If you’re anything like us, you have more than one size of bed in your house. We happen to have one of each size: a king, a queen, a couch that folds out into a full, and a twin.
This means that we have sheets in four different sizes. And because we live where it gets cold in the wintertime, we generally have a set of cotton sheets as well as a set of flannel sheets for each of the beds.… Continue reading
I don’t know about your house, but I know that in my house it’s really easy for piles of paper to accumulate. Whether it’s mail that needs to be sorted, piles of my boys’ art work, receipts that need to be filed for tax purposes, or articles I want to read, they all seem to pile up.
I’m working to put a stop to that.… Continue reading
The other day I was talking with a friend who said decluttering sounded great, but she had no idea where to begin. She said that the task felt so daunting, she couldn’t seem to get started. She couldn’t even come up with a room or a drawer that didn’t feel overwhelming.
So I suggested that she remove the pressure from herself by making the task concrete, small, and almost too easy to fail.… Continue reading
With the arrival of fall, we now have many of the windows in our house open in the afternoons. Instead of keeping them shut against summer’s afternoon heat or the soon-coming cold of winter, we have them open to welcome in the fresh air and the crisp fall breeze.
I have wind chimes hanging inside my kitchen window. Hanging wind chimes inside may seem odd to you, but we get some pretty fierce winds racing through our canyon, so outside wind chimes can sometimes sound frantic and wild (in addition to the fact that, as a light sleeper, their nighttime chiming can wake me up).… Continue reading
It’s no secret that I love to cook and to try new foods. Over the years I’ve read tons of cookbooks and collected a huge number of recipes.
A couple of months ago, I pared down my cookbooks (see HERE), getting rid of those that no longer felt useful or inspiring. Today, I pulled out a file folder full hundreds of loose recipes that I had collected from magazines or printed off of various websites over the years.… Continue reading
This last week we got a call from our credit card company asking us about some charges that didn’t seem consistent with our purchase history. It turns out, the charges were fraudulent.
While our credit card company was great about handling this (we won’t be responsible for any charges we didn’t make), it’s a bother to change the card number with all of the services we have bill that card on Auto-Pay.… Continue reading
Cool crisp mornings tell me that fall is on its way. I love the scents and flavors of fall, so as soon as it starts, I find myself wanting to bake delicious treats, which naturally makes the house smell lovely.
When I’m not baking, I love to use the scents of essential oils to fill my home with the Smells of Fall.… Continue reading
If you’re working on simplifying your life, chances are you’ll be doing some – if not a lot of – decluttering along the way (see HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE for some discussions about decluttering). Decluttering is a great way to get rid of things that you don’t find beautiful or useful, but somehow still manage to have around your house.… Continue reading
Do you find yourself spending a whole day doing laundry once a week? Or perhaps, especially if you have little ones, do you find yourself doing multiple loads of laundry each day? If so, I highly suggest finding a way to combine your laundry loads so that you can cut the amount of time and work it takes you to complete the laundry.… Continue reading
I decided to go through and clean out my two nearly full 4-drawer file cabinets. I had paper files that I’ve been carrying around with me for a long time. Some of them were old tax files, but most of them were old school files.
In those cabinets I had copies of papers I’d written, old syllabi, as well as files from research projects I worked on.… Continue reading