NeededInTheHome Was Featured And Given An Honorarium For Making Face Masks In Response To COVID-19

NeededInTheHome was featured in an article in the MFI Briefs magazine July 2020 issue for our response to COVID-19 in our local Coulee Region community. Our response ended up reaching all of the United States. Read on to hear how NeededInTheHome was featured for making face masks.

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[ctt template=”4″ link=”0f0cA” via=”yes” ]NeededInTheHome was featured in an article in the MFI Briefs magazine July 2020 issue for our response to COVID-19 reaching all of the United States.[/ctt]

How I Heard About The Opportunity

I am Amy Marohl, an American Lifestyle Blogger of this blog neededinthehome.com. Many bloggers were suffering with the pandemic as advertisers were no longer able to pay for sponsored posts, banners, or ads on the blog as their own income was in turmoil. My blog's income was also lowered. I also had an Etsy shop, NeededInTheHome, to help my large family of ten make ends meet. 

When the sponsored and affiliate income for my blog started to dry up at the end of March 2020 with the COVID-19 crisis, I wasn't sure how I was going to help meet the family's budget needs.  One day I went to ship out some reusable baby wipes to a customer on the Etsy platform and noticed an important message from Etsy. They were asking shop owners to start making face masks to meet the overwhelming demand. 

I had recently purchased a pattern of my own. So I had been making them for family members and to donate to local essential workers, so I knew how to make them. I had fabric and elastic on hand to work with so I thought I would help Etsy.com out and sell face masks to help supply the demand. Etsy rewarded me and other sellers by returning the listing fees of 200 face masks which also helped our income.

A news article caught my eye that UW-La Crosse was looking for stories of local businesses and how they were responding to the pandemic. Many people were making face masks, but I submitted my story anyways, knowing they were only going to pick 11. The college Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse produces this magazine for the Menard Family Initiative.

One day, I heard back that my business was chosen to receive a $500 honorarium from The Menard Family Initiative fund and started working with an editor on the article. The first week of August, I received my own copies of the magazine and just yesterday, I was sent a link to all all of the articles that have now been published on their website. You can read the article through this link… https://www.uwlax.edu/globalassets/centersprograms/menard/mfi-briefs-july-2020-digital-copy.pdf

Summary of the Article

The article basically tells about my business pivot from mostly blogging to make ends meet and selling on Etsy on the side; to mostly making and selling face masks on Etsy and not really working on the blog much. It really felt like a new business that would require more time. Time was in short supply as a homeschooling parent and homemaker of a family of ten! It also tells of how my family members helped out by babysitting my younger children, helping me cut fabric and elastic, shipping, etc.

There are also a few interesting details like how my sewing machine broke. And how I had to wait for more poly shipping bags as they were shipped from postal facility to postal facility with all the civil unrest that was going on with the George Floyd protests. The article also mentions some face masks that became “Bestsellers” on Etsy.

My family kept track of states that were being helped by coloring them on a map. At the time the article was accepted, we had helped others with over 1,000 face masks. Now we are into the thousands. I really hope this whole pandemic is temporary and won't go on too long as it will be nice to get back to a normal routine.

Amy Marohl is an American Lifestyle blogger and Etsy shop owner. Mike and Amy married in 1996 and have four sons and four daughters. Their children vary in age from 21 down to 1. They have three dogs, one cat, five rabbits, one guinea pig and one lizard.

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