May is Mental Health Awareness Month

May happens to be Mental Health Awareness month and April marked the ninth anniversary of Frugalwoods! Given that confluence, it seems like the perfect time to reflect on my 2018 post, “How A Diagnosis Of Postpartum Depression Changed My Life.” This one struck a serious chord, as evidence by the 433 comments and abundance of emails and messages I’ve received since. Many of you told me that reading that post prompted you to seek help, to finally go to the doctor, see a therapist, start taking the medication you’d been prescribed and stop blaming yourself. I’m glad it helped. I hope it still does.

You can check out my first two Frugalwoods nine-year retrospectives here:

• Reflecting on Nine Years of Frugalwoods
• Revisiting My 2015 Beauty Manifesto: What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong

I Still Have Depression and Anxiety!

Continue reading An Update On How Postpartum Depression Changed My Life at Frugalwoods.

As I shared last week, April is the NINTH anniversary of Frugalwoods! To celebrate, I’m typing down memory lane with reflections on some of my most influential old posts. Nine years is a long time to do anything and I’m curious to see if I agree with my old self or if my thoughts have changed in the intervening years.

Old Me vs. Current Me: A Showdown

The first post I want to reflect on was a real zinger when it came out and generated quite a bit of controversy and discussion (288 comments!). Published July 27, 2015, it’s my oft-cited “Less Makeup, More Confidence: My Frugal Beauty Manifesto.“

When I wrote this, I was 31 and didn’t have any kids. Re-reading it now–at 39 with two young children–my thoughts have changed. First of all, the writing is bad.

Continue reading Revisiting My 2015 Beauty Manifesto: What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong at Frugalwoods.

I started a clothing-focused mini-series over the summer wherein I managed to devote two ENTIRE posts to the topic of just me and my clothing alone:

• My Ever-Evolving Relationship With My Clothes
• The Clothes I Wear For Comfort and Confidence

Riveting as that was, a number of you requested I write about the clothing of the other people in my house. In response, today I bring you a deep dive into the closets of my children, Kidwoods, age 7 and Littlewoods, age 4.

The Hand-Me-Down Train Continues

We’ve been on the used/hand-me-down train since before the girls were born and haven’t disembarked yet. I get the bulk of their clothing (and shoes, toys, books, puzzles, etc) from three sources:

1) Garage sales.

The vast majority of their clothing (and everything else) comes from yard sales because it’s often one-stop shopping AND they have the best prices.

Continue reading How I’ve Saved Thousands of Dollars on Clothes for My Kids at Frugalwoods.

Last month I shared a journey through the recesses of my brain, or at least, the clothing and appearance-related recesses of my brain. If you haven’t read that post yet, I recommend you go there first since today’s article is the second in this mini-series. Today I’ll take you on a journey through my closet, with far less emotional toil and far more practical lists.

Now that you all know how I FEEL about my clothing, I know you want to know what clothing I wear. Right?!?

My Uniform

Given my past penchant for bizarre outfit concoctions, I never pictured myself as a uniform person. But now, with two kids, one job, nine chickens and one homestead? Uniform me up, baby. I didn’t intentionally set out to create a uniform, it just happened as I realized that I want to wear comfortable clothing every single day.

Continue reading The Clothes I Wear For Comfort and Confidence at Frugalwoods.

I have a hectic relationship with clothing. In my 20s and early 30s, I worshipped it. I stuffed the closets of our various rental apartments with beaded slip-on loafers I bought at an outdoor market in Strasbourg, France; a vintage bubblegum-pink stewardess dress I liberated from a Goodwill in rural Kansas; a red Banana Republic raincoat I found (with tags on) at a consignment store in Boston.

Recently, a number of readers–mostly also young (am I still young?) moms–have asked me what I wear and how I approach my relationship with clothing these days. Longtime readers will recall my three-year-long all-out ban on buying clothing. I successfully went three years without buying anything because I desperately needed a re-set. I bought clothes at thrift stores and yard sales constantly. I had enough to clothe an entire soccer team. Several teams.

I’ve only recently realized how intertwined my clothing obsession was with my previously undiagnosed depression and anxiety.

Continue reading My Ever-Evolving Relationship With My Clothes at Frugalwoods.

Oh yes, we’re going there today. The “pink tax” refers to the fact that women often pay more for goods and services marketed to them. A 2018 study found that, “…women pay as much as 13 percent more for some categories of products (source: NPR).” Not cool, ladies, not cool at all. This insidious increase in price has been documented in everything from women’s razors to women’s clothing. In some instances, we can just buy men’s stuff instead (such as the men’s overalls I recently purchased), but there are plenty of products created for–and needed by–women alone.

While a number of states are working to repeal taxes on menstrual products, many states still have such taxes in place. Since I can’t change this sexist public policy (yet), I can convene you brilliant folks to share how you combat it. Today, thanks to the insightful readers of Frugalwoods, I’ve compiled a massive list of how to save money on the sometimes taboo, sometimes annoying, always necessary aspects of being a woman/woman-identified person.

Continue reading Reader Suggestions On How To Fight the Pink Tax from Birth Control to Bras at Frugalwoods.

