According to the January/February 2012 issue of Money magazine, you'll be happier if you "Spend a Little a Lot of the Time "The Reason: Frequent small indulgences give you greater happiness than occasional splurges, according to a growing body of research covering everything from the pleasures of chocolate-chip cookies and massage chairs to lottery tickets and good grades. "The Resolution: Skip big-ticket purchases in favor of smaller ones you can spread out. Instead of splurging on dinner and a show, eat out one weekend and go to the theater the next. Rather than a designer dress you might … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Are You Hanging on to Too Many Papers?
According to a survey I saw recently, 67% of people said that paper clutter is their hardest area to deal with. Who knows if this is truly accurate, but I'm going to assume that it means that a lot of people, possibly including you, are having trouble dealing with paper. I think there are a couple of fundamental mistakes that people make regarding paper: Believing that every piece of paper is important or has the potential to be important Believing that if a piece of paper was important at one time, it's important forever Not intentionally minimizing the amount of paper that … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Assess Before You Add
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom I bet I'm not the only one who has had conversations like this: Doing laundry, husband says: "Look at these socks. I think I need to throw them away. In fact, I think I need to get rid a lot of my socks." Me: "Looks like it." "When you go to the mall, can you get me some new socks?" "What colors do you need?" "Oh, IÂ don't know. Just get some blue, black, tan, and brown. I'll get rid of the ones that are getting holey later." Not said: Hold it right there buddy! You'll declutter after I buy new? Said instead: "Most of the socks are in the laundry. I can … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom ~ Preserving Memories or Creating Clutter?
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom We just passed Thanksgiving (in the US) and are coming up on Christmas and Hanukkah, and I am willing to guess that December is the most heavily photographed month of the year. Well, last month, I spend an hour sorting through a huge box of photos and memorabilia. There were packets of organized photos from my college years, but beginning with my wedding (1997), nothing was organized, culled, etc. What a miserable experience! Here are the things I learned: If you don't sort through your photos when you get them, it will not get easier 14 years later. If … [Read more...]
The Big Freezer “Use it Up” Challenge
This is my freezer, not Dizzy's. As you can see it's not big enough to hold food clutter. Due to that fact the food in it is constantly being decluttered. Last week Dizzy informed me she was totally committed to Buy Nothing New November, a self imposed challenge as she was not able to comply during October. Not being one to do it the easy way Dizzy has committed to only buying milk and bread while feeding her whole family with just the contents of her Freezer for the whole month.  If I attempted that my family would stave to death due to the minuscule size of my freezer but that is a whole … [Read more...]
Crash diet or lifestyle change.
Have you ever got to a point where you think I really must go on a diet, my weight is getting out of control. So you follow the latest trendy crash diet for a month and the pounds are falling off. By week five you are pretty happy with your appearance and figure you don't need to be so hard on yourself. The odd treat starts sneaking its way back in but what harm does that do, right? A few more months down the track you have returned to all your old habits and have regained the pounds that you lost and are back to square one. After repeating this cycle a couple of times it … [Read more...]
Change your attitude and change the world
I have just started reading a book called ~ A complaint Free World by Will Bowen ~ How to stop complaining and start enjoying the life you always wanted. I haven't got far in to the book but the story goes something like this. Will Bowen is a church minister who has started a movement to get people to stop complaining, criticising and gossiping. The idea is to use the 21 days to a better habit principal to stop yourself from participating in these futile negative behaviours.  He offers free purple bracelets to people who want to participate and whenever you find yourself complaining... … [Read more...]
Cindy’s Weekly Wisdom – Pockets of Clutter
Cindy's Weekly Wisdom As if for the first time, last week I noticed that there is a large bulletin board partially tucked between the wall and my dresser. What's it doing there? Well, I think it's been for for two years, since we remodeled and it needed a new "temporary" home. That made me wonder what other pockets of cluttered I had squirrel away. For your edification and mine, I grabbed my camera and wandered the house. I found two more areas, and what makes these pockets special is that I had no idea they were there until I went looking for them. The first pocket, as I said, was my … [Read more...]
Mini Mission Monday ~ Break a bad habit
Mini Mission Monday is about finding ten minutes a day to declutter. To make it easy for you, each Monday I set seven declutter missions, one for each day of the week for you to follow. It takes the guess work out of decluttering and makes it easy and "fun" for you to achieve some quick decluttering. Today we are not going to concentrate on getting rid of stuff but tidying up clutter that is simply out of place. After all, according to most of the online dictionaries I have looked at, clutter is never referred to as, excessive possessions but as a disorderly array of stuff or noise. So this … [Read more...]
Do you shop to fill a void?
When we get to a point where we are shopping to fill a void in our lives then it is time to stop and think ~ What is happening here? ~ Instead of facing reality and doing something to improve whatever unsatisfactory situation you find yourself in, you turn to your drug of choice, shopping, to give you that little pick-me-up that you are craving for. Why do I do this? ~ In this day and age we behave this way because we are conditioned to it. In the modern consumer society we have become accustomed to the idea that shopping is a feel good activity and if we want to feel good what simpler … [Read more...]