Simplify The Bathroom: Part Two

June 30, 2008

I told y’all I had begun the process of getting my bathroom organized. Once I had tossed all the unused and excess items that don’t belong in my bathroom, everything had to go back on the shelves! On my first attempt, I put things back where they had been. Then, I realized I wasn’t making [...]

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Simplify The Bathroom: Part One

June 29, 2008

I thought that cleaning, de-cluttering, and organizing the bathroom would be the easiest “beginner task.” After all, it’s the smallest room in the house, isn’t it? That may be so, but it’s also the busiest and most crowded room of the house. It’s not as easy to simplify as it might seem. First of all, [...]

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Grocery Shopping Simplified

June 28, 2008

I love going to a Farmer’s Market to choose produce fresh from the farm. Never having been refrigerated, the fruits and vegetables actually smell the way they are supposed to smell! I enjoy going to the butcher shop here in town, where the owners call me by name, and know exactly what I want before [...]

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Water

June 27, 2008

If I were really smart, I could simplify my life tremendously in one fell swoop by drinking water. Then, my recycle bin wouldn’t be filled with soda cans. That would definitely be good for the environment. According to The Container Recycling Institute, “3% of the world’s electricity goes into making aluminum cans.” The hydroelectric plants [...]

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A Change Of Attitude

June 26, 2008

Difficult, difficult, difficult…    Easy, easy, easy… Neither difficult nor easy.           -Zen Buddhism As I work at sorting clutter, I occasionally feel as if I’m floundering. We have so much that is just junk, and I don’t always know what to do with it. I get overwhelmed. I was ready to just give up at about [...]

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Keeping The Memories

June 25, 2008

My brother was overjoyed when I called him earlier this week and asked, “Do you want these old 45s that belonged to Mom?” His voice was filled with wonder and awe, “You still have them? Yes, I want them.” We talked about some of the records that came from the store my mother had back [...]

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Does Anyone Need A Truckload of Pens?

June 24, 2008

Do you think I have enough pencils and pens? Usually these containers are stowed in strategic places throughout the house. I have them by my bed, in several parts of my office, by the sofa, in the kitchen, and at my favorite chair. You never know when you might need to write something down, and [...]

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Buried Under Paper

June 23, 2008

I could get buried under all the paper at this house! I could get lost for weeks and miss a meal or something -wouldn’t that be a crying shame? Everything else gets lost around here, that’s a fact. I lose my keys, my glasses, the calculator, the checkbook. A frantic search usually proves that I’ve [...]

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Clutter Begets Clutter

June 22, 2008

Have y’all ever noticed how clutter just seems to grow? It’s true. If I leave one book on the coffee table (instead of putting it back in the bookshelf), within a day it has a mate. Before the week is out, they have a family! I can hang one shirt on the back of a [...]

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Finding New Homes For The Books

June 21, 2008

After you have gone through the painful process of culling books from your shelves, you need to get them out of the house! If you don’t, you will begin looking at them and pining for them. You will pick up one book, and decide, “Oh, I really can’t part with that one.” Then, another and [...]

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Garage Sale Time

June 20, 2008

We are going to have a garage sale in August. I know full well that we won’t make enough money to justify the time, but we will get to turn a little bit of our trash into cash. Anything that is really worth money we will try to sell on E-Bay first. However, as we [...]

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What Do You Save In One Hour?

June 19, 2008

If you had an emergency situation, and had one hour (that’s all) to gather what is important to you, what would you take? That was the question posed in one of my organizing books. I’m supposed to list what those things would be to get an idea of the things that are really important to [...]

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Give Someone Else A Chance To Love Those Heirlooms

June 18, 2008

Organizing gurus say that we only use 20% of the items we own. The other 80% is stuff that we keep “just in case” we might need it someday. I freely admit that I have a lot of that “just in case” stuff. The only problem, is that it is buried beneath the other debris [...]

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Just Call Me “Pandora”

June 17, 2008

Many years ago, I read a tip in one of my books about organization. It told me what to do when I have trouble deciding to get rid of certain items while de-cluttering the house. The suggestion was to put the items in a box, tape the box shut, and mark a date six months [...]

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Old Lotions Smell Like Witch’s Brew

June 16, 2008

I know you are glad this isn’t a “scratch ‘n sniff” blog! While sorting in the bathroom, I came across a box filled with lotions and potions. They were expensive beauty products I had bought (I probably enough on them to run a small country for a year), but they had gotten shoved to the [...]

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Gift Giving Simplified, Or Not!

June 15, 2008

For years I have kept a drawer in my house that we have called “The Mathom Drawer.” If you have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s series of fantasy novels, you might know about “mathoms.” According to Tolkien, “Anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings [...]

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Freecycle

June 14, 2008

With all the junk we need to toss, our quickest solution would be to rent a dumpster and just fill it up and have it dragged away. In one Saturday, we could vastly reduce the amount of stuff we have. But, that’s not the best solution! What we consider trash might be someone else’s treasure. [...]

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A Timer Keeps Me Moving

June 13, 2008

At least fifteen years ago, I bought a book called Simplify Your Life, by Elaine St. James. It was cutting edge at the time; it was written back when people were still caught up in the mindset that more is better. I’ve figured out that more stuff is stressful! Bite off a little chunk each [...]

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How Do I Sort These Books?

June 12, 2008

It’s time to remove some books in our lives. I know it’s true, and I have been denying it for years. It’s time to put on my “big girl panties” and deal with it. Since we hope to move to a house that is at least one third smaller than this one, I have optimistically [...]

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Bibliophile or Bibliomaniac?

June 11, 2008

I find them at yard sales, stacked aside in boxes. They whisper to me from the boxes under the tables. Paperback and hardback books for less than a dollar apiece! Oh, Sweet Heavens! I can never resist loading my arms and bringing them home to my house. They need me! Sad, isn’t it? I would [...]

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