On the other hand, I’d do pretty much anything for my kid. And last weekend he wanted to build a gingerbread house. “That will take all weekend,” a friend of mine said when I mentioned it. She knew someone who had once made a gingerbread house. “All weekend,” she repeated in her dire warning voice. Deep breath. Okay, I thought to myself, there has to be an easy way to do this. I’ll Google it.

I found a video on Epicurious that showed an “easy” way to build a gingerbread house using graham crackers. All I had to do was round up some candy, whip up the icing, and glue graham crackers together. How long could that take?

The answer is, it takes almost ALL DAY even if you do the “easy” version. But my son had a lot of fun, and I had fun watching him have fun. Here’s a step-by-step guide if you want to try building your own gingerbread village.

Step One: Create a base for your gingerbread village. A cookie sheet works well. Tape a piece of white paper to the sheet, so that it looks like snow. Cover it with wax paper.

Step Two: Find small boxes about the height and width of a graham cracker. Ask your child to plan the landscape. My son had fun arranging the boxes, figuring where the road would go, and choosing toy cars for the display.

TIP: My ambition to do an entire village is what sank the day. I recommend one house per child.

Step Three: Cover the boxes with tin foil. Bunch up the excess tinfoil in a triangle shape on the top of the box to help support the roof. Make sure the bottom of the box is flat without too much foil.







Step Four: Make a batch of royal icing and put it in a pastry bag. You will use the icing like glue to stick the graham crackers to the sides and the top of the boxes.

TIP: use rubber bands to hold the graham crackers to the box while the icing hardens.

Step Five: Decorate the house and landscape with candy. Admire the finished work, while you eat the leftovers.

First, you learn to let go of the control over this part of your life, you learn to trust someone else (and pity them) to wash your smelly gym clothes. And then you do a basic cost-benefit analysis (Thank you, NYU Stern School of Business) that shows you that $.85 per pound, less than $10 – $15 per week (depending on your family size), is well worth it. (Here is where I will insert a disclaimer – kids are a game changer, where laundry can be almost a daily habit, and I can’t provide much guidance to those of you with kids!)

You must value these benefits: You don’t have to search around in pockets, purses and couches for quarters, and then spend these quarters for the machines, detergent and fabric softener. You also don’t have to hang out in a laundromat or laundry room for hours, worry if someone else is going to take your stuff out of the machine, or remember not to forget your stuff in the dryer causing your shirts and shorts to get wrinkly, and, most important, NO FOLDING!

The last tip I ever read in a Real Simple magazine recommended that you hire a cleaning person so that you can reduce stress, and I thought to myself, they just don’t get it – it’s stressful for some people just because they know they can’t afford to hire a cleaning person to reduce stress. I do get it, and the extra $5 – $10 it costs to get your laundry done will only provide you happiness and time to run your other errands, spend time with your family and friends, or write a blog post.

Here are my recommendations for having a successful laundry drop-off experience:

- Pick a laundromat that does drop-off/pick-up ONLY. You don’t want other people in the laundromat messing with machines and potentially taking your stuff.

- Round up the bill to include a tip. A tip is always appreciated and since the bill will be small, it’s okay if the tip is small, too. The tip will always pay-off in times of emergency when you need your stuff cleaned the same day, or you forgot your wallet or your receipt, or just because these men and women deserve it after cleaning your stinky stuff.

- Use a laundry bag that is recognizable. Makes life easy for you and the launderers at pick up if you can point out your bag. And if, like me, you sometimes forget your receipt, again, it makes life easier for everyone.

- Own more than one week’s worth of underwear. This holds true for do-it-yourselfers, and drop-offers, sometimes you just don’t feel like doing your laundry or taking it to the laundromat.

So release those laundry bag strings, and leave the laundry to someone else.

When I ditched TV ten years ago, it wasn’t for moral reasons. It wasn’t because I was worried that TV was rotting my brain, and it wasn’t because I couldn’t afford the cable bills. It was, purely and simply, a time-management decision. I never would have gotten through grad school if I had continued wasting spending 3 or 4 hours a day in front of the tube. But it took me awhile to pull the plug because I honestly believed that I loved TV. As a latchkey kid, I’d grown up with television, logging 25+ hours a week. The television was a pseudo parent and friend. Even after ten years of living television-free, I still can’t ignore it. If a TV is turned on anywhere near me, I am helplessly drawn to it.

So, when I canceled our cable account, I braced myself for a long painful withdrawl process. I fully expected to wander the apartment as a half-crazed shell of a person desperately longing for TV veg-out time. But it didn’t happen that way. After a few days of no TV, I kind of…forgot about it. Incredibly, I preferred quiet evenings spent reading (note: grad school = lots of reading), surfing the web, or talking to my husband. I also liked getting my homework done. And now, ten years later, I’m using what would have been television time to do stuff that matters to me like writing this blog, talking to friends, hanging out with my family, gardening, or fixing stuff around the house.

Turning off the TV had other unexpected perks. First, my outlook improved. Now, when I do watch TV (on airplanes, in hotel rooms, etc…) I notice how negative and degrading some of the shows are. And even though I still enjoy an occasional wallow in the reality show mud pits, after a few hours of it I feel pretty gross. Television exploits negativity because it is a downward spiral from which there is no escape addictive. Take a look at this blog post and ponder how your psyche might be impacted by television: Have You Fallen for these 7 Negative Attitudes Pushed by the Media?

