A mom and her daughter came in a few minutes after I’d settled myself into my work. She must have a child in the same gymnastics class as my daughter, because they’re there at the same time I am every week. And, every week, the same thing happens: She starts talking loudly, either to her older daughter or on her cell phone, while moving furniture around to create a space in which her daughter can do her homework. If there are books on the small table in the lounge, she dumps them on the floor with an exaggerated sigh, and then (loudly) tells her older daughter to start her homework. She glares at the two or three other people in the room if we look up from our books or our laptops. She goes through her daughter’s folder, reading comments from the teacher out loud and announcing each grade on each test.

Which made me think: There should really be a set of rules posted somewhere, for people who have to work in public.

Oh, look! Here’s some:

1. Be quiet. Even if there is no one else in the lounge or coffee shop, that doesn’t mean you get to treat it like it’s your living room. Turn off the ringer on your cell phone, and remember that other people don’t care about the details of your phone call, your kid’s test scores, or your music preferences.

2. Don’t hog the resources. Charge up your laptop before you arrive, so that you don’t have to monopolize an outlet. Don’t spread out your stuff in order to claim as much space as possible. Don’t block a heating vent with your backpack. Don’t leave your coat hanging into the aisle. If you are charging up your phone/laptop/whatever, keep an eye on it and unplug it when it’s sufficiently charged.

3. Pay rent. If you’re taking up a spot in a coffee shop for hours, at least buy a cup of coffee or a snack every now and then. Think of it as a fee for the electricity, light, and space you’re using. And be sure to tip the wait staff or server generously; the longer you stay in your spot, the fewer customers he or she gets, and that can affect his or her take-home pay.

4. Leave the place cleaner than when you came. It doesn’t matter if that’s not your newspaper on the seat next to you; pick it up and put it in the recycling. If you’ve spilled tea or left crumbs of scone on the tabletop, give it a quick swipe with your napkin before you leave. Working in a food-free space, like a community center or a library? Put the table or chair back in place, and leave your spot ready for the next person.

What rules would you suggest for people working in public?

I’ve found that, for my family, the most straight-forward and simple money-saving tricks work but, at some point, “just spend less money” or “cut out the things you don’t use” isn’t helpful advice. How do you spend less money when you’re spending it on essentials, like childcare when you work full time? What if you can’t cut out cable because you need to have high-speed internet access for your job?

Here are a few of the tips and techniques that work for my family:

Keep using credit cards. Most get-out-of-debt experts urge you to cut up your credit cards, which is fine if you’re stuck in a deficit-spending rut. But if you choose a credit card with some sort of bonus — cash back, points, frequent flyer miles — and you pay the bill in full each month, you’re getting more for your money than just the stuff you had to buy anyway. Paying my youngest kids’ daycare tuition with my frequent-flier-mile credit card usually garners us enough frequent flier miles to bring my stepkids up for an extra visit or two.

Get an enormous freezer and buy in bulk. We have a large family — five kids, ranging in age from 18 to 5 years old, though we’re rarely all together for months at a time any more. Still, having a chest freezer in the basement means that I can take advantage of sales on otherwise expensive things (like meat) that my family likes to eat. Making meals ahead of time and freezing them saves time (and my sanity) as well; when I’m too busy to prep food and everyone is starvatious, we can heat and eat something from our own frozen restaurant instead of spending money on fast food.

Clip only certain coupons. Yes, I absolutely do clip coupons — I have since I was a cash-strapped college student. But I only clip coupons for things I’m buying anyway. So, cheese sticks for my preschooler’s lunch box, yes; day-glo macaroni and cheese and frozen dinners, no. My favorite frugal score was a buy-one-get-one-free sale on deodorant coupled with high-value coupons and a store that had filled its shelves with “twin packs”; it brought the price down from $4.99 per stick to 99 cents each. Still gives me a bit of a thrill, to tell you the truth.

Weigh your pre-tax options. Any time your employer offers you the chance to put money aside (dependent-care or medical spending accounts, for instance) or pay for something (like your health-care premiums) on a pre-tax basis, look into it. It can lower your taxable income, for one thing and, for another, you may end up paying less out-of-pocket in the long run. Think of it this way: If you’re in the 28-percent tax bracket, you have to earn about $139 in order to spend $100 in post-tax dollars. Wouldn’t you rather put that “extra” $39 to good use? (Note: of course, this only works if you spend enough to empty the account before it expires.)

