I’m a single mother of 3 young children. As you can imagine, my life is pretty crazy. Between school, soccer practice, dance classes, and swimming lessons, I barely have time to take a moment for myself. Being a single mother is difficult and has its problems, but it is also so rewarding; my kids are my life, and I would do anything for them. However, as my kids are beginning to get older and more rambunctious, I’m running into constant new challenges regarding my parenting styles. It seems that each stage of youth offers a different set of hormonal problems bent on robbing me of my peace of mind. I’ve been on the lookout for something that can help me with my stress level. I heard several of my coworkers talking about oil diffusers and their benefits. Not only can it help with stress levels, but it also helps to erase the permanent smell of soccer cleats that seems to penetrate every crevice of my house.

I ordered my diffuser from Amazon as a treat for myself. After all, I deserve it, right? I have been working so hard to perform my motherly duties as well as my various tasks at work. I finally received my diffuser in the mail in a rather large container. The cardboard box was roomy, but the warehouse stuffed plenty of packing supplies into the open space to keep my precious oil diffuser intact. I had the option to order several different scented oils to receive as an addition to my diffuser. Boy, did I choose right. The first oil I selected was lavender. Sometimes I think lavender is quite literally sent from the heavens to keep single moms sane during the day. Ever since I was little, lavender has always been a calming smell to me, especially with my mom harvesting fresh lavender from our country garden on the regular. She used to keep it in a small vase on the dining room table, and the scent reminds me of balmy summer nights spent reading and sipping lemonade. Naturally, lavender was my first scent of choice for my new diffuser.

The next scented oil I picked was a pine scent. I absolutely love the smell of pine; it reminds me of hiking in the pine forests back in Michigan and of Christmas time at my grandma’s house. Pine is one of those smells that can be used any time of year, but it is almost better saved for fall and winter, in my opinion. Something about a pine-scented home with the air condition on full blast doesn’t sit right with me. For a summer scent, I picked lemon poppy oil for my diffuser. This scent fills my house wonderfully and lets me forget, even for just a second, that I don’t have 3 children fighting each other over LEGOs in the next room over. It has a wonderful lemon scent with wistful undertones of poppy that absolutely lighten my mood.

I would rate this oil diffuser as a 9/10. It is perfect for a medium-sized home like mine, but I would doubt its effectiveness in a rather large home. It was delivered on time and intact, thanks to the packing supplies, and choosing a new scent for the day has brought a new bright spot to my mornings.

Changes to our economy have forced the nation to change.  We are moving into an entirely online lifestyle.  This means everything is tracked.  Our own business has to change many things that we do in order to meet local regulations and also to meet the new needs of our customers.  The economy moved into a nearly entirely e-commerce focused market and for us that meant we had to adapt.  For our own company, we ended up cutting costs to adapt by doing our own marketing in-house.  Now, we normally paid other companies to do the tedious work of shipping out thank you boxes, or shipping our marketing mailers.  This was no longer the case because prices went higher and we needed to be a more lien business to adapt to this new market. One of the ways was just like I said to do our own marketing. If you want to servive this new world you must adapt.  I hope to give a few tips to help.

Our company had to be flexible and that was a good thing.  The first thing we had to do was to break down all the different types of marketing we did.  Our company does email marketing, corporate gifting, and actual direct mailing.  Corporate gifting and direct mail were the major transitions and something we had to jump full into.  Our sales team always did the email marketing and the digital side we decided to simply stop running ads. This meant that we needed to break down the different pieces of internal work and figure out how we could get it done.

When in doubt you use what worked in the past.  We reverse engineered all our old projects that were done for us.  We used those as a guide and brought in a designer to work on all the design work for gifts, boxes, and letters.  The next section was being able to put all of those pieces together and this is where it got complicated. It turns out the number of shipping supplies needed was a very large amount.  Luckily, since we were doing this in-house the cost of putting it together would be less if we took our own time to put it together on top of our normal jobs. 

If we all took turns we found out we could all get it done together. We tried to place each task in the amount we could complete in an hour because each hour would be done by a different set of people.  So we ordered shipping supplies from a packaging supply company which also helped us get the correct products we needed.  It turns out most marketing companies use packaging supply companies in order to send these items out so the customer service agent for that store was amazing in helping us get the right boxes, the correct tape, and so on. 

The scheduling took a bit of work but we found some fun crews to do it.  We had a room that would allow for the six-foot space regulations and we started to pump out our own marketing material.  The costs of this cut our marketing budget in half.  So in the future, if we want to do more we simply can. This was a quick way to pivot and I hope it gives you some ideas as well. 

