Money Miser: Paper

This should be easy, but I’ve found that many people needlessly spend big bucks on paper products. I don’t know if the reason is convenience, lack of time or lack of knowledge. I talk to folks in the grocery or retail store about buying paper products. There was a woman in the grocery store last week who had one of those mega-packs of twelve rolls of paper towels. HUH? When I asked her why she needed so many paper towels, she said that’s all her husband would use to clean up. And she said that was a less that a month’s worth. I just told her that my husband and I don’t give ourselves that choice. We use cloth towels as much as possible and only use one roll of paper towels every two months.

The best practice is to not use paper products unless you have to; however, a second choice is to buy recycled products. Both can save money in the long run and help the environment.

The average family uses 700 pounds of paper products each year. That adds up to a lot of money (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_paper_does_the_average_american_use).

I’ve brought up the subject of paper products before, but it’s time to take a more extensive look at the subject.

Bathroom Tissue

There are just some things that are impossible to replace. Well, unless you want to go back to corncobs. So you will probably keep buying this paper product. There are some brands that are more economical than others. Personally, I don’t buy most store brands because they don’t really cost less. There are often fewer tissues on each roll and the quality is low.

There are some brands better than others. Quilted Northern Soft and Strong is a good product to choose. It does the trick and isn’t too costly. Seventh Generation is 100% recycled paper although it costs a little more than Quilted Northern. Marcal Small Steps is also a good choice because it is not expensive and is recycled paper. Scott Extra Soft and Natural is a good choice. The rolls are large so you use less and the Naturals are made of 40% recycled paper.

Unless you have a specific need for a moist, flushable wipe, stick with regular bathroom tissue. The wipes are much more expensive and often don’t do the job and don’t do the job any better.

Kitchen Towels

Now there’s a waste of money. There are times when paper towels are a good thing to have on hand. I mostly use them when I’m frying something or there’s a clean it up right this second spill. I have an older cat whose stomach gets upset very easily so you figure it out. I’ve about gotten my husband to use cloth towels and old cotton rags instead of paper towels.

The cost of exclusively using paper towels is high. A roll can cost from between $1 and over $2 each. If you use three rolls a week, that’s a cost of between $3-6 a week. And that’s not even counting the cost to the environment in cut trees, towel manufacture and landfill costs.

The best buy to me is Viva. The roll looks small, but the paper is a tight weave, which makes each towel more absorbent, and there’s not much air between the sheets. Paper towels are much like toilet paper in how they’re packaged. So the best bet is to look at the paper and decide how tight the weave is and squeeze the roll to see how the sheets are compacted. All that air between sheets makes it look like you’re getting a huge roll, but often the number of sheets is less that rolls that look smaller. Knowing what you’re really getting can help you make a better choice when buying paper towels.

Napkins

I’ve never cared for paper napkins. I guess it’s because my grandmother never used them. Instead she had beautiful cotton and linen napkins, some of which were embroidered and others pale colors of the rainbow. I remember during my early years my mom used cloth napkins. My mom was also a money miser although she was practical too. With four of us in the family, she finally began using paper napkins.

A few years ago, I decided that buying napkins was a waste of money and not very environmentally friendly. It was then I came up with the idea of using bandanas and cleaning cloths from the auto parts store for napkins. The investment is more than one of those 250 packs of paper napkins, but if you have enough cloth napkins, you don’t have to wash a load but once in awhile. Additionally, you save money because you don’t have to replace cloth napkins more than every two years.

There are added advantages. Your fingers won’t punch through, and you seldom need more than one, even when eating fried chicken. I like having colorful bandanas so each person knows their napkin. We each use one cloth napkin a day.

Bandanas are pretty cheap and cost less than $10 for a dozen. Cotton auto cleaning cloths cost about $12 for 10. Both are a good value.

Facial Tissue

There’s nothing quite as nice as a cotton or linen handkerchief. You don’t see them very much anymore, but at one time everyone carried them. For most people cloth handkerchiefs are messy. But even so, you can still save money if you use paper tissues.

