Author: Anna

An Orthodox Jewish mom and freelance writer enjoying a simple life with her family and chickens, somewhere in the north of Israel.

Do moms have marketable skills?

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A statement I encountered on social media got me so full of things to say I pulled out of my unplanned blogging hiatus. Here it goes (simplified for clarity):

“Stay-at-home moms who are looking to reenter the workforce are extremely attractive to employers because they offer so many useful and versatile skills. Therefore, if you’re a SAHM, it will be easy to find a job at any future point.”

What can I say? I do wish the job market worked this way… but it doesn’t.

As one of the more realistic people on that thread said, “Employers aren’t looking at what you COULD do… only at what you have already DONE.”

After I finished my degree, I spent a decade having babies, mucking out chickens, and handling mountains of laundry. Any credentials I had became obsolete, and I had nothing to put on my resume when I eventually started applying for jobs. I was lost, because when I opted out, I never thought there might come a day when I’d be desperately looking for work.

Trust me, employers weren’t lining up saying, “Wow! This woman can change a diaper on a toddler who’s standing on his head, and she’s a real pro at matching socks. That’s a hire!”

Eventually I managed to land my first long-term editing gig, which paid like a Scrooge but allowed me to gain experience I used as a springboard into better things. It was hard; I recall the days of balancing my laptop on the corner of the nursing pillow as my baby snoozed. It got easier at some point, but I’m still a freelancer. I don’t enjoy the security or pay that my peers managed to gain by staying in the workforce.

Do I regret this? No. I made choices; being with my children was and is priceless; I love the flexibility of working remotely. But what I wish I had done, and what I hope everyone does, is walk into this situation with eyes open.

Everything is a tradeoff. If you take a decade off to focus on parenting, reentering the job market may be a grueling uphill struggle. If you choose to work part-time and/or from home, you might miss out on opportunities. You may need to settle for lower pay and no security. You may lie awake at night panicking about what’s going to happen.

I don’t want to discourage anyone, but let’s just stay real. Yes, you can find paid work after many years of full time parenting. Just don’t expect this to be easy, fast, or instantly super lucrative.

Extend the life of your clothes with mending

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Today, there’s an increasing trend of viewing clothes as disposable – cheap stuff that’s meant to be tossed after a couple of uses. Gone are the days of mending and altering clothes, and re-using the fabric when the item has reached the end of its lifespan.

While many clothes today are of a really shoddy quality, you can still get a lot more wear out of them with simple mending: replacing lost buttons, sewing up a ripped seam, or stitching a hole before it grows too large.

I always save buttons and often use them to mend different items, often not the original ones. I have also noticed that, while the stitch quality in clothing is often subpar, the fabric itself is OK, especially if I choose cotton. A couple of minutes’ work buys me months, if not years of extended use.

Many of our clothes are actually hand-me-downs in pristine condition except for a missing button or another such little easily fixable thing. I love taking something that would otherwise be thrown out and giving it new life.

To keep my mending organized, I put all the items in a pile on a dresser in my room. The clothes only go back into the closet when they’re ready to wear.

Your clothes will last longer if you invest in higher-quality items, but that’s not always possible with a bunch of growing and active kids. However, thrift stores in your area might yield some treasures if you have the time to look.

Another way to keep clothes in better condition is not washing them that often. Sometimes, an airing is more than enough to make the item ready to wear again. For me, washing after every use is non-optional only for underwear. Less laundry is also great for other, obvious reasons, like less work and a reduced electricity bill.

Once an item is really beyond repair, you can use it as a rag, make a rag rug, or repurpose it as pet bedding. Some people make yarn from used t-shirts, although I personally find this a little too labor intensive.

If you have a favorite hack for making clothes last longer, let me know in the comments!

Best no-bake energy bites

When it’s a scorching hot day and you’re longing for a sweet but healthy treat that doesn’t require turning on the oven, you can’t go wrong with these perfect nutty, crunchy, creamy, dairy- and gluten-free bites.

You’ll need:

About 1/2 cup crushed walnuts

1 cup almond flour

3 heaped spoonfuls crushed dates or date spread/filling

1 teaspoon of cocoa powder

2-3 heaped spoonfuls of your favorite peanut butter

A tiny drop of brandy, cognac, or liqueur (optional)

Shredded dry coconut for rolling

Mix everything together until you get a pliable mass you can easily roll into little balls. You may need to add a little more almond flour. Roll each ball in shredded coconut, place on a tray, and chill or freeze. These can keep in the freezer indefinitely (though they’ll disappear quickly!) and defrost in minutes.

I love how versatile this recipe is. You can substitute walnuts for cashews or pistachios, omit cocoa, add more sweetener, and, of course, double the amount! The recipe above makes about 20 bites that will go perfectly with iced coffee. Enjoy!

6 great reasons to grow geraniums

Spring is here, which in Israel means a brief respite of pleasant weather before a 6-month stretch of unbearable heat. But my geraniums won’t mind: just give them enough water, and they’ll thrive through the summer.

That’s reason one why I love geraniums so much. They’re hardy. I don’t do well with any plants that are too delicate or too particular about their growing condition.

The second reason, which should actually get a bump up to the top of the list, is the color. Geraniums add the most vivid splashes of color to any flowerbed or balcony. This hot pink you see above is my favorite, but you also get orange, red, pale pink, and other stunning color variations.

Third, geraniums smell great, especially rose-scented geraniums like the one here:

I keep mine in a cage because the chickens really love to snack on it, but I’ll soon need to find another solution because it grows really fast!

Reason four, geraniums are super easy to propagate. Just stick a cutting in damp soil and keep it moist:

You can make lots of cute geranium seedlings to give as gifts or sell.

