So long, Sallie Mae!

Goodbyes are often hard to do. In fact, saying goodbye to my best friend as she moved across the country was so difficult that I had to look at photos of Basset Hounds running on the beach to keep from tearing up at work. Seriously, I keep that page bookmarked at work so that I can laugh on those tough days.

But this is one goodbye that I love:

We paid off a Sallie Mae loan!

Sallie Mae preys on the pockets of eager, fresh-faced college students. It's so good to have paid off our third loan with her (we had about eleven loans with Sallie Mae in total ... womp, womp).

One by one, we are paying off our loans. It's our goal to live a debt-free life. It's totally possible, and I could talk to you for hours about how great Dave Ramsey is and how much we love the teachings of Dave Ramsey, but I won't. Not yet.

Reduce your energy usage

We've all seen the Sesame Street episodes about turning off the lights when you leave the room to save energy, but who knew that we would still be applying that same principle to reduce our monthly bills?

Last fall, J and I really wanted to reduce our energy usage. Here are some steps that we have taken:

1. Shut off lights when we leave the room (duh).
2. Put the TV, bluRay player and Internet thingy on a power strip. Turn the strip off when we leave the house or go to bed. Those silly little lights that glow eat up energy. We do the same with small kitchen appliances.
3. Line dry our clothes in the warmer months (even though our dryer uses gas).
4. Put the ceiling fan on in our bedroom and adjust the air conditioning in warmer months at night. Ceiling fans take up significantly less energy than an air conditioner.
5. Keep curtains drawn in the warmer months to keep the heat out. (Look into energy-saving curtains.) We do the opposite in winter when it's sunny.

Those are the majority of the small changes we've made, but look at the difference it's made:

In September of 2012, we got our energy usage even lower than our "efficient" neighbors!

Please keep in mind that we have three exterior lights on our house that stay on 24/7. We leave them all on throughout the night as a safety precaution since our neighborhood is older and has limited street lights. 

We plan on learning more ways to reduce our energy usage in our home throughout this year.

Looks like we need to our heads back in the game. May was cutting it close!

May 2012

Check your local energy provider's website to see your usage compared with your neighbors. Our energy company determines "neighbors" as people living in the same square footage withing 0.4 miles of us.

Do you have any good energy-saving tips?

Simple fixes: Removing scratches from a wood floor

Removing scratches from wood floors.

 If you own a wood floor and have dogs, kids, cats or have ever moved furniture ... you probably have some scratches on your floor.

While moving a bookcase from one corner of our dining room, the floor got rather scratched. The new mid-century bar (keep an eye out for a blog post about that!) has exposed legs, so the scratches are pretty obvious now.

Before: Scratches in wood floor

An easy solution (that I amended per our pantry contents) is to mix one part vinegar and three parts canola oil. I didn't have canola oil and just used vegetable oil. So if you're wondering if you can substitute vegetable oil for canola oil -- the answer is yes! It turned out great!

After: Removed scratches from wood floor.

Just wipe the solution on and gently rub into the wood. No need to wipe off. I can't wait to try this on some dog-scratched window sills that we have!

Do you have any simple fixes?

Airing out the laundry

Going the "natural" route of doing your laundry is not just better for the environment, but it's cheaper and better for your clothes. Triple whammy.

Last year, we purchased a Whitney Design retractable clothesline for $25 and it's been an awesome investment.

Photo courtesy of eBay.

J attached the device to the side of our house in the back yard. He put the corresponding hook on a fence post, since there wasn't much else in the yard to attach it to.

Retractable clothesline hook.

When the line is not in use, it retracts back into the main device. We have no complaints about this product. The line extends to 40 feet and has been able to hold all of our laundry, including heavy towels.

Line drying is awesome for those who choose to cloth diaper. Your diapers will stay whiter (the sun acts as a natural stain remover), and they will stay in better shape than if you were to tumble dry.

Line drying cloth diapers and wipes in the back yard.

Reasons for line drying:

1. Saves on energy costs.
2. Preserves the life of your clothing. Tumble drying adds much more wear and tear to clothes.
3. The sun will naturally remove many stains. (To enhance this feature, from time to time I will squeeze fresh lemon juice on stains and let them sit in the sun for awhile. Be sure to re-wash after doing this.)

Tip: After line drying, put your clothes in the dryer for 5-10 minutes. This removes any stiffness and helps remove pollen/debris that may have blown onto your clothes outside.

Any suggestions on how to line dry in the winter or in an apartment?

A TV-free summer!

J and I don't have cable (gasp!) and we don't even have an antenna (double gasp!). We aren't cavemen, I promise, our cable bill was getting out of control and we've never had enough oomph to purchase an antenna. However, we are human and enjoy shows like Bones, Castle, How I Met Your Mother and The Mindy Project. During the "school year" we have HuluPlus that we stream through our bluRay player so that we can enjoy some grown-up time after Baby Z goes to sleep.

Now that shows are wrapping up for the season, we decided that we are going to have a TV-free summer! The TV is going to be sequestered to the basement so that we aren't tempted to flip it on and let our brains ooze out our ears.

Stay tuned (haha, get it?) to see how we tackle our TV-free summer.

What would you with an extra hour each day?

Review of Ting

We love Ting!

Okay, that's a pretty one-sided review, but let me tell you the reasons we love Ting.

1. It's simple.
Ting doesn't make things complicated. They have zero contracts and their website is super easy to use.

2. It's cheap!
J and I spend $29 for two smart phones with Ting. No, your eyes didn't deceive you. Just $29 for the two of us. On Verizon, we were spending $90 on bare bones flip phones. Here's our Ting plan:

3. You never get put on hold.
How annoying is it when you call a customer service number and you have to go through an entire menu, only to be put on hold? More annoying than a mosquito in your bedroom at night, that's for sure. With Ting, you call and the line starts ringing and someone picks up! It's amazing! I've also had to use their online form to submit a question, and I received a helpful response within the hour.

4. It runs on the Sprint network.
This factor could be good or bad for people, depending on Sprint service in your area. For us, it's great -- we've never had any issues with service. As an added bonus, you can take almost any Sprint phone to Ting.

5. You can get inexpensive phones off eBay.
The phones on Ting's website are pretty costly (for us cheapos), so I ordered Sprint phones off eBay. J got an HTC Evo Shift for $80 and I got a Samsung Google Nexus S for $60. Both phones are contract-free! If you go this route, just be sure the phone has a clean ESN. A bad ESN will not allow you to activate the phone.

The not-so-great features of Ting: They don't have any local retail stores, so you need to do everything online. If you are bringing over a phone from Sprint, you need to do all the nerdy stuff on your own. Ting provides very helpful guides, but it can still take a few hours to get everything up and running.

Switching to Ting = Saving $60/month for us.

If you are interested in learning more about Ting, visit using my referral link and save $25 on your first month of service or a new Ting phone!

This review is in no way sponsored by Ting.

The $1,000 challenge!

Summer is creeping its way into our home and things are starting to feel stuffy. It's time to eliminate the clutter!

When things in our house start to get cluttered, I get anxious (hence why I don't like hosting family parties in our tiny home), so now is the perfect time to get rid of all this stuff!

My goal: Sell $1,000 in stuff this summer.

This will include selling on eBay, craigslist, local swap sites, our garage sale in July, etc.

So far, I've sold around $500 in stuff, so I will try to update the blog as I go and give tips for selling!

To view my ongoing tally of sold items, visit The $1,000 Challenge page.