The value of money earned

Joel and I have talked in the past about whether or not we plan on giving our kids an allowance. I like the idea of kids learning how to deal with money, or having some kind of income. I would want to give them the benefit of working, saving, putting thought and effort into acquiring that which they desire and therefore find the value in their work as well as their possessions. But I don't like the idea of just giving them money for no particular reason except that it's That Day of the Week. Then there is the question of whether or not their chores should have anything to do with their allowance - whether or not to pay them to clean their room and so forth. I wonder then how will they would learn responsibly - that there are duties we have in life that must be done, whether there is reward or not, whether we feel like it or not. As an adult, I don't get rewarded or paid to make my bed, cook my dinner, wash my bathroom. But I do these anyway, because it's the responsible thing.

I've also been thinking about something I read in a pretty good book once. The author was talking about the difference between a child who gets whatever he wants given to him freely and a child who is told 'no' occasionally or gets a more reasonable number of gifts. At Christmas time, for example, the child who gets whatever he wants, a hundred presents wrapped round the tree, is less likely to really see the value in any of those gifts, tossing them aside at once for the next. But the child who only gets a few gifts, is more likely to take care of each of them, and appreciate both the gift and the giver more. I suspect that it's true of a child who puts his own time and effort into aquiring something as well - he values it more.

With all these things in mind, Joel and I have come to a compromise with which I am quite satisfied. My son is still only 2 years old, so all this talk about allowances and money is mostly just a plan for the future. But the gist of it is this: their chores will be an unpaid lesson in responsibility (making bed, putting away toys, etc). but they can earn money by doing any extra chores that are normally done by mom and dad (yard work, vaccuming, etc) Now they know there are some things that they will have to just do for the sake of getting it done, but that they can earn money by working for someone else.

All of this is just leading up to a sweet moment that happened this afternoon. I pulled out my little swiffy mop, to wipe up the kitchen floor of some sticky spots after lunch and saw my son playing quietly in the living room. And just on a whim, I decided to give him his first lesson in wages... even if he's a little young to grasp it completely just yet. "Hey, kiddo - do you want to help mama mop the kitchen?" His eyes lit up for something new to do, "Yeah!" and he ran over to help. I showed him how to wipe it back and forth and then let him at it. He proceeded to mop back and forth around the kitchen, with much more detail and interest than I expected. He even got in all the corners and under the table! I was planning to pay him 25 cents for about 2 minutes of work. But he did such a good job, I ended up giving him 50 cents for a job very well done, and I made sure he knew that.

He took his 50 cents and proceeded to play "spinnies" with them on the kitchen table. Hahaha. So much for learning the value of money at this age... Maybe I'll wait til he's older before I offer again. I think it also might click better in his mind if we went through the process of purchasing something with his money together and talking about it then too. But this was a good start. :)

Do you give your kids an allowance? Did you get one as a kid?

Hilda and Fred

One of my hobbies since I was a teenager has been working on my genealogy. I'm in and out of it alot. But, over the years,  I've accumulated some good things - information, documentation, and photos. My mom has been sending me some old photos whenever she finds them. Especially if they were from my dad's side of the family, since they are of more significance to me than her. Luckily, the Petersen family was filled with pack rats. They saved everything.

In a box of treasures that mom recently gave me, there were some really great photos...
these are just a couple of them from the turn of the century - about 1910.

The bride is my great-grandma - Hilda Cornell.

The groom is my great grandpa - Fred Noyed.

Fred is attended by his brother. Hilda is attended by her sisters.

They both came from farming families in Watertown, Minnesota .

Hilda's parents immigrated from Sweden. Fred's grandparents as well.

What a gift a photograph can be. I never met my great-grandparents. They were gone way before me. But here I can see their faces. The gleam in their eyes. Imagine what their lives must have been like. Were they hopeful of the future? Were they burdened by obligation? What were their dreams, or ambitions?

They look so young.

They have no idea what's ahead. What's in store for them. The strange thing is that here I am, their great grand-daughter, looking at them now. And I know what's ahead. I do know a little bit about what's in store for them.

