5 posts tagged “diy”
I need to stop drafting posts and then not actually posting them.
I haven't been posting much lately because I'm super-duper busy as heck. Both the lead bloggers at DIY Life (one is darkmatt3r) stepped down at the beginning of March, and a couple of other ladies and I replaced them (the fact that it took three people to replace two harried ones, and the fact that all three of us are still very busy, might give you an idea of how much work we're talking about).
I wrote two long things in March, too. My article about Hinamatsuri, a holiday I think is really nifty because it involves super-fancy dolls, didn't get a ton of hits (but maybe people will discover it over time). There are some craft patterns at the end... a paper diorama, little cloth dolls, etc.
I also did a free knit/crochet pattern round-up for Easter: bunnies and lambs (or, if you prefer, rabbits and baby sheep). More cuteness per column inch than I knew what to do with. I want to make just about everything I listed, but I can't justify doing so. Anyway: Bunnies and Lambs to Knit, Bunnies and Lambs to Crochet.
I'm getting back on those "best free patterns of the month" columns, but skipping a few months. I have notes for a month that I'm not going to cover, so I will post them here. Later today, probably.
W/r/t my last post, I haven't yet bought any dolls. I did find that my local Japanese market is selling a few basic Re-Ment sets, so I bought one (single, not case) box of "Kawaii Kitchen" and one box of some food-based set. I don't think these are the new Americanized versions. Most of their other candy toy sets are based on, like, Power Rangers or some kind of mecha.
I banged my finger up pretty good last week, and in doing so, learned something: if you have a choice between Hello Kitty Band-Aids and non-Hello Kitty Band-Aids, get the Hello Kitty ones. They're bigger than the WaterBlock style anyway, and they will make you smile (at least, they will if you are me). I've been covering my bandaids in porous clear tape, then wearing a rubber finger cot every time I have to wash my hands.
I have managed to get a friend totally obsessed with Death Note. Now we are having long philosophical debates about A) whether or not we would use the Death Note, and how, and B) our deep, abiding love for L. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you clearly spend your leisure time more wisely than I do. (To be fair, though, everyone I know who sees the show becomes mildly obsessed with it. This includes my previously-animation-hating mother, who has also fallen hard for Ratatouille and anything from Studio Ghibli.)
(I'm also giggling at the moment, because Law & Order: Criminal Intent is on, and the suspect's last name is Morrissey, so they're saying things like, "I DON'T THINK MORRISSEY COULD HAVE PLANNED THIS ON HIS OWN," and I'm like, NO, HE WAS TOO MISERABLE, HE WILL BE CAUGHT WHEN JOHNNY MARR TURNS HIM IN....)
A few weeks ago, those Envirosax bag sets, large polyester fabric shopping bags in a variety of prints, were being pimped on half the blogs I read. They also make hemp bags, which might be less objectionable. One of the blogs had been discovered by someone from the company that makes the bags, and I wound up getting into it with him a little bit, because I really didn't appreciate his attitude. Here's why, and here's what I think you can do about it.
I don't think anyone can disagree that reusable shopping bags are a good thing, and I think that can be extended to most basic eco-friendly measures. However, the way that "green living" is being pushed these days... it's an issue of privilege, to a large degree, and an issue of trendiness and consumerism, and that bothers me. That is, being or at least appearing eco-friendly is a trend these days, one that also surfaced in the early 1970s and early 1990s. That seems antithetical to the spirit of green living... cognitive dissonance ahoy! I don't want, as it seemed in this instance, for someone to preach environmentalism to me primarily because they want to sell me something.
My friend Maggie points out that in localities that ban plastic bags, people who don't have enough extra money to invest in reusable shopping bags all at once, and who have to walk or bike their groceries home, or choose to do so because of the environmental impact of driving, are kind of screwed when they're stuck using paper bags, particularly if it rains. Paper bags are even less eco-friendly than plastic, though they biodegrade more easily. Sometimes while you're using them. I would link to Maggie's Livejournal post about this, but it's friends-only.
