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Saving money with cloth diapers

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When I was a baby, my parents used cloth diapers for me because that was all we had at the time in China. It was laborious to hand wash, hang dry, and fold. Nowadays, it's the norm to use disposables here in the US as well as cities in China. With the convenience, also comes a significant strain on the environment. We throw away about 18 billion diapers per year, and it's the single most common consumer item found in landfills. The environmental proposition for cloth diapering is a strong one, but I will save that topic for a future post. Today I will compare for you cloth diapering to disposable diapers from a purely economic perspective for the average family. Does it really save money to use cloth? Let's look at a few case studies. Disposables diapers: Cost $1387.00 for 2 years Newborn Pampers 30% off from Amazon Mom + Subscribe and Save: $0.19 per diaper Assume 10 diapers per day $0.19 per diaper X 10 diapers per day = $1.90 per day $1.90 per day X 365 per year =...
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Hardwood Floor Refinishing

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The oak hardwood floor in our house was old and looked dirty, with many scratches that showed the traffic pattern of the people before us. There were places where the protective coating had worn out and the wood turned gray and black, which didn't look nice. We wanted to resurface the floor before we move in to make it look new again. Since sanding the floor will create tons of dust, we wanted to do it before we move things in. We began on Veteran's Day, Nov. 11 and rented a floor sander from The Home Depot. These sanders are very heavy and uses a very large sheet of sand paper. The base moves in a small circular motion to sand the floor and we started with 24 grit to remove the old finish, followed by 60 grit and 100 grit. I pushed the sander around for 10 hours that day and returned the sander the next morning. It didn't come out perfect because there are some deep swirl marks that we couldn't get rid of. For the most part, the floor is a lot better than when we start...
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Backyard Adventure

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Since we bought our house, we have been working on the yard little by little. At the moment we are focused on reducing the population of unwanted plants. There are weeds in the lawn, overgrown bushes in the back yard, and aggrasive species climbing on top of trees and power lines. While we pull the weeds out, we are also interested in learning what they are and what makes them grow. Here is a few things that we have identified so far. Wisteria sinensis (Chinese Wisteria) blooms with purple flowers in April and is fragrant. They have wrinkly leaves with pointed tips. They like to climb onto things and choke trees to death. If there's nothing to climb, they send off shoots on the ground in all directions until they find another thing to climb onto. When we first moved in, we find that it has climbed onto every tree in the back yard and over the power lines which also runs along the property edge. Also to note is that this plant is toxic and can cause nausea, vomiting, stomach p...
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