You’ve made it! All your hard work has paid off and you can finally take a vacation! Don’t make packing as much work as your day job, and don’t pack more than you need. A simple checklist of things to bring will help you avoid packing too much.  Research the area you are traveling to. While it’s impossible to predict the weather 100%, you can base your wardrobe on the typical climate.

Make a list, and don’t skew from it. If you’re going to the beach, only pack 1 bathing suit. If you’re going to a colder area, don’t bring more than 2 light jackets. 1-2 dressier outfits will suffice, unless you are traveling for more than 10 days.  Pack 1 pair of sneakers, and 1 pair of dressier shoes. If you wear a lot of jewelry, don’t bring more than 5 pieces, or you’ll be carrying around a lot of heavy things you probably won’t wear. Remember, you will most likely be purchasing things on your vacation, so don’t over pack to reserve room for your souvenirs. Your vacation fun is not contingent on the clothes you are wearing, so remember to relax, only pack the essentials and have fun!

Everyone is doing it. Nowadays, Americans are learning to tighten their belts and live with less. You may be surprised to learn that a few simple cuts in your spending can save you a lot of money. For example, if you skipped your morning stop to the coffee shop, to get your favorite latte, and instead brewed coffee at home you could be saving up to $1,000 a year!

Other simple ways to save money include hanging clothes outside to dry during the warmer months, instead of using your dryer. Also, invest in a water filter and reusable thermos and ditch expensive water bottles that only pollute the environment. Another great way to save money is to eat out at restaurants only on special occasions, and to cook family meals in your home. Eating in the home can save thousands of dollars a year. Lastly, gently used clothes are available in great styles and designer labels, so you can avoid costly department store price tags. Enjoy more time with your family this year, and less time worrying about money. Be creative and discover new ways to limit your budget.

One of the things that most of us are guilty of when it comes to storing items is getting it packed away quickly and put up in a closet, in the basement or out in our storage shed so we no longer have to deal with it. The problem with that is we sometimes don’t take the time we should to pack things away carefully and protect it. This causes massive issues ranging from breakage to warping that we just did not anticipate before we packed it away.

To alleviate that problem we should carefully consider what we have and where it is going before we ever do anything. Placing old vinyl records in a hot storage room on the bottom of a pile of heavy books is not the ideal way to store these items. That goes for any multimedia that can melt away in heat. Out brains know this but for some reason we do it anyway and then think later that we should have known better. Same thing goes for storing paper items, books, letters, etc on the bottom of a basement floor or storage facility at or away from home. It takes minimal amounts of water to get soaked up in these paper products and totally ruin them.

A little forethought goes a long way when determining the best way to protect those items that you want to store.

We are lucky to live in an area that provides recycling cans for paper and plastics. However, for everything else we have to find a place that can take it or just store it until we can figure out the best way to deal with getting it recycled. For the most part, we have been able to find places to recycle all types of glass as well as electronics. However, there are some other types of things we have had some issues with like paint and rechargeable batteries and the Earth911.com website has been a help in us finding what we need to do.

Another tough item we had to look far and wide to recycle was glue. We finally found the Elmers Glue recycling program that lets visitors know how to recycle old glue bottles and sticks. You can also find out how to win school supplies like backpacks and binders. This is a great way to help the environment and get your kids together for next year’s school year. It does take some time and effort to not only recycle but to find out how you can recycle some everyday items and keep this stiff out of the landfills.

In years past, there were many fun and exciting things to that young people could do for little or no money. Kids used to read comic books or just books or both. They used to play outside with their friends. They would have spent hours building models or simply play with toys. But nowadays, most kids just play video games. Most kids hardly ever go outside and experience fresh air. And many of America’s youth do not even play organized sports anymore.

Action and war video games are clearly the most popular. And with online play kids can play with their friends from school without even leaving the house. They just meet up in a gaming party and work together. Some have even taken it one step further and formed clans, and most of the time these clans take there gaming very seriously. Maybe even a little too seriously. Then again, some are just friends who really, really enjoy playing together. The option to play online with friends has made the already impressive gaming world that much better and even easier to stay inside.

