We Have FOMO for Our Children and It Needs to Stop

Recently, I was reading a blog post about a family determined to pay off their mortgage early. They decided to postpone a vacation to Disney World, which the mother said was an important sacrifice to make, even though "it kills me to think that my 3-year-old is missing out on that experience."

Never mind that a 3-year-old wouldn't remember a thing about a Disney vacation a year from now.

Never mind that a 3-year-old would be equally delighted to blow bubbles in the driveway and get a pudding pop.

Of course there's nothing wrong with Disney World. But my mother antennae are starting to go up because I'm detecting that we have a serious cultural problem with FOMO.

Except the fear of missing out isn't for us, it's for our kids.

Since when did childhood become a checklist of "experiences"? We're approaching parenting as if it's some sort of accelerated enrichment course, and our grade depends on the number of "experiences" (often elaborate and expensive ones) we've furnished for our children.

I know we came to this place out of love for our kids, but it's got to stop. The goal of parenting is not to produce 18-year-olds with a fully checked-off bucket list.

We are stressing ourselves out and giving ourselves FOMO by making parenting about making sure the kids do all the things, visit all the places, and have all the fun — all before they're old enough to open their own bank account.

But we don't have to try to pack an entire lifetime of experiences into 18 years. Our job, our real job, is to make our kids feel safe and loved. That's it.

If you want to go on fancy vacations and you can afford it, then do it. It'll be fun. But please don't feel like your kid is missing out. There is no official list of things they must do or see in order to have a good childhood.

Remember that you are raising children, not building a résumé.

Orchestrating a series of once-in-a-lifetime experiences for kids in't the goal of parenting. Raising well-rounded, secure, healthy people is the goal, and there are many ways to do that — both ones that do and don't include a trip to Disney World.

Not all of the experiences that develop your child's character can be found on a list of 101 Amazing Things Your Kids Must Do Before They Grow Up.

So maybe the things that end up shaping your kids' lives will be cheaper, closer to home, and in a word, ordinary.

Maybe their "what I did over my summer vacation" essay when they go back to school in the fall will sound less impressive than their classmates'.

That's okay.

Because of money, distance, family circumstances, or a hundred other reasons, your kids are going to "miss out" on a good number of things we wish they could experience.

That really doesn't matter as much as we think it does. Because if your kids know what it feels like to grow up loved, then you're already giving them the most important experience of all.

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The Life-Changing Magic of Throwing Crap Away (And Some Rules for Decluttering Your House)

It all started with a book.

Not The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I think I reserved that at the library back in 2015 when everyone on the Internet was Kondo-ing their collective minds out, but I forgot to pick it up and the library waits for no man. Or mom.

No, I read a book called Simplicity Parenting, and that was the beginning of something.

I've never been a hoarder. In fact, I've always been more likely to throw things away than hang onto them. I've always hated clutter and loved big, empty space.

But with 6 kids, it just kind of happens. First there's one stuffed animal in the bed, then five, and one day you go in there and realize that the top bunk is in danger of collapsing under the weight of hundreds of plush figures. They bring home party favors. People give gifts.

And even though I'm sort of a minimalist, I also hate wasting anything. So what if that car doesn't have any wheels left? The kids still play with it. Bits and pieces of craft materials will still get used.

I also hesitate to throw things out because I'm no stranger to the way my kids play: anything can become a part of their game. So when I cut something out of felt, the scraps became rugs for their dolls and disappeared into their room.

Basically, my children are ferrets.

But when I picked up Simplicity Parenting, and I realized that it was taking my kids forever to clean their rooms at night, and that I was just going around picking things up all day long, I decided to change things.

Their rooms were not packed to overflowing, but I went through each and every toy, book, marker, and game. Room by room, I've been either trashing or donating ⅓ of its contents since November. (I do move some toys to the attic to rotate back to their rooms sometime in the future.)

Basically, I follow a simple 3-step process:

Step 1: Remove everything. Literally take everything out of the closets and shelves and put it on the floor. Yes, this means it gets much worse before it gets better.

Your husband will definitely choose this moment to walk by and passively-aggressively thank you for tidying up.

Do not skip this step. Throwing it all in a pile on the floor means:

1. You'll be forced to finish this job instead of giving up and watching Netflix halfway through. 
2. It becomes MORE WORK to put something back in the closet/cabinet/room than to get rid of it. If you do this, only stuff you really, truly want will go back in. 
3. You can clean the nasty shelves that have been accumulating crumbs and hair and dust and all other sorts of unholy things when you weren't looking.

