I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, crafter, and blogger living in rural New England. As seen in Martha Stewart Living, Food Network Magazine, and more! | Tutorials, DIY, crafts, parenting tips, recipes, money saving tips, product reviews, local product features, New England living, intentional living, and more! |
A tradition I started back in 2016 was to donate a percentage of profits from Birch Landing Home to charity at year end, and it’s a tradition I’ve been proud to continue every year since.
2024 has been a challenging year for a lot of small businesses, including mine. This year I had 4 brick and mortar shops I wholesale to close their doors, many of my remaining wholesale accounts have been cutting back how often they reorder, regular sales on Etsy have been slow, and affiliate sales/ad revenue on the blog are down. Inflation and spending habits have impacted everyone.
Nevertheless I am still planning on making a donation at year-end even if it’s small. I think it’s important to give back when you can and I want to make sure this tradition continues. If you have a suggestion of a charity or non-profit to consider please let me know! And thank you all again for your continued support - even just views, clicks, and likes on social media and my blog or Etsy go a very long way to supporting my business and don’t cost anything. Thank you!
Money is tight for everyone right now. But please try to support local shops and makers when you can.. we’re losing them at an alarming rate.
As an example - in the past eight months 4 brick and mortar shops I wholesale to have closed their doors. These are shops that employ many local people and buy goods from small businesses like myself. These shops not only support themselves and their employees but so many other small makers and businesses. These shops have all been in business for years and been successful, but times are tough and they had to make difficult decisions.
It’s so sad to see them close, but it’s a ripple effect that goes far beyond that one business. Everyone is struggling right now, but if you’re looking to spend your money please try to shop small and local when you can - thank you from all of us.
Recently I looked at our family calendar and realized every single day in July was booked with 95% of it being kids' activities or lessons. It felt crazy, and unhealthy. I went through our calendar and cancelled several things and now we have some downtime again - I feel like I can breathe. | This post contains affiliate links |
Some of my fondest memories growing up were those lazy summer days where we spent every moment outside with no plans and completely lost track of time, no idea what day of the week it even was. That's what kids' summers should be, not pressure to get ahead or keep up. Every day shouldn’t be booked with tennis lessons, or tutoring, or private training. There's plenty of time to over-schedule yourself once you're an adult - for now it’s so important to be a kid.
I recently read a few articles and books that talked about the importance of letting kids have downtime for their mental health and the opportunity to grow and make more decisions on their own. I highly reccomend reading "How to Raise an Adult" - while I definitley don't agree with all of the points or suggestions in the book, it's a great reminder that your kids are capable of much more than you think and you need to give them some space to figure it out on their own (and not overschedule their life). Also the article "Summer Sanity" is a short read from the University of Florida that also touches on the issues of over-scheduling.
I wish you all a safe, relaxing - and not over-scheduled - summer :)
This year we finally jumped on the backyard composting bandwagon. We’ve been wanting to make more eco-friendly choices around our home and decided a big step we could make would be trying to eliminate as much food waste going into our household trash as possible. | This post contains affiliate links |
Composting has a lot of benefits. Some of which include reducing the amount of decomposing matter filling our landfills as well as producing nutrient-rich garden soil to benefit your own yard and garden.
Getting Set Up
When it comes to composting, you could just make a pile in the corner of your yard or make your own bin with some scrap wood or fence. However, we decided to opt for a tumbler-style bin since we were looking for something compact, self-contained, and efficient.
Once you decide on your compost set-up it's important to add some good microbes to "get the party started" and create a good environment for breaking down your food and yard waste. To do this you can add a shovel-full of garden dirt from your own garden to introduce some microbes, or you can buy some specialty compost starter to add to your composter (just follow the package directions).
Composting
Once you have it set up, just keep on adding food/yard waste and periodically turn your compost over (by hand if yours is a pile or by spinning the drum if it’s a tumbler-style). The trickiest part for me is keeping the ratios right - ideally your compost pile should be about 1 part “greens” (these would be fruit/veggie scraps, coffee grounds, etc… I like to think of them as wet items) and 2 parts “browns” (leaves, newspaper, brown paper bags, etc… I like to think of them as dry items). We personally tend to teeter from too dry to too wet in our compost bin but it seems to average out eventually.
I typically toss our kitchen scraps in a bowl on the counter as I'm cooking and promptly empty it into the compost bin outside. This has worked well for us so far since the weather has been mild. Once it turns winter here I will probably invest in a kitchen countertop compost container so I don't need to walk outside across the icy/snowy yard several times a day, and instead can just empty the kitchen container into the outside compost bin periodically as it fills up.
What to Compost
Slimy spinach in your fridge? Toss it in the composter and then recycle the container!
Here’s a short list of things you can potentially compost:
fruit
vegetables
inedible portions of fruit/veggies (i.e. - rinds/cores)
coffee grounds
egg shells
disease-free, non-invasive plants
shredded newspaper
shredded brown paper bags
shredded paper (non-glossy)
untreated sawdust (I make a lot of ornaments for my Etsy shop and compost the sawdust)
toilet paper rolls
leaves, grass clippings
small sticks
The smaller you make the items in your compost bin (cut them up or shred them), the quicker they should decompose and compost.
