This is a guest post from Miss T at Prairie Eco Thrifter.  

The old saying of “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” holds especially true in the modern world. Life moves at such a fast pace these days and there always seems to be so much to do. It is vital to create good work/life balance if you want to live a long, healthy and productive life. Here are 5 tips to help you do it:

Work out what’s important to you.

Take the time to sort out your priorities. Determine what is really important to you. Make a list of the top ten things that are important to you, those things that are your absolute top priorities.

These may include family, maintaining friendships, getting healthy and fit, your career, sporting or cultural pursuits, church and religion, travel and holidays, giving back to the community, education, interests and passions. The list of possibilities is almost endless but as you compile your list, it is important to ask yourself, ‘ is this really important to me?’

Arrange these top ten priorities in order of importance. If you have listed more than ten, put them underneath, in order of importance. Check over your list and make sure it is correct. You might find that you revise your list over the next few days.

Keep a journal

For two weeks to a month, keep a journal of all the activities that take up your time. Make a note of how you felt while completing this activity; were you happy, relaxed, angry, upset, stressed or any other emotions.

Compare your journal entries with your priority list. Mark in red any activity that does not appear on your priority list. Mark in green the ones that are on your list and are therefore important to you. Calculate your work/life balance by comparing the time you spend at work with the time you spend on one of your top ten priorities.

Analyze how you spend your time

Take some time for this step, because it is important. Look over your journal and note the percentage of activities marked with red, meaning that they are not a priority for you. Note the following:

• Was it necessary, even if not a priority?
• Was it important that you do it? More important than doing something on your top ten list?
• Why were you really doing it?
• Will you need to continue to do this activity?
• Is there a way you can reduce the time that activity could take in the future?
• Can you delegate it?

Check your schedule

Look for ways that you can create more time for activities that contribute to your top ten. How can you reduce the time you spend at work and increase your time doing things that are important to you? Look for ways you can be more productive with your time by practising time management skills. Find tasks that you can delegate to someone else. Can you do some work at home to reduce travel time?

What is the ideal work/life balance for you?

You need to know what you are aiming for in work/life balance before you can make any adjustments to how you are spending your time. This will be different for everyone. You might need to consult the people who are close to you, especially those who are in your top ten priority list. Ask your friends and family how much of your time they want or need. Consider how much time you want to spend at the gym, or playing sport or attending new classes etc.

One of the best ways to adjust your work/life balance is to ask yourself the following question when faced with any activity – “is this adding to the time I want to spend on my top ten priorities?” This simple question will help you get your life in balance so that you can lead a happier, healthier life.

April was a far different month financially speaking, than I’ve ever had in my life.  H and I closed on our house at the end of the month, so there was a TON of money flowing into and out of my checking and savings accounts (and into the local hardware store) so honestly things have been rather hard for me to track.  Toss some taxes into the mix, and there was a lot of activity in my account, which is both good and bad.  May should be far calmer (except for trips to the hardware store, which will probably increase – H and I have been every day for at least 6 days in a row).

Debt:

This has been up and down for a while, but now that we have closed on the house it’s going to shoot up – I’ve also got a bit more on my credit card than I usually do, which I’m hoping to get most back because of (another) tax mix up.

House

This hasnt been finalized yet, but it’s going to be a whopper.   We got a 15 year note, and our payments arent that much more than our rent was, but that is before taxes, insurance, etc.

Student Loans

Great Lakes Loan $10,875 ($95)  I hate this loan.  It never goes down.  I got my tax form from them this year, and I paid them over 1,000 in interest.

Truck Loan

Ford Credit: $7,430 983  ($553):  This is my next target.  In order to keep myself motivated to pay off this goal, I decided to set myself a mini goal.  The payments that I talked about sending at the end of last month came through, along with my monthly payment as well as an extra $100 that I sent them last week.  Finally, getting somewhere.  I’m really close on this and my goal is 6,750.  I’ve got a nice place to brew my beer, so now all I need is the kit!

Total Debt: 18,305 This will probably be as low as my debt gets for a very, very long time.  Oh well, it’s still a far cry from my high of 56,500 in december of 2009!