The store brand, pop-up box tissues cost less and work just as well. You can buy them plain, with lotion or with a built in germicide. A box of the plain ones with 85 two-ply tissues costs about a dollar. If you watch for sales, you can get them for 75¢ a box.

Picnic Supplies

As Americans, we have become addicted to convenience. There’s no better sign of our addiction than picnic supplies: paper plates, paper napkins and paper cups. If we used them just for picnics, it probably wouldn’t get so expensive, but the use of these paper products has slipped into everyday life.

Here’s the logic used for using paper supplies: do you have company coming? Buy paper supplies so you won’t have to wash dishes. How about a large family? Paper works well and is less work.

The problem is that it gets expensive to buy all those paper products. Here’s a rundown of estimated costs:

$6.69 for 100 count 12 oz paper cups

$10.84 for 125 count 12 oz. paper bowls

$31.08 for 125 count 10 1/4 inch heavy duty paper plates (http://www.kmart.com).

I keep disposable paper picnic supplies on hand for when we lose electricity, but even when we have company, I stick with regular items that are washable.

I’m not suggesting that buying paper picnic supplies doesn’t make sense when you are having a large gathering, but just remember that everyday use is expensive. So you have to ask yourself if it’s worth the cost.

Diapers

This is certainly not my area of expertise. I have had no children and only acted as a babysitter once. However, that one babysitting experience involved changing diapers, cloth diapers. EWW! However, I don’t think disposables are much better.

I suggest a diaper service for working parents; however, the closest one is in Johnson City. I don’t know if they come to Johnson County but here’s their phone number (423) 283-9316. They don’t have a website so you’ll have to call for more information.

You will have to decide if cleaning and then washing diapers is worth it to you. For these calculations, let's assume that for one child you need about 60 diapers a week. In the San Francisco Bay area, each disposable diaper costs roughly 23¢ per store-brand diaper and 28¢ for name-brand. This averages to 25.5¢ per diaper. Thus the average child will cost about $1,600 to diaper for two years in disposable diapers or about $66 a month for cotton ones if you use a diaper service (http://www.realdiaperassociation.org). This site has a wealth of information on diapers.

So how much do cloth diapers cost? A twelve pack of three ply white cotton diapers costs around $11. The recommendation is to have 36 on hand for newborns and 12 for kids in potty training. This is based on washing them every two days (http://www.littlefornow.com). 

If you use cloth diapers from newborn through potty training, you’ll spend $500 (http://www.realnappiesusa.com). That is a big savings compared to the cost of disposable diapers.

Just remember that disposable diapers are expensive, toxic and one of the major components in landfills.

Most of us will never completely eliminate paper products, but there are ways to cut down on their use. Not only will you save money, but you’ll be helping the environment and conserving trees. You can use old towels and wash cloths in the kitchen. Cloth napkins and handkerchiefs are nice and save too. And don’t forget the diapers. For those paper products you just must have, shop around and buy in bulk. Buy products that work well so you won’t be wasting your hard-earned dollars. After all, we all want to save and get our money’s worth when we shop.

© 2011, Katherine B. Hegemann

Eating Wisley: Tasty Taters

The lowly potato is one of the main food staples we all keep on hand. We like them boiled, baked, fried, or roasted. You can add almost anything to potatoes to enhance the flavor. Or you can add nothing at all; well, maybe just a little salt and pepper.

I grew up in an area where the folks eat a lot more rice than potatoes. Southeastern NC used to have rice plantations, and the residents still love that rice.

Since moving to TN, I’ve eaten many more potatoes and have found out just how many ways you can serve them. Also, I grow them every year in my garden.

History

Potatoes are a root tuber and the name for them is Solanum tuberosum. They are a member of the nightshade family as are tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tobacco. Nightshades have a substance within the plant that wards off most pests—nicotine. Just handle a tomato plant then smell your hands. Daggone it they now smell like tobacco.

