Category Archives: Possibly Helpful Advice

Camping out in our own kitchen

Camping is actually a useful training activity. You learn how to prepare and serve meals without most of the tools, work surfaces, or running water that you normally find in a modern kitchen.

If you have done enough of it, you never lose the skills you have learned. You are unfazed by circumstances that leave your house without power or water or the usual sources of heat. This week we experienced a kitchen faucet failure that required us to fall back on our old camping skills.

Working faucet The faucet that came with our new modular home was a state-of-the-art Moen faucet that looked fine and worked well for five years. Because I hadn't planned for its failure, our sink has been shut down for a week instead of a few hours.

When the faucet started leaking, I managed to make it stop for a while and started looking up replacement parts. This turned out to be a bigger problem than I expected, because I could not find the faucet model on the Moen website.

At this point I realized that this was becoming one of those dreaded "learning experiences".

Continue reading

Posted in Country Living, Possibly Helpful Advice | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Pricing strategies for hard times

This year has been a learning experience for me as a consumer and as a small business owner. As a consumer: As a consumer with less money to spend, I find that my buying habits have changed significantly. I am … Continue reading

Posted in Dealing with hard times, Possibly Helpful Advice | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Creating a support network to survive hard times

Going through hard times alone is a grim and desperate business. I found myself in that situation many times until I learned that being part of a supportive group is not a luxury, but a vital necessity, . The worst … Continue reading

Posted in Dealing with hard times, Possibly Helpful Advice | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Rule #1 in starting your own business – revised and updated

I have written so many articles about starting a business and striking off in new directions that I can't believe I failed to mention one of the most basic rules of them all when it comes to starting your own … Continue reading

Posted in Basic Business Concepts, Possibly Helpful Advice, post-corporate | Tagged , , | Leave a comment