Money Saving Mom®

Guest post from Gretchen of Desert Survivor

Camping can be one of the cheapest and most memorable ways to take a vacation! Here’s how to make it a successful venture:

Get a Good Night’s Sleep

If you don’t sleep well, you probably won’t be able to do other things well. If you have access to a camper, that can almost be like sleeping at home. However, sleeping in a tent can be a different story.

Over the years, our beds at home have become more comfortable, with foam padding, pillow-top mattresses, and more. The ground has stayed the same: hard. And if you’re not used to hard, you won’t sleep well.

So bring a sleeping pad. This could be the inflatable mattress you use for guests at home, a specially made camping pad, or a bunch of blankets folded up. It doesn’t matter, as long as you have something. Kids might not need anything. But as I’ve told my family numerous times, “I have hips.” Women’s hips just need a little extra padding!

Make sure you have appropriate covers — if it’s hot, you won’t need so many, but there’s nothing like being freezing cold to keep you from sleeping well. The covers don’t have to be fancy, just bring enough — and don’t forget that you might need one under you too!

Finally, be sure the tent you’re in is adequate for the weather. There’s nothing worse than setting up your tent and then having a thunderstorm drench everything in it because the rainfly wasn’t on or adequate. A higher quality tent will provide more protection and last more years, but if all you have is a cheaper one, you can rig a tarp over it to help keep it dry.

Two more tips for sleeping through the night: be sure to bring a pillow. It’s amazing how much that helps. And bring earplugs. They can help muffle noises that you’re not used to and help you sleep better.

Plan Your Meals

I’m not a very good meal planner at home, but when I go camping, I make lists. I want to make sure that I’m going to have something to eat. I’ve camped with a couple different types of campers: the gourmets, and the survivalists. Both have merits. Regardless of the type, both need some meal planning. As you can see with the two menus below, it’s possible to have a simple menu with a quick clean-up that’s not costly but still healthy.

Breakfast: juice, yogurt, scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee
Lunch: sandwiches, carrots, apples
Dinner: potato-carrot-sausage foil dinner, corn on the cob roasted over the fire, S’mores
Snacks: fruit, cut-up vegetables, homemade trail mix

Breakfast: homemade muffins, hard-boiled eggs, bananas, milk
Lunch: tortilla wraps, cherry tomatoes, oranges
Dinner: hot dogs, green beans, popcorn,
Snacks: nuts, dried fruit, granola bars

To keep food cool, instead of buying a bag of ice, I often freeze water in old juice or milk containers and put them in the cooler. The ice stays longer, and as it melts, I have additional drinking water instead of a soggy mess at the bottom of the cooler.

If you have kids, have them help plan the meals, they will then be much more excited about helping to prepare it!

As for a camp kitchen, I keep mine in a see-through Rubbermaid container. I have simple pots and pans, a can opener, plates, cups, eating utensils, spatula, matches, paper towels, aluminum foil, and spices packed and ready to go to make getting out the door easier. Sometimes we cook over a fire and sometimes we use a Coleman stove.

Everything Else

Camping can be as simple as eating and sleeping. You can add a few activities like hiking, fishing, star gazing, and wildlife watching. Games around camp that we enjoy are flashlight tag (those simple finger flashlights make for cheap fun!), hide ‘n seek, t-ball, frisbee, ring toss, and catching insects.

Camping is a great way to unplug, spend some quality family time, and relax. Although camping can be frugal, the memories it makes are priceless.

Gretchen Baker lives nearly in the middle of nowhere (it’s three hours to the closest shopping mall). Fortunately, she has a good Internet connection. She lives on a ranch next to a national park and blogs at Desert Survivor about how to survive and thrive in the desert environment.

photo source

Guest post from Carrie of Natural Mom Talk Radio

Every work-at-home-mom wants to maximize her time online. Whether you are a blogger, virtual assistant, writer, or crafter, here are six tips that will help you get more done in less time when you boot up your computer:

1. Define Your Purpose

Before you even open your computer, know exactly what you’re going to accomplish and get right down to business.

I’m reminded of those movie scenes of medieval times when a traveler arrives at the gates of the city. Before he is allowed in, he must state his business. Doing so will help you avoid aimlessly checking email, social media accounts, and the like (who, me!?). Personally, I find it imperative to have a to-do list at my side so I don’t get sidetracked.

2. Analyze

What are the steps you regularly take in your business? Are they paying off for you? Are your marketing efforts producing measurable results?

It’s important to track these things so you don’t waste time in unprofitable activities. For example, getting to know your website stats so you can see where your traffic is coming from is vital.

Another area to analyze is your own energy and productivity levels. In her book, 2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, author Rachel Aaron said that she created a spreadsheet to track how much she wrote at various times of the day. She was shocked to discover that simply by changing her writing schedule a bit, she could produce far more words in the same amount of time.

3. Think Like Henry Ford

Henry Ford didn’t invent the car. He invented the assembly line, which made cars affordable, and that changed everything.

Mass production saves time, money and energy. How can you use the assembly line approach in your work? By batching similar activities together.

If you have a time slot to write an article and get on a roll, write two articles. Don’t check your email all day. Check it once or twice a day, when you’re actually at a computer and can answer emails.

Need to make some changes to your site? Wait until you have several tweaks, and do them all at once.

Brain researchers have told us that each time we have to switch gears mentally, we lose time and focus. So stay in flow. Multitasking doesn’t really work.

4. Automate

Tools like autoresponders, vacation response settings in email, signature lines, e-courses, FAQ pages on your website, scheduling posts in your blog, etc. are all wonderful pieces of technology that allow you to do something once and benefit from it over and over.

For instance, if you are a virtual assistant, you probably find that clients ask you the same questions over and over again. Copy and paste those into an FAQ page on your website to save yourself time. If you’re in direct sales and have a downline, train them all at once using Google Hangout, webinars, teleseminars and such.

5. Identify Your Shiny Objects

In some way, we’re like that dog in the movie Up. (Squirrel! ) We get distracted by shiny objects online. Maybe it’s email, Twitter, visiting message forums, reading too many blogs, Facebook or Pinterest — oh, don’t get me started on Pinterest!

You might just have to eliminate some of your social media accounts if they aren’t anything more than a distraction. Consider using some of the free software available to help you block these, because here’s the honest truth: Anything that doesn’t directly earn you income needs to be done in your free time, after money-making activities.

6. Use a Timer

If you have young kids, you probably know the power of the timer. The timer keeps your preschooler in time out. The timer tells your impatient child “how much longer?!” until something happens. Etc. Why not utilize the mysterious power of the timer on yourself?

If it currently takes you 45 minutes to write a blog post (which you should know from the “analyze” portion), challenge yourself. Set the timer for 35 minutes then hit publish. If you have only an hour to work while hubby plays with the baby, set a timer for 45 minutes and work quickly, then check email and Twitter.

These are a few of the tips that have helped me to stay focused and get more done online… do you have anything else to add to my list?

Carrie, a wife and mom to seven lively kids, writes about homeschooling, practical frugality and natural parenting at Natural Mom Talk Radio. She is the author of the ebook, Slash Your Grocery Budget *and* Eat a Whole Foods Diet with ALDI.