In my short career so far as a freelancer, I’ve quickly determined two things:

1. Compartmentalizing is an important skill, and
2. You have to take a weekend.

Being a freelance or contract worker puts your responsibilities in sharp relief. As a writer for a company, I am responsible for the voice and correctness of my copy. I am responsible for getting it submitted or published on time. I am not responsible for committing 8 hours of my day to the company. If it takes 8 hours to do my work, so be it. But if it doesn’t, I don’t have to feel guilty about that. I also don’t have to feel guilty if an unrelated appointment takes longer than I expected, or if I meet with someone about a different project. Those are distinct time boxes, and I’m allowed to have them. My job is to do the writing, and to do it well.

When I worked full time, I hung out in our company’s internal chat and responded to things all the time. It wasn’t all necessarily work. Sometimes it was fun chit chat. It was our water cooler, and I liked socializing with my co-workers.

As a freelancer, I’m being careful to close the chat client when I’m not specifically working on a project for that company. I have to respect my own time and not let it get leached away by activities I’m not being paid for. It sounds mercenary, I know. That’s not to say I won’t chit chat on occasion but, in general, the chat is more of a working tool for me as a freelancer.

That said, when you can work whenever and wherever you want, it’s easy to fall prey to a mindset that there’s no such thing as a weekend.

When your responsibilites are task oriented, it’s easy to put them off and to do other things during the time that you would typically be working if you were a full-time employee. And then the work responsibilities leach into your social time, like the weekend.

Sure, as a freelancer you can go out to lunch, run personal errands during the day, and goof off at home. And that’s absolutely one of the benefits of freelancing! I’d just caution you to take advantage of it sparingly and with intention so that you don’t end up working when the rest of the world is playing or sleeping.

To me, a weekend is when you don’t think about work at all, or feel guilty that you’re not doing it, even if it’s only for a few hours. Without the constraints of an office schedule, maybe you want your “weekend” to be Mondays and Tuesdays. That’s fine! Just make sure you balance it out with working hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

Now sure, there are seasons when we all give up time on our weekends for the sake of work. Times when there’s an event scheduled, or so much to get done that we have to hustle and put in extra hours. When it’s necessary, do the time. But when it’s not, take a break. Don’t delude yourself with a false sense of urgency. Don’t let amorphous guilt strong-arm you. Take the weekend, and compartmentalize your projects.

A little holiday called Valentine’s Day is coming up in about ten days. I know, I know, it’s a Hallmark holiday, it’s a cliche, we should show our love every day, yada yada yada. I get it. But look, I’m a gift person. I like getting gifts, and I like giving gifts. Last year, Valentine’s Day fell right after the second Snowpocalypse in Atlanta, and I apologized to Andy that my gift to him was hung up somewhere and might not be delivered on time. He responded, “Oh, you got me a gift?!” Yes, honey, I did, because gifts are what I do!

If gifts are not your love language, then look no further! I have some out-of-the-box suggestions for you, and you still have plenty of time.

<a data-pin-do=”embedBoard” href=”https://www.pinterest.com/lcl/valentines-day-gift-ideas/”data-pin-scale-width=”80” data-pin-scale-height=”200” data-pin-board-width=”400”>Follow Laura’s board Valentine's Day Gift Ideas on Pinterest.</a>

Some highlights:

• Bear Hugs Gummies from PaperSource
  
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  Who doesn’t need a bear hug every now and then?

• Rose Earrings by lesthings on Etsy
  
  source Beautiful and delicate, a much longer-lasting alternative to a bouquet!

• Stay Awesome Stamp by A Sensible Habit
  
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  A cute reminder for anyone you like! (Who says Valentine’s Day has to be only ooey gooey and lovey dovey? It’s fun to pamper friends, too!)

• Coupe Glasses and Pink Champagne
  
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  Indulge a little! Coupe glasses feel fancy no matter what you’re drinking, and the pink wine is girly treat.

• So Worth Loving tank
  
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  I’ll choose comfy over sexy any day, and this tank has a wonderful message as well.

• iPhone Camera Lenses
  
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  All the better to take your closeup with, my dear!

Inject some whimsy into your Valentine’s Day this year. Go out for breakfast instead of for dinner. Wear pink. Watch the movie. Giggle with your sweetheart. Buy your cat a treat. It’s about love–find your way to show it!

It seems like freelancers and creative types are all about working from coffee shops. I get it: when you work alone, and you’re at home all day, you might not talk to anyone other than your cat for hours on end. Maybe you’re too distracted at home by the dishes in the kitchen (guilty), the laundry in the dryer (guilty), or the aforementioned cat who is dying to be played with (guilty). The coffee shop seems like the ultimate compromise: the opportunity for human interaction, a distinct lack of household chores to be done, and delicious joe to boot.

There’s another option for committed work-from-home-ers that’s dramatically increased in popularity over the past few years: the co-working space. But co-working spaces are expensive, right? And working at a coffee shop is free.