On a similar note, I live in a notoriously wealthy district that has free recycling, but charges residents by volume for trash collection. We pay by purchasing special stickers at local grocery stores and putting one sticker on each of our (33 gallons or less, 50 lbs or less) trash bags. These stickers now cost over $3 and have gone up $1 in the three years since I moved here. Sometimes the collectors behave in a discretionary manner, refusing to pick up a bag that's "too heavy," but taking its stickers, even multiple ones meant to cover for its weight.
The end effect is to force recycling on the lower-income residents of the area. This plan is overwhelmingly favored by wealthier residents, who never have to choose between having a house filled with garbage and eating or going to the doctor, and who presumably can afford to "throw money away" if they choose not to recycle. (In my house, this plan is resented on principal, although we recycle a lot regardless, and usually only throw away 2 to 3 bags of trash per month, making it way cheaper for us than flat-rate municipal trash collection would be. Mostly we miss having helpful trash collectors.)
Anyway, it distresses me that the eco-friendly message that is filtering down to the masses is mostly consumerist: you can buy this and this and this to be eco-friendly, and for a while, it won't be fashionable to be without these things. What happens when being eco-friendly goes out of fashion again? Is it only in fashion because Bush has such a low approval rating? Because some celebrities are doing it... not just the wacky pothead ones?
In England, Sainsbury's, a retail chain, sold a cloth bag designed by Anya Hindmarch for a few dollars each; there were lines around the block when it was introduced, and some of the bags went for hundreds of dollars on ebay. There is a move to issue a slightly different version of the same bag in the US, because the launch was so successful. The punchline? It was made in a Chinese sweatshop, and the materials used weren't organic.
That's why I went at it with the Envirosax guy... I explained several ways in which plastic shopping bags are useful (example: most dog owners find them incredibly handy*; they are used in my house for that, and in place of other plastic trash bags that would be thrown out anyway) and that many supermarkets have recycling bins for them, and he replied that "they all end up in a landfill anyway, and recycling is hard on developing countries" (the latter might have been his only really valid point, and there are a couple of other good arguments against plastic bags: for one thing, free-roaming plastic bags are bad news for wildlife). But when I mentioned both that my family already has a pile of plain canvas bags and that Whole Foods sells great, cheaper fabric shopping bags, he called canvas bags unfashionable and claimed you wouldn't want to use them for anything but shopping. (As if you don't probably already have three bags you can take to the beach.)
That's the point where I got really ticked off, and thought I'd rather eat my own hat than buy one of Envirosax's bag sets. There is nothing particularly eco-friendly about having a manufactured product shipped to you, particularly if you slip from using it for its intended purpose after a few weeks or months. He also never (at least, not before I did the virtual equivalent of storming off in a huff) addressed my point that a bag that holds at least twice as much as a regular plastic shopping bag and is carried on the shoulder might not be the best thing for people's backs. Regardless: using what you have or making something yourself is almost certainly much more green and much less consumerist than buying "fashionable" shopping bags online just because they're cute and you can.
So, in response to all this consumerism and greenwashing, here are a few patterns for shopping bags. Some of which recycle plastic shopping bags, so they won't end up in a landfill for a long time, if ever. Plain tote bags are a pretty simple thing to sew, so I'm not going to try to include sewing patterns.
- Reduce Reuse Recycle in Magknits, May 2007 - Knit from "yarn" made of plastic shopping bags.
- There's a similar crocheted bag, "Bag O' Bags" by Diane Bromberg, in Tsia Carson's book Craftivity. (Which I really mean to get around to reviewing one of these days.)
- Love To Shop Shopping Bag, at SpunMag, seems relatively large. Another bag made from plastic shopping bags, carefully melted to "block" it into shape. (Can those fumes possibly be healthy?)
