I’ve had a handful of jobs in my lifetime. I’ve detasseled corn, washed dishes, cooked food, sold insurance, ministered to coaches and athletes, and done taxes. I’ve had favorite things in those jobs and dreadful things in those jobs. Sometimes, the job itself was nothing but dreadful. Detasseling corn was definitely not a favorite job of mine, but it only lasted two to three weeks and it was over.

And we got paid what seemed like a lot of money in that two-week span. Looking back, it wasn’t very much money at all, but to a high school kid who has everything taken care of for him by his parents, the extra cash seemed like a lot at the time. The worst job I think I had to work was washing dishes at a local restaurant. It was a summer job and I always had to work in the evening when all the fun was going on outside of work. It wasn’t just washing dishes that was bad, it was the fact that when the restaurant closed for the night, everyone except the dish washers got to leave. The reason being was because the restaurant had a buffet. Every single buffet pan needed washed before I was allowed to leave.

These pans had food completely caked and burned on them, so it took forever to get that stuff to come off. Not to mention, we had to break down all the shipping boxes that the restaurant supplies and products would come in. Why this responsibility fell on the dishwashers was completely unbeknownst to me because of how busy we were. The waitresses were so bored they’d just hang out in the kitchen and eat.

Why couldn’t they have broken down shipping boxes? All they cared about was getting to play with the supplies like popping the bubble wrap that would come in the cardboard boxes. And to be honest, that would upset me to some extent.

But, looking back, we couldn’t even get them to scrape the food off the plates they brought us. Instead, they just sat all the dishes down on our runway with all the food in the world piled high. A true breeding ground for flies and gnats alike. Therefore, it doesn’t surprise me that they couldn’t break down boxes when they were incapable of scraping a little food off the plates they had just sat down for us to clean.

Many people begin building furniture when they realize how expensive it is to buy new furniture. With all the do it yourself plans on the internet, there’s not a lot to building your own furniture. All it takes is a quick search for a plan on your desired build, a quick trip to the hardware store, and possessing the right tools. The cutting, the screwing, the construction and assembly doesn’t take much time at all. For example, one could build what would seem like an intricate king size bed in as little as 12 hours. With the help of another person, this particular build could be built in half the time. A table, however, would only take a few hours to construct and assemble. Common tools that are needed in many do it yourself builds, that most people don’t have, are table horses. Table horses help prop up long pieces of wood that are being cut, and are also used to place various pieces that need sanding on.

A great alternative to table horses are cheap moving boxes. My house, for instance, is full of cheap moving boxes because we just moved. So I use these for all my wood working projects. With the help of these stand ins, I have been able to build many different pieces of furniture that are now being used daily in my house.

I sleep in the bed I built. I eat food at the table I built. I store books in the bookshelves I built. And all these builds have been made for a fraction of the cost. Thousands of dollars have been saved because a few personal hours have been valuably spent constructing these pieces of furniture.

Although the build and the construction is fun, the sanding and staining is no fun at all. Certain wood has to be sanded to specific standards in order to properly take the stain that will be applied. This is a very tedious and lengthy process. A great idea would be having a partner that you could count on to sand and stain after you have constructed the piece. Some people, however, will sand all the wood before they even begin construction.

This makes the staining process a breeze because you don’t have to worry about a nook or corner or crevasse not taking the stain the way the rest of the piece takes it due to improper sanding techniques.

For about 10 months now we’ve had over 10 different succulents in our apartment, and it was actually quite a fun process to go pick them out and find the pots we thought would fit the aesthetic of our home. While buying plants at a local shop and not a department store likely cost us more than it could have, we felt better knowing the plants were taken care of and probably healthier in general. And so far, we’ve done amazing.

Repotting them hasn’t been easy, especially since we’re new to having plants. But it was a fun process that was much needed. And that’s what I’ve come to realize about hobbies. If you’re having fun and your interest is constantly piqued, nothing else should matter. That’s the whole point of hobbies, isn’t it? Having fun and doing what you enjoy? Too often I feel like I see people forcing hobbies or forcing things they don’t actually like. And I feel sorry for those types of people who are trying to do what others enjoy or what others want. That’s not living a life for themselves. That’s worrying about what others think of them.

