“The Clothes Pin” by Jane Kenyon How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than to moan about your life. How much better to throw the garbage onto the compost, or to pin the clean sheet on the line with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin! This afternoon – basking in the balmy-for-northeast-Iowa […]

OK, maybe not a total solution (that would be ceasing the manufacture of red plastic nets.) But it will keep them out of the landfill. And the ocean. Let it become a reusable produce bag! That way you won’t have to rip one of those little thin plastic bags off the roll in the store. […]

Lately I’ve been feeling challenged to keep mindful about spending.  Three things have helped: One, I consulted my credit-counseling service’s client website, where my progress chart looks like this: What a great feeling.  That’s just a little more than $1,500 on one card to go, compared to what was $22,000 on seven cards four years […]

“Let the Captains of Industry retire into their own hearts, and ask solemnly, If there is nothing but vulturous hunger for fine wines, valet reputation and gilt carriages, discoverable there? Of hearts made by the Almighty God I will not believe such a thing. . . . Arise, save thyself, be one of those that […]

Last month, my friend Kristin and I went cross-country skiing.  We trekked up to a wooded park on the side of a bluff – a beautiful place, with a snowy trail crossed by deer tracks and the skittery trails of mice, lit by the gray-and-pink light of a winter afternoon.  Winding in and out of […]

a) The IRS direct-deposited my income-tax refund, first thing this morning.  One chunk goes straight back to savings.  Another chunk goes to bills (including my accountant, because of whom I have this money in the first place.) Maybe the rest can go to a new rug for my living room, to replace the old, now-frayed […]

Just before Valentine’s Day, a scrap of pink and red flutters in the bare tree in front of Main Building, against a melting gray sky.  “How to Give Gifts from the Heart,” it reads.  “Write stories about your relationship and hang them from the ceiling.  That way it will look like the whole room is […]

Not knowing one end of a football field from the other — except when it comes to Auburn vs. Alabama — I don’t watch the Super Bowl. But the news-clip crawl across the top of my email account this morning made me click to read this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/07/133560977/groupons-tibet-super-bowl-ad-harmless-fun-or-offensive?ft=1&f=1001 Last night I began reading a book I’ve […]

This post inaugurates another will-be Cheapskate Intellectual feature: writing about food and cooking as an inherently life-enriching (and money-saving) force.  Some of y’all have already seen a version of this, but take advantage while the weather’s still cold! ____ Even as I sat in reverent silence, savoring my first bite of this bit of Provencal […]

Every organizational system – for clothing, clutter, files, tasks, personal relationships – can be reduced to one rule: separate the living from the dead, and keep the dead in check.  Recognize the living: what the person you are right now values and needs to achieve her goals.  Pare down, organize, and store the relics that […]