- Knit Net Shopping Bag by YarnDemon.
- Reduction Tote in CrochetMe, Spring 2007 - a string mesh tote with a relatively solid bottom panel. This bag is designed to fold into the pocket on the front, for easy carrying.
- Also worth looking at: CrochetMe's Sack Dress Sack, a bag crocheted with "yarn" that was recycled from an old dress by cutting it into strips. You could adapt this into a basic tote and use sheets bought at thrift stores to make the yarn.
- Check out the "Bags, Totes, and Purses" category at both Knitting Pattern Central and Crochet Pattern Central; make a point of looking at anything labelled "Shopping Bag" or "Tote Bag," since many bag styles are represented in this category. "Mesh" isn't a bad keyword either, and there are a bunch of linked patterns for large felted solid "market" totes, too, if you'd prefer that. (Here's another meshy Shopping Bag.)
- One of the companies known for linen yarns, probably Louet, has a free mesh shopping bag pattern on the yarn label. This is usually advertised in the back of magazines like Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting.
As to which yarns you use... well, hm. There was an eco-friendly yarn post on Treehugger recently. The trouble is, once you add in shipping (to yourself or a local store), and the manufacturing process even on organic yarns, it can be hard to decide what's actually eco-friendly. For example, a ceramic mug would seem to be the better choice than a throwaway cup, but studies have shown that given what it takes to manufacture each (and keep the mug clean), the mug doesn't begin to be a better choice until you've used it to replace 300 cups, and doesn't actually outstrip the cups until the 600+ mark. So if you drop the mug in the sink and break it after you've had 30 cups of tea out of it, you haven't been as eco-friendly as you thought. The numbers vary based on whether the cup is paper or styrofoam, but not that much, and there are, unbelievably, some respects in which styrofoam is the most eco-friendly up to over 1000 uses. Ceramic is still better - and when it breaks, you can still use it in other ways, like as a pencil holder (if it has a hairline crack) or in a mosaic (if it's really shattered). But it takes a long time to realize the actual benefits, and it works best if you only own the one mug and use it all the time.
(A few of these links originally came from CRAFT. Some of the environmental information came from replies to Maggie's LJ post about banning plastic bags, which is friends-only. I am particularly indebted to "chaotic_heat"'s well-researched comments on that entry. Also, anyone who uses plastic shopping bags for dog business ahem ahem might want to look into the Doggie Dooley, an enzymatic breakdown system for dog waste. If you have a 2'x2' square of yard available to you, you can use it. It costs around $40 and has the side effect of fertilizing any plants around it.)
Oh, as far as me? No, I'm not an environmentalist or fair-trade guru or someone who manages to completely sidestep consumerism. I try to do what I can when I can do it, and sometimes that isn't much. I try not to use animal-tested cosmetics of any kind, and I'm trying to use non-toxic cleaning products in my house, eat organic foods when possible, look for fair trade goods. I'm also trying to at least question and fend off the worst of my own consumerist impulses and to DIY (DIM?) when I can.
If you're really in need of shopping bags, have money to burn, and don't resent the statements made by the company's rep, you could probably do worse than to buy the Envirosax, particularly the hemp ones. But you'll note that I'm not linking to them. I've been told that Trader Joe's also has inexpensive fabric shopping bags that last a long time. I'm not stumping for the eco-friendliness or fair-tradeitude of the Trader Joe's or Whole Foods bags, only their accessibility and the fact that nobody involved with either company has ever tried to shame me on the basis of fashion into buying their bags.