How do you make the most of your money?

Eighty percent of common infections can be spread through the air, water, food, and via contact with contaminated surfaces, Peter Sheldon, vice president of the commercial cleaning company Coverall, told me.  And the places where people are most likely to pick up germs aren’t as obvious as you might think.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advocates washing your hands often in order to reduce your risk of getting sick, but did you know that washing your desk can make even more of a difference? According to Dr. Charles Gerba, a University of Arizona researcher whose work has earned him the title of “Dr. Germ,” the average desk harbors 400 times as many bacteria as the average toilet seat. And his research shows that women’s desks are far worse than men’s.

“What we found is that women seemed to have more ’stuff’ in their offices, from makeup bags to pictures of family and purses on their desks,” said Gerba. “It added up to big numbers for women, even though their offices typically looked cleaner.”

Gerba’s study (which was funded by the Clorox Company) found that computer keyboards and mice were the germiest, and desk drawers were germy as well — which makes sense, since that’s where we stash makeup, snacks, and sometimes even our purses, which are the perfect vehicle for germs.

“Women frequently place their purses on the floor just about everywhere they go, so we’ve come to think of handbags as walking ‘bag-teria,’” said Gerba. Since we’re so pressed for time, we’re more likely to eat lunch at our desks, too, and drips and crumbs can harbor bacteria.

Just wiping down your desk every morning can make a massive difference — even if it already looks spotless. “That’s the thing,” Sheldon said. “You can clean something and it may look clean, but you can have thousands of bacteria and viruses on the surface.”

Do you ever wipe down your desk at work?

But still, she’s right. And now that my primary office is inside my own house, the scales have tipped way over to the work side of things. Which means that I need to do a better job of going from “work mode” to “home mode.”

When I was commuting 1 1/2 hours each way each day, I would try to make my commute my “me time,” listening to cheesy ’80s music that made my former-rock-music-critic husband roll his eyes when I turned it on at home. Now? At the end of the work day I commute downstairs to my kitchen — and I sometimes leave my smart phone, that electronic leash that binds me to work, upstairs in my office.

I often cook to relax, so I try to make extras of anything I’m cooking on the weekend or early in the week. That way, by the time Thursday and Friday roll around and I’d cheerfully drink a couple glasses of Malbec and call it dinner, there’s a balanced meal already in the fridge, ready to heat and eat.

But the biggest thing I’ve done is accept that I can’t do it all perfectly, and embrace certain short cuts. In spite of our superpowers, we are simply human. It took me a long time to understand that having to say “this much of my to-do list is just not going to get done today” was OK and sometimes necessary and not at all a sign of failure. And it took me even longer to remember that I could fake clean the house and wash the clothes but not always fold them. And that I could tear open a bag of Orange Chicken from Trader Joe’s and heat that up for my kids instead of feeling annoyed that I couldn’t make it from scratch myself. My kids don’t mind, I get a break, and that Malbec isn’t going to drink itself.

How do you go from work mode to home mode? And what part of that juggle do you struggle with?

But Facebook seems to change in some tiny way or another every few weeks. Between trying to navigate a new timeline to figuring out whether you follow your friends and their status feeds, it’s easy to forget to check your privacy settings. And Facebook counts on that, to some extent.

It didn’t occur to me to check until I noticed, all of a sudden, that there were little messages in my newsfeed telling me what my friends were reading on Yahoo and the Washington Post. And when I checked I noticed that my privacy settings had changed pretty much across the board to give more websites and more people way more access than I wanted them to have.

If you can’t remember whether you’ve made your Facebook photos public or private, you probably haven’t noticed whether you’ve let other websites “check in” or whether people can see what you’ve posted on other social media sites like Twitter, Flickr or Instagram (think those last two are just for photos? Think again). And plenty of other people are in the same boat.

There’s an easy way to check and see how much access you’ve (inadvertently) given out. Go to MyPermissions.org and start clicking on the icons to see who and what people and places can do with your Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Instagram, Yahoo, Dropbox, Google, and Twitter accounts. You may be surprised.

Monitoring your online privacy settings is part and parcel of managing your online reputation and protecting yourself from ID theft. Have you double-checked your permissions lately?

