Every year, I share a list of some of our favorite things we have purchased/invested in throughout the year. Normally I post that around the first of November, but since I know there are sometimes shipping delays this year, I'm moving up my post by a couple of weeks. Shop early for Christmas!!
We purchased this for our travels in Abby the RV, but we actually use this every day in our apartment, too! Grabill water is, in a word, awful, so we will only drink filtered or purified water. Our building has one of those water dispensers that hold the giant round blue bottles, and we do use that some in our personal use as well, but we love having our Berkey filter in our apartment to supplement it. The filter takes out all the yuck (there are much more scientific ways to say that, but you get my drift) and makes our water safe to drink. We also purchased a stand for it, but we only use the stand in our home. When we take it in Abby, there's no room for the stand. Berkeys are absolutely an investment...they're not cheap! We were able to afford it by saving up and choosing the travel version, which is smaller and more affordable. But it's been a blessing both at home and on the road this year! (To use, you just pour water in the top portion of the Berkey and it filters down into the bottom, where you can dispense it with a lever.)
This is one of our newer purchases, but I am LOVING IT. One of the hardest things about life in our apartment is the noise...everywhere. They insulated the building when they gutted it and transformed it from an office to an apartment, but the insulation seems a bit...lacking. Can't tell you how many times I've been jolted awake from a quick nap (made even quicker) because someone slammed a door or a baby started screaming. Ryan decided to get me some headphones that I can attach to my white noise app on my phone so I can get some uninterrupted rest. Because they have Bluetooth capabilities, they can also be used for listening to movies or music. (Ryan used them right after we got them to watch an action movie so the rest of the building didn't have to hear all the loudness.) Granted, these are bigger and not discreet, but they work great and the price was right!
3. Bike Shorts
We aren't hard core bike riders, so we don't have all the fancy suits and aerodynamic helmets and all that. But we do like to be on our bikes for a while, and even with bigger seats and plentiful natural padding, we came away with sore behinds! So we invested in some padded bike shorts. Yes, it feels like wearing a diaper, but it does help with the soreness after a longer ride! Worth it!
4. Health Coach/Gym Membership
I've written before about how one of the hardest things with our job is finding time that we can invest in our own personal health. We were warned about this at the beginning, because it's been an issue for others who have been in this line of work before us. For the first solid year, things were so chaotic that we did not have time to get away to work out or do anything to invest in our personal health. But by late summer/early fall of this year, we knew if we were going to have any shot of making it any length of time in this job, we had to make a way to prioritize our mental and physical health. I hired a health coach, who lives here locally, but she does virtual coaching as well, and she has been key in helping me improve my thoughts toward my relationship with food and my body image. Ryan joined Anytime Fitness, which has been really good for him, since he currently can't run. (His bad sprain this summer will take many months to fully heal, so he's unable to run and do the types of exercise he was used to doing.) He's been loving the chance to get stronger!
Now that we regularly have toddlers visiting our home, we found ourselves in need of a booster seat! The littles that are hanging out with us right now are big enough that they no longer require a high chair, but they're too small to reach the table without a booster. One of our tenants actually introduced us to this model, and we liked it so much, we bought our own! It's a highly portable booster that just straps around any regular chair with a back. When not needed, it stores in the tiniest little block - about the same size as a lunch box! It didn't cost much and was worth the money!
6. Interleaved Journaling Bible
I wanted to invest in a new Bible this year, because my previous one was so marked up that there wasn't room for new journaling! I actually found this Bible that has one full blank page for every page of text. I am able to take SO MANY NOTES while I'm reading, and I love it. It isn't lined, which (according to the reviews) drove a lot of people nuts, but I like it that way. I like to print as small as I can so I can make the most of my space! One word of caution: the print of the actual Scripture itself is also fairly small. It's not a problem for me, but if your church dims its lights like ours does, it can make it a little challenging to read!
I grew up on good, old-fashioned curling irons. But of course, along came wands, and curling irons seemed so yesterday. When flat-irons showed up, I learned that the only kind of hair appliance that works for my head has ceramic on it. My hair is just too textured for anything else to work with staying power. My flat-iron is actually almost a decade old, gifted to me by Ryan's mom for my first birthday as her daughter-in-law. Probably about five years ago, I bought a ceramic curling wand and it worked beautifully...except...I am clumsy and burn myself all the time while using it. Yes, I have the glove, and yes it works, but it makes my hand SO HOT! So last year I taught myself to curl my hair with the flat-iron and it worked...until it didn't. It stopped working for me for curling, even though it still straightens like a charm. So a few months ago, I decided I didn't care if wands were trendier than curling irons. I wanted a real ceramic curling iron...with a clip. So we bought one, and it has been the perfect fit for me. It's good and hot and I can go 4-5 days between washings, just touching up the curl each day!
8. Bike Pump
Because we both purchased bikes in the last year and have been utilizing them more, we realized it would be handy to have a portable bike pump. (We had a couple of instances where we found ourselves out and about with low tires and no pump in sight.) So we purchased this pump that can actually attach to the bike and be present and accounted for throughout the ride! It's a good solution if you're riding in areas where you don't have access to air pumps!
I know...I know. Were the noise cancelling headphones NOT ENOUGH?? Not in an apartment, they're not. As more tenants move in, we find ourselves finding it harder to sleep because of people walking around, talking, or doing chores while we're trying to sleep. We already owned two sound machines - one for our bedroom and one for our living room. But we recently purchased THIS sound machine, which can go to decibels of airplane engines if it needs to. (We don't keep it that loud.) But we put this one in our bedroom and moved our old bedroom one near the door that separates our apartment from the WillowBridge office, just for additional privacy. The new one is pretty amazing!! (It also has a variety of other sound options, including lullabies, which can be handy when kiddos come to stay and need their music to sleep!)
I know...what? A phone holder that sits in the cup holder! So here's the story on this one. For several years now, we've had phone holders that clip into the vent in the car. They're pretty great, because they keep the phone up closer to eye level, but it is kind of a bummer to lose your air flow from the vent that holds the phone. When we started traveling in Abby, Ryan bought one of our trusty phone holders for the vent, but alas, the gear shift in Abby covered up the phone! So he found this one instead, and it is PERFECT!! It sits down in a cup holder (which we didn't need because we have plenty more), yet it holds the phone up high enough that he can glance over to see his phone GPS while driving. (Abby is too old to come with a built-in GPS.) It's seriously a perfect fit!
Here are our top-10 investment posts from previous years!
4 comments:
Some really good ones!!
I struggle with sound machines because I hear the repeat. 😕 My hubby teases me because my hearing is too good! Lol!
Sound machines are a life-saver for traveling or when you have small kids. We’ve been big fans since a Emily as an infant.
Your great-niece likes her sound machine to alternate colors (which she calls rainbow) and play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. All night long.
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