So where did potatoes come from? They are a species that originated in the Andes Mountains of South America. When the Spanish came to South America in the 1500s, they took potatoes back to their country with them. Sir Walter Raleigh of England took potatoes to Ireland in the late 1500s and planted 40,000 acres of them. Forty years later, potatoes were grown all over Europe. It wasn’t until the early 1700s that potatoes were successfully introduced into American agriculture by Scotch-Irish immigrants. (1)

My own family had their lives dramatically altered by the potato. The blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-1800s spread to northern Europe. My father’s family was from northern Germany and migrated to the US when the potato blight began to cause crop failure and the resulting starvation in that country. Interestingly, the potato blight is a fungus and related to the fungal blight that infects tomatoes. And we, who live in this area, know all about late tomato blight.

Potatoes are among the top four crops grown in the world. The list includes rice, wheat, maize (corn), and potatoes.

Home gardeners try to grow enough potatoes to last through winter and hopefully until the next potato crop is harvested. All those potatoes are usually stored in a root cellar, which keeps the potatoes dry and cool. The root cellar is supposed to keep the potatoes from freezing yet cold enough to prevent sprouting.

Nutritional Value

What nutritionists say about potatoes is familiar to me. Remember the egg? One year they’re good for you, the next year they aren’t. So it goes with the potato.

But wait, potatoes ARE good for you. They are high in fiber, vitamin C and minerals. Moreover, potatoes are part of a well-balanced diet. Besides, potatoes are cheap and filling.

Let’s take a look at a plain old tater and its nutrition. Costing about 25 cents, a medium potato that you eat with the skin on you get:

-110 calories

-45% of your daily value of vitamin C

-potassium 614 mg

-fiber 2 g

-fat-free and sodium-free

-also a source of calcium, iron, B vitamins, phosphorous, zinc, magnesium, and copper

-good carbohydrates (2)

That makes the potato a pretty good food to eat. Combine that with the many ways to cook potatoes, and you have the ‘great American staple.’

If the only ways you eat potatoes are fried, mashed with gravy, or baked with butter and sour cream, you might think potatoes aren’t that good for you. But they are if they’re cooked right. And yes, I do love good French fries.

Recipes

My mom used to cook boiled potatoes at least once a week. She would make either mashed potatoes or potato salad, but she always left one potato for the refrigerator. As a kid, I loved cold boiled potatoes, and that extra potato was for me. I’d get the salt shaker and take the potato out to the back porch. Take a bite, shake a little salt, take another bite until it was all gone. Now that is good eating.

I have a few good recipes for potatoes: potato cakes, scalloped potatoes and potatoes au gratin.

Potato Cakes: Serves 4

Ingredients

-2 cups left over mashed potatoes

-1/4 cup finely chopped onions

-1/4 cup finely chopped bell pepper

-1/4 teaspoon dill weed

-1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

-Salt, pepper and paprika to taste

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Form 1/2 inch thick patties from the mix that are 2-3 inches across.

Dreg the patties in seasoned all purpose flour then put them on a plate and refrigerate least 1 hour. The cold potatoes don’t fall apart when you fry them if the oil is hot enough to create a crust before the patty gets warm on the inside.

Take a frying pan and pour in about 1/2 to 1 inch of vegetable oil.

Heat the oil until when you add one drop of water it sizzles.

Fry the patties a few at a time until they are heated through and golden brown. Don’t crowd the pan, or the temperature of the oil will go down and you’ll end up with greasy potato cakes.

Drain the cakes on paper towels then pat the tops with a paper towel too.

Eat however you like them; you can use butter, sour cream, yogurt, Dijon mustard, or even applesauce. These are good for any meal although I’m partial to them for breakfast.