That in 1915, they will have twin daughters, Ellen and Eleanor. That less than a year later, Eleanor will die, leaving Ellen an only child. That shortly afterwards, they will separate - Hilda will take the baby and move back in with her parents, and Fred back with his - although they will still be in neighboring farms. That little Ellen would grow up, marry and have three boys, one of which was my father. That me, my siblings, and our two cousins are their only posterity of our generation.

That 100 years later, their granddaughter will be looking at their wedding photo, wondering about their lives and thinking about their story...

The most profound thing I have learned as I've investigated the family history is how fragile our lives can be. The people themselves can be very strong. But the details of their lives seem almost paper thin. What brought Fred and Hilda's ancestors to America? What if they had decided it would be easier not to come? What if Ellen had gotten sick instead of Eleanor? What if, later on, when Ellen was a young woman, she had never met grandpa? What if, after their first date, she thought - "well, he's nice, but I think I'll keep looking?" What if after waiting so long for babies, they decided not to try, then they would've never had my dad. What if my dad, being enlisted in the Air Force, had never been stationed in San Rafeal (where he met my mom). What if he had never gone into the cafeteria for burgers that fateful night - would they have ever met? These are just some of the larger turning points. There are an infinite number of possibilities, paths our lives can follow. So I start to realize - how perfectly everything had to come together for ME to exist. Can you imagine - if anything had been one iota different, how our lives would have changed. Or maybe we wouldn't be here at all...

And yet here I stand. With Hilda and Fred Noyed's blood coursing through my veins.

Have you looked into your family history? I think you'll find it worthwhile. You may fin priceless stories. Maybe some photos. Most likely a heritage to be proud of. If you've never done it before, talking to family members is a good way to start a family tree, gathering names and birthdates, maybe photos. When you are ready to delve deeper, or can't find any info from relatives, try ancestry.com. I use it quite a bit when I'm in one of my researching stints. Or you can do research at libraries and request info (birth and death certificates) from the local government where the event occurred. If you've already studied your genealogy, what are some interesting things you discovered?

T Shirt Bag

Speaking of less waste market bags!

I've been thinking of this craft project I saw a few months ago, where you make a market bag out of an old T-Shirt. I don't really remember where I first saw it, but after searching a bit, I found out it was originally a "Good Thing" from Martha. You can find her video/tutorial here.

The main thing I was waiting for was a good candidate for the project. Then the other night my husband was cleaning out his closet and asked me if I wanted to do anything with this old shirt. I said yeah! I do! :)

Here it is. Cute, huh?  I bought it as a gift for Joel about 9 years ago, when we were dating. I remember hanging out at his parents house, laughing at old Strong Bad emails. Good times. ♥

Needless to say, it's getting kinda ratty. Especially around the neck. But a perfect candidate.

The project was SUPER easy. I think it took me about 15 minutes to do the whole thing.

 

The only problem now is... I feel kinda funny bringing a ratty old tshirt bag into the grocery store. Haha. :)

Waste not

I'm inspired when I hear about the different ways that people are living sustainably. Especially when it's those in lead of companies.

Like, hearing about how Subaru created a zero landfill auto plant that captures and recycles, reduces, or reuses their resources in such a way that they send nothing to the landfills. Can you imagine? Creating as many cars as they do every year, with no waste!

Or hearing about Sierra Nevada's practices here in Chico, about which I've already shared briefly. Besides the solar panel, there are other ways that they've worked hard to improve efficiency. These efforts include heat/Co2 recovery, using locally grown beef in their taproom, and dig this - they even  have a biodiesel processor so that they can use 100% of the used vegetable oil from their taproom as an alternative fuel source for their transportation fleet. Amazing.

I'm not sure exactly why things like this can get me excited. In such a wasteful, frivolous society, I like seeing others who are more careful with what they have. Thoughtful about how much they really need. Fitting environmentalism into a contemporary lifestyle sometimes makes for some interesting progression. People become inventive, they get to work the puzzle and hopefully come up with clever solutions to have a low impact on the planet.

Taking it closer to home:

I've been taking a fresh look at the items that I've been making and selling in my etsy shop. In an effort to reduce waste myself, I have from the very beginning, kept scraps of this and that, hoping to use or upcycle it elsewhere. But, after over a year of doing it this way, I realize that all this leaves me with is a pile of scraps to be used! And how much better would it be to redesign my products so that there was no waste at all.