Five, geraniums make a wonderful refreshing herbal infusion that is great for colds, inflammation, or immune system reinforcement.

Six, geraniums repel insects. Plant some and enjoy fewer mosquitoes in your garden on hot summer nights.

Did I forget any perks of this popular plant? Tell me in the comments!

Exciting new release and free book promo

A good story makes this world a better place.

I’ve been making up stories in my head and jotting them down for as long as I could make out letters. And fiction remains my passion now, when 90% of my working time is taken up by creating content for other people.

Every book release is a victory to me; victory over time restraints, exhaustion, and that experience of being pulled in a million different directions you live through as a work-from-home parent.

Today, I’m celebrating. My environmental sci-fi series, Frozen World, is finally complete after five years and six books. I have just released the final installment, The Ruins of Glory. Woohoo!

In honor of the launch, I’m making the first book in the series, The Last Outpost, free for the next few days. So if you haven’t read it yet, now is the perfect time to dip your toes into the series!

And now… onward and upward!

Why you should stay in control of your finances and future

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Some time ago, I wrote about the potential pitfalls of investing a lot of time and resources into unpaid, unacknowledged work, even and especially if you’re working in a family business and/or for your spouse.

Honestly, I didn’t expect the post to get any traction. I mostly treated it as a mini-rant on my private web corner. But surprisingly (or perhaps not), I keep getting feedback on what I wrote back then.

Here are a couple of the public comments:

“My husband left me for a younger girl and abandoned me. For 25 years, I worked with him in his company and never had a role, never been put on the books at all. I have no social security at all. What do I do?”

“We bought a business 7 years into a common law marriage. It was in my wife’s name only. I have worked there for free for 19 years. Never thought much about it until now. We have been together 25 years now and she just left me and moved out for a guy she just met. I’m left running her business that was ours by myself now. I’m 66, disabled because of the hard work at the business. I can’t get medicare or SS because she never paid for me… now I’m told that it’s her business and I benefited from it by having a place to live and food for 19 years! I’m tired, disabled and left without anything.”

You guys, these people did what appears the most natural thing in the world. They trusted their partners and put in the work for a family business without keeping score. Because that’s what you do when you’re married, right? But it can lead to some absolutely heartbreaking, glaringly unfair situations. I believe the commenters may have some legal recourse, but it would probably take a skilled lawyer who’d agree to work on a contingency basis.

When I was younger, I didn’t believe in planning for financial crises. I saw it as pessimism, or lack of faith, or whatever. I was all about looking at the future with a bright and trusting outlook, and I got my comeuppance. You guys know the story: I moved into the middle of nowhere, cut myself from all transportation and resources, and was left with no means to provide for myself and the kids when we hit a long stretch of unemployment, underemployment, and disastrous financial decisions. I remember there was one job opportunity that was SUCH a great fit for me and so close to home… only 10 minutes’ ride – but as I had no car, it might as well have been on the moon! I remember thinking, “I did this to myself. My own lack of forethought put me in this position.”

I’m in a different and better place now. And I know I talk a lot about finances and financial security. I do this because I feel a duty to warn people: don’t entrust your whole future (and your children’s future) to one person, even if this person is the love of your life. People can fail you. I bet the people who commented on my original post never thought their partners would abandon them. But even if everyone is 100% faithful and well-intentioned, people still fall sick, lose jobs, and run into unexpected financial pitfalls.

Protect yourselves, folks. If you stay home with your kids, have something to fall back on. If you pour your soul into working in a family business, make sure you get official recognition for your role, if not a salary. If you’re married to someone who isn’t very good with money, consider setting up a separate bank account for your own and your children’s sake.

That’s all for now. Here’s to a joyous month of Nissan and a happy, non-stressful Passover.

And the Cleaning Frenzy Begins Again

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You guys, it’s that time of the year again. Purim behind, Pesach ahead. I have this itch to throw out half of our stuff and scrub the rest. Plenty of good intentions, though they don’t always come to fruition.

I made a big master list and just read some useful tips to remind myself not to sweat it. I won’t disclose everything I still have to do, but here’s a partial list of what I’m glad to say I WON’T do, at least not before this crazy messy holiday is over:

  • Sorting through closets
  • Cleaning windows
  • Yard work
  • Painting dirty wall and ceiling sections
  • Deep-scrubbing the bathtub

Repeat after me: Pesach cleaning is not spring cleaning. Dust is not leavened bread. Clutter is not chametz.

The kitchen is the real challenge. The lady from the link I’ve shared above says cleaning out and prepping the kitchen for Pesach only takes a day. That may be possible if you have a whole day free, tons of energy, and no kids at home. Personally, I have a big kitchen with lots of storage spaces and nooks and crannies. I also have to stop to eat and rest from time to time. I typically set aside a day just to clean the refrigerator.

At least I’m learning from year to year. For me, the biggest challenge is the couple of days when almost everything – the stove, the refrigerator, the counters – is already clean, but it’s too early to take out the Pesach dishes and start using them. So I’m sort of in a limbo where I can’t cook at all, and sitting on the front steps and eating sandwiches gets old eventually. There’s no time to figure out anything decent to eat.

Last year, eventually, I was just so HUNGRY. So were the kids. I called to order pizza (something I never do) and it turned out they were too busy to do deliveries. I could have cried. We ended up eating instant noodles.

So, this year, my challenge will be to stock up on nutritious snacks and food for those critical couple of days before the kitchen makes its yearly transition.

Oh well, we’ve made it before and will make it this year too. Happy Pesach/Spring cleaning, everyone!