About a year and a half ago, a book by Mark Montano came out that made some waves and got some attention in the online crafty world, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. It was called Dollar Store Decor. It wasn't that I thought the book should be avoided, exactly, it's that I thought that it had severe limitations. One issue was that it advertised somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 projects (99? 101?), but the majority of those projects seemed to be "get picture frame or mirror, then glue stuff to frame" or "get small fabric things and stitch them together to make larger fabric things" (something that, by the way, never came out looking good), which vastly reduced the number of actual ideas in the book. A few of the other projects were just a little bit tacky, and involved so much effort that it would have been cheaper to buy the completed item from a non-dollar store. On top of that, most of the instructions were really vague, not giving much info about what tools to use. But a few of the projects, like a table made from stacked plastic salad bowls, or a pictorial plastic tray, were fun and interesting.
I think most people interested in such a book are smart enough to figure out for themselves that they can glue stuff to a frame, or paint a frame, or paint a frame and THEN glue stuff to it. I really meant to review this book - had it out of the library for months and spent plenty of time paging through it. But I was so uninspired by it that I never got around to it, and after the second cycle of checking out and renewing the book several times, I let it go back to the stacks.
So, a month or two ago, I was fooling around in the library and came across this book, Super Suite, which is older (2002) and was written mostly for teen girls. Montano did (does?) a column for CosmoGIRL! magazine about interior decorating. Super Suite shows how the rooms of fifteen girls, ages 12-18, were transformed by themed makeovers with cues taken from the girls' personalities and interests. The themes range from "desert caravan" to "romantic Victoriana" to "ultra mod" to "southwestern" to a few contemporary styles. It's nice to see profiles of the girls, and nice that, even after the makeovers are completed, you can still see "normal girl stuff" around the rooms. They don't have that depersonalized look that made-over rooms on TV shows sometimes have, where anything that doesn't fit with the decorator's scheme is hidden away or tossed into another room, regardless of how that works for the homeowners.
The issue that I have with this book is similar to one of the issues I had with Dollar Store Decor, though I think this book is generally better: many of the projects are relatively simplistic, but not so much so that an inexperienced crafter would necessarily have an easy time with them. A lot of detail is left out of the instructions, and there are no diagrams in a few places where diagrams would have been extremely helpful. It would be almost impossible for someone who didn't have a very good idea of what they were doing to complete a particular coffee table project from the book, for example. The photography in the book is good and helpful, but most teenage girls who aren't already art students, or taking shop, or working on the technical side of the theater department, etc, will have a lot of trouble executing some of the projects here.
On the upside, I think there are a lot of great ideas in this book for people on a budget, even if they aren't teenagers, and particularly if they would like to theme out a room or at least suggest a definite mood. Some of the suggestions here are common set-design tricks; many are a little kitschy. Use this book for ideas, but don't rely on it for advice about execution... you'll really have to use a combination of common sense, your own knowledge, other books, and careful reading of the use instructions of any products you select (which you should do anyway). If you decide to undertake any of the projects in this book, now that I've brought it to your attention, read them through carefully before starting, in case there's any info you need that the book doesn't give. This is also something you should always do, but it's particularly important in this case, because you don't want to be halfway through a project before you realize that you don't understand the directions for the next step.
(Meanwhile: Montano! You have cute ideas, but you need a better technical editor than you have! Your instructions are way too generalized! Marry yourself to specificity! Montano, Montano, Montano!)
Over the last few years, the television show Trading Spaces has grown in popularity and then faded. Not everyone who sees it realizes that it was based on a slightly different (and, to my mind, better) British show called Changing Rooms. Everything on Changing Rooms was a little more avant-garde and modern-European than the rooms and projects on its American counterpart; a typical Trading Spaces episode is also twice the length of most Changing Rooms episodes. Both shows share a concept: two people do a thematic total makeover on a neighbor's room with a fairly small budget under the guidance of an interior designer, while the neighbor is doing the same thing at their place. A carpenter and the show's host pitch in where they can. At some point in most episodes of either show, the designer will assign a craft to one or two people, which will almost always wind up being something mildly epic and vaguely pointless (motivated mostly by budget) which neither of the people has ever done before, and which needs to be completed QUICKLY. The Changing Rooms crafts usually have a different, artier feel when compared to the Trading Spaces crafts.
