Well, I picked a crummy week to drop off the face of the blog planet: the week when I’ve asked YOU to chime and give me some feedback! Work has been crazy lately, and I’ve been feeling exhausted and crummy and not witty enough to come regale the internet with tales of my life. But this morning I all of a sudden caught a whiff of “I’m going to be okay,” perhaps because it’s the Friday of a long weekend, perhaps because I got enough sleep last night, and perhaps because I cleared some things off my desk at work.

ANYWAY, I’ve been monitoring the polls and I’m excited to share some results with you! I’ll keep voting “open” through the weekend and run the entries through random.org for the giveaway on Monday, so take the polls and enter if you haven’t yet!

As I somewhat assumed, 84% of you read this blog because you know me (at least among the 19 people who voted). It’s great to have supportive friends and family who take the time to check out the blog, but I’d also love to get more involved in some blogging communities that may bring in more “outsiders.”

16 people answered the question about how they read my blog, and I was pleased the 44% of them are subscribed via a feed reader such as Google Reader. I’ll definitely keep that in mind as I format posts, and it will be useful information to have if I ever move toward monetizing through some ads here.

8 out of 16 people were satisfied with the post variety as it is, so I guess that’s good. :-) But a surprising 7 of you want to see more self-reflective posts. It was eye opening to me to find out that you guys want to know what’s going on in my head! Those are definitely the hardest posts for me to write but usually the most rewarding in terms of feedback, so I will try to begin incorporating more of those. (Along a similar line, Thoughtful Thursday and Monday Musings blew the competition out of the water for the title of your favorite post category.)

In thinking about narrowing the focus of my blog a bit, I gleaned some feedback from you that coupons and recipes are not why you come here. There are plenty of other resources for those, and especially since I’m not posting original coupon matchups or my own recipe creations, perhaps I just don’t have much to add to the online conversation in those areas. It’s a good reminder that just because I do something regularly (and well) or enjoy it doesn’t mean it has to be a main focus of my blog! I may keep Frugal Friday around for the time being because I enjoy it, but I think Tasty Tuesday will get nixed (especially because I’m so bad at taking pictures for it!). If you’d like to know what I’m cooking, you can follow me on Pinterest.

Though it was a somewhat arbitrary question, I got a lot of responses that people would like to read posts from me 3 days a week. That was refreshing to learn, because I sometimes get caught in the trap of comparing myself to big-name bloggers who post EVERY DAY and surely get thousands of hits on every post. I typically have between 15 and 50 unique visitors every day, and it varies widely by day of the week. So as I move forward, I’ll probably shoot for 3 posts a week, which I think is super doable!

This is all probably more interesting to me than it is to you, since it concerns my blog and decisions I may make about its direction, but I thought I would share just so you’d know your voice was heard! While Unpunctuated Life may not be a democracy, for this week at least, it was a parliament, and I appreciate your thoughts!

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend and check back Tuesday to see who won the copy of Same Kind of Different as Me!

I've been blogging here for over a year now, and I'm desperately curious as to what you guys think of this little corner of the internet. I'm with Gretchen Rubin on the merits of gold stars, and I would love your feedback! I've created polls to find out your opinions on a few questions I'm wondering about. (If you're lurking in Google Reader I think you'll have to click through to my actual site; please come visit!) Feel free to leave a comment and let me know if there's anything else on your mind. Once you take the polls, I'll have access to the results but I won't know who YOU are--so leave a comment letting me know you took it (an a way to get in touch with you if I don't know you personally), and you'll be entered in a giveaway as a token of my thanks! The polls will close on Tuesday September 4, so you can spend your Labor Day fruitfully sharing your mind here.

For my first ever giveaway, I'll be sending one lucky reader a copy of the amazing book Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent. This book made me laugh, cry, and think differently about my interactions with people I meet, and I would love to share it with you. I'll use a random number generator to figure out who gets the prize.

So now, without further ado, the polls!

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Thanks for contributing your two cents! As I look to the future of this blog and getting more involved in certain blogging communities, it definitely matters to me what my readers like and where they want me to go. If you're selected as the winner I'll be in touch soon!