Health Goals

Though the year is out, i’m still going to keep this going in my monthly reviews.  Since I’ve got a goal of running a marathon for next year, I’ll be counting runs in this as well.  I’ve been continuing my weight lifting regimen as well as doing my marathon training, so I’ve been something of an exercise rat as of late.  My week typically has 4 runs (3 short, 1 long) and 5 weightlifting workouts.  I usually do the weights before work at the gym in the morning, and my short runs Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with the long run on Saturday.  This month was slightly clouded by my trip to new mexico to watch basketball, where I didnt stick with my plan (though that was anticipated).  However, getting back into the routine hasnt been as easy as I would have hoped.

Goal Workouts: 20

For this, I count my gym visits and my runs.  This month I ran 15 times, for a total of 90 miles.   I went to the gym 19 times as well.

Total Workouts: 30

Food Challenges:

This month, in an effort to save some money and start eating what food H and I have, I started a Meat Challenge and a Grocery Store Challenge.  The meat challenge was unfortunately broken, but not for H and myself.  In order to bribe our friends to help us move, we promised to have a little bbq for everyone that helped, so we needed to get some burgers for that.  Everything else is going well though.

How are your yearly goals going?  

Today is the day that H and I are closing, so this post is going to be short (also, I took back the internets on Wednesday, so we dont have internet at the house right now).  After talking about the huge check yesterday, and I got the final number yesterday, which was still mind boggling.

After closing, one of the things that I’m looking forward to the most is going on an efficiency shopping trip to the hardware store.  I havent decided exactly what i’m going to get on this trip, but it will be all products that you can quickly change yourself that will save energy, (light or heat) or water – which will reduce your use and your bills.  It could be a rather expensive trip, but it will pay off in the long run.  I havent looked at everything yet, but here are a few things I know will be on the list.  (I’ll also write a more detailed post about what I get and why later)

Programmable Thermostat

These things are awesome.  You set them up to keep the temperature at a certain level for a certain time (say, from the time you normally get up in the morning to the time you leave for work) and then it will kick off when no one is home during the day, so you’re not heating a big, empty house.  I’ve installed them before and they take about an hour or so to install and set up.  After that, it’s nothing but automatic energy savings.

LED Bulbs

These bulbs are new (to consumers) and are still kind of expensive, at around 15 bucks per bulb.  They last much longer than normal incandescent bulbs and even CFL’s and use a fraction of the energy.  I’ll have to check and see which lights will be on most and start there, to save the most cash right away, then I’ll moved on to the lower used ones.

Dual Flush Toilet

These have been around for a while, and the toilets use less water based on the type of discharge that someone puts in there.  Typically you’ll get about 1/2 the water if you push the handle up, and  a full flush if you push the handle down.  These are about 20 bucks for the kit.

That’s about it for now, but once I actually make this trip I know that I’ll have done more research and add more things to the list.  Enjoy your weekend!

For about the 5th year in a row, I’ve set some goals for myself.  (If you’re curious, you can find them here)  One of these goals this year was to run a marathon, and once I picked one out, I set a training schedule.

Well, the marathon is in june and the training program is about 4 months long, it meant that I’d be starting my training in the dead of winter, and continuing through what we like to call “still winter” in Wyoming.  Of course, when I was lining this all out in january, knowing about my upcoming wedding and honeymoon crowding out most of july and a portion of august, this was essentially the only choice I had.  Needless to say, I was mentally preparing to do some things that I really, really dont like.

One of those things is running inside on a treadmill, and I can honestly say that there is not much that I hate more.  You do all this work, get nowhere, and at my gym, you have to stare out the window to do it.  In addition to all of that, I feel like I run slower on the treadmill (which has been independently verified) and and it is much harder on my knees.  All of that really brings me to the question: Do I want to achieve my goal of running a marathon more than I hate treadmills?

For a while there, the answer was pretty up in the air – whenever I would be forced into running on a treadmill because of weather, I would end up hating the treadmill, the running and my marathon goal in general.  Overall though, this really is probably untested more than anything – I think I’ve had to run on a treadmill 3 times since I started running, which I attribute to this extremely dry winter.  It would be nice to know for sure though – because I know I want to finish the marathon, but I really hate the treadmill.  I think that at this point, with just less than 2 months to go, I’d gut it out on the treadmill if I have to, but I’m not so sure how I would have reacted at the beginning – there’s a very real possibility I would have said hell with this shit and stopped.

