Prioritized Living

Master your money. Get organized. Take back your time.

Setting Goals for Success

Setting Goals for Success

I am a firm believer in the importance of setting goals.  Some people believe that creating personal goals is boring and stifling, but I find it to be a liberating experience:

  • Goals provide a sense of accomplishment.  It is truly satisfying to cross a goal — no matter how small — off a written list!  At the end of the week, month, or year, you can see just how far you’ve come.
  • Goals give you purpose.  Have you asked yourself, “What should I be doing right now?” or “Is there something more important or more urgent that I should be doing right now?”  Know that what you’re doing is exactly what you truly need or  to be doing at that moment.
  • Goals reduce your stress.  Write down your goals — and the dates by which you want to accomplish them — and you don’t have to worry about keeping it all straight in your head . . . or missing something.
  • Shared goals bring people together.  Setting goals with your spouse, your kids, and your peers unites you in a common purpose and establishes you as teammates working together.

[Read more…]

Make It From Scratch: Baby Food

Make It From Scratch Baby Food

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

Baby products come with major sticker shock.  Of the many hefty baby expenses out there, one that really adds up over time is baby food.

When my son started solid foods at four months of age, I was baffled by the fact that a minuscule jar of mashed bananas — on sale! — cost more than a full-sized banana from the produce department.  For standard Gerber fare, my supermarket wanted to charge me, on a good day, $0.50 per portion of Stage 1 foods, $0.60 per portion of Stage 2 foods, and $0.75 per portion of Stage Stage 3 foods.  The Beech-Nut foods usually hovered around twice that price!

There was no way I was willing tho shell out that much money for groceries when a simple solution would allow me to have high-quality baby food for so much less — making my own baby food. [Read more…]

Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos: Part 2

This post is part 2 in the series Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos.

Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos

Check out Part 1 of this series!  Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

Big Containers

Baking is a breeze with these babies.  A bag of flour fits with room enough for a scoop into a single one of these 5.5-quart containers.  They’re great for storing your flours, sugar, rice, and more.  Smaller containers are handy for confectioner’s sugar, coffee, pastas, dry beans, etc.  They’re attractive enough — with a small enough footprint — to leave on the counter. [Read more…]

Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos: Part 1

This post is part 1 in the series Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos.

Favorite Products for Banishing Kitchen Chaos

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

Cooking can be a refreshing and relaxing experience . . . but not when you’re pulling out your hair trying to find everything you need.  Digging through a vat of pot lids, hauling everything out of the freezer to find tomorrow night’s roast, and trying to get everything away so that your kitchen doesn’t look like a war zone can make the process something to dread.

A disorganized kitchen is stressful and wastes your time every minute that you have to do battle with it.  I’ve discovered and come to love the following tools for keeping my food and equipment organized, which in turn saves my time and sanity. [Read more…]

Quick Tip: Slicing a Loaf of Bread

A bread knife is a great tool in the kitchen, but it’s caused some major loaf carnage in my kitchen.  Sometimes the pressure required to slice homemade or bakery bread — especially when it’s toasty warm — can flatten a previously lovely loaf.  Sometimes, wrangling the knife can make it extremely challenging to get even slices of the right thickness and a smooth cut.  Even under the best circumstances though, I wind up with piles of crumbs on my counter . . . wasted bread! [Read more…]

4 Ways to Pack for a Trip at Lightning Speed

Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

Pack Lightning Fast

How familiar is this scenario?  It’s 10:00 at night, you’re leaving early to travel, and you haven’t packed a thing.

Back when I was single, my less-than-ideal approach to packing would involve miming my way through each day of my vacation to figure out what I needed to take and packing each item as I went along.  Mentally walking through a long weekend though was incredibly time-consuming, and I’d still head out in the morning muttering, “I hope I remembered everything.”  It was often the daily essentials I didn’t think about — comb, razor, toothpaste — that would be most likely to be forgotten.

Now with a husband — who seems to require more accessories than I do! — and a kid,  I definitely can’t stick with the old approach.  To keep my sanity and save a massive amount of time, I’ve whole-heartedly embraced the following tips for getting our family’s packing done in a snap: [Read more…]

Budget Leeches (and How to Stop the Bleeding): Cable T.V.

This post is part 3 in the series Budget Leeches (and How to Stop the Bleeding).

Budget Leeches and How to Stop the Bleeding - Cable TV

Check out Part 2 of this series!  Note:  This post contains affiliate links.  Read my policy here.

The Problem

You’ve got every channel imaginable at the tip of your fingertips.  Maybe for that first year of service, you think you’ve landed yourself a pretty sweet deal for your television, phone, and Internet service!  Then year two rolls around and you get the jaw-dropping bill . . . [Read more…]

Budget Leeches (and How to Stop the Bleeding): Groceries

This post is part 2 in the series Budget Leeches (and How to Stop the Bleeding).

Budget Leeches and How to Stop the Bleeding - Groceries

Check out Part 1 of this series!

The Problem

In general, purchasing groceries to prepare your own meals is far less expensive than eating out.  Still, are you hemorrhaging money at the supermarket without realizing you’re leaving a trail of discarded cash in your wake?

Here’s a real life example:  I know that I can nab a medium cheese pizza from the local Italian place for about $10, but I can walk into my my grocery store and pick up a frozen pie for $8.  I’ve saved $2, right?  Not so fast.  I’m still giving away my hard-earned money when I could be even smarter with my spending. [Read more…]