I Can’t Remember

(for more on downsizing, see my post Live large in a small house)

The secret to successfully downsizing your home is to have a plan. Downsizing is the newest trend in homeownership: some older couples no longer need their children’s bedrooms, others just want their home to feel cozier, some people downsize their home in an effort to simplify their lives, and others do so for economic reasons. (see my post Simplify Your Home!) Whatever the reason for downsizing, homeowners reap all the benefits of small home, including lower utility bills, lower mortgages, and less time, effort, and money spent on upkeep. The hardest part about downsizing is deciding what to keep. Planning ahead ensure that you will have everything you need, will keep what is important, and that everything you keep fits in your new home.

STEP ONE: THE NEW HOME

When you see your new downsized home, take the opportunity to measure everything. Make note of window heights and door widths. Note views through windows and natural traffic patterns. Make a map of the floor plan. Take pictures of features, windows, doorway, and natural focal points. Get color swatches if available.
Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: downsize, home stag, moving, new home, real estate, retire

The Simple Living Guide: A Sourcebook for Less Stressful, More Joyful Living

The Author
Janet Luhrs has helped define the Simple Living movement as the editor/publisher of Simple Living: The Journal pf Voluntary Simplicity. While others have been doing all this longer, it wasn’t called Simple Living then. The Simple Living movement has differences between it and previous movements, and Ms. Luhrs has helped define those differences.

The Format Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: book review, Simple Living

The winter holidays are about shopping and getting stuff, right?

At least that is what people who sell stuff would have us believe!

Remember: don’t trust anyone who acts like they’re doing you a favor and then charges you!

Not only is there a magazine about shopping, called “Lucky“–as in “gee, aren’t I so lucky to be buying a collection of ads so I can then know what the people who want my money want me to buy and how much it’ll cost me!”
but there is also blogs about shopping, like ShoppingAddicted. At least they admit that shopping for some is an addiction, similar to a gambling addition in it’s self-destructive pattern. And the first step is admitting you have a problem.

I’m serious, here! I could not be more appalled!

Want to get your friend or relative the “perfect” present?
Make sure it’s consumable, because if it takes up any space at all it could end up costing them big.

Check out Paul Graham’s assessment on how much “stuff” is costing us to store and upkeep–to the point that stuff isn’t even valuable anymore, and how those who grew up poor are still hoarding in a misguided attempt to be rich:
Stuff
And MSN’s late cover if the same topic:
The hidden costs of too much stuff

My daughter was upset.

We had gone to get the Halloween decorations out of storage (or as my husband calls it: “the money pit”**) and had left the gate code at home. And we wouldn’t have time to retrieve the decorations for a couple days.

We stopped at a drugstore on the way home, and I had an idea. Escewing the double-wide isle full of Halloween decorations in the middle of the store, I spent around a buck for a bag of jumbo-sized cotton balls.
Because, of course, cotton balls are the backbone of Halloween decorations. No, really!

Add a tissue and marker in some eyes, and you have little ghosts. String them together for ghost garlands, or just place them strategically all over the house.

Stretch out cotton balls for spider webs: add to mirrors, mantles, candle sticks, and wherever they will look spooky. If you have any plastic spider rings, bugs, etc you can tangle them in.

Paint or marker them black, and add little legs made out of black paper or twist ties and you have little spiders.

Orange paint and a bit of black marker and you hace mini jack-o-lanterns.

Stretch them over wire and add glitter and you have fairy wings.

Grab some gold paint and pretend you’re Martha Stewart (What would Martha do?)

Make the kids exercise their imagination, and let them do whatever silly craft idea they come up with. Hang it up proudly.

We didn’t get back to the storage unit for over a week, but my daughter didn’t notice, because we had already decorated.

**Storage units are a bad bad bad bad bad idea. Bad for the environment, bad for your wallet. We have plans to not have one anymore by the end of the year. Reduce and reuse! Or, in this case, donate.

Technorati Tags: children, crafts, decorations, Halloween, kids

My husband (who has never in his whole life been neat) just told me that he could “become addicted to all this decluttering.”
Apparently, he is now irritated by the disorganization inside his desk drawers and has started to organize them—in such a way that it hasn’t made a mess anywhere else.
I have found that it is easier to live in a decluttered home. It’s easier to find things, and to put things away. Even the kids are putting everything up.

If you are selling your home like we are, don’t worry about having to live in a neat/clean/decluttered home while your house is on the market: trust me, it’s great! Think of how pleasant staying in a hotel is. It’s very soothing to have only a few things to keep track of. And you still have your “stuff”: what do you think your furniture and your good china and the kids’ favorite toys are? And it still feels like “home”: your family and everything you really need is there.

So go ahead, declutter and stage all your rooms and put all that stuff into storage.
But beware, you may never want it all back!

Did your mother ever make your clothes? If she did, chances are that you swore you’d never do it to your own kids!

A woman named Alex Martin is making her own clothes…out of ones she already owns. Her Clothing Recycling project is a social commentary on consumerism as well as an earth-friendly project. Most famous for putting on the same little brown dress every morning for a year, Martin states: “let’s stop agreeing that the best way for women (in particular) to “express themselves” is by purchasing new wardrobe items and putting together daily outfits.” Martin’s a mom, and she makes her kids clothes, too.

It’s hard enough getting the kids dressed in the morning…I can see how not having to decide what to wear every morning would be appealing. The Dean of the college I did my graduate work at had 5 copies of the same black outfit: one for every day of the week. She looked appropriate and stylish every day and never had to waste time deciding what to wear.

As someone who once sewed a sampler to my thumbnail in Home Ec, I won’t be making clothes for me or my children (it was a really fast sewing machine, honest!)

But I really like the idea of not wasting time on clothes, and I love the idea of sustainable clothes!