There is always a correct product for the task.  This can be super expensive or in some cases a really cheap product, but there is usually the best solution.  This whole economic insanity of 2021 has given people a good reason to move because of how cheap it is.  This is actually all related because we ended up using insane amounts of boxes.  Moving was fun but yet complicated time do to the pandemic and at work hopping for the correct amount and type of boxes was complicated. So I learned a whole lot about the topic these past few months and thought I would share some knowledge because it could help you out. 

Learning is always a good thing especially when it is something you will use forever.  We have done this several times and this time we wanted it to not only be smooth but safe as well.  Our previous moves were filled with boxes crashing, trailers running into things and causing damage and we simply didn’t want this again.  So the first thing on my list was to discover the best moving boxes.  In past moves, we used old cheap boxes that had been used a hundred times.  Not all things that are free can be good.

One thing many people don’t know is that with old boxes the cardboard gets weaker and can shift or tear when weight is added.  The old tape can tear and so many things go wrong.  I ended up hurting my back when a flimsy box shifted while I was walking it to a trailer to move and everything went flying and a muscle in my back seemed to do the same.  This was an awful time because I still had to move and was in pain. This is something I didn’t want to happen again.  I know when we moved we lost a lot of products to the bad boxes.

With a lot of research, I found that a packaging supplies store for the perfect moving boxes. I wanted the best and found that the best was actually cheaper than the average boxes at your regular big box hardware store.  This was pretty shocking and I landed on a moving package.  The packaging supplies store had pre-made moving boxes, tape, and markers of different sizes ready to go for like twenty bucks.  They also had boxes for the closet that had bars in them for hangers and kept your closet safe without crushing it all into a normal box.  The innovation was amazing and the cost was super low.  So this was the best find of the year. 

I used my knowledge to shop for work as well.   I figured that this would be done again cheaply and with the best products from a store like this.  And boy was I right.  We ended up buying in bulk from this company and saved tons of money.  It was great to be able to negotiate deals for work and drop our marketing costs in half.  I was basically the hero of our company. Honestly, the best part is our policy is that whatever you save the company you get half the savings in a bonus. Now it is time to get a new mask and vacation.  

After spending a year or so at my new home I have learned a lot about what items are needed.  We used the 2020 financial and pandemic crisis to move into a new home for a lot less money. With interest rates so low and homes popping up and moving fast we decided to move into a nice location with a home that needed some work.  It has taught me so many different lessons and I have decided that Youtube Premium was the best investment of the year due to all the home fixes and tutorials I have used over the year.  So with all the work that has been done, I have discovered that there are so many things that are needed to work on a home and to be able to not be hindered and running off to a store every other weekend.  There are simply some items you have to have on hand to save from disaster happening.

Everyone knows that duct tape is a staple of homeownership and life.  I have used these two items over and over for quick fixes and long fixes.  I remember painting the exterior of the house and multiple times the height of our house was an issue.  We had extendable poles but sometimes we needed to get a fine brush in some crazy areas. Massive ladders with crazy brushes taped to poles.  It was a wild ride.  Yes, it looks insane when you see it but it certainly worked.  It was much better than paying a bunch of money when you can slap some tape on a brush and pole and make it work.  So I highly suggest purchasing a big supply of packaging supplies to keep your house covered. The best place I found to buy this stuff is at packaging supplies store.

I know that it seems a bit red neck, but it is a good investment.  The cost of these two types of tapes and well boxes and bags are simply cheaper at these stores.  Buying these at your local hardware store is not the only game in town or getting it off Amazon.  There are cheaper options and I think buying from the main company and not a middleman or the third middleman is the better way to save money.  Get a bunch of this stuff. It is not like it goes bad and you will use it over time.

But don’t forget there is more than duct tape. Teflon tape has been a plumbing save and is standard gear for plumbers.  This is actually a plumber tape and my father told me about it and got me a roll for doing plumbing work.  If you ever get a leak this is a super thin tape that goes on the threads to make sure the threads on older pipes or just not well-cut pipes don’t leak.  Our refrigerator had a thread issue and the water supply from the well was direct and never able to be shut off.  So this was the most important thread in the home.  It was leaking and luckily my Dad had given me the tape needed.  Give these different tapes a shot.  It is worth having around to save from lots of extra costs and can save you a lot of headaches as well.