Scalloped Potatoes: Serves 4

Ingredients

-3 tablespoons chopped or thinly sliced onion

-3 tablespoons butter or margarine

-3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1/4 teaspoon pepper

-2 1/2 cups milk

-4 thinly sliced potatoes

Directions

In a large saucepan, sauté onion in butter until tender. Stir in flour, salt and pepper until blended. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until sauce is thickened.

Place half of potatoes in a greased 1 quart baking dish. Pour half of sauce over potatoes. Repeat layers. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees F for 60-70 minutes or until potatoes are tender and top is lightly browned.

Potatoes au Gratin: Serves 4

Ingredients

-4 russet potatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch slices

-1 onion, sliced into rings

-salt and pepper to taste

-3 tablespoons butter

-3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-2 cups milk

-1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or use cooking spray a 1 quart casserole dish.

Layer 1/2 of the potatoes into bottom of the prepared casserole dish. Top with the onion slices, and add the remaining potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

In a medium-size saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Mix in the flour and salt, and stir constantly with a whisk for one minute. Stir in milk. Cook until mixture has thickened. Stir in cheese all at once, and continue stirring until melted, about 30 to 60 seconds. Pour cheese over the potatoes and cover the dish with aluminum foil or lid.

Bake 1 1/2 hours in the preheated oven.

I like to remove the top the last 10 minutes to let the potatoes brown.

Both the scalloped and au gratin potatoes can be cooked in a crock pot. Cook them 3 hours on high or 7-9 hours on low. The dish won’t be browned on top, but it will be delicious.

Potatoes are good for you, cheap and plentiful. You can take any potato recipe and make it low calorie and low fat. I love all the recipes, but I do have a favorite way to use potatoes. Fresh green beans, diced Vidalia onions, unpeeled small red new potatoes quartered, and a dash of cayenne pepper flakes. You can season with ham, chicken or beef bouillon if you so choose. And of course this is best when the vegetables come right out of your garden. My mouth is watering. Now when will those beans be ready to pick and taters ready to dig?

1. What’s Cooking: http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/PotatoHistory.htm

2. Washington State Potato Commission: http://www.potatoes.com/Nutrition.cfm

© 2011, Katherine B. Hegemann

Grow It: Summer’s Here

How do we calculate the seasons?

Seasons reflect changes in the weather, which are dependent upon the tilt of the Earth. The Earth doesn’t rotate on a straight axis but tilts in relation to the sun. That tilt puts us either closer or farther away from the sun. The tilt determines the length of the days, which is then responsible for how hot or cold it is. The season are opposite from ours when you get below the equator. When we’re having summer, they’re having winter. The real confusion begins when you ask what date begins each season.

I’ve had a couple of questions about this topic. As I child, I remember winter was December, January, February; spring was March, April, May; summer was June, July, August; and fall or autumn was September, October, November. All of a sudden in the late 80s, the date for the beginning of a season was different. I asked myself what happened and why.

What I grew up with is based upon the meteorological dates for season. The seasons begin and end with months. It’s easier to remember and follows the changes in the weather. For example, autumn means cooling temperatures and many trees begin losing their leaves. That’s pretty simple right? It must be too simple since somebody decided to change the season dates.

So now when you read, hear or see the news saying that summer will begin on June 20 THIS year, what does it mean and how did scientists come up with THAT date? This dating of the seasons is called astrological season dating. No, you don’t have to go have get an astrologist work up your horoscope. This method, though, is completely based upon the earth’s movement and tilt. First some terms: solstices are when the days are either the shortest in December or longest in June, and equinoxes are when days are the same length as nights and fall in September and March. That means when you hear summer begins on June 20, that’s the summer solstice. By the way, the dates change just about every year, but they fall within just a few days each year. Whew!

To make this easier, I found charts for 2011 and 2012 at The Old Farmer’s Almanac (http://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-seasons). Here are the dates:

Are you confused yet? Some tables include the time as well as the date. The best bet is to look the dates up on the Internet and mark them on your calendar. I sometimes wonder if people who come up with this stuff have too much time on their hands. I think I’ll just stick with the meteorological seasons.

