Welcome to the inaugural issue of Patch.com and my column! Every two weeks I am going to be writing about topics relating to my Hoboken household of four (me, my two toddlers E & J, and my husband N). I am a Hoboken WAHM (Work at Home Mom) living in a four-bedroom condo (they really do exist!) in southwest Hoboken (Mayor Dawn Zimmer's ward!) that we bought in early 2009. I have to say that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would wind up doing what I do, but it all works. And you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Ten years ago I was a dedicated Manhattan career woman. I was a hospital marketing director headed for VP, my husband and I were newlyweds living in Brooklyn Heights, and I thought that was how things would always be. Then 9/11 happened, and we decided it was time for a change. We needed more space anyway, and Hoboken was the next best thing to Brooklyn Heights, since both locations are one stop away from Manhattan on mass transit, are small (they don't call Hoboken the Mile Square City for nothing!), walkable, charming and affluent.

Life in the NYC metro area is pretty hectic, and it gets even harder to manage once you have kids. I know people who have every waking hour scheduled on their Blackberries. If you work full-time then you try to squeeze in household chores on weekends, making your theoretical days off as frantic as the work week. I think a lot of people get so caught up in the daily grind that they don't have a chance to take a step back, take a good hard look at their activities, and reevaluate from time to time.

The recession that began in 2008 has made everybody do more with less and cut back on consumption of material goods. I have to say I have seen no change in my spending patterns because for my household, spending conservation began in 2006, when I became pregnant with my daughter and started staying home. At the time, I thought I was staying at home because of hyperemesis gravidarum, but as time went on, I found that my natural thriftiness started surfacing to make life better for our family.

For example, I found myself cooking large quantities of healthy soups, stews and casseroles and immediately freezing half. In the old days, a lot of food would go to waste because I often skipped dinner out of exhaustion, forgot what we had in the fridge, and shoved the old food to the back of the shelves each weekend when I put away the new groceries. Because I was home all week, I actually finished the leftovers and was able to dramatically cut down on food spoilage. My blood pressure went down from the low-fat/low-sodium diet, and so did our expenses because we weren't eating out all the time.

I also had the time to comparison shop and get good deals on all sorts of household projects that had been languishing for years. My pregnancy started out as a hiatus from my normal life, but when the time came for me to return to work, my husband and I were so reluctant to give up our new relaxed lifestyle that we decided to try to make a go of it on one income with occasional consulting jobs for me. Four years later, we are financially solid and settled into a 2,000 sf four-bedroom apartment in Hoboken.

To read more about what makes Kathy Zucker tick, check out her blog at http://hobokenmomcondo.com/momblog and follow her at http://twitter.com/zhobokenmom