Step 2: Sort it into piles. My patented four-pile system is:

• Trash -  crumpled sketches of who knows what. Action figures without heads. Pop up books that have been destroyed by grabby baby hands. Random pieces of plastic that serve no purpose. Why is there so much random plastic?? 
• Donate - toys that only do one thing and don't entertain for long. Things you always pick up but rarely see played with. Picture books you've always secretly hated. (I was riding the high of giving away Barbie and the Secret Door for days.)
• Move to Somewhere Else - I still want it, I'm just keeping it in a dumb place. Like the misspelled "MOMY" bracelet from my preschooler in my jewelry box (it was supposed to say 'mommy.') It's cute and I want to keep it, but not to wear on a regular basis so it shouldn't go with my everyday jewelry.
• Keep - once all the other piles have been taken care of, I usually go through the 'keep' pile one more time. Then I start organizing everything left and putting it in its new home.

Step 3: Force everyone to admire your work. Really. Stop everybody in the house from what they're doing and tell them to go appreciate it. Don't let them leave until they sufficiently do. If they don't adequately comment on what an amazing transformation this is, physically point their face toward the newly organized space and yell, "LOOK AT IT!!"

Once I started doing this in every room of the house, a few interesting things started to happen.

First, the kids actually started playing with the stuff they have. When the shelves in our dining room/craft area were crammed with kits to make-your-own-everything, they used none of them. They didn't even know they were there.

Once we got rid of all but one or two, they rediscovered them. I used to think my kids weren't crafters; now I think they were just overwhelmed.

The second thing was that their rooms stayed clean. Before, it was always a disaster so they wouldn't even bother cleaning up after themselves, because really, what was the point? I couldn't blame them.

With less stuff, it only takes 5 minutes for the whole room. Sometimes, they even clean up without even being asked (the older ones, anyway.) And by the way, this is the kind of claim I'd previously read and yell "Liar!" while chucking a boot at the screen. But it's true.

Having seen this with my own eyes, I don't hesitate now to be very selective in the things that enter my home and very liberal in getting rid of things that are already inside it.

And next time our stuff starts multiplying on its own as stuff always does, I'll know exactly what to do about it.

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30 More Slightly Insane Things I Do To Save Money

I'm a real cheapskate. And if you're reading this, you probably are, too.

How do I know this? Because other people want the regular tips for saving money. But you know all those. You've done them. You're looking for the slightly insane ones.

Well, I got such a huge response when I wrote my first 30 Slightly Insane Things I Do To Save Money that I'm back again with 30 more.

This post contains affiliate links mixed with links to hilarious stories on this blog. If a link takes you to somewhere outside of Unremarkable Files, it's probably an affiliate link which means I will get a small commission for purchases you make at no extra cost to you.