I was pregnant or breastfeeding for four years. Starting in March 2015, when I got pregnant with Kidwoods, straight through to April 2019, when I weaned a 14-month-old Littlewoods. There was a one-month hiatus in 2017 after I weaned Kidwoods and before I got pregnant with Littlewoods. Other than that, my body’s been in full-time mama territory.

Today is an exploration of how my relationship with my body–and by extension, with clothes–evolved as a result of my pregnancies and parenting. I’m learning it’s more nuanced than the fact that my hips will never go back to their original shape. The physical changes are the most obvious, but the mindset shift is the most affecting.

Body positivity, acceptance, finding a balance between vanity and neglect, breaking my clothes-buying-ban, and spending money are all wrapped up in this experience.

Four Years Of Maternity Clothes

Four and a half years ago, I was determined to cobble together a hand-me-down maternity wardrobe and baby nursery.

Continue reading How I’m Learning To Love My Body, Find A Middle Ground, And Buy Clothes Without Regret at Frugalwoods.

Today, I’ve gathered sage advice from Frugalwoods readers about frugal beauty routines because I’ve always been stumped by beauty routines. When I turned thirteen, I felt like I should do something to my body in the area of beauty routines using beauty products. What that was exactly remained a mystery. I was overwhelmed by the beauty section at Walmart, which was the only store we went to that sold such things. It was off in a corner behind the pharmacy, and it smelled of womanly things. Floral, heady, foreign.

I’d wander those aisles while my parents bought toothpaste and toilet paper. I’d read the labels on body spray, trying to discern if you were supposed to spray it on your body during or after showering. Because then there was also body wash and body lotion. Did these all work in concert? Or were you supposed to use just one of them?

Continue reading Reader Suggestions: Beauty Routines Of The Frugal And Fabulous at Frugalwoods.

I cut my hair. A lot of my hair. Most of my hair, in fact. Yes indeed, today I am writing about hair. I will cover other thrilling topics such as the sunk cost fallacy and paralysis by analysis. But mostly, this is a post about my hair. With more pictures of my hair than is reasonable.

Mr. Frugalwoods told me I should tell you this at the outset because he felt that people should be forewarned they were about to read about hair. I countered that in the past, I’ve written missives on a screen door, bananas, and popcorn. Hair does not feel like a departure from these high-brow topics. I hope you agree.

Me + My Long Hair = A Dying Love

I loved my long hair two times a year: 1) When I had a photo taken (see photo at right, taken by Mr.

Continue reading Sunk Costs, Paralysis By Analysis, And Why I Finally Cut My Hair Short at Frugalwoods.

Mr. Frugalwoods needed glasses. After years of competing over who could discern distant signs on roadtrips first, age finally caught up with my mountain/computer man.

Both of his vocations–software engineering and forestry management/homesteading–require the ability to see clearly. As does, you know, life in general.

Last year he started getting headaches and complained of blurry vision and so, the time had come. I sent him to the eye doctor. Verdict: his vision isn’t terrible, but it’s enough that glasses make his life better. And who doesn’t want a better life?!

A LASIK Sidenote

Longtime readers will recall that I, oh haver of terrible vision since middle school, got LASIK surgery exactly four years ago, which I still consider one of the best things money ever bought (second, of course, to our marriage license and the co-pay for Babywoods’ birth).

The full rundown on my LASIK story is here: Why LASIK Surgery Is The Best $4,225 I’ve Ever Spent.

Continue reading How We Bought Inexpensive, Awesome Glasses Online at Frugalwoods.

Today I mark a frugal milestone: my clothing ban is over! Well, it’s not actually over, it was simply suspended a tad. On January 1, 2014, I decided to stop buying clothes. And I mean fully stop. I didn’t have a list of items I was allowed to purchase and I didn’t make exceptions for anything–not even during my nine months of pregnancy. The rules of my self-imposed ban were as follows: no buying any clothing, which includes shoes, coats, jewelry, accessories, socks, hats, belts, underwear, and of course, any and all clothes! Really I could’ve just said “no buying clothes,” but I felt like making a list. Since I know everyone will ask about this, I own these undies, which I consider to be pure magic. I’ve had them for 7+ years and they’re still going strong with nary a stretched-out elastic and not a single rip.

Continue reading Why I Broke My Three Year Clothes Buying Ban at Frugalwoods.

We begin today with a satirical rant, which will, I promise, eventually wend its way around to some possibly useful advice. 

Used stuff is gross. I mean think about it, someone else sat on my couch before I owned it. Someone else petted my dog before I adopted her. Someone else WORE my clothes. My cars were driven by another. Even my cloth napkin was pre-dabbed.

Therein lurks a very real threat to many a would-be frugal person: the fear of the used.

Sitting as I am at this very moment, in a deluge of used items, I contemplate this peril. Indeed, I’m perched on a used chair, at a used table, drinking from a used coffee mug, glancing over at a used high chair. A second-hand sideboard haunts the corner. Pre-owned baby toys are tangled in my feet (thanks to Babywoods’ current interest in putting things on our feet).

Continue reading The Myth Of The Gross Used Things at Frugalwoods.