For instance: my loveys were at one time an 18" square. I would get an 18" length, and since most cotton fabrics come in about a 40" width, there was always about 4" off the end that I would cut and set aside in my scrap pile (to use in something someday, I tell myself)

But when did I decide that my blankets needed to be square? Is it just because every one else's were square at the time? Why not make my loveys 18" x 20" and not have any waste at all. This actually works out fabulously, even though the minky I use for the backside of the fabric comes in a different width. It is however 60," which is also divisible by 20, so I don't waste any minky either! Brilliant. Why didn't I think of this before.

I will be redesigning my burp cloths and a few other items as well.

One of the biggest producers of scrap for me was my market bag. It was the only thing I had in the shop with rounded seems (in the straps). Which meant I was cutting a round peg out of a square hole, so to speak. Just today, I am proud to announce, I have successfully designed a new kind of grocery bag, that not only uses about half the fabric, but also produces less waste!

Here is an example of one of the older market bags (reversible)

And here is how much I scrap I had from making one:

Here is the bag I just finished today:

And here is my waste:

Two tiny little triangles! They are equivilant to about a 5" square. This is a great improvement over what it was before - I will use less and waste less.

[BTdubs, the new bags will be in the shop later this week  are now available! here]

My next project is to finally use up all those old fabric scraps so they won't be laying around my craft station - that will be a relief! And from now on, with a bit of cleverness, and a fresh perspective, hopefully I can continue to think of ways to not create waste. Or even scrap!

What are some ways you have found to reduce waste in your home or business?

Growing my own

I've always had a romantic notion of being a farmer. I think I've discussed that here before. "Sheeps and chickens and things." Gathering my own eggs. Milking my own cow. Growing my own produce seems especially feasible to me. Unfortunately in the 7 years I've been married (read: moved out of mom's house), we've lived in apartments, so there wasn't any land to work. Well, technically we did live in a house with some acreage... for about three months. It was in the mountains and we lived there during the winter. Not only was it freezing, but the entire lot was covered in redwoods. Very peaceful, quite beautiful. But not conducive to growing anything really.

Anyhoo.

Our current place is no different. We have a nice second story balcony patio, but it's about 6' x 6'. And Joel's manly barbeque takes up about a third of that. My point here is that while the obvious alternative to having land is to create a patio garden with pots, there is not even much room for that. My other sad secret is that while I love the idea of growing things... I'm actually not very good at it. :} I usually end up either loving the plant to death by watering it too much, or on the other end of the spectrum, I forget it exists and it dies of starvation. I also rarely take time to get to know them very well. I ignore instructions like how much sun it should get. Well, if I have a shady patio, there's not much I can do about it anyway. All this adds up to a few failed attempts at patio gardening, in which the plants usually die after reaching about 3" high. Then I give up and throw them out and get frustrated and decide it's "just not for me," that I must have a black thumb and I leave my empty pots in storage for a few more years until I get the courage to try again.

Enter Fred.

He's my new tomato plant. I was walking out of CVS one day and... something about the way his leaves beckoned me and his cheerful yellow flowers smiled 'hello,' I just had to take him home. The fact that he was only 2.99 might have helped, too. ;) What I especially love about Fred is that I adopted him at a mature age. All my other patio gardens I've tried to start from seed. But Fred has taken root, and grown to a substantial height, so I was hoping this head start would help him through the life of hard knocks he was sure to encounter in his relationship with me. :) But I'm really trying to treat him a little better than his predecessors.

So far things are going well. My son takes joy in helping me water him daily. I placed Fred in the sunniest spot I could find, though it's not his ideal, I'm sure. I even took a daring dash out into a hail storm a few nights ago to save him from certain death.

Then. Like magic. The other day, we walked out and found this!

It's a TOMATO!! I was so excited to see fruit on my patio garden for the first time in 7 years. My son and I continue to water and check for developments. I've even noticed a couple of other buds falling and fruits coming along. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself just yet, but I'll confess that visions of greek salads and tomato sandwiches have been dancing in my head.

Maybe I should go out there and talk to him a little bit. That might help.