If you’ve ever clicked on one of the links that say, “It works for me!” in many of my posts, you’ve found the wonderful blog carnival Works-for-Me Wednesday, where every week about 200 writers each link an article about something that works for them.  (Here are the instructions for participating in Works-for-Me Wednesday.)  This delightfully flexible premise brings together a wide array of tips and tricks, from simple to elaborately detailed, from silly to practical to profound.  Most contributors are mothers and Christians, so many of the tips are about parenting or housekeeping or spirituality, but a wide array of people participate.  You never know what you may learn from Works-for-Me Wednesday!  I love browsing the articles during my lunch breaks at work.

However, sifting through 200+ links every week takes a lot of time–I often don’t finish wandering through them before the next Wednesday comes–and sometimes people link things that just aren’t that great.  After five years and thousands of tips, the best of Works-for-Me Wednesday has been compiled into an e-book!  It indexes over 800 articles from hundreds of bloggers (including myself!), with a summary of each article and a link to the article on its original site.  This means that if there are any updates to the article, you’ll see them (you’re not buying a version that might become outdated), and you’ll see all the links within that article to other articles on the same blog or references on other sites.  You’ll also be reading each article in the context of its blog, so you can see what else the author has written and might find a new favorite blog to read.

That Works For Me! costs $8–less than one cent per helpful idea!  You’re bound to find many ideas in it that will be worth a lot more than one cent each, either in cash savings or in comfort and sanity.  As a contributing author, I will receive a portion of the proceeds when you purchase That Works For Me! by clicking on this handy button.

Another portion of the proceeds from this e-book will benefit The Mercy House, a non-profit maternity home in Kenya.  Kristen Welch, who hosts Works-for-Me Wednesday, and her family founded The Mercy House after Kristen’s eye-opening trip to Kenya two years ago.  She came home broken-hearted about the poverty and suffering she had seen . . . and she did something to help!  I have been amazed by this unfolding story of the entire Welch family’s dedication to this project and the speed with which they’ve gotten it up and running.  I am pro-choice, and that means I firmly believe that women deserve safe choices in addition to abortion, even if they are young and poor.  The Mercy House gives women from desperate circumstances a safe place to live and receive health care, education, counseling, and skills training while they are pregnant and adjusting to motherhood.  It gives them an option other than abortion, in a country where abortion is very dangerous, contraception is hard to get, rape is common, and many women turn to prostitution to buy food.  I admire Kristen and her family for stepping into this difficult environment to help strangers, and I am glad to support The Mercy House.