Product Review Monday

This week’s book review is a self-published tome entitled “The Shoestring Girl: How I Live on Practically Nothing and You Can Too,” by Annie Jean Brewer.

I picked this up at a thrift store several years ago and frankly was impressed by how comprehensive the advice is … comprehensive and, well, sometimes a little over the top (notably on her insurance advice). The author was a single mom of three living in some pretty dire financial circumstances, yet she managed to get by. Not just got by, thrived.

An impressive 400 pages in length, the author urges readers to take a good hard look at everything in their life and question whether striving for certain goals or possessing certain things are truly necessary. Some of the glimpses into her life are kinda crazy, and sometimes her advice reflects that. As she put it, “If you don’t like an idea [in the book], just move on to the next one. No one is going to come knocking at your door if you don’t implement these suggestions.”

Despite a certain lack of copy editing (the author really needs to learn the importance of commas preceding independent clauses), I found myself vastly admiring her spunk and grit. This is a woman who has been dealt a difficult hand in life, and she buckled down to make things work. Kudos.

If nothing else, “The Shoestring Girl” reminds us that if author Annie Jean Brewer can get by, so can we.

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This week’s product recommendation is something we literally reach for on a daily basis in our household: Duracell 1200 lumens flashlights.

Something like 20 years ago, Don and I invested some serious money for a rechargeable 1,000-lumen … um … flashlight? spotlight? … Whatever you call it, it was the size of a boombox and weighed about 20 lbs. But it was bright, and sometimes a bright light is necessary on a farm to see what’s disturbing the cows in the middle of the night.

That boombox-sized spotlight was bulky, expensive, heavy, and took a long time to recharge. It also didn’t last much longer than a couple of years.

So when we found these 7.5-inch long pocket flashlights achieving an even higher lumen count than our old boombox, we were thrilled and bought five packs, 15 flashlights total. Later we bought even more.

Seriously, we keep a basket of these babies near our back door. 

We also keep them scattered on windowsills and other strategic locations. I keep one in my purse. We keep a couple in the car.

At their brightest setting, these flashlights are strong enough to scan the yard or pasture if something seems amiss after dark. At the lower setting, they’re excellent for searching for a hard-to-find item on a back shelf in the pantry.

The flashlights are battery-powered (AAA) and have no rechargeable (i.e., plug-in) option. However, often we use rechargeable AAA batteries in them.

We’ve gone through many variations of small, powerful, pocket-sized flashlights since our boombox-spotlight days, and these are some of the very best we’ve found for the price. Highly recommended.

(Obligatory disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, if you purchase through those links, we earn a small commission.)

Oh! Before I forget, please direct your attention to the upper-right column of this blog. By popular request, I’ve put up a link which lists all the book and product recommendations we make, and we will keep it current.

Source: http://www.rural-revolution.com/2025/07/product-review-monday_13.html