All of that got me thinking though – it’s the same for all goals: what it really comes down to is how bad you want it.  For me and my debt, I started out really really wanting nothing more than being debt free.  Obviously, my attitude has changed a bit, and while I still want to be debt free, I also dont want to miss out on any exciting opportunities that I’ve been presented with (like going to alaska) over the last 18 months.  While I wanted to be debt free, I wanted to go to alaska more (a lot more), so diverting funds from my debt repayment to fund that trip (with cash!) was something I was willing to do.  Of course, this is much easier for the “huge” goals – I cant go to alaska every 6 months or every 2 months (boo) than it is for your day to day sacrifices, such as eating out and buying 1 too many of whatever it is you collect from the store.

My guess is, that for those smaller purchases you dont ask yourself if you’d rather have that serving of popcorn at the movies or if you’d rather pay off your debt, but you do ask yourself if you’d rather go to see the giant turtles or be closer to being debt free.  This probably holds true for you when exercising as well: You’re not focused on the small day to day actions, but then when something large comes up you focus heavily on it.

Readers: Do you find that this is true for you as well?  Do you tend to let the day to day stuff slide because it’s not that big of a deal, only to find out that it hamstrings you on your way to your goals in the future?  How do you remind yourself that your future goal is more important than that trip to dairy queen?

It seems like there are plenty of posts out there about weddings and how much they cost and all of those things.  Weddings are expensive and I think they can provide the perfect exercise for frugality and value – cut on areas that you dont care about, spend money on quality in areas that you do care about.  That being said plenty of the things I’ve decided to do for my own wedding could be done cheaper or skipped entirely – the reason that I’m spending money on these things is because I believe I’ll get lasting value out of them or because it’s something that I dont mind spending my money on.

Note: These will only be the things that are specifically for me and what I’ll be wearing during the wedding – the cost of things like invites, save the dates, facility rental and all of that are not included.  Below is what I’ll be purchasing for my wedding.

A New Suit – Growing up in the western US, I never needed a suit (and I still dont) because no one frequently wears a suit.  The only ones that do are bankers and lawyers, of which I am neither.  Formal here is considered a nice pair of blue jeans or stretchy wranglers with a this sport coat – both of which were quickly nixed by my fiancee.  I didnt even own a suit that fit until right after I finished grad school and through connections I was able to land an interview with a firm in the DC area.  My friend that worked there asked what I was wearing – so I told him kakhis, shirt, tie.  Apparently, that doesnt cut it on the east coast, so the night before I left I went down and bought a suit and had it tailored.  The guy who was helping me was pretty shocked when he asked when I needed it done and I told him “tomorrow” – but everything worked out.  Since this is my only suit, I’d like to get a new one in a different color, and I’d also like a 3 piece suit for the wedding.  Due to the fact that I’m fairly tall and lean, in most suits I look like I’m wearing a tent.  I’ve found some that fit well, but they are quite expensive, around 1,000.  The one thing that’s really committed me to making this decision is the fact that I’ll be able to wear this around to events and other things, driving the cost per wear down significantly over my lifetime –  unfortunately for brides, the wedding dress is a 1 day only thing.
Cost: $840

Shirt – I’d also like to get a new custom shirt with my new suit.  As mentioned in the preceding paragraph I’m tall and lean, so like most suits, most shirts don’t fit all that well either.  I seem to run into three problems – it’s too short in the tail and wont stay tucked in when I move around (and I’ll surely be dancing the night away) or if it is long enough the arms and body have way too much fabric in them, or, the neck is waaaay too tight.  This usually makes it fit weird and uncomfortable, which annoys me.  Since I’ll also be wearing this for the rest of my life, I don’t mind spending more money than normal for a shirt – so I’m getting one custom made.  I can pick fabric, collar type, pocket or no pocket, and wether or not I want my initials on the cuff.  Pretty awesome stuff, I think.
Cost: $112

Tie: H has been bothering me about getting a tie basically since we got engaged.  She quite literally wanted to pick what color tie I was going to wear and base the rest of my outfit off of that.  I was able to put the kibosh on that, because I didnt want to lock myself into a certain suit and shirt color because of some tie that was picked out when everything in the wedding planning game was fluid and no colors had really been nailed down.  After a while, I was told I could pick basically any color tie I wanted as long as it was yellow-ish.  I havent picked one out yet, but Ive found a few that could go up for “vetting” soon.
Cost: $60 

Shoes:  I’ve got a pair of solid black shoes that I’ll be wearing for this – it’s probably the only thing that wont be new for my wedding, but that’s fine – I’m happy to save the money and I happen to find the shoes rather comfortable.
Cost: $0

Grand total: $1,012

So, as you can see, I kind of got quite a bit of stuff here for my wedding.  This wont be the case for most people I imagine, but before this I only had 1 suit (I think others have more) and I didnt have to get a custom made shirt either.  However, I figure that this will be a day I’ll remember for a while, and looking nice is something I’d like to do – It also gave me a pretty good excuse to get something that I’ve wanted for a while (the shirt) and have a nice place to wear it.