1. Think one year ahead if you can. Shop for next year's school supplies in mid-September, next year's Christmas decorations in January, and next year's clothes for your kids at the end of the season when they're on clearance.
2. Repurpose clearanced holiday merchandise. Sure, it looks holiday-themed in the aisle surrounded by all the other stuff, but a lot of the time it's basically the regular product with holiday packaging. I like to buy all my wrapping paper after Christmas; even the not-Christmasey looking stuff goes on sale and I can use it all year long.
3. A lot of utility companies give early payment discounts for paying your bill early. Does yours? (Even if they don't, pay your bills right away. Procrastination sometimes ends up in a late fee, and that sucks.)
4. I used to plan a week's worth of meals and go shopping every Saturday; now I still shop once a week but I only plan 5 days of meals and on the weekends we're forced to use up stuff from the fridge and cupboards. Even if we're out of something like milk that we use all the time, I try to wait one more day before grocery shopping because something else always ends up coming home with the milk.
5. Our oldest child is 12, and we've paid for a babysitter exactly twice. Part of it is that we don't go out nearly often enough, but part of it is that we trade babysitting with another family whenever we can.
6. Our health insurance will pay $200 a year toward gym memberships or sports fees. Others give incentives for preventive medicine like yearly physicals. Does yours?
7. Speaking of health insurance, you should read the fine print of yours. On some plans, it might cost less out of pocket for you to visit urgent care instead of the emergency room for stitches, go to Minute Clinic at CVS instead of your pediatrician for your kid's ear infection, or request the generic prescription instead of the name brand.
8. If you have some money in savings but you can't invest it or put it in a CD because you might need it, consider a high-yield savings account.
9. If you have an Amazon Prime membership, you can watch a lot of movies and TV for free with Amazon Instant Video. The ones that aren't free are only a few dollars, which is still better than having to put on pants and drive to a Redbox.
10. List broken appliances on Craigslist or Freecycle with full disclosure; some people fix up bikes or lawnmowers to resell or use and will actually take yours off of your hands.
11. If you can't sell your old electronics on eBay or Craiglist, use the Best Buy electronics recycling program to get rid of them for free. No disposal fees!
12. There are a ton of workout videos on Amazon Instant or YouTube, as opposed to a gym membership. And it's more fun to work out at home with a toddler crawling on your head, anyway.
13. Learn to coupon. I will never again pay a cent for toothpaste, shampoo, or conditioner because of coupons. Even if you don't want to be an extreme couponer who gets 112 bottles of mouthwash for 50 cents, understanding the principles of couponing will help you save money regularly.
14. Use conditioner instead of shaving cream. I get my conditioner for free by couponing, but even if you pay full price, a cheap bottle of VO5 is cheaper than a bottle of shaving cream and lasts longer.
15. Sign up for online coupon sites like Checkout 51 and Ibotta. You just take pictures of your receipt and submit them, money goes into your account, and you can cash out once you reach a certain amount.
16. I grind my teeth, and a new mouthguard last spring was going to cost me $667. My dental insurance covered nothing. So instead I went to CVS and got a 2-pack of at-home moldable mouth guards for $30. They are a little clunkier than the ones the dentist will make for you, but even if each of them only last a year it will literally take me 40 years to meet that $667 price point.
17. I buy dry beans, cook large batches of them in the crockpot, the freeze bags to use in place of canned beans. Dry beans are easier to take home, are healthier for you, and most importantly, cost 1/6 as much as canned beans. You can get them super-cheap at restaurant supply stores, but there isn't one close enough to make it worth my while so I just get 1-pound bags at the grocery store.
18. If your state requires vehicle inspection stickers, wait until the first day of the next month to renew yours. They expire on the last day of the month, so if yours expires August 31 go get your inspection on September 1. Your new sticker will be good through the end of next September and you've just gotten a free month.
19. Change your default printer settings to "black only" or "grayscale." Most of the time, printing in color is a total waste. Even if you're only printing black text, your printer still uses some colored ink unless you specifically tell it not to.
20. Get a free cell phone plan. Yes, free. I currently have service with Freedom Pop which is great for my data and texting needs, but I'm not happy with the call quality. A friend who hates spending money almost as much as I do recommended a free plan with Ring Plus, so I will have to check them out.
21. A lot of drugstores have prescription loyalty rewards programs. You might get $5 in store credit for every 10 prescriptions you fill there, for example.
22. Special makeup remover pads come in an 80-count container for $4.99; I can find baby wipes for 1 cent per wipe (couponing!) and cut them into fourths to use instead of makeup remover. You don't even need to do the math. It's just way, way cheaper.
23. I carry around discounted gift cards for the stores I shop at most often. I find them on Gift Card Granny and buy at a 10-20% discount (i.e: a $100 gift card for $80 or $90.) You could actually gift these to people, or use them yourself. Either way, you win.
24. A word about credit cards: I already mentioned in my other post that we use cashback credit cards. Normally, we get 1% cash back on purchases, but every quarter you can sign up for certain categories (restaurants, groceries, gas, etc) that get 5%. But here's the important part: credit cards are only smart if you pay them off in full every month. If you are carrying a balance and paying interest on your credit card, you are wasting your money in the worst way. Treat your debt as a huge flaming emergency and get rid of it. [end rant]
25. We rarely eat out, but when we do we try to combine it with a deal. Check sites like Groupon, Restaurant.com, or even Gift Card Granny for someplace you'd like to eat. Or you can ask for gift cards to restaurants at holidays and save them for date night.
26. When something breaks, learn to fix it on YouTube. From changing oil to cleaning your dishwasher to unclogging your sink, there's a tutorial for it online for free. Phillip could get a degree in auto mechanics from YouTube for all he's learned there. He once knew nothing about cars; now he does our brakes in the garage.
27. You can throw money at your kids' wardrobes endlessly, and they'll still outgrow everything in a season. In general, we don't buy more than our kids can wear in a week, which is how often we do laundry. They each have a pair of church shoes and a pair of everyday shoes for each season, and that's it. Any more just adds clutter to our tiny mudroom.
28. Buy with price per ounce in mind. Usually stores make it really easy for you by putting it right on the tag on the shelf. Bigger boxes are often, but not always, the best deal. A bunch of regular-sized packages of store brand cereal from your grocery store is often cheaper than a huge bulk container of name brand stuff from Costco.
29. Keep a box of stocking stuffers (or Easter basket stuffers). And hide it, obviously. Whenever I run across $1 toys, cheap candy, or after-the-holiday clearanced Easter/Christmas stuff I think my kids might like, I throw them in the box.
30. Re-use large 5x7 or 8x10 envelopes you get in the mail. We buy practically everything besides groceries on Amazon, so these are in no short supply in our house. You just need to tape the flap shut when re-using, and I write the address on a separate piece of paper and tape it to the front to cover up any previous labels. 

What about you? What slightly insane shortcuts do you take to save some money? Leave your input below and don't forget to check out the original 30 Slightly Insane Things I Do To Save Money for more ideas.

