Saving money on groceries

Recently, we had some family visiting for a few months and as a result, our grocery bills shot through the roof. It's back to being just us again and I'm trying to reduce our grocery expenses.

One of the reasons our grocery bill gets so high is we buy a lot of groceries at the local indian grocery store and it tends to be the biggest part of our grocery budget.

1. Use a discount grocer or warehouse club - options for me are Trader Joe's, Market Basket, Costco, ALDI's and Sam's Club
2. Choose your primary store and learn its layout
3. Watch the store flyer each week
4. Make a meal plan and grocery list
5. Stock up big on sale-priced non perishables
6. Listen to uptempo music while you shop
7. Figure out the price per unit when buying a specific non perishable item
8. Shop your pantry - meal plan around the items in stock in your pantry

So I'm going to start meal planning soon and use the rest of these tips to reduce our grocery costs every month. I will keep updating on how that's going.

Eight Discount Grocery Strategies

Free Printable Baby Shower Planning Checklist

This would have been really helpful when I was planning my friend's baby shower and even when I was planning my own baby shower.

Check out this FREE printable Baby Shower planning checklist from Unoriginal Mom

Free Printable Baby Shower Planning Checklist - unOriginal Mom

Gender Inequality

I came across this Indian advertisement for laundry on my Facebook feed and it brought me to tears. It brings home a fact that is so true... Women do a lot more of the housework and childcare than men do. And when a man does do housework, he is greatly appreciated and lauded for that.

My husband and I both work full-time. My husband enjoys cooking more than I do and does majority though not all of the cooking in our house and recently has started doing his own laundry as well. But I still do 95% of the childcare in the house and 95% of the cleaning and my laundry and the kids laundry. I however consider myself better off than a lot of other Indian women - my husband does more work than they do. But it's not equal.

I read this article on the New York Times and according to the article, in India, men spend about 0.9 hours per day on cooking, cleaning and childcare whereas women spend about 5.9 hours per day on the same. Talk about being unbalanced.

Vara MahaLakshmi Pooja

Yesterday, since the baby hasn't come out yet, we (mostly my mom) were able to perform Vara MahaLakshmi pooja at my home.

Varalakshmi pooja is performed by married Indian women to pray to the Goddess Lakshmi to bring health, wealth, prosperity and wisdom to their household. It's performed typically in the July-August timeframe.

You can read more about the pooja here and how to perform the pooja here. Each family generally perform it a little differently and that tradition is followed by all the women of that family. My mom does it by smearing a coconut with turmeric paste and making the features of the face with turmeric paste and sticking jewelry depicting eyes, eyebrows, nose-ring, earrings, etc onto the turmeric. Below is the picture of the pooja coconut depicting Goddess Lakshmi

It was the first time the pooja was performed in my house and hopefully, next  year, I will be able to perform it as well. It is generally said that the way to perform this pooja is not very important - even a simple prayer to Goddess Lakshmi on a smaller scale is good when performed. I may not do it on the same scale as my mom but on a smaller scale to begin with.

New CEO of Yahoo! pregnant and due in October!

One of the main topics buzzing around the web over the last few days is the news of Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer who was appointed and announced the same day that she was pregnant and due in October! It's great that Yahoo! is open to the idea of hiring a pregnant CEO and kudos to her for considering taking up such a challenging job at this time in her life. 

One thing which bothered me though is that she has announced that she will be taking a very short maternity leave and will most likely be working through most of it. I don't want to judge but as somebody who's 9 months pregnant and looking at getting back to work after 12 weeks of maternity leave, it's hard not to judge whether she's doing the right thing or not. Sure, it might be easier for her - she's rich and she can hire a bunch of people to take care of her baby. Her working is going to come at the expense of missing time with her baby and she's probably ok with that. Something's always gotta give - it's either going to be her job or time with her baby. That trade-off is something very personal and something every mother is going to have to make.

The thing that bothers me is also that she's going to set the expectation that other women in tech are going to be expected to do the same. It's already a tough environment out there for women in tech and this is going to make it even tougher for women in tech to have families and not let it affect their career.

Who Is Really Owed an Apology Here: Ann Romney or Hilary Rosen? | Strollerderby

Well said.

Who Is Really Owed an Apology Here: Ann Romney or Hilary Rosen? | Strollerderby

I've been watching this debate on TV these last few days and it's so stupid. I happened to be watching TV at the moment that Ms. Rosen said those words and I agreed with her - I got the spirit of what she was saying - work as in working outside the house. And I agreed with her. It's hard for Mrs. Romney to relate to the average working middle-class mother.

The whole thing has been blown out of proportion and is ridiculous when we should be focussing on the real issues here.