So when it comes to spending your time off work, I really think you need to evaluate what you like, what you find yourself enjoying, and what you’ve always wanted to do. Those answers won’t ever be the same for any two people, so own your experience and enjoy the things you love. I know that sometimes money is an issue, but let’s be honest, there’s something satisfying about a few shipping boxes showing up to your doorstep every few weeks when you’re collecting something or need more materials to continue your artistic ability.

So truthfully, this is all that should go into your time off. If you’re not relaxing and not enjoying your time, why continue the bad habits or the hobbies that are someone else’s in your life? Get online, buy a few of your favorite albums or video games or whatever, wait for those shipping boxes to arrive, and then have a blast doing what you love. That’s all it takes, truly.

Once you get to this point in your life, everything else just seems to come easier. And I’ve lived that feeling, so it’s a real experience that I want to tell everyone about. Not caring what others think and doing what you enjoy is all that should matter.

This Valentine’s Day has armed me with quite a few ideas of things I want to do for my partner’s birthday. Her special day falls a month after V-Day on the dot. And the only reason I’m gathering some ideas for her birthday is because we’re hosting a listening party for a new album on Valentine’s Day. This is something we’ll absolutely buy on vinyl, and so it’s making me think of what all I can do for her birthday a month later.

One of those things? Buying her a record or two she’s been wanting for awhile now. But also, I’m thinking of a nice restaurant I can take her out to that we don’t have the time to do on Valentine’s Day this week. And since it’s only a month later, it helps to “combine” the two of sorts.

I know what you’re thinking though. “If you truly cared about her, you would take her to dinner for both days you cheapskate!” Well, that’s simply not true. If you knew us, you’d realize she doesn’t want a V-Day dinner and never has. Because it’s all just a corporate scheme to get Americans to go crazy on teddy bears, chocolates, candy, gift cards, and Hallmark cards. We’d rather celebrate our own way and then do something more special for birthdays instead. That, to me, is what really defines a relationship (i.e., understanding what matters to us).

So I’ll be ordering a few records that we haven’t been able to find for her in the past. Heck, I’ve been doing it for myself recently and ripping through the shipping supplies when they arrive on my front porch. This’ll be no different and she’ll merely think I bought something for myself again! The only difference is that shipping supplies won’t be scattered across my floor this time since I can’t reveal what I bought.

Nonetheless, I think we’re set for a nice birthday celebration for her this year, and I’ll also be looking to take her to a concert locally to celebrate. It’s something we always try to do for one another, so it just goes hand in hand with the music I’m already planning to buy.

So, how are you celebrating Valentine’s Day this year? We’re doing a listening party. Why don’t you try going against the grain and do something that actually matters to you and your relationship? It’ll feel really good. Trust me.

Plastic bags are ruining the planet. Among other things, of course, but they are a big colporate. These things used to be (and still are in some places) everywhere! The worst part is they take thousands of years to decompose. It is our responsibility to clean up the earth. Reducing our plastic intake is just one way we can help save the earth.

At first, the initiative was to recycle them. Recycling was marketed as if it worked 100% of the time. We had the mentality that every item we put in the recycling box would go to a facility, be successfully recycled, and would come back as another product. In theory this is great! Unfortunately, it just is not the case. The majority of materials placed in recycling bins are rejected and get thrown into a landfill anyways.

Why would a material get rejected? Mostly because of contaminants with food and other non-recyclable products. The biggest source of plastic bags not getting recycled are plastic bags from carry-out restaurants. Restaurants are notorious for overusing plastic when they definitely do not need to be. Sometimes they wrap containers in a brown paper bag and then still use two plastic bags! It is so wasteful and unnecessary to have just one plastic bag let alone two!

The solution to helping restaurants become more conscious of their plastic use is by not even using plastic at all! Okay, that is kind of unrealistic so they should consider reusing what they already have in their restaurants. Every restaurant gets multiple shipments in a week of produce and other materials needed for their food. Instead of just tossing those shipping boxes the restaurant could reuse them to package their to-go orders. Obviously the boxes could not be the huge oversized ones, but smaller packages would work just fine. Lots of produce and grains usually arrive in smaller packages, anyways.

I’m sure there would not be enough shipping boxes for every single order. But even if it covered even just a day’s worth of orders it would be great how much waste they reduced! The boxes could even be reused at home as well.

It is simple changes like this that anybody can be a part of to help save the earth. Little things will ultimately add up. If all restaurants start adopting this model I could not imagine the change we would start to see in just one year.