Light and temperature

This information is important to gardeners because the amount of sunlight is directly related to how well plants grow. I wish it was the only thing a gardener needed to understand to be successful. There’s also soil temperature to consider. You can plant your beans anytime, but they won’t germinate much less grow until the soil reaches 75 degrees. Plants that grow at between 40-50 degrees are lettuce, garden peas, potatoes, spinach, and turnips. Those that grow in the 60 degree range are dill and mustard. Everything else needs at minimum soil temperature at or above 70 degrees. There are a few that have to have 80 degree to grow: broccoli, corn, cucumber, okra, bell peppers, and tomatoes. So unless you want the seed to just sit there or worse rot in the ground, make sure your soil is the correct temperature before planting. That is why I don’t plant my corn or okra until June. We are 1000 feet higher than Mountain City so our temperatures are lower and the soil stays cooler longer.

Moon phases

I’ve written about planting using moon phases, but you might want to know why people use that method to plant their garden.

To understand planting by the moon you need to know a few things. Both the full moon and dark or new moon last three days. Waxing is when the moon appears fuller and lasts from the last day of the new moon until first day of the full moon. Waning is when the moon appears to disappear and lasts from the last day of the full moon until the first day of the new moon. There is some evidence that the pull of the moon affects the growth of plants.

I’m glad most calendars have full moon, quarter moons, and new moons on them. Here’s how it works. Plant above ground seeds during the waxing phase until the first day of the full moon. Plant below ground seeds during the waning phase until the first day of the new moon. The folklore says the pull of the moon waxing directs energy for the plants to grow upward. When the moon is waning, the energy goes to the roots. So you don’t want root vegetables to have all nice above ground foliage; you want those turnips, potatoes and beets to have large underground fruit. The opposite is true of beans, tomatoes and corn. I’ve seen this work. One year I grew the prettiest turnips, but when it came time to eat the bottoms, they were only about the size of a large marble.

What to do in June

Are your garden tools clean and sharpened? If not, get to it. Clean before sharpening any tool that needs a sharp edge. Use a grinder or file, or you can take the tool to someone who can sharpen it for you. If you aren’t used to doing this, you’ll be very surprised at how much easier gardening can become. This includes shovels, hoes, and even those little hand tools like a trowel.

As a gardener, you need to know what you have to do to keep your garden growing. Now let’s look at the to-do list.

Weed regularly as in every few days. No, not the whole garden but a section of the garden. I know how much weeding I can do in half an hour so I do that at one time. If I’m feeling industrious, I weed for the time allotted in both the early morning and late afternoon.

When potato plants are about a foot tall, you need to mound up soil until all you can see is the top four inches. You only do this one time. Multiple times encourages disease and doesn’t do much to get the plants to make more potatoes. Now, mulch around the plants to keep the weeds down.

If you are growing runner or pole beans, you should have whatever contraption you want to use in place and check the plants to make sure they are using the supports. Keep in mind that pole beans tend to curve clockwise when growing. It won’t do you much good if you try to make them grow counter clockwise.

Keep an eye out for diseases and pests. If you see problems, go into combat mode. If you grow flowers that help with bugs, you should have to use less insect killer. However, if you find bugs eating your plants, try a non-chemical pesticide to get rid of them. Dusting with diatomaceous earth really works. You can buy or make insecticidal soap to spray on the bugs and plants. You can make it by the quart or gallon. For one gallon, mix a few tablespoons of a mild liquid soap (not detergent), canola oil and a gallon of water. To add more insect killing punch, boil garlic and hot pepper powder in a little water for about ten minutes then let it cool and strain the mix through cheesecloth. Add this to your soap mix. You just spray the bugs and plants, but do the spraying in the evening or very early in the morning. You want the water to evaporate before the sun gets high in to sky so your plants won’t get burned. You’ll need to do this every week or after a rain, but it is chemical free.

