lifestyle/family |

It’s 1pm and I just helped Anjali to sleep. She’s sleeping peacefully in our room. We have had a good time today, so far. We went for a walk. We had breakfast and lunch together. We played on the third floor with drums and toys. We climbed the steps. We’ve had a lot of pees in the potty today thanks to elimination communication. We even shared a morning nap together (she slept on my chest so I didn’t disturb her by getting up).

Now half the day is gone and I haven’t accomplished a long list of work and things I have set out to do. So this is my opportunity. Of course, here I am blog posting. But I want to take a few minutes to relay some tips that have helped me be more efficient with my time, especially when I have a 9 month old daughter who could wake up at any moment. Here goes:

Make a “To Do” list and prioritize it. I often fail on prioritizing, but I am working on that.
Get the most important, life-changing items done on your list first. What do I mean by life changing? The things that will move you toward your big-picture goals. That means, don’t get bogged down with things that seem urgent, like email or bills. For example, if I want to work on promoting my new CD, Battery, I need to work on the items on that list first, before anything else.
Check email no more than 2 times a day. This is a recommendation from Timothy Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week. His contention is that email, PDAs and the like have actually bog us down with more minutia and delay us from reaching our bigger goals.
Batch items on your list, especially minutia. That means if you have a bunch of related tasks, try to get them done in a batch, rather than attacking them a little bit at a time, here and there. Paying bills is a perfect batching item. Same thing goes for meal prep for the week and food shopping. Get it all done up front, so when it comes dinner time you’re not staring at the fridge wondering what to make.
Set a timer. When I check email nowadays, I set a timer for a half hour. The timer tells me when I’m done, and it’s time to move on to other tasks. While this may make you feel more like the ticking time bomb is inevitably going to go off (and it is, trust me), it will help you prioritize within the task. With email, for example, it forces me to be shorter with my emails, and to decide which things should be answered first.

Okay, so those are a few tips for you. Some of those ideas come from Michael Masterson, and some from Tim Ferriss. Both are worthy authors and worth checking out.

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As recently new parents, we have tried our best to keep costs down. It certainly presents a challenge, especially because choosing quality, and often organic items, tends to dip into the wallet a bit more. There are some places where we had to sacrifice dollars for peace of mind, and others where some DIY and bargain hunting saved us some cash.

Diapers

We had decided on cloth diapers, without thought of cost so much. Lucky us, our choice is more cost effective compared to using disposables. We started with prefolds, which tends to be less expensive than some of the other styles (pocket diapers, all in ones and fitteds). Even choosing organic prefolds and some more expensive wool covers, like the Little Beetles Wool Little To Bigand the Imse Vimse Wool, proves to be less expensive than disposables. We later moved on to using pocket diapers, which are working great for us. With these we did sacrifice on the natural fiber, more for the sake of waterproofing than to save a buck. Our Bum Genius 4.0′srock! They fit great, they’re easy to use and we never have leakage issues. All of this coupled with elimination communication is certainly proving to be a spend-less method. And you could save even more if you make your own, or buy used.

Newborn Baby Clothes

With newborn baby clothes, we ran into a dilemma. Sure, we didn’t want to overspend. It seems like a huge mistake to pay out lots of money for designer newborn baby clothes that your baby will grow out of in a month. But organic was important to us for at least the first 6 months. Many parents are making the decision to choose organic baby clothes–quality over quantity perhaps.

On the other hand, if you want natural and/or organic clothing, your pickings of second hand newborn baby clothes will be a bit slimmer. We chose to go organic, at least for the first 6 months, because we wanted the most safe and pure fibers touching her newborn skin as possible. As with the diapers, we shopped for bargains…Well, Madhavi found them online. I basically agreed with her choices.

I highly recommend buying unisex newborn baby clothes if you don’t know if you are having a boy or girl. I guess that is kind of obvious. We chose all neutral colors.

Certainly you can save a ton of money if you buy inexpensive newborn baby clothes, second hand newborn baby clothes, or receive hand-me-downs. We did eventually get a lot of hand-me-downs from Madhavi’s sister. That’s when we started becoming lax on the organic thing. We will, however, save a ton of money should we have a second child, because we kept all of Anjali’s old clothes.

Accessories

Strollers

Many parents will consider a stroller a necessary item. We did/do not. Our Graco car seat did pair with a basic stroller, which we bought. We used it maybe 10 times. If you want to save money and create an even closer bond with your baby, get a baby carrier. We use several wraps and the Ergo Baby Carrier.

Baby Carrier
cranberry

Anjali didn’t really like the stroller, but she loves to be carried in the wrap or carrier! No stroller necessary; money saved.

Cribs

There are two things we did to save on this item. One, we bought Gulliver crib from Ikea, a mere $99. Then we sold it, recouping $75. Being into attachment parenting, we knew we would co-sleep. We figured that we would still need a crib eventually. Nope. The crib was more a place to throw clothing. Anjali napped there a bunch of times. But in the end, getting rid of it saved space and recouped our money. We did shell out on quality bedding though, and an organic crib mattress. Those things aren’t cheap. But they’re worth every penny. Regular commercial mattresses are have so many chemicals–flame retardant and such. All of that off-gassing is no good for anyone, let alone a baby who has a developing immune system. We did keep the organic mattress, which Anjali plays and naps on during the day.

Oh, lastly about cribs. It is recommended that you don’t use second hand cribs or carseats. It’s not worth saving a buck to risk your child’s safety.

Nursery Decor

Here is where Madhavi really shines. She saved us a good deal of money, and had fun doing it. Her DIY mobiles, decor and overall design of Anjali’s room rock! Check out the pictures.

My feeling is, we definitely could have saved more money by ditching organic items and going with 2nd hand clothes from the get go. But, as I said, certain other criteria were more important than saving money…

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