the dishwasher. After taking Brent’s suggestion to turn off the circuit breaker before working on it, we began to take apart the dishwasher. As I took off the large filter cover, I uncovered the horrors of mineral build up on home appliances. Seriously, I was expecting bits of food as the fix-it guys encountered in their video but this was grody to the max. Fortunately, I used my handy dandy Pampered Chef scraper to loosen it and then swept it up with an old toothbrush.

I was unable to get the grinder cover off because it was glued on with crud. When Alan finally got it off, we saw the problem.

The mangled blade of the chopper assembly. The other washer was practically disintegrated.

This strainer goes behind the blade. Note the hurricane like pattern worn into it.

 

Fortunately, the replacement part wasn’t too expensive and after putting it in, my dishwasher runs like new.

I like new things but there’s a side of me that causes me to pause and think about where large appliances go after end-of-life; sitting in a landfill not breaking down until kingdom come. I hope they actually go to a metal scrap yard. If everyone took time to consider buying a $20 part instead replacing the whole thing, perhaps the landfills wouldn’t be so full. There is only so much earth left and more people are taking it up day by day. Call me cheap but I hope my mentality provides a true environmental benefit to the future generations of my family.

A Few of My Favorite Things – Part 2

Some things in life are simply too good to be kept to one’s self. Of course, as the things around us are the spice of life, apply the following to your own life’s recipe accordingly.
 
Patons Beehive Baby Sport Yarn
I’ve been especially busy this past year filling requests for yarny creations. I like to use synthetic yarns because they are easy to care for as well as light on the wallet. This yarn in particular is so soft and lies nicely on the body so it’s easy to wear. I made my favorite baby sweater project using this yarn in colors Vintage Lace and Precious Pink.

 
 
The Garden Gourmet Restaurant
You know food was going to be in the top 2 of my list. Located right on the South Branch of the Raritan River in Clinton, NJ is a shabby chic restaurant with a menu that will delight your taste buds with a comfort that is hard to be beat outside the home cook’s kitchen. Whether it’s breakfast or lunch, I have never had just an “ok” stomach filling meal. Chef Briellen’s cooking is familiar with a staple of super fresh ingredients and yet she takes it to a level that is above delicious. I highly recommend her dessert appropriately named Pretzel Crack. After you’ve eaten this locally popular chocolate, pretzel and caramel treat, you’ll understand. (Ladies – it’s got the sweet and salty flavors if you know what I mean.)

 
 
Leaving Story Avenue – My journey from the projects to the front page by Paul LaRosa
If you’re looking for a good read with substance but without pretension, definitely check this one out. There aren't many authors these days that wield words with relaxed precision and are deemed as a worthy literary master as is Paul LaRosa. The first few pages of his book are like delicious appetizers hinting at a fabulous meal soon to be served. Rest assured, I devoured it.

 
 
Kindle Fire HD
If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that not only did I turn down a gift but the gift was an iPad. At the time, I saw it as too frivolous which has no place in my efficient practical world. I will admit that I wished I hadn’t returned it but Alan persevered and got me a 7” Kindle. It took me a while to get acclimated but the crystal clear screen and the separately purchased cover with keyboard upped the ante in techno competition to the “i” devices. The size is truly portable via my purse which I love because now I can read without having to touch germy all for one magazines at the doctor’s office. I am very pleased with the practicality of this device’s ability to connect to my library system, check out a book and be able to read it within a matter of minutes. Above all, this tablet didn’t cost an arm and a leg or so I heard through the grapevine.

 

The Backyard Garden

I remember when my parents built a huge terraced raised bed vegetable garden in the backyard of my childhood home. It practically went from one end of our lot to the other and had two levels. The more I think about it, the more I admire my parents for seeing that project to fruition. It was an economically sound decision on their part. There was certainly no worry of price per pound when pulling produce out of their own soil and the maintenance was free. Being that it was a large garden, it took a lot of time to water and weed; which was on our list of chores rotated between my sister, brother and me. Sure we complained when it was our turn because running around or playing cops and robbers on our bikes was infinitely more fun. But digging around in the richly fertilized soil finding earth worms and planting seeds to see them grow into things we would see on our dinner plates seared something more than just a memory into my mind. The need to have a garden became something I cannot live without.