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Coupons: You're Using Them Wrong

Even though I've always been a really frugal person, I didn't see the purpose in coupons for the first several years of my adult life. In fact, I thought they were stupid.

Case in point: I would see a coupon for Cheerios, but upon going to the store it was obvious that the store brand Yummy-Os (or whatever) were still cheaper, even with the coupon.

I was using them wrong.

Coupons on their own are not particularly useful, unless you're a snob brand-loyal person. Combine them with the right resources, and you will never pay for toothpaste, feminine care products, or shampoo again. You'll also get deodorant, toilet paper, and diapers for much cheaper than you could buy even the store brand.

How to Get Started Couponing

First, you need to find yourself a couponing blog. Find one for your region of the country (because deals vary from region to region.) If you live in New England, I like Krazy Coupon Lady. If you don't, you know how to Google.

Second, bookmark your blog-o-choice and check it regularly. There will be all kinds of deals: online deals and in-store deals, deals with coupons and deals without coupons.

My son, helping organize my coupons.

Third, get your hands on the coupon inserts that come with the Sunday newspaper. I used to get a subscription just for the coupons, but stopped because I don't like wasting money on a paper I don't read. You can ask family and friends for theirs, or strike up a deal where the local library saves them for you, or even peruse public recycling bins for newspaper inserts. I won't judge.

However you get your coupon inserts, organize them in a binder by the date they were delivered. You don't even have to leaf through them to know what's inside first; the couponing blog does that for you.

How Couponing Works

Like I said before, coupons by themselves aren't very useful. Coupons are great when they are stacked with an awesome sale and an in-store promotion. That's when you get stuff for free.

The beauty of the couponing blog is that it finds these 'stacked' deals for you, and tells you exactly when and where and how to take advantage of them.

For example, Maven of Savin' recently told me how I could get 4 tubes of Colgate at CVS for free:

1. They were already on sale at the store
2. I used 2 coupons from my Sunday circular binder (it told me the date of the ones I needed)
3. CVS has a loyalty program where you get coupons to use at their store on future purchases when you buy certain products, including Colgate that week 
4. I paid with a $100 CVS gift card I'd gotten for $86 on eBay, which I'd learned about earlier from Maven of Savin'.

What If I Still Think Coupons are Dumb?

Even if you have no interest in ever clipping a coupon, I still think any frugal person should be following a couponing blog.

Many of the deals are online deals that don't even need a coupon. My couponing blog alerts me all the time to good deals at Amazon (yesterday I bought a big case of Pampers for half the price of store brand diapers) and Staples (our source of almost-free printer paper and inexplicably, toilet paper.) At Christmas I took advantage of several great deals, including a Groupon for 50 photo cards for $10.

A Word About Extreme Couponing

If you've ever seen that show on TLC, forget about it: you will not be that person. Yes, that person is getting 247 bottles of mouthwash for "free" in a single shopping trip, but it wasn't really free because:

1. They had to buy bulk lots of 50 coupon inserts on eBay in order to pull off those deals.
2. They still paid sales tax on each of those bottles of mouthwash
3. How many bottles of mouthwash can one reasonably use in a lifetime, anyway?

To be clear, I'm not an extreme couponer. I am a person who uses coupons and occasionally uses the word 'coupon' as a verb. I have a modest stockpile of stuff we regularly use in our house, and I pay less for it because I follow a couponing blog.

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Babies Do Not Cost a Fortune

In a phone conversation with a friend once, she let slip the F-bomb. Not that F-bomb. The other one. She said in passing, "...and you know, babies cost a fortune."

Ha!

I'm glad she couldn't see me because I'm sure I made a face. Eleven years and 5 kids into this becoming a mom thing, I'm convinced that babies simply cost whatever we want to spend on them.

I didn't bother to correct my friend because I hear it everywhere.

Babies are so expensive. 

You have to save up for years if you're considering having a baby. 

Don't even think about having a baby until you've moved into a ginormous house and achieved financial nirvana.

Mailings from Babies 'R Us would have me believe I need to devote an entire room of my house to my baby, furnish it with a coordinating crib and dresser/diaper changing table combo in walnut or cherry (depending on my style,) and buy a thousand dollars of matchy-matchy decor to fill out the room.

But up until the late 1900s nurseries weren't even a thing, and you probably have at least one grandparent that spent his or her first few months of life sleeping in a dresser drawer.

I'm not necessarily advocating a return to dresser drawers, but I am pointing out that babies don't need a lot of space or stuff, they just need love and enough room to set up a Pack 'n Play in the corner.

I know because we've done this, when our third child joined the family and we were living in an 820-square-foot apartment.

Nowhere we've lived have we ever had a nursery. Over the years we've had babies rooming with us, with their siblings, or even temporarily in a closet, the basement, or the master bathroom. 