This, then, is basically a book of Changing Rooms crafts.
Oh, I don't mean they're actual crafts that have been done on the show, although a few of them have been in some way or another. Nor do I mean that A Comfortable Home: 100 Cozy Projects for Easy Living is an official tie-in to the show. No, what I mean is that they have the look-and-feel of the sort of projects often featured on the show, and that some of the projects are about as bewildering. Furthermore, many of them are not things that most people would want to attempt if they didn't have most of the materials on hand, and need a way to use them up. Some use techniques that are unnecessarily complicated, where the same results could have been achieved through easier means.
The book is organized categorically, and actually has six project designers aside from Moss, all of whom have published books of their own in the past. The categories are
Window Dressing - curtains, blinds, screens
Furniture - mostly recommendations for decorating existing furniture with paint or tile
Linens - a hodgepodge, some things made from scratch and some just decorated, table linens and bed linens and sofa cushions
Storage - potentially the most irritating section, in my opinion, full of corrugated cardboard and an unnecessary amount of cutting, painting, and glueing, given the results
Lighting - lampshades, lamps, and candle holders
Display - another hodgepodge: more candle holders, as well as photo albums, vases, photo frames, soaps, wire baskets, and so on
Entertaining - a section wherein almost everything could have been sorted into other sections: placemats, decorated bowls and utensils, beaded fruit, a raffia table runner made of crocheted leaves
Christmas - ornaments and things to do with ornaments, window decorations, stockings, gift boxes, etc
Outdoor Living - things for the garden, many of which could have been put in other categories and are not specially adapted for the outdoors; however, a few of these items genuinely involve plants.
There are several major problems in the book. First of all, some of the items are things that, yes, you CAN make by hand... but why would you WANT to, especially by the methods displayed here? A perfect example of this is a cardboard "laundry box" in the storage section. It's made from 24 long (almost 5-foot) strips of corrugated cardboard that have been colored with six different colors of wood stain before being woven together; three colors of thread are stitched, each separately, around the rim. I suspect that by the time you've collected all the supplies and managed to do hundreds of feet of clean-edged and precise cardboard cutting, all to make a small box that isn't even two feet tall, you'll have been better off in terms of time and finance by just picking up a hamper at the store. In another sense, at least one project designer is very keen on the idea of you cutting and mounting your own rubber stamps, but the stamps are used in such a way that the same work could easily have been done with a stencil, or even (for the brave) freehand.
A second, larger problem is the fact that most of the designers assume prior knowledge of a technique. Thus, there are several crocheted projects in the book, but none have basic crochet instructions. Mosaic designs abound, without any real tips or tricks beyond the barest instructions of how to do that particular design. Instructions for a blanket decorated with ribbon embroidery basically come down to "Do ribbon embroidery on a blanket. No, we're not teaching you any stitches, but we recommend Lazy Daisy." I don't sew or crochet, and I'm a little afraid of anything involving tin snips, so it's possible that I just find those projects intimidating.
One thing I look for when I review a book here is the clarity of the instructions: the best books have an illustration for every step. This book has illustrations for every second or third step, which is certainly helpful (you'd be almost completely unable to complete several of the projects without them), but which is not enough for some of the more complicated projects. To their credit, the authors have included an extensive appendix of templates for various designs used in the projects. However, it seems odd that some projects, which do not seem easy, are made from scratch, and others, which seem easier (especially with a slightly different choice of materials) begin, "Go to a carpenter/welder/electrician and have them...." Another issue is that the book was initially produced in the UK, and it doesn't seem like too much effort was made to translate certain terminology for an American audience. (This is fine if you are, in fact, in the UK.)