Honestly, I really dont think this is that bad – if you look at my grand total, that’s the cost of a relatively low priced wedding dress (though correct me if I’m wrong, ladies), and that is all I need.  In addition, I have yet to hear of an instance where women can wear their original wedding dress again, and I will be able to wear each one of these items more than once, bringing down the cost per wear significantly.

Readers: How much did you spend on your wedding clothing?  Were you able to wear it again or is it sitting unused in the closet somewhere?  Do you think that I went overboard or is this reasonable?

Like I’ve said before, H and I bought a house (we have not closed yet, though).  Needless to say, it was quite the process, and we didnt really know where to start and didnt anticipate all of the things that we would have to do.  As I mentioned, this will delay my debt free date, but im OK with that – this isnt actually going to change my monthly costs that much.  One of the first things that H and I did when we decided to start looking for a house was talk about what we like and dont like about where we live now, and what we thought would be important to have going forward (like a dishwasher). One of the most important things for me is to be able to walk to work – I did the long commute thing for a while and wasnt going to do it anymore, so I told her that I didnt really care about the number of bedrooms and bathrooms or square footage, but I did want it within a certain geographic area – which she thought was a good idea because the area I picked is close to friends and where we live now.  I let her deal with all the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and all that crap, because it wasnt really important to me, so if it was important to her, I figured that would be the best.

After we figured out an idea of what we wanted, we started doing the fun stuff: talking numbers.  Property in our area is fairly cheap (I think) and never really ran up from 05-08, but did get knocked down a bit.  We kind of talked some rules of thumb financially speaking.  Here’s a few that came up:

• don’t spend more than 3x our yearly income
• keep payment below 30% of our income

There’s a few more that we talked about but those were the main ones.  Once we picked out that number, we went to and checked out a mortgage calculator from emortgagecalculator.co.uk like that one and plugged in our high number and saw if it returned a favorable monthly payment on a 15 year term (I refused to do a 30 year note and explained why to H and showed her the numbers, and she agreed with me).

Once we got back some numbers, it was time to find a realtor and look around.  I wasnt sure what to expect here, but the process was smooth and our realtor told us a lot of stuff we didnt know, which was very cool.  As for now, even though I’m sad my debt free date is pushed back, I’m going to be having tons of fun doing a bunch of sustainability projects around the house, and of course i’ll post them here.

Readers: How did you like shopping for a house and a mortgage?  Did it boggle your mind when you looked at the amount of money you were about to spend?

Tenets of Sustainability will be back next week. 

The other day, H and I were having dinner with some friends when the talk turned to our race training.  They asked how it was going, and H mentioned that she had got some new running shoes, as her old ones were falling apart.  She also mentioned that she would have gotten them earlier, but I suggested that she hold off for until she had been running for a while, so that she could figure out a bit more about her stride, what she may like, what she wouldnt like and things like that.  This quickly sparked a little discussion on habits and a little debate between our friends.  The two sides can be summed up pretty neatly.

Person 1:  John is currently an avid bird watcher, and one of his bird watching friends has invited him to go rock climbing because he thinks that john will enjoy it.  John accepts, and asks the friend what sort of things he will need to go rock climbing.  The friend tells him a few things that john will need, such as a harness and some new shoes.  Once john gets home, he starts to look for some information on rock climbing on the internet, where he finds plenty of reviews for gear that his friend didnt suggest, so he starts buying some more rock climbing gear.  He buys some ropes, camalots, a helmet, some rock climbing pants, an ice ax and a set of crampons.  Though he still hasnt done a minute of climbing yet, john is prepared for just about any type of climbing there is.