What NOT to Compost
Do NOT Compost:
x plastic or household trash x meat x dairy x cooked food x glass or metal x animal waste or used animal bedding/shavings x invasive or diseased plant materials - compost very strong smelling fruit/veggies with caution (i.e. citrus/bananas) if you live in an area with bears or raccoons that are an issue
Good luck in your composting adventure! I hope you enjoy the process and be proud in your efforts to be a little more eco-friendly in your home.
Disclaimer: I am sharing my experiences with what we’ve learned in the composting process so far. If you’d like expert or more detailed and specific information, I’d recommend contacting your local garden center or university cooperative for more information. Your local town or city may have composting programs to join or guidelines to follow too.
A tradition I started four years ago was to donate a percentage of profits from Birch Landing Home at year-end to Charity. I’m so happy to say that this year we were able to help support Gather NH as well as The Nature Conservancy. I chose to support Gather NH because food insecurity has become an issue for many more families this year due to the economical impact of the pandemic. I chose The Nature Conservancy because turning to nature and time outside has become such a saving grace for many during this time and it’s more important than ever to protect our natural resources.
Thank you so much for all your support this past year, it has definitely been a strange year for Birch Landing Home too with less Etsy sales (due to me temporarily pausing my Etsy storefront) and less partnerships and projects on the blog. Nevertheless, I am thankful for my Wholesale Accounts and continued traffic on my blog to make these donations happen. I hope to continue to grow Birch Landing Home and be able to give back more each year in return. Thank you all!
This year sure has been different, including for Birch Landing Home. This year there was no New England travel guides from day trips. I worked with far, far less brands than usual. I put my Etsy shop on hold for the time being. I also didn't do nearly as many DIY projects as I would like, for the simple reason I've been avoiding shopping in-stores as much as possible. BUT instead of focusing on what I couldn't do, I tried to enjoy what we have: We are thankfully healthy. We had more time than ever at home, lots of quality time with our kids in our backyard, and time exploring local trails together. Lots of time working on our garden. Not taking for granted simple things like groceries and mail delivery. Appreciating family and friends so much more now that we can't be together, and looking forward to the day we can hug each other again.
2020 helped make us appreciate what we have, and I hope 2021 will better and brighter because of it. Wishing you all health and happiness in the New Year. Best, Sarah
Happy Giving Tuesday! Did you know I donate a percentage of profits from Birch Landing Home (blog and craft sales) to charity at year-end? So every time you visit my blog or purchase one of my crafts that donation gets the chance to grow. Last year I was able to donate to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
I haven’t decided where this year’s donation is going yet so if you have a favorite charity please feel free to share it with me!
Being home 24/7 and trying to limit grocery trips and ordering really makes you evaluate how quickly you’re going through supplies in your home. With two little kids, paper products were something we were blowing through and made me wonder how we could change this for the better. | This post is not sponsored but does contain affiliate links |
Now when I say "paper products" in this post I'm talking about paper towels and paper napkins. To greatly reduce our usage of these things we made the switch to reusable "unpaper" towels and aren't looking back. (And before you ask... yes, reusable toilet paper/wipes do exist too - but that's not for us, though if the toilet paper shortage continues who knows...).
“Unpaper” towels are cloths that you can use like paper towels but wash and reuse for a long time. You could really use just about any kind of cloth - wash cloths, tea towels, cloth napkins, pieces of flannel, etc. Hopefully you have something around the house already that you can use, but if you don’t and decide to purchase some we’ve found them to be worth the investment. For the price of a large package of throw-away paper towels, you can purchase of set of reusable ones that will last you a very, very long time and will eventually pay for themselves.
We thought about just using our current dishtowels but we use them regularly already for dishes and big spills (which happen a lot with two small kids). We were primarily looking for something smaller that would function like a paper towel and also wouldn’t fill our washing machine quickly (something else to consider), which is why we settled on these modestly-sized, organic bamboo cloths.
Some people will roll them on a paper towel holder and use them in place of ALL paper towels, completely eliminating paper towels in their home. For our household we decided to fold them and place them in a basket on our counter, next to our roll of paper towels. That way we’d be constantly reminded to grab a cloth instead of a paper towel whenever we had to wipe a dirty face or sticky fingers, but we’d still have paper towels at the ready if we really needed them. I even hung a little note over the paper towel holder to remind us to use less of them.
Since starting this system we’ve cut down on our paper towel usage big time. This has saved us money on our grocery bill and we feel like we’ve made a positive long-term change that’s more eco-friendly.
Cleaning Unpaper Towels: I hung a small mesh laundry bag on the doorknob of our laundry closet, which is conveniently right off the kitchen, to toss the used unpaper towels in to be washed. Whenever I start a load of laundry, I just throw the mesh bag in with the rest of the washing. You could also easily hang a mesh bag or small basket on the inside of a cupboard door with a Command Hook too if that is a more convenient spot.
Hopefully I’ve inspired you to find a reusable, money-saving solution to something in your home like we have found unpaper towels to be for us.
This post is not sponsored but contains my personal opinion as well as affiliate links.