In the spring Dad would begin the process of fertilizing the soil. He and I would load up our family’s brown hatchback Volkswagen Dasher with aluminum trash cans and head up to Wagner’s Farm to collect some “black gold”. The first time I went, I thought we were going to get milk. Yes, I’m old enough to have drunk milk that came out of a glass bottle which had to be shaken first in order to get the cream that collected at the top mixed in. Dad parked the car in front of the little store area where he went in and asked the farmer if we could take some manure. The farmer pointed in the direction of the field where the manure was and happily said, “Help yourself! There’s plenty!”

We drove onto the seemingly endless field as the dusky deep periwinkle sky still offered some light for the work at hand. Dad popped the hatch, took the trash cans out and began to fill them. I couldn’t believe my eyes as the idea of bringing home cow poop slowly began to sink into my little naïve head. Over the years I actually enjoyed to help turn the soil over, watching the earthworms jostle wildly to get back into their dark, moist environment, while we mixed in the manure. There was a mature earthy smell that signaled promise of another great year of vegetables from our garden. I learned to respect all aspects of the work that made a garden a great success – even if it involved cow poop.

For years afterwards, we had successful crops of tomatoes, beans, carrots, all kinds of herbs and lettuce, and of course the dreaded kale and Swiss chard. If you’re wondering why I wrote “dreaded” it’s because those two leafy greens are highly nutritious for the human body and they are extremely hardy plants. Those were probably the two reasons my mom liked to repeatedly serve them as a side dish for dinner every week. We saw this repetition as unfortunate as we kids hadn’t developed the palate for these somewhat bitter common comestibles. Thankfully our backyard neighbor, Kitty, was more than happy to take some of the superfluous leafies.

My sister, brother and I depended on the garden’s goods when we occasionally got locked out of the house. Mom has ingenious practical skills and had made a cold frame from an old glass paned storm door. This gave some plants a tremendous start way before the harvest season. We’d walk home from school and find that Mom was a bit slow in getting back from the grocery store. If we were a bit hungry – no problem; we had an outdoor pantry! There was a large bunch of curly parsley, string beans and even small carrots as a quick snack.

Yes, all those positive experiences from our childhood garden carried with me into adulthood. When Alan and I were dating, we created a vegetable garden area in a very rocky and somewhat shady area at the house he was renting at the time. We tried tomatoes and cucumbers but the soil and sunlight were too poor to produce what I had been accustomed to as a child.

The house we bought and now live in had a small garden much to our delight. The year we got married, we planted seeds and starters before we left for our long honeymoon. When we got back, it had grown jungle style and we practically needed a machete to get through the plants that had grown waist high in three weeks.

When the weather begins to warm up to 60 degrees, I get bitten by the infectious garden bug and I’m not satisfied until the soil has been turned over and some seeds and starters are planted. It does not matter what’s high on my priority list at the time – I need to begin my garden. It is the closest thing I have to an addiction but this is actually good for me. Perhaps it’s an evolutionary process within my family genetics but whatever the case may be, the desire is so strong I cannot deny it. I am now passing on the knowledge of how important it is to grow one’s own food onto Nate. In truth, sharing the gardening experience with Nate surpasses planting by myself. I feel as if I’m somehow preparing him to survive on his own, which is the goal of every parent, right?

I thought nothing could beat the satisfaction of first plantings in the Spring. Although I’ve planted and harvested with Nate for a few years now, this past year was the best season yet in my book. Nate actually looked forward toward the planting. He stayed for hours dedicated in digging holes and extricating even the most stubborn weeds. We were both amused that the carrots we forgot to harvest in the Fall were still there growing happily until we disrupted the bed. Some of them where the diameter of the handle of a baseball bat!

When the sugar snap peas were ready for harvest, we ate a few as we picked. The look on his face as he crunched on the fresh green spheres of sweetness couldn’t have been beat by the likes of Charlie Bucket or Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. My heart swelled with joy and pride as I saw Nate had grasped the understanding I learned when I was about his age – vegetables are not only good for you but they taste the best when they come from your own garden.