It sounds like the latest battle in the ongoing Mommy Wars, but it doesn’t have to be. The health benefits, the happiness… I think it all boils down to whether you’re doing what you really want to be doing.

According to the study, “Mothers’ part-time employment: Associations with mother and family well-being,” published in the December issue of the American Psychological Association’s “Journal of Family Psychology,” being employed has multiple benefits for moms. The researchers found that those who worked anywhere form 1 to 32 hours per week were more sensitive to their kids’ needs, less likely to have symptoms of depression, and more likely to split household duties with their spouses than mothers who were not employed. Moms who worked full-time outside of the home were more stressed out, which makes sense, but still reported fewer symptoms of depression than stay-at-home moms — which took the researchers by surprise.

“In all cases with significant differences in maternal well-being, such as conflict between work and family or parenting, the comparison favored part-time work over full-time or not working,” the study’s lead author, Cheryl Buehler, professor of human development and family studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said in a statement. “However, in many cases the well-being of moms working part time was no different from moms working full time.”

The moms in the study were from 10 different states and from varying socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. Some were single moms. Some were college grads. Some never finished high school. But the health benefits of working was evident in spite of all of the differences, the researchers said. “It may be employment in general rather than the number of work hours that protects against depressed mood when children are young,” Buehler concluded.

But for every woman who has told me that maternity leave was the toughest time of their lives, I know a stay-at-home mom who says she feels fulfilled by her choice drop out of the work force and focus on the kids. Staying home with your kids is a career choice in my book, not a moral imperative, so it makes sense that as long as you’re doing what you love, you’ll be happier and healthier than someone who is logging long hours in a place where they’d rather not be.

What do you think? Does working make you happier? Why or why not?

The problem is that, with so much on our to-do lists all the time, we working moms have conditioned ourselves to believe that really taking care of ourselves is selfish, or at least not that important. When we do it, we justify it, almost as if we feel guilty about it: We “deserve” time to ourselves, we need to “make time” to exercise. Or, at least, I do.

And it turns out that I’m not alone.

According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, 75 percent of adults reported experiencing “moderate to high levels of stress” in the past month, and 42 percent said that their stress levels have increased in the past year. And more and more people don’t feel like they have the energy to deal with it.

According to the study:

47 percent of respondents report that they have lain awake at night
45 percent report irritability or anger
43 percent report fatigue
40 percent report lack of interest, motivation or energy

Nearly a third of respondents report headaches, feelings of depression, and sadness; 27 percent blame stress for their upset stomachs and indigestion.

Though more of us are experiencing stress, fewer of us are willing to do much about it, the survey found. Some — as many as 44 percent — reported exercising or walking to relieve stress, but more people listen to music, read, watch TV or movies, or play video games to relax.

At The Wall Street Journal’s The Juggle, Helen L. Coons, a clinical psychologist and a fellow of the APA, suggests that one reason people don’t tackle the long-term job of managing their stress is that they feel they don’t have enough time to do so. “We need to “reframe ‘self care’ as something that is not selfish,” she said.

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but it seems like a good one: Resolve to believe that taking care of yourself isn’t selfish. Everything else — getting more sleep, getting more exercise, eating healthily, being kind to yourself — kind of falls under that big umbrella, doesn’t it?

Do you feel like you’re being selfish when you take care of yourself?

1.) Donate to individuals to help them start a business. Kiva allows you lend small amounts of money to entrepreneurs for whom a little goes a long way. Each small business’ fundraising goals are quite modest — $425 for a woman to purchase used clothing to sell in Ghana, $825 for a construction business in Mozambique — and $25 helps a lot.

2.) Give to organizations that encourage independent living. Just $20 can buy a flock of chicks for a hungry family in Tanzania, for example, providing them with a source for food as well as an income. Heifer International has many gift options at different price points, from $20 to $5,000, and the animals you underwrite are worth so much more than the money it cost to buy them.

3.) Donate online while you’re doing other things. Click through online malls that send a portion of your purchase prices to charity, like GoodShop.com, or click on the buttons at GreaterGood.com and give money without spending a cent.

4.) Donate time instead of money. You don’t have to do it right around the holidays. Volunteer at a soup kitchen later this winter, sign up with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, read to kids at a hospital… the possibilities are endless.

5.) Donate what you no longer need. The coat your child outgrew before she even had a chance to really break it in could keep another kid warm this winter if you donate it to One Warm Coat or a similar organization. Goodwill and the Salvation Army take items other than clothing. And those great books and DVDs you no longer read or watch could go to your local library if they’re still in great shape.