We've found that they don't really need a changing table (beds, couches, or the floor work just fine,) a dresser (wire dorm-room shelving from Target is $20 and holds clothes,) or a high chair (we bought a yard sale Bumbo for assisted sitters and a portable booster seat for bigger babies and toddlers.)

I've seen babies with their own personal closets full of baby-sized clothes on baby-sized hangers and 2-year-olds with more purses and shoes than I've owned in my entire lifetime, but most kids just don't need more than a week's worth of clothes and you can find them at a consignment/thrift shop, yard sale, or your friend down the street giving away her son's outgrown things.

I have to admit, the USDA's estimate that it costs an average of  $245,000 to raise a child from birth to age 18 makes me freak out a little.

But when I do the math and multiply the per-month cost by 5 for my 5 kids, I realize it's either a super-inflated number or the average parent is buying diamond-studded pacifiers on Etsy, because it's nowhere near what we spend or have ever spent on any of ours, even though we live in a stupidly expensive area of the country (Northeastern United States.)

I decided to spend a little time playing around with the USDA child cost calculator myself to see what's supposed to make little people so expensive.

It asked what region I live in, how old my kids are, and what our household income is, then told me how much each one of them cost to raise this year — broken down into housing, food, transportation, clothing, health care, child care and education, and miscellaneous expenses for each one.

I know it's just a computer-generated algorithm, but there were serious problems with this thing. 

First, it added a $6,800 yearly housing allowance and a $2,100 annual transportation allowance for each child, even though I have the exact same house and car with five kids that I did when we had three. Basically, it's assuming that I'm getting more house and a bigger car for each child. (I wish, but no.)

Second, it must assume I'm exclusively formula feeding (since I'm told to budget $1,591 for baby's food for the first year) and using full-time daycare (since it projects over $5,000 in childcare costs.) In reality, we've dropped maybe a few hundred on formula to supplement and $30 for that one time we got a sitter in the spring.

Actually, I thought the numbers in every category were too high, like the estimated $45 per week on food for my 11-year-old when really, a weekly grocery trip for our entire family of 7 is about $150.

Long story short, since we're not teetering on the edge of financial ruin like the USDA calculator says we should be, I think it's wise to take the old "babies cost a fortune" adage with a grain of salt.

Possibly one of those giant blocks of salt lick they make for horses.

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30 Slightly Insane Things I Do To Save Money

I've declared before on the blog that I'm a cheapskate but never really elaborated on it.

That's partly because a big chunk of our cheapskate lifestyle is just not buying stuff — and a 500-word blog post about that would be hard for me to write and boring for you to read.

But there are plenty of frugal shortcuts I take that, when I think about them, are a little wacky. Do you do any of these, or is it just me?

This post contains affiliate links mixed with links to hilarious stories on this blog. If a link takes you to somewhere outside of Unremarkable Files, it's probably an affiliate link which means I will get a small commission for purchases you make at no extra cost to you.

1. Buy ink refill kits online instead of new printer cartridges. For our printer, a refill kit has ink enough for two refills and costs $10. A new cartridge costs $30. I still recommend refill kits in spite of the ink explosion debacle back in August (I've been doing this for 10 years and that was a fluke user error.)

2. Join a rebate program. Whenever I shop online, I check if I can get cashback from Mr. Rebates. It's only a little if you buy something small like, say, an ink refill kit, but pretty cool if you're buying airfare for your entire family.

3. Use online coupon codes. Anytime I buy anything online, I Google coupon codes for that store first and half the time I find something.

4. Pay with cashback credit cards. We also got a hotel rewards card before we were planning a family vacation and ended up staying in a one-room suite for free for 6 days in Washington, D.C.

5. Send postcards instead of letters. When my kids mail out thank-you cards for their birthday presents, I give them 4x6" rectangles of posterboard for them to decorate and send as thank-you postcards instead. We save on cards and also postage — did you know that postcards are cheaper to mail than envelopes?

6. Another word on postcards: don't ever buy them. Postcards are a 4x6" picture. Write on the back of a photo and mail it (with the cheaper stamp) instead of buying one!

7. Cut your family's hair at home. Almost a decade ago I bought this haircut kit for under $20 and my husband and sons haven't been to an actual haircut place since.

8. Keep a stash of birthday presents. When I see good deals on toys, I buy them. Between my 5 kids, someone is always going to a birthday party.

9. I stock up on staples like shelf-stable groceries, diapers, toiletries, paper towels, and toilet paper when I see good deals. (Of course, that means you need to watch prices so you know what's a good deal when you see it.) Our basement looks kind of like a grocery store, but if there's ever a zombie apocalypse you can come over because we'll share (unless you're a zombie.)

