Resolutions?

I’ve never been one for new year’s resolutions. I read on the news that people aren’t doing it so much anymore, so maybe it’s a generational thing. I just think that a year is too long of a time to devote to one specific thing. However, I do think it’s important to actively pursue positive changes in your life. This year is going to pretty crazy for us. We are planning our wedding, buying a house (hopefully, if find the right one), and travelling. I think I might try to set monthly goals to try to keep moving forward.

This month I’m focussing on simplifying our house and stuff. So far I’ve been going through boxes in closets and getting rid of stuff. I’m trying to minimize things we have that aren’t used or important. It would be great to reduce our belongings so that if we do buy a house we won’t have to worry about packing and moving as much.

The other place I’m really trying to tackle is the kitchen. I’m trying to simplify the foods that we have/use. By this I mean, I don’t really think we need to have four types of flour on hand all the time. There seems to be a lot of ingredients in the pantry that we bought, used once and then forgot about. Or else things we bought in bulk, didn’t label, and now don’t know what it is. The first step will be to use up what we have (which is going to take a while) and then only replace key ingredients.

Hopefully my small steps help me achieve the simplicity I long for, in cooking and living

Under Attack: Part Two

Well yesterday it was the sock drawer. I didn’t want to bombard you with all of the my clothing problems all at once so I thought I would wait until today to tell you about my shirt drawer. Actually, this one wasn’t even close to the sock drawer. It was just the usual problem of me always grabbing the shirt that is on top, thus leaving the bottom half of the shirts unworn. The problem with this is that the shirts on top wear out much faster since they are worn so much and the bottom ones get all sad and wrinkly. The solution: rotating piles. Though it sounds complicated it actually simplifies things. At least in my opinion. So, hopefully, here’s how it will go: I have three piles of shirts in the drawer. The middle one is just tank tops I wear underneath, the other two are my regular t-shirts. When I get dressed I will take the shirt on top (switching piles each day). If I don’t want to wear that shirt it means I should get rid of it, because I shouldn’t keep something I don’t wear. When I do laundry I will put the clean shirts on the bottom of the piles, therefore ensuring equal wear. This seems brilliant to me, but most likely it is something that most people do already. I wish I could implement a similar system with my closet, but those are mainly work clothes, which I need to put more thought into. If only I could make getting dress completely trouble-free. Sometimes I miss my high school uniform.

Under Attack: The Clothes Monster

Today I did laundry. Nothing new. The problem came when I was trying to put away said laundry and I encounted a monster, and not the cute kind like below. My underwear and sock drawer was at maximum capacity. It just was not going to accept anymore. First world problem, I know. It is so sad that clutter and the over-owning of stuff is such a big problem, when for some people it is unimaginable. So, I needed a solution. The easiest thing seemed to be to go through my socks and underwear, choose 14 of each (in case I don’t do laundry for 2 weeks, which sometimes happens). These were given the privilege of living in the drawer. The rest were relocated to a plastic storage container. Whenever one pair wears out I can go to the bin and grab a new one. It will be just like shopping! Okay, not really, but at least it solves the problem for now. Until next Christmas when I am given 20 more pairs of socks.