Beans can get rust if we get too much rain so you have to watch for that too. I had to quit growing pole beans for about three years as they got anthracnose. Bush beans are less susceptible to disease. YUCK! The plants and beans develop purple lesions, and the disease kills the plants. Too much rain and high humidity lead to these diseases. Both rust and anthracnose are fungal. The section after tomatoes will cover how to deal with fungal infection for both types of plants.

A word or two about tomatoes is in order. Some people pinch off suckers and others don’t. I do, but you have to pinch (not cut) them and do it when they first appear. Suckers? They are side shoots that appear where leaves and the stems that produce tomatoes join to the main plant and will produce another tomato vine if left unchecked. The agricultural experts say that suckers take energy from the main plant, and you’ll have fewer healthy tomatoes. Tomatoes are vulnerable to blight up here, and it takes work to keep blight away. Right now it isn’t such a big deal, but our tomatoes don’t start producing fruit until July at the earliest so it pays to be prepared. I’ve tried many ways to grow healthy tomatoes that produce fruit until the first fall frost. The biggest problem is late blight. You will see this awful disease develop when there’s prolonged rain and the humidity is high even when there’s no rain. I’ve mixed up weak chlorine bleach and water with a dab of vegetable oil to spray the plants. I’ve used copper sulfate. Blight, either early or late, is a fungus and must be dealt with as such.

I’ve had invasions of Mexican bean beetles, those nasty Japanese beetles and Colorado potato beetles. They can be dealt with, but fungus is a whole different problem. First, you have to try to keep away the moisture on the plants. You can’t stop the rain, but there are methods to allow the moisture to evaporate. First, don’t plant seeds too close to each other. The recommendation for beans is three inches, but I plant them six inches apart. Tomatoes should be about two feet or more apart, and they need staking or cages. By planting both of these a little further apart, you allow for air circulation so the water evaporates. One of the reasons I cut the tomato suckers is that also allow the air to flow more freely.

The next thing you should do is mulch. A pine chip or nugget mulch works for beans. The acid doesn’t seem to hurt the plant but it does help keep fungus away. I’ve had great success with red mulch for tomatoes. There is scientific evidence that it helps prevent blight and makes the tomatoes ripen more quickly.

But what if all this fails? You can buy sprays that are supposed to control or kill fungus. I haven’t had much luck with them. So I thought about what kills fungus, any fungus. Well hydrogen peroxide does so I tried that mixed with water, but it bleached the leaves. Baking soda kills fungus, but my mix with water in a spray bottle didn’t do much good. So I started searching the Internet and found something that worked for me. Potassium bicarbonate mixed with water and sprayed on both the foliage and stems will kill the fungus. You absolutely have to do this at the first sign of fungal infection. There are lots of brands but the best known is Green Cure (http://www.greencure.net). I happened to find and buy a product called GreenSense (http://www.greensense.net), sold through Amazon. There are other brands but the main thing is potassium bicarbonate works.

Finally, it’s time to plant corn, okra, squash, cucumbers, and more beans. If you live at a lower altitude, you may have already done your planting. Just remember you can plant beans every few weeks until the end of July.

There are more things to do in your garden during June. However, the list above should keep you busy. The best tip I can give you is to enjoy your garden and avoid getting all het up if things don’t go the way you want them to.

Living Well: Relationships

By Katherine Hegemann (kittyhegemann@embarqmail.com)

I’ve met people who are hermits or otherwise choose to live with few or no human relationships. Because there were mitigating circumstances or because it was his/her choice, these people lived a fairly contented life. Most of us aren’t like that. We need healthy, happy and productive relationships with others.

We all know many people. Most of these relations require nothing more than saying hello, conducting business, and inquiring about a person’s life. These are dealings that are fairly superficial and may include your favorite waitress, cashier, a neighbor, or even a relative who lives on the other side of the country. They don’t require much effort.