The thought of couponing can be overwhelming. First of all, you have to figure out how to get your hands on the newspaper every Sunday. Do you want to subscribe for home delivery, or will you buy it every week? Or do you have friends who will pass their inserts on to you later in the week? When you get the paper, you have to clip out all those little squares, figure out how to keep up with them, and do something with the rest of the paper. And then, once you get into printable coupons, there’s the issue of printer ink, keeping the printer stocked with paper, and all the leftover scraps that come once you cut them out. That’s a lot to deal with! But I’ve found a couple of ways to make these aspects of couponing manageable.

• I was fortunate to find a Groupon for a Thursday-Sunday subscription to the paper that gets it delivered to my door at a fraction of the regular cost. And conveniently, right as I was trying to figure out whether it was worthwhile to renew or not, the Groupon resurfaced and I was able to extend for another 6 months!
• I got a cute coupon organizer as an anniversary gift, and I've posted before about how I use technology to keep track of all my coupons. I try to revisit the physical organizer and the online list at least once a week.
• I save most (but not all) of the newspaper bags, and they come in handy occasionally.
• We recycle all the newspaper (and in fact, we really barely read it), but it also comes in handy around the house. Just this past weekend, I pulled some sections out of the recycling bin to lay over the carpet as we brought in all of our grimy camping gear! I'm sure if I were intentional about it I could come up with even more great ways to use newspaper. Do you have any favorite tricks?

I actually got into printable coupons before I started clipping from the paper, which I think is backwards from how most people do it. I saw many coupon blogs talking about the merits of laser printers, and that’s one way to keep costs down. Andy and I found a great deal on a black and white all-in-one Brother printer, and I think we’ve only had to change the toner cartridge once in the year or so we’ve had it. Plus, when we do need a new one, there are almost always sales or coupon codes if you order online. Laser printers have a reputation of being expensive, but the black and white versions are more reasonable and make up for the upfront investment through ink savings.

When it comes to paper, believe it or not you can often get FREE paper from office supply stores like Staples. If you keep an eye out, they regularly run promotions where a certain type or brand of paper is on sale, with an offer to send in an easy rebate worth the whole amount. So, you only end up paying tax! Yesterday, I submitted my rebate online for their most recent promotion. Hammermill Copy and Print paper was on sale for $6.99, with a $2.00 off coupon available from Staples.com. I shelled out $5.39 at the register and will get back $4.99 in a few weeks. $0.40 definitely makes printing coupons worth it!

I save all the partial sheets of paper that result from coupons that don’t take up a whole page and keep them on a clipboard. I use these as my go-to paper for to-do lists, weekly meal planning, and other things that need to be written down around the apartment. This way, I don’t feel like I’m wasting much paper at all! For me, all of these tactics help using coupons make sense.

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Loyal readers, as we head into this weekend, prepare yourself for an exciting survey and giveaway coming on Monday! I’m heading to a frugal living conference in September, hosted by several big-name-to-me bloggers, and I want to do some thinking about the purpose of this blog. I’ll be asking for your feedback in a few areas, and I hope you’ll click through on Monday to take my polls! One lucky reader will be randomly selected to receive a copy of Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.

 

The other night, as I stood by the bed at 9:30 folding Andy’s shirts while he played trivia, which I had decided to skip in favor of taking care of some things at home, I thought, “Boy, he sure is spoiled. He’s going to come home and it will be as if this laundry got done by magic.” But as SOON as that thought crossed my mind, I realized, “Boy, I sure am spoiled too, because I never pay a bill, never vacuum, and know very little about how all the various computers and technologies in our home work.” Somehow Andy and I have never had the big “who does what around the house” discussion, but things get taken care of anyway. And by not talking about it and making a big deal of it, we both seem pretty content with the inadvertent system we’ve devised.