Person Two: Joan is in the same situation john is, but instead of purchasing new gear, she borrows her friends old harness and shoes.  When asking about all the other stuff, her friend tells her that it’s not really useful at the beginning stages, and it costs quite a bit of money.  Joan was happy about that, because she didnt want to spend a whole bunch of money on a new hobby just to find out that she didnt like it.

I’ve heard the it both ways, but some seem to feel like if you’re going to get started doing something, you should go all in and get the best equipment so that you’ll have the most enjoyable time possible.  Others think you should hold off until you figure out what you need, what would be handy to have, and what could be done without.

So readers, which type are you?  Do you get started on a new hobby minimally, or do you go out and purchase some brand new supplies?

Me personally, I’m the one to hold off, wait and see what I will actually need and then go buy it.  That way, it gives me a chance to see what I like, what I dont like, what I need, what I dont need and so on.

Debt:

This used to be all the debt I have left to pay, but since H and I recently bought a house, this number will obviously increase, though I wont know the exact number until later.  Unfortunately, it added quite a bit to my debt total.  I was hoping to be debt free for like, 1 month before we bought a house, but that didnt quite happen.  It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it does tack on quite a bit of time to my debt free schedule (at least 15 years).

Student Loans

Great Lakes Loan $10,971 ($95)  I hate this loan.  It never goes down.  I got my tax form from them this year, and I paid them over 1,000 in interest.  Finally under 11k on this – I may have a party if I ever get under 10k, though I think this started out around 20k.

Truck Loan

Ford Credit: $7,983  ($577):  This is my next target.  In order to keep myself motivated to pay off this goal, I decided to set myself a mini goal.  The payments that I talked about sending at the end of last month came through, along with my monthly payment as well as an extra $100 that I sent them last week.  Finally, getting somewhere.  Progress on my mini goal is as follows: The balance on the day of the post was about 9,000, and  was trying to pay down 2,250.  That would bring me to 6,750, which is about 1,233 away from where I am right now!  Moving in the right direction, and also the new house will have a few outbuildings, one will be a workshop for me that I can brew in!

Total Debt: 18,954 Unfortunately, this will probably be as low as it will get for a long time (though I dont think the mortgage starts till june, so april and may could be better)

Health Goals

Though the year is out, i’m still going to keep this going in my monthly reviews.  Since I’ve got a goal of running a marathon for next year, I’ll be counting runs in this as well.  I’ve been continuing my weight lifting regimen as well as doing my marathon training, so I’ve been something of an exercise rat as of late.  My week typically has 4 runs (3 short, 1 long) and 5 weightlifting workouts.  I usually do the weights before work at the gym in the morning, and my short runs Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with the long run on Saturday.  This month was slightly clouded by my trip to new mexico to watch basketball, where I didnt stick with my plan (though that was anticipated).  However, getting back into the routine hasnt been as easy as I would have hoped.

Goal Workouts: 20

For this, I count my gym visits and my runs.  This month I ran 15 times, for a total of 90 miles.   I went to the gym 19 times as well.

Total Visits: 34

Unfortunately, I did end up breaking my streak of going to the gym everyday, during the first weekend.  I had people in from out of town and was running around all day one sunday, and didnt even realize I hadnt been to the gym until about 930 that night, so I just decided to let the streak go.  Of course, I realize now that it was a pretty big motivator to go to the gym.

Food Challenges:

This month, in an effort to save some money and start eating what food H and I have, I started a Meat Challenge and a Grocery Store Challenge.  The meat challenge is going well, and we’ve reduced quite a bit of our food stock as well – which is nice because that way we wont have to move it to the new house.

Well, march is just about over (as of this writing) and it’s time to look at how I fared on my goal progress for the first quarter of 2012.  If you’re curious about what my goals were, you can see them here (as well as past years).  I’ll write them below and provide a brief update on the status, and how I can move forward for the rest of the year.