Back to the Beginning

Welcome 2013! In the spirit of the New Year and fresh beginnings, and for the geek that I am, I wanted to learn more about the people who founded this country. While I try to refrain from divulging my political opinions on my blog, I feel I must share new insights I have gained from reading about John Adams and his wife Abigail.

I recently had an insatiable urge to read up on Mr. Adams. As it turns out, my husband’s family tree shares a relative with our second president. I wanted to delve deeper past my high school history knowledge and learn more about this very distant relative.

John Adams’s popular profile is short and pudgy with male pattern baldness all the while having a sulky, outspoken, snobbish attitude. After reading First Family: John and Abigail Adams by Joseph J. Ellis, I now know John Adams made tremendous sacrifices of his personal time and familial responsibilities in order to bring independence and government structure to our country which we have today. In all that John Adams did, he truly did it for the greater good of the country which ironically fueled his ego which mainly desired to be looked upon as one of the greatest American dignitaries of all time. He knew for that to happen, he had to do his job beyond the best of his ability but to the unerring truth, for justice for all people.

As I read more of Ellis’s book, I learned that John and Abigail Adams were true soul mates; the kind of stuff read about in fairy tales or romance novels. I admire John Adams for his steadfast dedication to our country’s creation but it was Abigail who bolstered him and gave him the necessary strength to drive through the icy walls of infant American democracy. Without Abigail, I don’t think John would have gone as far as he did politically. Although in the time period she lived in, she was expected to keep house and take care of family not much beyond that. Her intelligence and sharp wit would have easily paralleled and even surpassed the men her husband worked with. I believe historians are now giving her due credit. I wonder if she was given the opportunity, would she have joined the Continental Congress? If she did, the Adams story would be a completely different one and what would that have meant for our country?

Quite unexpectedly, I gained a newfound respect for Abigail. I saw great beauty in Abigail’s love for her husband in having to let him go often while remaining home. She shared with her husband a faith and personal sacrifices that in doing his job well, our country would become one of the greatest on the planet. In her day, travel was much slower so John would be away months even years at a time. They didn’t have texts, email or even phones so the time between communications must have been agonizing. Yet her love never waned. She was the ballast for the family so that John could easily sail, literally and figuratively, to wherever he needed to be.

From Abigail’s steadfastness, I have come to realize there is much strength in a woman of our day and age who decides to keep house and take care of family full time. I am not casting a shadow on women who are in the workforce full time. Often times it is financially necessary for many families to have both parents in the workforce. Some women simply want a career instead of family and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But I’d like to take time and wave a banner for the stay-at-home mom. I’d like to dispel the notion that stay-at-home moms eat ice cream while sitting on the couch watching tv all day. Even more so, I’d like to dispel the notion that a woman loses her strength and purpose if she chooses to put aside her professional career.

Right after Nate was born I greatly struggled with this shift in my own life – going from the corporate business world to the somewhat solitary life as a stay-at-home mom. Actually to be blunt, it was agonizing. For over a decade before Nate, I enthusiastically climbed the proverbial corporate ladder and placed high importance on my job so that it became my identity. I was well liked by my co-workers and often got slaps on the back and praises from the managerial staff that only fueled my ego and my need to excel at my job.

When I got laid off from my job and was home for the first few months alone, I found physical and emotional refreshment. When I realized I was pregnant, I had no idea of the full commitment he would need from me. Within the first six months of Nate’s life, I stood before a figurative full sized mirror and saw the naked truth of who I really was and the tower of strength that I had built myself to be was quickly beginning to fall apart brick by brick.

Being a mom, and a full time one at that, was a dream I never had. I think God allowed this to happen to me in order to break me down so He could rebuild me into someone better, not necessarily an important figurehead but a kinder, gentler and more thoughtful person that I had been. He’s got a long while to go to complete this project but it’s nothing He can’t handle.

Just as Abigail Adams did, I can take pride in being a stay-at-home mom for this fact alone: it brings essential structure to our family which provides priceless peace in our home. I know I am intelligent enough to have climbed the corporate ladder even further than I had but for me, it was eating away at the goodness in my spirit. I feel as I have been given a second chance - a new beginning. I am learning to be content to walk slowly along on this new path, allowing to be reshaped into a different person, and being stronger than ever. For there is much power in loving and caring for others.