It seems to me like the division of household labor is often a sticking point in marriages, and I feel fortunate to have skirted that speed bump. When I shared my revelation about our mutual spoil-age with Andy, he suggested that perhaps the not talking about it system has worked well for us because we got married so young. Neither of us had lived alone for very long (me never and him for less than a year), so neither of us had a developed a routine of taking care of everything. I enjoy doing the laundry (okay, well, and am ridiculously particular about how my t-shirts are folded), so I took over that for both of us. Andy had already been keeping a budget and paying rent and other bills (and I didn’t have many finances to bring to the table straight out of college), so he kept doing that. I started cooking and grew to enjoy it, so it also made sense for me to to do the grocery shopping, especially once I added coupons into the mix. Andy grew up taking care of the dishes after dinner, so that naturally fell to him. And so on. Before we knew it, we had a system, wherein everything that needs to get done seems to get done! And it’s not quite magic, but it’s maybe akin to clockwork.

Sure, I have days when I don’t really feel like lugging the laundry down. Sure, every now and then I wish I could ask Andy to cook dinner when I’ve had a long day and don’t have anything planned. And sure, we butt heads sometimes about how long dirty containers have sat waiting to be washed. And sometimes, I feel inadequate and stupid for not knowing the “right” way to do certain things (like clean a stain on the carpet or load the dishwasher). In fact, I don’t really know how to use our vacuum cleaner because I’m literally not sure I ever have. I should probably figure that out. It’s probably not that hard. But at regular intervals, Andy vacuums! And so I’ve never needed to.

It was a nice surprise to realize that we have a system for household chores and to realize that we came to it with practically no analysis at all (unlike most things in my life). And it made me appreciate how well we work together and complement each other. I’m sure as life gets more complex there will be tasks will have to talk about. But for now, we’re both spoiled by how well we take care of each other, in our individual ways, and I’m okay with that.

How do you and your housemate(s) split up the chores? Do you like having a system in place, or do you play it by ear?

After years of angst about what my hair looks like, lately I have stopped doing anything to it at all.

Let me back up. Both of my parents have good thick hair with a bit of wave, which I inherited. But for years, I swam so much that my hair was dry and unhealthy, and I never liked how it looked. As I progressed through school, I learned the beauty of hair straighteners and curl gel/mousse/cream, and once I crossed that bridge I never went back. Even if I was letting it air dry, I scrunched it to death with some kind of product. And most days, I blew it dry and straightened it, because that was the way I could make it predictable. Unfortunately, I never mastered the art of using a round brush to make it blow dry nicely, so the straightening was a necessary second step.

I also went through a phase of coloring my hair. After an unfortunate experiment with “auburn” from a box (read: RED), I started going to a salon. But I was inconsistent about my visits so I almost always had roots showing. Plus I let my already thick hair grow long, and the combination of color, chlorine, and length made it look dry. To me, my senior portrait from high school is the epitome of what I don’t want my hair to look like!

I go all over the map on length, with a tendency toward keeping it about chin length with an off-center part, but again, my salon laziness means that it sometimes gets to shoulder length or a bit longer before I finally do that. Now that I don’t swim regularly, my hair is no longer dried out, and in fact tends to get greasy after a day or so, meaning I don’t like to use any product in it. So I’ve been exposing my hair to heat for years.

One recent Saturday, I took a late afternoon shower and, since I wasn’t planning to leave the apartment, decided to just leave my hair alone. And wonder of wonders, it actually looked kind of nice! It had a subtle curl to it and not a drastic amount of frizz. So I tried the experiment the next day to similar results. And now I am hooked. The extra 15 minutes or so that not drying and straightening my hair frees up in the mornings feels revolutionary. It may not look awesome, but it looks good enough for me. Plus it’s on the long end of my haircut spectrum right now, and I have a feeling if I get it cut, it will have even more bounce to it.

I’m sure I’ll pull out the straightener on days I have some extra time or on days I want my hair to cooperate, but for now I’m enjoying this change. Instead of rushing to dry my hair, I’m sitting here enjoying a cup of coffee and “talking” to you fine folks!

What are your tricks for freeing up valuable minutes of your time? Do you change up your hair routine occasionally?