1. No New Debt From Jan 1, 2012 until the wedding in Mid July.  Well, this is a  fail – H and I bought a house.  Of course, it’s not consumer debt or “bad” debt, but it’s debt nonetheless.
2. Pay off 1/2 of the truck loan.  Working on this, and have started to get some traction over the last 3o days.  Paid down about 2k worth of balance so far in 2012.
3. Finally, I’d like to create joint financial goals with H after we get back from the honeymoon, but before the end of the year.  It’s not just me anymore out there, and I’m happy to have her support. Obviously, this wont happen until later this year, but we have had a few discussions about it so far, but nothing concrete.
4. Run a Marathon – This has been going well so far.  Though I’ve missed a handful of training days over the last 2 months (it’s less than 5, but I’m not sure of the exact number) the results of this wont officially be in until June, after I run the race.  I wish it was as easy as just turning up and running, but unfortunately it’s not, and everything I’ve done so far will help me complete this goal.
5. Eat Vegetarian Dinners Three times per week - This also has been going well.  It was a little rocky at the beginning because H and were trading off the shopping duties – one week she would menu plan and shop, and the next week I would do it.  It didnt work so well – H doesnt really like going to the grocery store, so after a few tries, I just started getting her input when I make the menu, and do all of the shopping and cooking on my own.  I’ve been doing fine on this goal so far this year.
6. Be in Good shape for my honeymoon - Though this was a rather terrible goal because it had no reportable metric, and I still havent figured out how to measure it, but I think it’s going well.  I’ve been able to put on something like 10 lbs since I started regularly going to the gym again – and I’ve noticed a difference.  That’s about all I can ask for at this point, so this is also going well.
7. Plant a Garden – This has been in quite a state of flux, and at this point I dont really know where it’s going to end up.  Before we decided to move, I had a plan for the garden and all I was waiting for was to get some time to build the border and then fill it with compost from the city.  Now that we are moving, I have found a spot that I’d like to turn into the garden (but it’s full of rocks right now) – I’d have to clear the rocks, get the soil in and all of that relatively quickly.  I’m not giving up on this quite yet, but it’s looking dicey at best at this point – this is surely not a fail yet, though.
8. Make papercrete- There hasnt really been too much movement on this yet, but unlike the previous goal it was probably helped by moving.  I’ll get my own outbuilding in the new house, and I can make papercrete in there and I’ve even got a 55 gal drum to make it in.  In addition to that, I’ve been saving all my throwaway paper from my office for the past year to make papercrete with, so i’ve got the stock and all I need is a mold to pour the stuff in.  So, this is going along swimmingly, and I’ve still got 9 months to go.
9. Continue using human power for travel - this has also been going swimmingly, and with the purchase of our new house, it will continue.

I havent really been sure how to write this because I didnt want to bore you all, but H and I put an offer in on a house.  Our offer was accepted, and we will be moving sometime in may – not too sure of the dates yet, but  I talked to our landlord and made sure that we had the whole month.  I dont really want to detail the whole home buying process because I feel like that’s just beating a dead horse.  You can find plenty of PF bloggers who have bought homes recently, and they’ll give you much better direction and advice than I ever could.  However, that doesnt mean that I think the home buying process should not come up on this blog, so I’ve found a few things to talk about during the process and after the move-in.

Of course, I’ll be focusing these posts on ways to have a greener home and save some money as well.  A few of the things I identified while the inspectors were there that would be “quick wins” were a programmable thermostat, low flow shower heads, more efficient lighting and a 2 button toilet.   Hopefully I’ll find more, but those are simply things that you can do around the house yourself that dont cost much money but have the potential to save quite a bit of money.  So, look for a post or two on those topics.

This house should also give me quite a bit more space to do more DIY projects.  It has 2 detached 1 car garages (odd, but awesome) one which H will park her car in, and the other which will turn into my man-cave/laboratory.  I’m not exactly what I’ll use the space for quite yet, but I’d like to try my hand at making some papercrete, making beer, and aquaponics for starters.  Clearly, the possibilities have me quite excited, and I cant wait to get it all cleaned out, lit up and see what I can make in there.

Needless to say, this will put my debt freedom date back by quite a bit, but I’m not sure how long.  H and I got a 15 year mortgage with what I consider to be a fairly low (3.375%) interest rate.  We didnt buy too much house, either.  The amount of the note that we are taking out is equal to about 1 year of each of our salaries, combined.  I havent decided if we are going to share the purchase price or not – that’s something I’ll have to talk to H about and see what she thinks.  One thing though is that it is still close enough to my office that I can walk  or bike to work, something that I was interested in continuing to do.  (When we talked to the realtor for the first time, we gave him a geographical bounding box we had agreed on, then a price range, and started there).

Obviously, this is a big step for us (and an exciting one) and I’ll make sure to keep you all posted on how things are going, and I’ll be sure to put up a bunch of tips on how to make your home more sustainable.