I am not one of them.

I try to shop here and there throughout the year, stocking my gift closet with bargains, but inevitably a day or two before the holiday I discover that I need a stocking stuffer for a teenager (no easy feat, if you’re trying to stick to a small budget) or that I’ve given away as a birthday present something I’d stashed away for my own kids. I don’t wait until the 11th hour in order to save more money — though, given that stores are dropping prices in order to entice shoppers in this dismal economy, it’s been a bit of a win for me this year. I wait until the 11th hour because, even though it’s on the same day every year, Christmas always sneaks up on me before I’m ready.

If you’re a last-minute shopper, too — for whatever reason — here are four ideas that can help. Think of them as fake-cleaning tips, but for shopping.

1. Shop on Free Shipping Day (Dec. 16). If shipping charges are what kills you about shopping online, your day has come. Friday, Dec. 16 is Free Shipping Day, and 2,339 different merchants have agreed to waive shipping fees and still get your order to you (or to anywhere in the contiguous United States) by Christmas Eve. These are big-name brands, too — JCPenny, Express, Kohls, Sephora, Barnes & Nobel, HP, Sharper Image, One Step Ahead, Wine Enthusiast and more… check them all out and start shopping at FreeShippingDay.com.
2. Skip the Hottest Toys. “The odds of finding a Nerf Vortex or a Sesame Street Let’s Rock Elmo rank up there with winning the lottery,” says Andrea Woroch, a consumer and money-saving expert with Kinoli Inc. “Even if you could locate the object of your child’s most expensive affection, stores will likely have jacked up prices as they know shoppers are desperate.” Look for alternative, and when the coveted toys are restocked, buy them for another occasion.
3. Check your email. “Remember all those merchant e-newsletters you receive throughout the year? Well this is the time to start reading them,” says Woroch. “Online retailers usually include coupon codes that allow you to score great last-minute deals.”
4. Don’t wrap gifts. Or, at least, don’t wrap them in the traditional way. Make cloth sacks in which to hide the goodies if you’re crafty, stock up on inexpensive pillowcases if you’re not, or “wrap” the presents in paper gift bags (if you stuff enough tissue paper in, the kids won’t miss the ripping part). Instead of bows, grab a tiny toy from their stockings or buy a bunch of lollipops and use them to decorate the gifts under the tree. No ribbon? No worries — kids don’t care about that stuff anyway.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than an hour in my company.

It’s not that I need people to do exactly what I say when I say it (though, honestly? That’s kind of nice). It’s that I feel more secure when I know what’s going on, and I’m more likely to know what’s going on if I’m the one holding all (or most) of the cards.

Not realistic. Or healthy. And it only gets worse around the holidays.

I read this great article about taming a control freak a couple of years ago, and while the article is all about getting along with that super-controlling coworker, I quickly realized I could easily apply it to my own life. A good control freak, after all, should be able to control herself, right?

Here are five ways to shut off your inner control freak for the holidays.

1.) Respect other people’s turf. Don’t step on other people’s toes. If your mother-in-law always makes the dessert, don’t show up at her house with your amazing homemade cheesecake. No matter how good it is, it won’t go down well.

2.) Pick your battles. Do you traditionally open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day? Is Midnight Mass a must? Do the kids get the big present on the last night of Hanukkah or the first? Do you do charity work as a family? Figure out what’s important to you and fight for it. Let the rest slide.

3.) Perfection is a myth. There is no “just right” in real life. Hold on to your ideals, of course, but abandon the idea that things can only be good if they’re perfect. That just sets you up for disappointment — and failure.

4.) Accept help. And then let them do it their way. A couple of years ago, when my husband offered to lend a hand with arranging and wrapping some of the eleventy billion gift baskets I was putting together for family members, I swallowed hard and said yes, thanks. Then I swallowed hard some more as he did it his way instead of the way I had planned. And you know what? They looked gorgeous. It turned out that he has a much better eye for things like that than I do. Which is why, before we have company come over, he’s in charge of staging the house.

5.) What are you really trying to control? Is it more important that things get done your way, or that they get done? Sometimes, we waste tons of energy trying to control the method, when the important part is the outcome.

Are you a control freak? How do you cope during the holidays?