10. Don't buy pre-cut vegetables, shredded cheese, or premade food very often. This is an issue where sometimes you're willing to pay extra for convenience, but in general I live by the rule that if I wouldn't pay someone to come over to my house and do it for me it doesn't make sense to pay for it at the store.

11. Cook breakfast! Cereal is expensive and not very filling, anyway. If you can convince your kids to eat a bowl of oatmeal or an egg and toast, it's way cheaper.

12. For a parent, pre-packaged snacks are a huge money suck. Seriously, look at the price per ounce of the little snack-size 6-packs of crackers versus the family-size packages. Buy the big container and have the kids portion it out into Ziplocs at home to pack in their lunches. Even with the Ziplocs you still save money.

13. Packets of microwave popcorn are the biggest rip-off in the history of rip-offs. A bag of loose popcorn kernels will last you 6 months and costs less than a few packets of microwave popcorn, and it's not hard to make. I once almost started a fire frying an egg; if I can pop popcorn, so can you.

14. Make your own laundry soap. You probably think no one but Ma Ingalls does this. Well, possibly no one but Ma Ingalls and me. But here's the recipe I use, which I just found on a Google search. I've tried a few other recipes but this is the best I've found so far.

15. Stop paying bills by mail. I die inside every time I need to use a stamp. Really. Whenever we get a bill, I always call the 800 number at the bottom to pay it by phone (or do it online if it's free.)

16. Greeting cards are a waste of money. I hate buying them; they just seem so frivolous to me. Instead, I save the cards I receive and use the elements to make new ones when a card is necessary. I already have a bunch of scrapbooking stuff from my other life when I had less kids and more time, so it doesn't take long.

17. I follow a coupon blog. Coupon blogs are regional and you can find one in your area with Google. If you live in New England I like Maven of Savin'. (Update Oct 2016: Maven of Savin' has closed up shop. I'm currently in mourning. Don't talk to me about it.)

18. Maintain a gift list for yourself. When people ask "What do you want for your birthday/Christmas?" my mind goes completely blank, every time. So I keep an actual list of stuff I think would be cool to own (I'm told that many people call this "Pinterest.") Then I actually have a useful idea if someone asks me what I want.

19. When traveling, buy meals at the grocery store deli. A rotissiere chicken and a carton of potato salad from the deli counter is cheaper than even McDonald's for a family. (If you absolutely must do fast food, however, we've found that the best value for a lot of people is KFC.)

20. Make your own curtains. I'm the world's worst seamstress, but I can sew four straight lines and that makes a curtain. If you price out the fabric and then compare it to the cost of the two panels you need to buy at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, curtains are crazily overpriced.

21. Join the mailing list for your favorite stores. Some place bury you with coupons if you get on their mailing list: JoAnn Fabrics, JC Penney, and Kohl's come to mind. I never shop at those places without a coupon, because they show up in my mailbox almost every other week.

22. If there's a special promotion to get a gift card for less than its face value, and it's a store I shop at anyway, I buy them and use them myself.

23. I skip school photos and get the kids' pictures taken every year at JC Penney (with a coupon, of course.) Maybe it's not as good as the hoity-toity portrait studio down the road that also does weddings and graduation photo shoots, but it's good enough for me.

24. Get books/magazines/movies/music from the public library. If you know how to use inter-library loan you can get whatever you want for free. (If I ever write a book, though, then by all means please buy it.)

25. Cut up your meat when you cook. Our family does a lot of vegetarian meals now, but even when we ate meat at almost every dinner we rarely had meals that were a slab of meat with some potatoes and veggies on the side. We always used half as much meat by always cutting it up and putting it in a stir-fry or casserole.

26. Join Freecycle. It's a global network of local groups where you can give away anything, as long as it's free. This is a gold mine for kids' stuff including furniture and toys, and all kinds of other things, too. We also have a local "give and take" thrift shop where everything is free, and a swap shop at our town transfer station with the same idea.

27. Avoid buying brand-new furniture. Craigslist is usually the best deal, followed by eBay, followed by kids' consignment stores. If you have a few months to wait and watch before you need the item, periodically check Freecycle and see if it comes up.

28. Learn what a rain check is. I didn't know what a rain check was until I was 30, and even then I was scared to use them. But they're great! If something's on sale and it's not on the shelves, ask the cashier for a rain check. You can come back later and get it for the sale price, usually within 30 days. You can still use coupons if you have them.

29. Never throw away food. The beauty of having babies and small people around is that if there are two spoonfuls of mashed potatoes or 6 green beans or a quarter of a waffle left over, it's a perfectly sized snack for later. My youngest kids and I have random leftovers all the time for lunch — we call this a "choose your own adventure" meal.

30. Join diaper loyalty programs. Since we've had someone in diapers for 11 years and counting, I make it my business to belong to the Huggies and Pampers rewards programs. If nothing else, I can use the rewards for baby shower gifts. (In a few more years, I'll have earned enough points to buy some lucky mom-to-be a new minivan.)