Second, since I stopped watching shows with ridiculously good looking actors who live in beautiful homes, wear incredible clothes, have perfect hair, and enjoy outrageous adventures, I find myself increasingly satisfied with my own life. Not that I don’t still fantasize about being an international spy with amazing karate moves, but those daydreams are on my terms and I have them with both feet firmly planted on my own Walter Mitty-ish turf.

Third, I don’t watch commercials, so I don’t even know about all the stuff that I should want. There are whole boatloads of Chinese consumer goods that I’ve never even heard of. And more importantly, my child doesn’t know about these things. If he watches a show, it’s on DVD, so no commercials, no nagging me to get that plastic thingamabob. No TV = less nagging, that is a scientifically-proven fact:

In 2001, the Nag Factor was used to influence an estimated $300 billion in sales. That amounts to over $4,000 per pestering child per year.

I eliminated TV because I was time starved. The tube was a non-essential and getting rid of it was an easy way to gain a few hours a day. But the decision turned out to be a great lifestyle-enhancer. If you are considering doing the same, here are a few websites to check out:
Trash Your TV! The Complete Guide to a Television-free Lifestyle
Unplug Your Kids
Escape Your Television — Diary of an Addict

Laura's bike

One of the deal-sweeteners of our recent move from the city to the suburbs, in my husband’s view, was getting our car back, which had been on loan to family. And, although my partiality to car-free living has been lifelong–when I was 8, I told a friend I would never trade my bike for a car (she responded, “The air you breathe will be my exhaust!”)–I have to admit, having a car makes some things much, much easier. Weekend trips are no longer tainted by auto rental hassles, and our days of lugging heavy items through the subway are behind us.

That said, I find that most of my everyday errands can be more pleasurably conducted on two wheels rather than four. When we became suburbanites, I invested in a pair of saddlebags
(and, importantly, a comfortable seat) for my bike. The saddlebags are roomy enough to hold two big canvas sacks of foodstuffs, plus my purse, bike lock, and whatever else I’m carrying–letters for the post office, or books to drop off at the library, for example. With a little forethought, I can plan a smooth multi-errand trip. (Grocery shopping usually comes last; I don’t like leaving my groceries, and full saddlebags make locking up more cumbersome.)

Every time I swing a leg up onto my bike and get rolling, I’m reminded of the long list of benefits of this let-your-hair-down mode of travel. It makes the world feel more real–no surprise, given that in swapping car for bike, you’ve stripped a ton of steel and glass separating you from the road down to about thirty svelte pounds. The air, the birds–and yes, that gnarly pothole–are all on offer for you to experience in their full glory. Plus, it’s mood-enhancing, wiping the fog off your brain and waking you up; even the bumps are enlivening. Add a maneuver around an obstacle and a greeting to a pedestrian, and you’re feeling positively competent and neighborly. It’s good exercise, but not especially strenuous (and any work you do pumping up hills is always rewarded with effortless speed on the other side). And, it’s free, or almost. Magically, its costs are also benefits: stronger muscles and a kindled appetite to fill with something delicious. To me, it seems a frugal no-brainer.

When I moved into my house last August, the yard was mostly dirt, weeds and moss. At the time I was so overwhelmed by the work of owning an old house, that I thought, “good” moss and dirt are low maintenance. I’ll worry about it next spring.

When next spring came, I bought a big bag of grass seed, tossed it on the barren ground, sprayed it with water and hoped for the best. I was pretty sure nothing would grow. Somewhere I got the idea that grass was really really hard to cultivate. But, amazingly, it grew. And grew and grew. Now we needed a lawnmower.

This may not seem like a big deal to those of you who have been mowing since high school, but owning a lawnmower is a jarring rite of passage for former apartment dwellers. For my entire adult life I’ve avoided owning the fleet of lawn care machinery my suburban parents did battle with. Lawn mowing always seemed like an unpleasant, loud, polluting, dangerous chore, and the tool one used for it (the lawnmower) was an expensive, cumbersome piece of equipment that wouldn’t fit in our extremely narrow one-car garage. Moreover, I dreaded the effect it would have on my five year old. He can’t keep away from anything noisy and mechanical, so I was sure I’d be yelling myself horse warning him away from the deadly, spinning blades.

Enter the old-fashioned rotary mower. The Scotts push reel mower we bought was a hundred dollars cheaper then the least-expensive gas-powered or electric mower and it fit in our tiny garage! We brought it home from the hardware store and my husband assembled it in under ten minutes. It was whisper-quiet and it cut the grass beautifully, but there was an even bigger benefit that I hadn’t anticipated. My son wanted to help, and it seemed safe enough to let him. Supervised by my husband, he pushed the mower and called out, “This is so fun, mom! I want to do this every weekend.”

If you have a fireplace, I encourage you to rediscover it. Light a fire and experience these “priceless” benefits for yourself.

Alone time by the fire becomes time to recharge. Read a book, update your blog, or take a nap. The fire adds a bonus “relaxation factor” to everything. Staring into the flames can be a rejuvenating meditation.

Family time goes from routine to magical. A game of “go fish” or “trivial pursuit” played next to the fire is suddenly an event. A bowl of popcorn, and a favorite movie by the firelight make the home box office a hundred times more satisfying than the theatre.

Entertaining next to a crackling fire adds a feeling of luxury and old-world charm that makes guests feel pampered. Keep a robust fire burning in the hearth and watch how the attitude of your get-together changes from “we can’t afford to go out” to “why would we even want to go out?”

So if your budget demands that you spend more time at home, rediscover your fireplace. It will transform your home into a luxurious, relaxing, magical place to spend an evening.