A third issue is one of safety and permanance. There is a lovely "Japanese Lamp" that has some of the worst instructions in the book: have a wire frame welded together for you (well, that's basically the whole lamp, isn't it?), cover it with shoji paper that you've decorated, glue a panel of MDF on the base to support the light fitting. Problems? You're never instructed to drill a hole in the MDF for the light cord, you're never instructed to purchase a light fitting, and the shoji paper is merely stuck to the frame with - wait for it - double-stick tape! I like this particular project, but I can think of five better ways to design and make it. The idea that you can make and/or decorate your own lampshades is a valuable one, but the majority of the designs here are duds.
There are several candle holder designs that basically involve taking ordinary glassware and repurposing it as a candle holder, maybe with some wirework: must be careful with this. Most glass will be fine, some will shatter under the heat. Some of the materials recommended, mostly certain adhesives and paints, should not be used indoors without a lot of ventilation, and this is not mentioned in the instructions, though there is a quick word about safety in the introduction. Anyone who chooses to do any of these projects should use common sense and think about any safety issues that might come up.
When a book has one hundred projects in it, it's difficult to sort them into a binary, yes-or-no list; even if I did, people with different tastes might disagree with me. So I'm just going to mention some representative projects that I liked and disliked. I think many of the storage projects are pointless (the aforementioned "laundry box", or the cardboard shoeboxes that have been lovingly carved with a cutwork design and painted; they defeat the purpose of keeping off dust). I don't like many of the furniture projects. Most just involve stenciling or stamping, and you have to like the stencils or stamps being used. The denim tab-top curtain would most likely be cheaper and easier to buy than to make; it's a common style, at least in the US. Small wire baskets - the book has patterns for several - are also common and inexpensive in craft stores. In general I like many of the window coverings and some of the display items. I like the stencil-frosted windowpanes for Christmas, and most of the mosaic projects. I like the idea of the Japanese paper lamp (execution leaves something to be desired), and the momigami lamp - which will teach you how to make a real Japanese lantern. The woven cane lamp is also lovely, but a little difficult for the average crafter, as are many of these projects.
A Comfortable Home is apparently out-of-print, but it isn't hard to get, either from used book sources or from libraries. It was released in 2003 and retailed for $22.95, which I suppose is a fair price for a book of its size. It may be available as a remainder in the bargain section of major chain bookstores. Nonetheless, it's very difficult to decide whether to recommend that you hunt it down. It came to my attention when one of its projects, a magazine rack made of stacked cuts of corrugated cardboard, was recently featured in an issue of ReadyMade, and certainly, some of its projects are worth attempting. If you have a chance to flip through it and something you see or something you heard described here appeals to you, by all means check it out, but be aware that you may need supplementary materials to figure out how to do a project correctly. The editor states up front that part of the point of the book is to promote creativity, that perhaps you won't want to make the items as shown in the book, but they may inspire you to a new use of a technique you've already mastered. In that respect I can see the book being valuable. Otherwise, you will probably have to approach any project with supplementary beginner's instructions that you've found on your own.
I don't really know if I've managed to explain why this seems like it could be a sourcebook of vaguely punishing household crafts for the designers on Changing Rooms - maybe it's only a concept that other viewers of the show will really understand. If you like the projects they've done over the years, you might like this. But don't expect it to be any less bewildering than having Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen standing over you and trying to explain while simultaneously trying to hang a chandelier. My final conclusion is that A Comfortable Home would have been better if Moss had been more selective about the projects she chose to include in it, and taken slightly more care to eliminate vagueness in the instructions. The result would have been a shorter book, but possibly also a more useful one.
Another book that isn't strictly a craft book; I'm talking about it here because "thrift books" often involve a good amount of DIY. However, while this book has several good features, I can't recommend it.
Why not? Well, first of all, the quality of the book is very low. It comes from a small publisher. Illustrations are generally either the women's family photos or ghastly drawings like the one on the cover. The general quality of the writing itself isn't good; the book could have used an editorial polish.
