My first experience with renting a household product was back when I first graduated from college. My boyfriend(now husband) enrolled me into a CD music program since he was going to buy me a CD player for Christmas. Well, that fell through and since I had these 12 CDs that I paid a penny for (plus shipping) I kinda wanted to listen to them. So I rented a CD player.

I took it back a few weeks later after I did some math and realized that soon I would have spent enough money that I could have bought one. I guess that has always been my mental block when it comes to renting household items is that over time I could have bought it for that price.

However, I do see how it could be beneficial to rent. I met a single mom with three kids and she rented furniture. After a few years you own it with most lease options, so this was a great way for her to get the items she needed and be within her budget.

Another reason to rent is items you don’t need but for a special occasion. We could use a second laptop on our trip Labor Day weekend, so we might check into a laptop rental instead of trying to scamper to buy one.

So, renting household items might not be such a bad option under the right circumstances.

It’s amazing how dirty our computer monitors get. Well, I guess it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise with a two-year-old who has to touch everything! Right now I see all sorts of fingerprints and smudges on my CRT monitor. It’s definitely time for a cleaning.

To clean an LCD monitor like a viewsonic monitor is a different process that I’ll explain later.

What you will need to clean any CRT monitor:

Polishing cloth like you might find in an eyeglass cleaning kit or a Nintendo DS, Sony PSP cleaning screen cleaning cloth.
Eyeglass cleaning solution or any cleaning solution meant for CDs or computer screens. Or use rubbing alcohol.

First unplug the monitor for safety. Then try to clean the monitor with just the cloth. If smudges won’t budge, dab the cloth with the cleaning solution and clean in circles (think wax on, wax off! sorry couldn’t resist). The solution will dry really fast, so you may have to reapply to your cloth to finish cleaning the monitor.

Here is my CRT monitor before:

And here it is after:

It might be hard to tell from the pictures, but the monitor does look a lot better.

LCD monitors are a different beast altogether. It is not recommended to clean them with rubbing alcohol although some people use a 50/50(water, rubbing alcohol) solution and report good results. I would stick with gently using a polishing cloth dampened with a little water. Avoid touching the LCD monitor and never pour liquid directly onto it. When in doubt, check your owner’s manual to see how the manufacture recommends cleaning an LCD monitor.

It seems like this week has flown by! Most of it is in a blur. No reason really. It just seems I have a lot of goals for May that I may not make. I love to make those monthly goals since I have 30 days to fulfill them. Then about day 25 I start thinking about actually <b>doing</b> them.

One major one I have is to clean up all of our stuff in storage. We have a lot of stuff on the back porch of my mom’s shop that needs to be either donated or brought into the house. I need to start working on this soon because it is almost getting too hot right now to spend a lot of time outside. Ah, the joys of living in the south.

Another goal I have for the summer is to make more money online. I would really like a passive income, one that really takes little effort on my part. I’m not sure if this will be feasible but would like to give it a try.

Since we are saving for a Labor Day weekend trip and trying to pay off all of our debt, I’ve been looking to pick up some more writing work online. It takes time to find leads and then even more time to write the assignments. It is enjoyable but just takes time. It seems everything takes twice as long to do as I think it should.

Also I really need to do some major housework. I still have a lot of spring cleaning to do. There’s a part of me that says if I have a clean, worry free house, then I will be able to work in peace and get more done in less time. I do work better away from home, so maybe I should clear all of the clutter to see what happens.

So, it will be another weekend of catching up on blog posts, reading blogs, and housework.  Oh to actually be caught up going into a weekend would be such a welcome change.

I may not be a great cook but I love to look at recipes, especially ones with pictures. It makes the food more appealing and gives a guide as to what the finish product should look like. Also I’m trying to improve my technique of taking food pictures, so having a cache of photos to look at is helpful.

TasteSpotting is a website that has pages and pages upon food pictures. Some are recipes, and some might be other information. Each food picture is submitted. You can search for food pictures since it seems that food photos are listed as they are added.

I found a delicious looking brownie recipe featuring Reese’s peanut butter chips. You can’t go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter.

If I get better with my photo-taking skills, I might even submit a food picture with a recipe.

I’ve bought two ‘diet’ books in recent months. One is for the Best Life Diet and the other is the Biggest Loser cookbook. I really need to change my eating habits and to lose weight. I would rather do it by eating well instead of checking into some of the top diet pills for a boost.

I like the ideas being the Best Life Diet but love the food better on the Biggest Loser. I might combine both plans by taking the points that I like from Best Life and work them in to the eating plan of the Biggest Loser. The Best Life helps to ease you into better eating habits instead of just jumping into dieting all at once. The Biggest Loser cookbook includes much more foods that I eat.

