Everyone Loves A Freebie…: a house log
Ain’t free stuff excellent? If it were not, why would Oprah’s audiences blow a gasket on national TV every year when she says “Faaaay-vo-rit thiiiiiings!”
But sufficient about Ms. Winfrey (Sherry’s perma-smiling over here, because Oprah’s her jam). We are bringing up freebies because we are making a swag related declaration. Moving forward, we are simply saying no. We will still offer up free house stuff to you folks in the form of our weekly giveaways, but we are not going to accept products or services for our casa at any special “blogger discount” or for free – even if we genuinely enjoy them.
We have absolutely nothing against other bloggers who do (it is certainly an obvious perk of the job) but especially since we are both able to do this full time, we are appreciative of a few other perks (like working from home with our pooch & our girl by our side). This way it makes it straightforward to recommend an remarkable piece of furniture or a strong floor refinisher based on the job that person has done or the item they’ve sold – not based on any special arrangement behind the scenes. We do not want you folks to ever question our motives for blogging about something. And although we have consistently tried to be totally transparent when we are writing about an item that was gifted (like this faucet & this lawnmower) and only agreed if it was something we truly liked (and consistently tried to snag a second freebie for a reader, like we did with the faucet & the lawnmower), now no one even has to wonder if we are endorsing something because we truly enjoy it or because it was free.
Why now? Well, over the next few years, our new house will need plenty of stuff. But we want to stalk every single thing down ourselves and buy it (or make it) without any other reason than it is what we enjoy and it is in fact within our price range. And we do not want a post about how we need a new dining table to be misconstrued by you folks as “fishing for a freebie” (and we do not want companies to consider it to be an invitation for them to offer something up in exchange for a post about it). Besides, being constrained by a real budget is when we come up with our most creative ideas.
And although we are glad to pass on the free stuff from now on, we will do our best to pass it onto you folks whenever we can. A lot of our weekly giveaways already come from that technique, so we will continue to give away stuff that we think you will enjoy. Our little declaration certainly means we will be hunting down discounts, sales, and even free stuff on craigslist like it is our job (oddly sufficient, it kind of is). As long as it is a deal that each of you could score too, we are game (special blogger discounts & freebies are out, but deal hunting in the clearance section & haggling at garage sales are certainly still in).
Oh and this is likely a good time to remind you folks that things in the new home will be happening on a real timeline. No same day 10K makeovers a la HGTV. So we hope you will bear with us as we save our pennies and take on Operation New House one project at a time (remember our current house took 4.5 years to get to where it is today!).
Update – Some of the most frequent requests that we get are for info about professionally blogging (how we made our site, how we grew our following, how we make money, etc) so we shared all of the details about how we began a journal, grew our traffic, and turned it into a full time job.
