It Worked For Me | Offbeat Home

This is Offbeat Home's archive of It Worked For Me posts.

Sometimes offbeat living takes strange forms, and sometimes we end up living in a totally different space than we through we would.

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Offbeat Bride just talked about pre-wedding cohabitation from the perspective of the still-engaged, so we thought we'd look at it from the married-people side here on Offbeat Home, too!

Living in Sin No More © by lipstick42, used under Creative Commons license.

I recently read the New York Times article The Downside of Cohabitating Before Marriage, and found myself filled with thoughts. I disagree with much of what is written in the article, specifically because of what the author says at the end:

I am not for or against living together, but I am for young adults knowing that, far from safeguarding against divorce and unhappiness, moving in with someone can increase your chances of making a mistake — or of spending too much time on a mistake.

A mentor of mine used to say, "The best time to work on someone's marriage is before he or she has one," and in our era, that may mean before cohabitation.

I WANT to help the environment, but that alone usually does nothing to help me remember my reuseable shopping bags. Then the issue went from "Help the environment" to "Help the environment and save the cat from death by plastic."

Lately, I've taken a stronger interest in my health. Step one: Get a baseline blood panel.

Lo and behold, I was super low in Vitamin D and Vitamin B. My blood pressure is high and my sinuses are a wreck. I've been prescribed sprays, allergy meds, vitamins and I am back on the aspirin.

So after a few years of taking nothing but prenatal vitamins, like a lot of Americans, I'm back on the daily pill party.

As I have a lot of other tasks vying for my attention, taking daily pills just isn't something I always remember. But at least I know enough to hack myself.

So there are some people who are a little embarrassed to hear about, um, well…*ahem*, "feminine issues." This is not an article for them. This is an article for the other people who like to get all in other people's personal business, but understand that because of the constraints of polite society, they can't always ask all the questions they like.

There's this thing called a menstrual cup! You may have heard of it. It's a reusable alternative to pads and tampons in the form of a cup that fits comfortably up in your vagina and collects rather than absorbing menstrual blood.

As part of spring cleaning, I'm sifting through closets and trying to figure out what I need and what I've got too much of. As part of this process, I'm realizing that I've got an overabundance of certain objects … all of them gifts. See, Andreas and I seem to attract certain types of presents, and while each gift has been deeply appreciated and a great idea, I have several boxes full of duplicated great ideas that I'm now guilt-battling to say "I don't need all of these, get rid of some." When I looked at the gifts that just kept on coming, patterns emerged. Once I'd identified the gifts we got over and over again, I decided to start dropping hints about related alternatives…

People who have owned a car, but decided to get rid of it: what was the transition like? What do you do if you have an emergency or need to run to the store in the middle of the night? How do you haul large stuff around? And most importantly: do you regret the decision… or do you love it?

Last summer I read The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. I was given the book for my birthday, together with some cookbooks. You get the point, I love food. But I care about how it found its way into my kitchen, too. Let me tell you about what we decided works for us, after much book-reading and value-weighing.

We moved two weeks ago. I usually like moving, but this move was particularly hard. We loved our place, but our landlord was selling it and couldn't guarantee that the new owners would let us continue to rent.

Some people think we have a finite amount of willpower each day. Some days we make big decisions, some days we make little decisions, some days we make a lot of decisions, some days we make only a few. If we use up our finite amount of willpower early in the day, we might not have enough later to make the "better" decision or exercise our will-power. So we moved, and I found myself feeling taxed.