by Libby Balke | I Am So Cheap, Kid-Friendly
Recently, I went on a bit of a rant regarding how much some of my friends and neighbors pay a babysitter to watch their children. After asking around to discover the “going rate” in town, I learned that sitters were charging $10, $15, even $20 an hour to...
by Libby Balke | I Am So Cheap, Kid-Friendly
It’s a rite of passage for teenage girls: working as a babysitter. I did it, my mother did it, my aunts did it, and some day, my daughter will do it, too. When I was a teen, the going rate around town was $5/hour, per kid. So if you had two kids and were going...
by Libby Balke | I Am So Cheap
I realize that calling myself a “small-scale hoarder” is in itself an oxymoron. After all, pop culture tends to associate hoarding with reality TV shows that depict a typically sad, lonely, isolated person with mounds and mounds of stuff. I do not hoard on...
by Libby Balke | I Am So Cheap
We were standing in line at the Walmart checkout when my daughter saw it – one of those push-button toys that light up and spin around. I knew what was coming next. “Mommy, can I have this?” she asked me in her sweetest voice. I could hear the doubt...
by Libby Balke | I Am So Cheap
It started innocently enough – by accident, really. I don’t know who put the plastic spoon in the dishwasher – it could have easily been myself, my husband, or our daughter – but I know that when I saw it in there after I’d run a full...
by Libby Balke | I Am So Cheap
As we speak, I am wearing my fuzziest pair of socks, silk long johns underneath my fleece-lined jeans and not one but two sweatshirts. My husband is similarly dressed, while the baby is wearing his footie pajamas, not because he’s going to sleep any time soon,...