Any time you have a period of change in your life, a lot of stress suddenly befalls you that is almost always unwelcome. Rarely does anyone actively seek stress, though they make seek a busy schedule. Nonetheless, switching jobs can not only induce a newfound stress but also affect your sleeping schedule, your daily schedule, and also what you eat or don’t eat in a day.

Needless to say, switching jobs can be anxiety inducing and make you worry about menial things in your life that you never once thought of when you had your old job.

The other thing that comes with new jobs, though? Ambition. Responsibility. Empowerment. Self-esteem. Those things are absolutely amazing in anyone’s life, and yet they’re so easily found. It’s just that no one thinks about how easily they can access them on a daily basis, because there’s no major change in their life to spur them on to doing great things. There’s nothing that jars their everyday life enough to make them reconsider how they do other things, like interacting with strangers or pushing your skills to the limit. And if everyone would think like that, there wouldn’t be much to worry about in life. Because you’d have a serious handle on everything you do and say. You’d know what was needed on the daily. You would understand people better.

I suppose I should back up and think about another thing that no one thinks about when they get a new job. What is it? Well, no one thinks about the work of moving old materials, furniture, or files that goes into switching jobs.

More than anything, it sucks having to bag up your old papers and folders. Using shipping supplies to protect your belongings or furniture from the old gig isn’t the most fun to spend your money on, but it’s also no fun spending time on actually moving those things. That’s sweat equity right there.

Nonetheless, there are much greater things that the new career will bring you and your loved ones. It’s just a matter of taking the time to explore your options, to pack up the old things in shipping supplies, and to see where you can push yourself more than you ever have.

With change, we develop and grow more than we ever would staying in an old position or old home. Humans thrive on change, it’s just a matter of finding the change that’s right for you and everyone you love.

One of my favorite gifts that I, myself, gifted this year was a one-month subscription to Hello Fresh for my mom. She’s been bogged down with work lately, so I know that’s affected the time she has available to go grocery shopping. So, my partner and I decided to go half in together on a one month subscription to a food prep company all so my mother could make her own meals after work and not worry about time needed to do it.

Unfortunately, a company like that isn’t exactly cheap, so we had to cancel her subscription a week ago in order to not be charged full price for February. It sucked because we both knew she was loving it so much, but the full price on some of those subscription companies and their shipping boxes is absolutely outrageous.

And this made us realize we had our own subscription companies to decide on quitting or not. In fact, one of her friends gifted us a one-month subscription to a wine company. It’s not surprising that her friend is a huge fan of wine, but we’ve enjoyed the company enough to consider continuing the subscription boxes we get now that a month has gone by after Christmas. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that we’re going to continue on with it. But all isn’t said and done until she gives the go ahead!

Still, we live in a moment in history where people actually have to make these conscious decisions, to skip their next month’s subscription or to continue on. Part of these decisions can be made based on financial reasons, and sometimes they’re made because someone realizes that it’s just not as necessary as they first thought. On the other hand, other subscriptions can really make you consider continuing a subscription because of the absolute convenience that the company is providing you. Take my mom and us for example. We would be dropping almost eighty bucks to go forward with 2 meals a week for her and my dad. Yeah, that really only comes out to be five dollars a meal, but that’s something we could achieve on our own for even cheaper if we went to the store often for really cheap produce and grains.

When all is said and done, I would say that now more than ever we have all the power in the world to choose what we want and what we spend our money on. A lot say the internet is an evil thing, but I look at it as the most benevolent invention humans have ever made if only because it has offered us absolute control over our preferences.

In the past few years, I’ve begun narrowing down a lot of my expenses to become things that I need or can afford if I don’t need it. It’s really been helping my budgeting to be able to name exactly what it is I must have and what I don’t need. From there, things become pretty simple to avoid. It’s almost like an alcoholic making sure they’re not around alcohol in certain situations to not even tempt them. For some, they must ensure they’re not even in the position to spend money on things like video games by removing a card from the online gaming store and by not going near gaming sections in certain stores. Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, it is so long as you have the willpower to start off strong in whatever you’re doing. I’ve found that another healthier way of handling this sort of need to buy things is substituting something you were paying for with something you actually need.

For example, I’m a big fan of subscription boxes, much like a lot of others out there my age. It’s all the craze nowadays, and there’s a reason for that: getting something shipped to your door without having to go out and buy it is addicting. You do much less work to get the product and yet can get pretty much whatever you want from online marketplaces. And the shipping supplies are always enticing too, because those companies put so much work into making sure their customers return for more and more.