News flash: working at a coffee shop isn’t free.

Unless you’re a total jerk, you’re going to buy something before you sit down. If you’re like me, that something is going to be a vanilla latte, and it will set you back around $5. Cha-ching.

You’ll grab your spot and nurse the drink for awhile, maybe grabbing a free cup of water or re-filling your bottle. A few hours pass and your stomach starts grumbling. Uh oh…lunch time! Maybe your coffee shop serves sandwiches, or maybe you opt for a muffin or bagel as a lunch stand-in. Or maybe you’re with some friends and you decide to walk across the street and grab Mexican for lunch. Cha-ching, cha-ching. Ten more dollars.

Back to the coffee shop. You gave up your spot, so you grab an after-lunch drink instead of slinking back to your table empty-handed. Tea this time, or a bottle of Perrier. $3. Cha-ching.

It’s 5 o’clock and you’re done with work. You deserve a beer, which, conveniently, your hip coffee shop has on tap. You buy one and close your laptop. $6. Cha-ching.

It’s been a great day. You got a lot of words written, spent time with your friends, relaxed with a brew…but when you add up those receipts, you realize it wasn’t free.

Now, co-working spots aren’t free either. But when you compare it to the money you might spend hanging out at a coffee shop all day, it starts not to look so bad. A day pass to Atlanta-based Strongbox West is $15. They have coffee there, too. And the beauty of a co-working space for a frugalista like me is that I can pack my lunch! I’d feel weird opening up a container of leftovers at a coffee shop, seeing as how they’re in the food service business. And if you want somewhere to go every single day, as opposed to just casually, it may make sense to join a co-working community. They’re paying the utilities, maintaining infrastructure, and creating opportunities to network.

I’m not bashing working at a coffee shop. I love letting someone else caffeinate me (especially as I’ve been too lazy at home of late and have solely been drinking tea). For me personally, the cafe atmosphere is not the most conducive to productivity, but I know some people thrive in it. That’s great! I’m just suggesting that you do the math. When I work somewhere other than home, I find I regularly spend about $20 on just food and drinks. And if I’m doing that with any frequency, my $20 might be able to work harder for me at a co-working space.

Find a co-working location near you!

P.S. Sometimes it takes getting out of your typical routine to get things done. Wherever you work, make sure you pack your bag well so you don’t leave any essentials at home!

I read 6 books in January. Even though I’ve been using Goodreads since 2009, I haven’t applied much quanitified self analysis to my reading habits until this year. But since I’m doing Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge I’m paying much closer attention. In fact, on January 29 or so I noticed that I had read 4 books and I thought to myself, “Surely I can make it 5!” Well, thanks to the books I picked (short-ish, quick reads), I ended up making it 6.

This is why the quantified self is a catch-22 for me: I tend to get a little obsessive. At least reading could hardly be cast as a destructive behavior. Though if you start to notice my house looking a mess and Andy and me looking gaunt because I’ve been reading instead of cooking, maybe you should check in on me.

The Books

1. Delicious! by Ruth Reichl
   This book was a Christmas gift, and I counted it as “a book published this year” (if “this year” meant 2014, when Book Riot’s list was released). I enjoyed this novel! Ruth Reichl is an excellent food writer, and her memoirs are some of my favorites. While this wasn’t as charming as those, it was enjoyable and the story was engrossing. I saw a lot of Ruth in the main character, but it definitely wasn’t 100% autobiographical. I gave it 4 stars, or “I really liked it,” on Goodreads.

1. The Circle by Dave Eggers
   This was my January book club read, so it wasn’t on the Read Harder list. We all had mixed feelings about this one. It was very readable–I think almost all of us read it in a very short period of time–and yet we were angered by the ending. We agreed that the characters, especially the main female character, were flat, and we wondered if it was because it was a male author trying to write a female character. It didn’t resolve how we wished it would, but the subject matter (privacy and connectedness in a digital age) gave us a lot of food for thought. 3 stars (“I liked it”) on Goodreads, though I would recommend it with the caveat that it’s worth a read for the subject moreso than the writing.

2. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
   This book was not for me. Satisfied the sci-fi novel task in the Read Harder challenge. It’s not surprising that I didn’t love it; sci fi and fantasy have never really been my cup of tea. It held my attention well enough, but I wouldn’t read it again. It was just weird, and I had trouble swallowing some of the fantastical elements. Books where the magic is simply interwoven with real life tend to make me uncomfortable. (I KNOW, that’s what Harry Potter is, but it’s different.) I may try out some other Neil Gaiman books that folks recommended, but I may not. 2 stars.

3. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
   This one fell flat for me. I think the charm of this book must have gotten lost in translation. I went days without reading at all while I was reading this one because it just wasn’t grabbing me enough to make me want to pick it up. I ended up with no concept of how the story at the beginning fit in to the rest of the novel or especially the end. And it just kind of…ended. Perhaps I need to read the rest of the trilogy to get that…but I know I won’t. Checked off “a book that was published in another language,” though. 2 stars.

4. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
   Y’all, Marie Kondo is a little nuts about tidying. This short book was a quick read. It’s been making its waves around the Internet, so I was glad to read it and form my own opinion. On the one hand, I found many of the quirks of the KonMari method to be somewhat ridiculous. On the other hand, I found myself underlining a lot of passages and, when I closed the book, I was overcome with an itch to get rid of all my stuff. So in that sense I suppose it had an influence on me! I decided this would be my self help book for the Read Harder challenge, though I’ll still probably tackle my original picks in that category. 3 stars.

5. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
   I can barely bring myself to have an opinion about this book. This was my “guilty pleasure” pick for the reading challenge, though I’m not sure it ended up being pleasurable. As with the Twilight books, I’m basically glad I read it so that now I know what all the fuss is about, but even though the ending totally left me hanging, I won’t be picking up the next installment in the trilogy. I couldn’t bring myself to even give this one a star rating.

I’m not sure 6 books a month will be sustainable for me, but it was a pretty fun start to the year!

The Challenge

5/24 completed

A few edits to my picks, as well:

• A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65
  Every Third Thought by John Barth My dad started reading this one and said it wasn’t very fun or good. He suggested Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, instead. Berry was 66 when he wrote it.

• A book published by an indie press
  I’m planning to pick something here when I visit Powell’s Books in Portland this spring!

• A book that takes place in Asia
  Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See A new friend of mine recommended The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, and I love going with recommendations.

• A microhistory
  The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  I have a copy in-hand now, so this will be next!

• ✓ A sci-fi novel
  The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

• A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)
  Wicked by Gregory Maguire A lot of my friends steered me away from Wicked when they read my original post. Instead, I’ll be reading The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, a 1920s re-imagining of the fairytale of the twelve dancing princesses (which I need to read first).

• A book that someone else has recommended to you
  I’m going to go with Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, which I kind of wanted to read anyway, per my friend Meredith (though tons of the other selections here could have also satisfied this task).

• ✓ A book that was originally published in another language
  My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (originally written in Italian)

• ✓ A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure
  50 Shades of Grey by E. L. James (Yep, I went there.)

• ✓ A book published this year (this year being 2014, when the tasks were published)
  Delicious! by Ruth Reichl (currently reading Veronica Mars: Mr. Kiss and Tell, which was released in January 2015, so I’ll have this category doubly covered.)

• ✓ A self-improvement book
  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

What are you reading these days?

disclosure: links are Amazon affiliate links and help support my blogging habit

I’ve recently come across a product that touts itself as a litterbox deodorizer. Sounds great, right? Cat owners throughout the ages (well, recent ages, anyway) have been looking for effective ways to hide the olfactory evidence that they are, in fact, cat owners. I’m pretty pleased with the litter I’ve been using, but I do occasionally notice a stench from the little princess’ litterbox. So I decided to look into the deodorizer.

It has activated baking soda, moisture-activated fragrance, and “an ingredient” to help keep litter from sticking to the box, making cleanup easier. “An ingredient” kind of freaks me out. What IS it, exactly? Cats spend a lot of time licking their little feet, which have pawed through that “ingredient.” What are they ingesting? What are they tracking across my floors?

As far as I’m concerned, plain ole baking soda does a great job of controlling odors from the litterbox. And it’s cheap!

Baking soda works at neutralizing odors because SCIENCE. Its fancy name is sodium bicarbonate, and it works by neutralizing pH levels in molecules it absorbs. Bad odors are usually due to either strong acids or strong bases, so the baking soda regulates those back to a normal (neutral) level. Plus, baking soda does something called buffering, which actually helps prevent further changes in the pH of molecules around it.

Plus, it’s cheaper! Did you do the math on the price tags above? The store brand baking soda is 4.3 cents per ounce, compared with 9.45 cents per ounce for the store brand litterbox deodorizer (even on sale). That’s almost double the cost for a sketchy “ingredient!” Not to mention that the name brand costs even more. BONUS: baking soda is non-toxic and environmentally friendly and you can do tons of other stuff with it as well.

I can see why the ingredient that purportedly keeps litter from sticking to the box is appealing. Lil Kira seems to often urinate JUST on the edge of the box, and it does stick. But guess what? I scoop regularly and use a little elbow grease (with the scooper, of course) to get the moister clumps off before they have much time to sink their odors into the plastic bin. And, I periodically dump all of the litter and clean the box with a mild detergent. Then, I sprinkle a layer of baking soda in the bottom before I refill it with litter. If I’m noticing a smell, I’ll sprinkle in about 1/4 cup more baking soda when I scoop.

Unless I’m totally missing something, my efforts and baking soda do the trick, without spending more on a product with who-knows-what in it. (But please, if your nose comes to my house and thinks otherwise, tell me!!)

Do you use baking soda for anything creative around your home? Cat owners, how do you handle the potential for litterbox stench?

P.S. I warned you about a different kind of toxic fragrance recently, too.