Friday, February 25, 2011

Five on Friday

  1. Won't you be my neighbor? There's a house for sale on my street with a fancy kitchen, a pool, and me for a neighbor! And it is priced $50K less than last year. What are you waiting for?
  2. You could take all that savings and put it towards gas since it is now $3.69/gallon.
  3. It is raining again. Guess I won't be working in the yard this weekend. Maybe I'll make soup.
  4. We're getting our taxes done this weekend. Fun, fun, fun.
  5. I've attended more than 25 meetings this month and there are at least five more scheduled before this month ends (yes, five more today and Monday). Whew, I'm tired!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Simplify: Baby steps

I've added a few minimalism and simplicity blogs to my Reader (which is cluttering my Reader, but let's not go there). What's the difference between the two? I'm not sure, but here's a good explanation. I think I'm more into the simplicity than minimalism. I like my little luxuries.

So what am I doing to simplify my life? I'm trying, trying, trying to declutter. It is a difficult task since I'm a packrat. One big step is to get rid of boxes. I have a tendency to stuff things into boxes to sort later. But somehow, later never comes.

I'm doing okay on my clothing rule of new in, old out. I got a couple of great turtlenecks at Target (only $7!) and even at that cheap price, I was still able to stick with my rule. In the past, I would have justified keeping everything in my closet "because the other stuff costs more." But I'm not allowing myself to put the new clothes away until the old clothes has been added to the giveaway bin so I had to get rid of the old stuff to avoid more clutter.

As for groceries, I'm trying not to stockpile as much. Really, how much pasta does one need? (Although a third of the pasta stash is already gone.) I've only made small trips to the grocery stores in the past month and our diet hasn't suffered at all.

Baby steps, but steps in the right direction.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Five on Friday

  1. I'm happy that it is the weekend and Monday is a holiday.
  2. If you're interested in reducing your paper towel usage, this is a great article.
  3. Going out to lunch and dinner four times this week is hard on the pocketbook and caused a major weight increase...temporary I hope
  4. I'm looking forward to celebrating my nephew's birthday this weekend.
  5. We've having an incredible storm here tonight. I hope the backyard is still one piece tomorrow.