Most people want to be in better shape. They commit themselves to working out a few times a week but they don’t really work it. What most people do not realize is that when they work out they are supposed to feel sore. That soreness is the feeling of muscle building and growing. I know plenty of people who will stop working out for a week or so because they are sore. What they don’t understand is that when they do, they are losing all of the progress that they had just made. There are better ideas then just stopping. These ideas will let you still workout but you will not have to work the sore parts.

What people should do is alternate the parts of their body that they work. For example, one day they should focus only on upper body. Do work outs like bench presses and curls. On another day you should do only lower body workouts such as front and back squats. Using these methods you can continue to work out every day without worrying about being too sore. These methods will still make you sore but that’s part of what working out does. I have found that P90X is a great way to alternate workouts and get good results.

Have you ever really had to use the restroom and there was no good place in sight? You don’t want to go to a gross gas station or McDonalds. Now that is just nasty and nobody wants to have to do that. I was in this awful situation the other day and I can tell you it wasn’t fun.

There are a few easy fixes for this. Some are easier than others. The easiest and, let’s face it, a classic, is to just go in an empty bottle of some sort. Water, Coke, Gatorade. Anything will do in this situation. Another thing you can do is look around for a nice grocery store. In my experience, nice grocery stores have very nice restrooms. I understand that there may not be a nice grocery near by but even a sub-par grocery is better than a convenience store.

So over all there are some good choices out there. And when disaster strikes let’s just hope you have one of these choices available to you. If not, you may have to use the bottle method. But that’s better than nothing.

My step father in a general physician and the senior partner in his practice so he was one of the doctors I spoke to about healthcare. In the beginning he was all for the changes that were being proposed and then something changes; it became about the insurance industry and not about the care that we get from our doctors and hospitals. No one is arguing that we should do nothing; the question is what do we do?

Today it was released that the average American spends 17% of their total income on healthcare. That’s over a third of the average American’s mortgage payment since most house payments cannot exceed 45% to be approved. That is a staggering amount of your household income spent on healthcare but again; what do we need to do? I suggest you ask your doctor on your next appointment and find out what he or she thinks they need us to fight for in order to improve care. When I have asked mine the questions they had said some very smart and creative things. We should be talking to the people who take care of patients and NOT the administration big wigs whose only job is to make a lot of money. Until we get our priorities straight, a solution will never be found.

I live in the South and in the South you seldom get the “Winter Wonderland” that you hear about in the Christmas songs and see on so many postcards. However, it looks like we are in for a blast of old man winter in the next few days. When that blast comes you will find a lot of crazy people on the roads down here! Most have never lived in a Northern state so they have never driven with snow tires or had a lesson for how to steer in a slide when driving in the snow as it’s totally opposite of how you would think it was to steer.

I suggest, as well as I will be doing, to go get enough groceries to last you until temperatures get above the freezing mark and make sure you have a full tank of gas just in case you have an emergency and have to get out. You don’t want to get caught in a traffic situation and run out of gas. If you have to travel for work, please give the guy in front of you four to five times more space than you normally do as this is a major contributor to accidents in ice and snow. Other than that, dress warm and keep your walks and driveway as clear as you can (A broom works wonders in powdered snow) and good luck!

I friend and I went to see a movie a few days before Christmas and if anyone was wondering if people had gone out to the malls, I can testify that they were out in droves! The traffic was awful and wonderful at the same time. The awful part was the part we all hate; the waiting, taking of turns and wanting to flip people off that were a bit out of control behind the wheel. (We didn’t though in adhering to the Christmas spirit of the holidays)

The really good part though was that so many were out shopping for gifts. This seems to be a very good sign that the retail sector might be bouncing back after a very tough year. Granted, I don’t know how many of these people were going to a movie like we were or if they were out to get the best deals; but I do know there was a lot of them and for the first time in months the parking lot was full and people were everywhere. I hope it is a Merry Christmas to everyone; including those in the retail business.