Should you wash your clothes inside out?

I’ve got a couple of relevant articles to share with you guys today…and I’m throwing in a reader question too.

Should you wash your clothes inside out?

We frugal people are very interested in making our clothes last as long as possible, so I thought you’d like this Lifehacker article about the pros and cons of washing your clothing inside out.

I don’t usually turn my clothes inside out on purpose but….many of them end up inside out after I take them off! So I’ve been inadvertently washing a good proportion of my laundry inside out.

Micro acts of joy

A Guardian writer tried out a “micro acts of joy” challenge, and since I often write about gratefulness, contentment, and joy, I enjoyed reading about her little experiment.

Her Day 3 assignment reminded me of what I have done so many times in my years of life: taking a hard, sad situation and finding the little bits of joy that have come from that situation. She writes about how the death of her dog was such a heartbreaking time, but one beautiful thing that came from it was the closeness between her and her husband as they grieved together.

Despite her ho-hum attitude going into the challenge, the author did find herself a bit more joyful at the end of the challenge. She concludes, “to feel more joy, I need to become a more connected, outward-looking person, ruminate less and focus on finding ways, however small, of doing good in the world.”

Yup, that sounds about right to me!

Why you should buy everything used

WilliamB sent me this Washington Post article titled, “Why you should buy everything used” and ooh, I love it!

(I just had to enter my email address and a few other things to read the article for free.)

While I am not as diehard as my friend The Non-Consumer Advocate, I do love to score secondhand items whenever possible (often from my Buy Nothing group).

My Buy-Nothing cereal bowls!

My favorite part of the article was the last paragraph:

Riffing off author Michael Pollan’s famous formulation for food (Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.), she has redefined her own relationship with things: “Have good stuff (not too much), mostly reclaimed.”

I could not love that more!

My Buy Nothing toaster oven on my Buy Nothing table

_______________________

And lastly, a question from Liz (Biker Liz…remember when we met her??) who is in nursing school like me!

How do you respond to people who tell you how hard/thankless nursing is?

“Nurses eat their young”, people say, and they share all the stories about how nurses are underpaid, overworked, underappreciated by doctors & patients, have LESS power/agency than they did in the 1970s/80s (less able to make patient decisions, expected to just execute the doctor’s orders without question, less flexibility in care decisions, etc.)?

I’ve had a lot of people, especially older nurses, being very discouraging recently!

-Liz

I have also heard my fair share of these types of stories, so I feel you. And I am sure that some of this is flat-out true. For example, there are certainly staffing shortages, and that leads to overworking.

I’m sure that for those reasons, and others, nursing is going to have its fair share of frustrations and difficulties.

But here is what I come back to: someone needs to take care of these patients. We can’t all just be like, “Oh, no, I can’t be a nurse. It’s too hard/frustrating/etc.” Patients aren’t going to evaporate just because nursing working conditions are problematic.

So, I figure that I will help out. I will get my education and then go put in as many years as my body/mind can handle, and then I’ll hand the baton on to someone else.

Also: I’m not counting on nursing being anything but thankless. Ha.

I understand that it is a job that is typically underappreciated, but underappreciated does not equal unimportant. I don’t really mind working behind the scenes in a helper role, so I’m guessing that I will be ok being a bit invisible in my job.

(Someone once told me, “You just want to be a nurse for the attention you will get.”, which is sort of a hilarious thing to say to someone preparing for a career that can be rather invisible and thankless!)

One other thing that helps me is remembering that while some retired nurses have horror stories to share, I have also heard from scads of nurses who say things like, “Nursing was such an awesome and fulfilling career.”

So.

If nursing turns out to be super-duper hard, that’s ok; I still think it’s important work to do.

But at the same time, I’m not necessarily convinced that it’s going to be all terrible because not every nurse has that perspective. It’s entirely possible I will not be miserable as a nurse. 😉

Stay tuned…I’ll start working in the summer of 2025 and after that, I’ll have a more informed opinion!

Let me know your thoughts on these articles. And if you’re a current or former nurse, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Liz’s question.

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Marivic Pontejon Frederick

Wednesday 21st of February 2024

RN over here with 25 years experience in different areas (peds/ picu/ nicu/ maternity, nursing informatics, and case management). I also come from a family of RNs. I may have been guilty of not being "ecstatic" when someone tells me that they're thinking of becoming a nurse. I love being a nurse, but I think most people don't know what the career truly entails. I usually encourage someone to volunteer at a hospital for a few months to really observe the nursing life. If they still want to do it after that, then I truly support it! Sometimes they do decide to pursue it. Sometimes they don't. But, at least they have a better understanding.

Sharon Sorrels

Friday 26th of January 2024

I spent most of June in the hospital/ trauma/ rehab halls of one of our local hospitals. That included many nurses, therapists, and doctors. I had older nurses and some that had gone through my elementary school. Hats off to the nurses who were all top notch! One of the young men I'd had assured me that they were there to help me, even as I rang for him every 90 minutes to be helped to the bathroom.

Lori S.

Thursday 25th of January 2024

I think this could be an area where going into a career a little older is a big help! I started a full-time grade 7-12 teaching job this fall, after almost 20 years of homeschooling and part-time university teaching. At 46 I know a lot more about myself, and a lot more about the world, and have much more realistic expectations about both than I did right out of college at 22. I also think that raising kids is a good preparation for thankless work!

I have honestly been surprised at how much I love my job. I am not a morning person and do not love having to wake up at 5:15 am, but I have not had a single morning where I didn’t want to go to work. I love my students and my colleagues. (My three younger kids are also at the school with me, which is a big plus!)

Teaching is another career that people can be really negative about, but if you have realistic expectations and enjoy at least most of the work (I know I need to sometimes work outside of contract hours, so I do the work I least enjoy—grading—during school hours and save my reading and prep work, which I do enjoy, for when I’m home), you can make it a good experience, especially if you are in a healthy work environment.

Plus, I think by your 40s you realize that you are always doing some kind of work. Keeping house is sometimes hard, raising kids is sometimes hard, caring for parents is sometimes hard, and your job will sometimes be hard. There is no avoiding hard!

Kristen W

I am mother/baby nurse with 27 yrs of experience. I worked 1 1/2 of those years in a med-surg float pool in the hospital where I have worked since I graduated from nursing school. While there are some areas of nursing I definitely do not want to do, I love my job working with moms, babies and the families. Nursing has been good to me for the most part, allowing me to go part-time when my kids were little. I adore my co-workers and I feel we are like family. Just in the past 2 months we have had baby showers, sent a lantern for a funeral, and supported a co-worker's family at Christmas while she goes through treatment for cancer. Yes, there are frustrations, but that is true with any job. I am so thankful for my experience early on in my career that helped concrete ALL the concepts of nursing I learned about. There are so many areas in which nurses can use their skills and knowledge, and once we find that niche, it's not so much a job but an extension of who we are as knowledgeable, helpful, concerned, compassionate people. Kristen, I think you already know that, and I really feel you will be an awesome nurse! As my mom (who was a phys-ed teacher turned ER nurse) used to say, "Don't let the turkeys get you down!" ;-)

Pamela

Nurse for almost 22 years, worked as a nurse practitioner for the last 16 of them, mostly in-patient. Every career has its pros and cons. Nursing is a great career. People’s perceptions and preconceived notions of nursing vs what nursing actually is are two very different things.