Leave a comment below with your best money-saving tips, and check out my article 30 More Slightly Insane Ways to Save Money. I promise you this is just the tip of the cheapskate iceberg.

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Why I've Never Bought School Pictures... And I Never Will

My oldest daughter brought home a school picture order form on Friday, which I immediately tossed in the garbage without looking at it.

To make sense of this post, you need to know that I'm frugal. Really frugal. I've worn shoes until they literally disintegrated and I found myself walking down the street barefoot. I'll put items in my cart at the dollar store and then end up putting them back because we don't really need them. At the dollar store.

So please understand that if you send my child home with an order form where the "Most Popular" package costs $82.10, I will swiftly burn it and not look back.

I love pictures of my kids. But school pictures, let's face it, are only slightly prettier to look at than mug shots.

The kids have usually got weird hair from running around at recess or a smudge of jelly on their lip left over from lunch, or a funky expression on their face. The pose is exactly the same, year after year.

And if you've got more than one child (in my case I have 6!) to buy pictures for, good luck to you and the second mortgage you'll be taking out to pay for them.

So I came up with a great money-saving solution that allows me to have current photos of my kids on the walls and not overpay.

Every year on the kids' birthdays, I make an appointment at a department store photo studio and get their pictures done there. I use J.C. Penney, but there are also studios at Sears, Target, and Walmart.

Once you sign up on their mailing list, they'll regularly send you coupons several times per year. I come home with a boatload of prints for under $40 every time, because I never go without a coupon. (The important part here is that you read the fine print and don't allow yourself to get pressured into buying fancy photo enhancement options or overpriced packages that aren't covered by the coupon.)

I love the results: I can get a variety of poses and if I like, a few shots of the kids together. One year, my daughter even brought her violin for pictures.

They're like pictures I would take at home, only better because the cameras are nicer than my phone and the photo studio doesn't have balled-up socks and abandoned bowls of raisins in the background.

If you like shelling out $296.50 for forty-eight identical head shots before you've even seen what they look like, then more power to you. Buy the school pictures. I'm not going to tell you how to live your life.

It's nothing personal; I just don't have a need for a dozen copies of identical mug shots of my daughter looking like, well, like she's tired of waiting in line behind 50 other kids for her turn all morning.

Our walls are hung with professional portraits of the kids, except with this money-saving alternative the pictures in my frames are better quality and cost a fraction of the "Best Value" packages the school tries to hawk to me every year.

So it's safe to say I will never buy school portraits, and I'm 100% okay with that.

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The Circus Comes to D.C.: 7 Things You Learn When Taking Your Big Family to the United States Capital

Now that we're home and we're (mostly) unpacked, and the 3,857 articles of clothing that were somehow soiled on the trip are (almost) all washed, I can reflect on our most recent vacation.

Taking our large family to Washington, D.C., with five kids ranging in age from 11 to 1, taught me 7 lessons.

Lesson #1: You will visit every public bathroom in the city.

In fact, there may be certain Smithsonian museums that you have no idea what's even inside, excepting the restrooms.

Your children will stagger their pit stop requests throughout the entire vacation so as to maximize your intimate knowledge of each and every public bathroom on the National Mall.

This is made slightly less annoying by the fact that your preschooler calls port-a-potties "Portal Potties."

Lesson #2: You will be in each other's way, like, all of the time.

Your kids will walk off the Metro and stop directly in front of the doors, while you're trapped behind the stroller frantically waving at them and saying, "Go! Go! Move over to the side, at least!" as the other commuters stuck behind you start to panic. The kids, however, will be completely oblivious that you're even talking to them.

Little things like that are just more embarrassing with a big family, because, well, you take up more space. You're more conspicuous.

If you're by yourself and you get on the elevator at your hotel, can't figure out that the buttons don't work without your key card, and then get off, it's not too mortifying. People probably won't even notice.

But just try parading a family of 7 (plus suitcases) in and out of the elevator, then back in once you figure it out. Trust me, every eye in a mile radius will be trained directly on you.

Everything 7 people need for 6 days. We tried to pack light and blend in. Didn't work.

You'll be going up to your room when the elevator stops to pick up a guy on the fifth floor. He'll get on and exclaim, "Woah! Party in the elevator!"

You'd better believe it's a party, mister. You have no idea.

Lesson #3: Hotels aren't built for families of your, shall we say, caliber.

Not advocating breaking any fire codes here, but you'll stay in one room because let's face it: having a separate room for the kids to be in unsupervised increases the odds of the building burning down by 500%. It's just math.

Which means you'll have people sleeping on pretty much every conceivable surface come nighttime.