To choose which guidelines to follow from each program will take me sitting down with each book to see what I think will work best for us.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who finds this the coolest mousepad ever.

I don’t know how many times I’ve done a search to find the hex numbers for colors. If you do any website work from designing to tweaking, then you have probably had to look up a hex number once or twice. Visibone sells this hex mousepad as well as a square one for $15. While mousepads are usually something I get for free, I can definitely see how this one would be super handy to have around. They also have some pretty cool free tools like color lab.

It’s a pretty cool resource for when you need the hex number of a color.

So, today I’ve been doing a little housekeeping with the blog and noticed the “Help send Lisa to Disneyworld” button and remembered it has been a few weeks(maybe even a month) since I last visited her blog. I took down the button after seeing this on her most recent post:

Lisa is battling cancer a third time and had really wanted to take her kids to Disneyworld. A blogging friend of hers rose to the challenge and started a raffle to raise money that bloomed into something amazing. They raised enough money to send her to Disneyworld and some spending money. Here is my original post that goes into more detail.

Have a great time at Disney, Lisa!

Summer is fast approaching. It was pretty warm yesterday and today the forecast calls for even higher temperatures. One of the bigger purchases on our list is a swimming pool as it would be great exercise and a fun way to beat the heat this summer. Plus a small-to-medium sized pool won’t break the bank. Besides, last year’s pool is too small to really be enjoyed by the growing nieces and nephews.

I remember when I was a kid it seemed the only pool treatments used chlorine. If we do get a pool, I would be against using chlorine since it was so rough on the pool, our skin, and clothing.

Having a salt water pool sounds like a good idea until you start reading more about it. First of all, imagine getting a mouth-full of salt water. That’d be just as bad as chlorine water. Ecosmarte says that a pool treated with their product is like swimming in bottled water. That would be way better to get a mouth-full of that instead of chlorine or salt!

Another problem with both chlorine and salt is that they can cause damage to the vinyl siding of the pool. The backwash discharge of a salt treatment is not good for your lawn or garden. Also, some make think that because it’s a salt pool that they are free of chlorine when in fact salt pools create chlorine.

By using a natural alternative, there would be many benefits to us and the environment. Not only is Ecosmarte an effective way to keep pool water clear, they also donate 5% to environmental charities. You get to choose where the money goes from your purchase.

Ecosmarte is firmly against using salt chlorinators and chlorine generators since both options are not good for your skin, pool, or your lawn. They offer plenty of information about both of these systems and why their pool filter system is better for you and the environment.

Here is how the Ecosmarte system works. It creates two sanitizing agents: copper ionization and liquid oxidation. Water from your pool travels into the Ecosmarte system and receives the ionization or oxidation, depending on the setting on the controller. Both methods sanitizes the water, killing bacteria, algae, and viruses. The copper level is perfectly fine and is okay if accidentally consumed. In fact, you could drink up to two gallons of pool water and only consume the amount of copper found in a multi-vitamin.

There is a lot to think about when purchasing a pool from size to pool filters. A pool would be something the whole family would enjoy, and I want to make sure that it’s as enjoyable as possible. I’m not interested in having my little girl swim in a chlorine-filled pool but know that I will need some pool treatment system. It’s good to know about Ecosmarte’s products that not only offer a safe alternative to chlorine but give something back to environmental charities.

Nothing will dull scissors faster than using them to cut paper. If you any amount of sewing, you know that sharp scissors are a very important tool to have.

My mom has a separate pair of scissors that are just used to cut cloth. She even has it marked on the handle so that they aren’t accidentally used for another purpose.

I don’t sew that much but I would imagine that I would buy a nice pair of scissors to cut cloth and would want them to be used just for that. Labeling the scissors is also a good idea so that everyone in the household will know that these scissors are off limits for all projects that don’t involve cloth.

Clutter is one of my biggest problems when cleaning house. It seems that any flat surface naturally collects stuff. If I can find conquer clutter, I’ll be very proud and will certainly share how I did it.

Yesterday I started to clear the buffet and then I will move to the bar. Once I have these area clear, I plan to put some baskets or storage cloth drawers to catch the clutter.

Most of our stuff just needs to go. We don’t have the room and we never use it. So, May will be my spring cleaning month and hopefully a productive one at that. There’s a lot to do and if I don’t get on top of things, I won’t get it all done.

Today I will clear more clutter from the buffet as well as the bar. It does make the house look neater when there is less clutter even if it really isn’t that clean.