Simple Dresses for Clothing a Three-Year-Old Girl

Does she want to wear leggings? Jeans? Pants? Tights? A cotton dress works with any of those options. My 3yo loves to TWIRL, so the secret there is to only get dresses with drop-waist twirliness; that way she can run, jump, play, climb without it getting in her way. This is her latest everyday dress. I have Gap credit so it's free to me, but for the a few bucks more, you can get 2 similar dresses at Old Navy.

Write the remaining balance on the gift card at checkout

I have lots of gift cards with store credit, and I tend to use them pretty regularly. In order to keep track of how much is left on a card, I often ask the cashier (at the time of purchase) if they have a price-tag-making machine (those little handheld things), and if they can use it to print out a sticker with my remaining balance. That is the best way to get the remaining balance onto your card, because pen wipes off too easily, and marker can be large and forever. The sticker can be peeled off OR you can write a new balance over the old. I usually also write the date of the balance, so I know when a card was last used. Some gift cards lose balance when they aren't used, so you have to be careful about that.

World's Best Cat Litter

I love World's Best Cat Litter; we've been using it since we first got our kitty 5 years ago. It's a clumping litter made of corn, which means that there's no mining issue (if that's something that concerns you). It's flushable, if that interests you, and it's safe to eat, for what that's worth.

What I like about it particularly, though, is that it's quite good at clumping and odor control. We use a litter locker, which means we scoop the clumps, so having scoopable clumps matters.
No matter what litter you use, you're bound to smell a cat's fresh deposit (unless you use an F.O.R.A., like we do), but once the litter has absorbed the material, the scent from the litterbox is a gentler scent than the overbearing perfumes from a Fresh-Step-type litter.

What reminded me of writing this post is that I saw a full-page ad in Entertainment Weekly for a rebate program they have going on right now. Yeah, a cat litter ad in a media periodical IS WEIRD, right? But still, $12.99 back for what I buy anyway. You too; follow this link.

Extra Freezer

We rent, and our refrigerator is probably 25 years old or so. The freezer is not large.
With two small children, there's a lot of food that we need to be able to cook on-demand, and we also need some flexibility about when to cook the meals we'd like, which is why we use frozen vegetables more than fresh. Other frozen staples include chicken nuggets, popsicles (in the summer), hamburger patties, pork loin (bought on sale), chicken breasts, pizza, and pasta dishes. Our affection for Costco means we shop less often (which is KEY with little kids!) and we need more room for what we buy.

Enter the extra freezer. It makes it easy to stock up on stuff, and if you have an infant and pump breast-milk, you actually can have room for that storage as well.
I saved money and energy costs by not getting a "frost-free" freezer, but I think if I had it to do over, I'd go with the frost-free. Defrosting the freezer isn't a hassle, but all that frost build-up is annoying on a day-to-day basis.

Febreze Odor Removal Appliance

You would think they could come up with a catchier name.
Anyway, the F.O.R.A. is a fan-with-filter contraption that plugs into, and hangs from, an outlet.
We have a cat, and we have our F.O.R.A. plugged in right above the litterbox. I didn't realize just how good a job it was doing until I went a month past due to change the filter, and it became less effective and I could smell what I wasn't smelling before. Namely, not just the litterbox, but the diaper pail in the other room! This device is near the door to the baby's room, a door left open whenever the baby is not asleep. The F.O.R.A. has been eliminating the diaper pail smell in there as well, which is pretty impressive to me.

Most people would be annoyed to pay $20 for an electric air freshener, but it's really effective and it doesn't leave any scent at all - no cloying cover-up scent. It won't purify the air, and it has a limited radius, but for pets or babies, this thing is great.

Costco: for electronics

Costco is great for lots of things, but lately we've discovered how particularly good it is for electronics. I recently had to get a new laptop, and a salesguy at a local computer store actually recommended Costco over his own place, because Costco includes a 2-year warranty for all its electronics. They don't have a huge selection, but they had exactly what I was looking for, which is what matters.
We also just this week bought a new TV through Costco: again, not a huge selection, but exactly what we wanted at the right price with the warranty included.