At home we have a book called So Many Bunnies  about "Old Mother Rabbit" who lives in a shoe and tucks her many, many baby bunnies into bed in creative places:

"1 was named Abel, he slept on the table. 2 was named Blair, she slept on a chair. 3 was named Dee, she slept in a tree..." 

The book ends with the 26th bunny Zed, who sleeps on the shed. And you'll be wishing you had a shed by the time you get everyone tucked in to their various nooks and crannies in that teeny hotel room.

Families like yours can also get really loud, especially when all the kids are excited. You realize it's hopeless to prevent this, but you'll try anyway.

Phillip giving the preliminary "no screaming in the hotel because there are other people here" speech before we enter our room.

In the end, the kids will end up watching a whole lot of TV in the hotel room to stay quietly entertained.

Thanks to Cartoon Network, you'll leave with half the brain cells you had when you came.

Lesson #4: You will write embarrassing notes to housekeeping.

On your first night there, you'll be awoken by a child at your bedside saying they wet the bed, "bed" being a euphemism for the two couch cushions under the writing desk they're sleeping on.

As you're cleaning them up in the bathroom, you'll open the door and literally run into a second child telling you that they threw up earlier. Then they'll demonstrate it for you, in case you didn't actually believe them.

In the morning, you'll ask yourself, "Am I really doing this?" as you write the following note for housekeeping, but you won't know what else to do because you don't want the maid to come and just re-make the bed using the vomit sheets.

I debated whether I should sign this "thank you" or "sorry," and I decided that "thanks" sounded more positive.

Later in the week, a child will wet the bed again. You'll bit your lip, examine the circular urine stain on the blanket and have a debate with yourself: do you write another note and become known among the housekeeping staff as the Weird Vomit-and-Pee Lady in Room 1202, or do you run the entire blanket under the sink so you can still signify to the maid that it's in need of laundering without having to write "Heads up, there's urine on this!"

You will choose the latter.

Lesson #5: D.C. is a great place for cheapskates.

You'd be lying if you said one of the most exciting parts of this vacation was how little it cost.

If you're lucky, you'll get your hotel room using points from your credit card. Food won't cost much more than a week of eating at home, because you'll eat the hotel's breakfast and buy food at the grocery store to make your own lunches and dinners.

Look at the food trucks lined up for all the suckers! Oh, we're just fine with our PB&Js, thank you.

(Note: if you buy a week's worth of groceries at a Safeway a few blocks from your hotel and then give everyone in your 7-person family a bag or two to carry home, you should also wave and throw candy because people will think you're a parade.)

You'll pay for gas driving there and back, daily parking at the hotel, and subway fare, but that's it. There are paid attractions in D.C., but you won't see any of them, because there's so much else to see that's free.

You've got the federal buildings

and the monuments,

which have lots to offer babies who live to climb stairs.

But they're even more majestic-looking all lit up at night:

Plus there's the National Art Gallery and all the Smithsonian museums, and the U.S. Botanic Garden where you'll finally find out where pipe cleaners come from:

Didn't see a label with the name, but I'm pretty sure it's a pipe cleaner plant.

Lesson #6: Hell hath no fury like a baby who hasn't taken a proper nap in three days.

You'll hope that your 1-year-old will just sort of drift off to sleep in the stroller when he's tired, but how realistic is that?

He'll be okay for the first few days, but on Day 3 he'll end up screaming face-down on the floor of the Meto, and any attempt to placate him will only make him madder. When you get to your stop you'll carry him 5 blocks back to the hotel while he flails so furiously his shorts fly off, and he'll fall asleep the second he hits his crib.

Tomorrow, you'll learn your lesson and stay at the hotel to get the baby his beauty sleep while your husband takes the older kids out at naptime.

Lesson #7: You will discover again how cool each of your kids is.

At home you're nagging your kids all the time to clean up after themselves, put away the Legos on the floor, do their chores, and flush the toilets when they're finished (for goodness' sake!)

On vacation, you'll remember how hilarious they are and just how much you enjoy being around them.

They will laugh every time you go past the stop called "Foggy Bottom" on the Metro, and it'll never get old for them. They'll even make up a song about it together.

"There goes old Foggy Bottom..."

Your son will be transfixed by touching a brain (even if it is a fake one) at the Museum of Natural History,

and will try to convince you that this giant chunk of amethyst really does smell like grapes.

You'll see the statue of Roosevelt and his dog at the FDR Memorial and your 3-year-old will immediately bend over to check "if there's anything inside her nose."

Your two oldest girls will stand in the Lincoln Memorial and read one of his speeches in its entirety,

and the baby will want to be standing on the windowsill pretty much all of the time you're in the hotel.

You'll play with them at a water park

and laugh when the baby tries to copy his older siblings doing handstands in the park.

And you'll tell yourself never to forget how very, very lucky you all are to have each other.

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