I found much of the book's contents incredibly grating. The Foxes never miss a chance to talk about what their parents did Back In The Day, and in doing so it's always "Mama" and "Daddy." ALWAYS. There are religious overtones here; the book isn't exactly Christian, but there are constant references to God and bible stories. (Some people may think this is a plus: I disagree; I'm not religious and I prefer editorial neutrality on the topic, wherein Jesus is neither invoked nor dissed.) There's a ton of wasted space in the form of "pithy" observations, which are mostly sanctimonious or sentimental groaners of the "children and husbands are lazy" variety. This kind of cornpone sentimentality and faux-folksy tone is a real turnoff, for me.
But that's just the writing - what about the advice? Well, a lot of it is terrible.
- Many of the money-and-time-saving recipes in the food section are based on things like canned potatos and canned macaroni and cheese, nutritionally suspect processed foods where using the "real thing" isn't that difficult or time-consuming. It's not going to save money or time when you and your kids need medical care as a result of your poor diet.
- The word "expensive" is thrown around with abandon. Believe me: if you shop for groceries at a deep discount retailer, buying fruit yogurt is NOT more expensive than buying a decent jam and mixing it with plain or vanilla yogurt. A Lexus is expensive; Yoplait is not.
- There's a selection of DIY toys for kids which often, frankly, have safety concerns.
- There's also a short wedding section and checklist, which, if followed, will help you waste a ton of money (two words: Unity Candles).
- There's a suggestion to go door to door, selling plastic bags of potpourri to make extra money. (If anyone you approach has an iota of sense, they will realize that dollar-store potpourri in plastic sandwich bags is not something worth wasting money on.)
For me the kicker came when the twins started suggesting that you partition your house and rent part of it out. To me this is a last-ditch effort to keep a house you can't afford... I have a ton of opinions on this topic, because this was something my mom did when I was a child (and we just lived in apartments!), and I do not recommend it to anyone. I also currently have friends who are in the situation of being the renters, who cannot get the homeowner to fix anything in the place, who have become aware that the owners are using them as their primary income, etc. Renting is an investment for extra income, but should never be something you count on to make your mortgage payment. Furthermore, the whole point of owning your own home is not having to share it; if you rent an apartment out of your home, there are also lots of legal issues to pay attention to (the renters have rights that you need to be aware of), as well as a huge loss of control in terms of what your family will be exposed to. My personal concern is fire. You can control your family's habits, but you can't control those of a renter. In my experience this whole scheme works best if the renter is a relative.
There are a handful of good tips here, if you can sort them out. There are lots of checklists that may be helpful to some people, anything from an "Eternal Grocery List" to a housecleaning checklist to budgeting to emergency phone lists to a packing checklist for travel. Much of the advice early in the book is sound, things like recipes for DIY household cleaners, or the fact that used dryer sheets can make really good dustrags. There is an area where working mothers in two-income homes are advised to consider their work expenses - daycare, transportation, clothing, etc - to see if they are actually making any money, or just working to be able to afford to work, in which case they can feel better about quitting if they'd rather be stay-at-home moms. (There are problems with the politics around this issue, but for people who would rather not work outside the home or who are running themselves ragged to do so, it's worth saying.) More content like this would have been welcome.
Most books with the word "Tightwad" in the title will offer advice that involves significant aesthetic compromise as well as taking on the feeling of being poor. Your quality of life will suffer and you will spend almost all your time trying to figure out how on earth to make ends meet (if this is the case already, you might find the book helpful). For a lot of people this is fine. For others (especially kids, who have social issues at school to worry about), this may not be. I would recommend Amy Dacyczyn's The Complete Tightwad Gazette before this book, for its better writing and layout, and seemingly more intelligent advice. Neither of these books, however, is for me, because of the aesthetic issues. Yankee magazine has put out a number of books on thrift which feature advice that is much less extreme; all are worth a look to anyone interested in the topic.
No Amazon link; I don't like this book. If it interests you, try the library first; that's the thrifty way, anyway.