So I decided to invest in something like imperfect produce. Cooking is a huge part of my relationship with my partner, and we’re constantly running to the grocery all the time for a few onions here or some garlic and greens there. Instead, I decided it would be a good idea to pay a monthly subscription for imperfect produce. It serves three different purposes for us.

First off, we’re able to reroute money elsewhere spent on subscription boxes that we don’t need to something like this that we do need. It’s fueling an obsession in a healthy way. Secondly, it saves us trips to the store and gives us a constant stream of produce so that we’re getting all the nutrition we need and are forced to cook with it. Finally, it makes us stay in much more often and eat our own home-cooked meals instead of going out all the time and spending more than we need.

Who knew boxes with pretty shipping supplies within could be a healthy thing that supports a need in your life? Too often we’re swept up by all the enticing things out there that we “want” but don’t actually “need.” It’s good to find a healthy substitute!

With a new year comes new habits, new resolutions, and new lifestyle changes. Well, I sure hope that all of those things happen for everyone else, because new means change, and I have always seen change as one of the best things humans can undergo and take on.

It’s no surprise that all of the resolutions are coming out in full force this year. This is mostly because not only have we welcomed in a new year, but we’ve also welcomed in an entirely new decade. Considering decades don’t come around as awesome, you can imagine that everyone is hopping on the resolution bandwagon and setting out lofty goals to achieve in 2020.

One thing my partner and I have set out to do this year is to get much more vegetables and produce than we did last year. We just recently transitioned to a vegan lifestyle, and so plants and produce should abound in our home. The problem is, we’ve been a bit bad about making sure we have enough to eat and getting the right nutrition, so we’re taking a new approach to groceries this year.

And that’s through the imperfect produce companies out there. I’ve heard that you get so much produce on a weekly basis, almost to the point of not being able to keep up. And for the price they offer this imperfect produce at, it’s seemingly the best deal out there for helping to support a cause like eliminating food waste awhile also getting your own produce at an absolute steal.

So we’re bound to have shipping boxes on our front porch on a weekly basis now. This should also make grocery shopping much easier, as that will likely revolve around spices, one off products, frozen foods, and other essentials that are not related to our cooking. Joining in on one simple little plan with shipping boxes full of produce is going to change our grocery game in a huge way this year, and I think it’s going to keep us honest when it comes to sticking to a great nutritional program.

I encourage you to think about your own resolutions in a way that helps out your health more than any other aspect of your life. Second most important to health? Your financial life. These two things have the biggest influence on your lifestyle and what you are able to do, and they absolutely should be addressed when it comes to crafting goals for yourself for the rest of the year (or even decade!).

Now that the new year has rolled in, I’ve become engrossed with creating storage out of nothing in my home. The idea of organizing my belongings and storage areas is enticing if only to save space elsewhere and keep the home nice and tidy. In fact, I always find myself wanting more areas and dedicated spaces to store my general stuff. You know, general stuff as in not clothes, not food, and not technology. Everything else that is a loose item needs somewhere to go, right?

For example, rather than putting my shoes directly beneath the bench in front of my front door, I have a shoe rack. Or even the abundance of coasters I have collected from breweries, those go in a small basket beneath my coffee table.

But when it comes to new storage things, I can’t really justify spending money on storage containers and other shipping supplies when I’m fine with my place being a little messier than normal if it means saving a few bucks. And that’s probably most of my problem. That I’m okay with being cheap even if it means being messier. Probably not the best way to be!

As of late I’ve started to have a few ideas of little things I could go out and buy that wouldn’t cost too much, especially if they’re from resale shops.

Knife rack.

Honestly, I have too many loose knives with no dedicated rack in my kitchen. And the loose knives in my drawers can honestly be a bit dangerous to reach into if not careful. So recently, I I realized we need a knife holder. These can be extremely cheap if you find the right ones in the right places. The only thing to keep in mind, though, is if it fits the theme of your kitchen. You can never go wrong with wooden knife racks.

Bookcase.

I always loved my bookcases growing up. They were a sign of how much I loved to read, and I considered them sacred for that very reason. Now, I don’t happen to have as many books since I’ve gotten rid of a lot, but having a bookcase for my books and other things like my vinyl albums seems super useful. Heck, I can even store my very shipping supplies in cabinets within the new book shelves if there happens to be any. Talk about storing the storage supplies themselves!