When we decide to begin and build a relationship with another person, there is more required of each person involved. More important is the deepening knowledge, acceptance, respect, trust, and love for each other.

Healthy human relationships provide mental and emotional well-being; improve health, happiness and success; and help us grow as members of a community and as an individual.

The question is what makes a healthy, long-term, successful relationship? There are five key components to building and maintaining strong connections with others.

Commitment

A commitment is a pledge to do something or fulfill an obligation or promise. I’m not writing about keeping a commitment to meet for lunch once a month, although that is important too. Opening up and sharing yourself with another person is the vital promise in relationships. Whether it’s your spouse, child, pastor, best friend, or doctor, you have to share the real you with them. That means the good parts as well as the not so good.

Another aspect of commitment is to stay with the relationship even when the going gets rough. None of us agree with another person all the time, but learning to agree to disagree is important in building a good relationship.

One of the best things about a healthy relationship is learning how others think and feel. It’s really about opening up to new ideas, paradigms, ways of living, and how to do things.

Of course, commitment is a two-way pledge. It is important to be realistic about just how much you and the other person are willing to share of yourselves. The depth of the relationship depends on that sharing and commitment.

Compassion

Did you know compassion is the cornerstone of all types of love? Compassion is when you connect with others to share their joy, suffering, good times, and bad times. It, basically, is when you want for others what you have.

Empathy is part of compassion. You are able to recognize and share other’s feelings, such as happiness and sadness. Another piece to the compassion puzzle is sympathy, which is to understand another’s feelings. Recognizing another’s feelings is not the same as understanding them. To show compassion, you have to do both.

When you share and care about another’s feelings, you go beyond the superficial. It’s a skill that can be developed and is essential to having stable and long-lasting relationships.

Generosity

Generosity is giving freely to others without expecting anything in return. It may involve offering your time, assets or talents to aid someone else during their time of need. Generosity is often equated with giving to others and is seen as a virtue.

It’s a funny thing, but sometimes we do something generous then later wonder at our motives. I’m still learning not to second guess myself and you should also.

A good relationship is dependent on being generous. If you always expect something in return for doing something generous, then you’re not being generous at all. Just giving with no expectations will bring you joy and a closer relationship.

One year at Christmas, my husband and I adopted a family with a disabled single mother. The kids were teens. We worked with the apartment manager to anonymously give them Christmas dinner and a few presents for each person. We insisted the manager NOT let the family know who did this. This will always stay in my memory as one of the best Christmases ever.

Tolerance

No matter how great a relationship you have with another person, there will be times when you don’t see things the same way and you’ll disagree. Being tolerant doesn’t mean changing your views, but it does mean listening and trying to understand.

Tolerance also means knowing we all make mistakes and hold different views but being open-minded enough to listen and not judge the other person.

It is important in a relationship for each person to be tolerance, which helps us feel safe and trusted. This allows us to gain great fulfillment and increases personal growth.

Kindness

A desire to help others, express goodwill and be considerate of others is what kindness is all about. We like to think of ourselves as being kind, but in a relationship it is absolutely necessary. Without kindness, there will be no relationship.

Psychological research has shown kindness to have a measurable benefit on a person’s happiness and life-satisfaction. Not only that, but kindness given by you and shown to others benefits your health.

A nice gesture, doing favors for others, simply treating others with respect, and doing what we can to show we care about them as a human being are all acts of kindness. When you have a loving heart and feel affection and warmth for others, you are more likely to show kindness.

Most people would agree that it is a good thing to show kindness to everyone. In a relationship, it helps to bind you together, build intimacy, and affirm the other person as worthy of love.

I remember a bumper sticker that said ‘Commit random acts of kindness.’ Unexpected and unsolicited kindness benefits everyone in a relationship.

Humans need deep and abiding relationships to be fulfilled. Include these five components into current, new and future relationships. Everyone involved will greatly benefit and experience personal affirmation.

© 2011, Katherine Hegemann