We were robbed last week. Someone took Jim’s golf clubs out of the trunk of our car and my prescription glasses out of the front seat. Our car wasn’t locked and it was in our open garage. Still it felt like a personal violation and it takes time to replace stuff. After allowing ourselves some […]
Living Lightly
Susan Vogt on living more simply but abundantlyBrowsing Posts in The Process
At my stage of life (children sprung, I work at home) I don’t need to buy stuff as often as I did when our kids were outgrowing clothes and I needed an office wardrobe. Bottom line – I don’t do much shopping. However, underwear does wear out and thus I embarked on what I thought […]
My last blog talked about “The Beauty of Empty” and how helpful it is to empty out a space to start the pruning process. Now it’s time to start with myself (and my husband). Since my first round of pruning our clothes closet in 2010, I’ve slowly been passing clothes on that I seldom wear, […]
January 1: As we begin a new year, our hearts turn to resolutions but our practical sides often resist – at least after a feeble try at exercising more, eating healthier, becoming more prayerful, etc. In an effort to serve you better and clear my own life of clutter, I keep up with what professional organizers […]
December 31: As the year comes to a close, it seems like a natural time to give away the things I’ve been collecting in my “Giveaway Bin.” The month of December, however, has also been a busy time for me. (What a surprise 😉 ) So, I did what any committed but lazy declutterer would […]
As our 44 year marriage evolved, we realized that my husband, Jim, enjoyed cooking and I didn’t. This fits us well in sort of a “Jack Sprat could eat no fat; his wife could eat no lean” way. As our marriage progressed so did our accumulation of cookbooks. I dared not complain because, after all, I […]
Traditionally the time leading up to Christmas is a time of shopping. It is also the time that my own nuclear family again faces the question of how we are going to celebrate the holidays and what will we do about gift giving. In the past we have ranged from buying a gift for everyone, […]
As we approach the season of Thanksgiving and Gift Giving, my mind turns to how to be generous. What is truly helpful vs. what just adds to another’s clutter, feeds an addiction, or stresses the environment. First, let me say that it is possible to overthink this generosity thing. At its core generosity is about […]
Recycling is good. Right? Well, sort of. Of course it is better to recycle stuff than not to, but remember those other ecology Rs – Reduce and Reuse? This all came to mind recently as my city changed its trash collection company. They used to accept all plastics #1 – #7 but now only accept […]
Following my mother’s death last spring, I was blessed with inheriting quite a few lovely items. This presented me with a mini dilemma. Here I am trying to prune my home of extra possessions but I want to honor the memory of my mother. By including some of her household items in my decor I […]
Now on to the really hard core homeless items. My top 3 are Mattresses. (I never did find any place that would take a mattress so I re-purposed the baby crib rails and metal as garden supports and put the mattress on the floor for visiting kids.) See mattress posts here and here. Items that are […]
IT HELPS TO BE CONNECTED. By this I mean that sometimes giving stuff to the usual places (Goodwill, St. Vincent de Paul, Salvation Army, Lupus, Viet Vets – GSVPSALVV for short 😉 ) seems like a bad match. It helps to have personal links to potential “good homes.” For example: Challenge #1 – Carpet Samples. Several decades […]
While pruning the clutter of Too Much Information from my life these last few months has been good, other items have been collecting dust. When I’m ready to let go of miscellaneous stuff around the house I put them in a bin and wait for a time to take them to Goodwill, St. Vincent de […]
April 22 is Earth Day. This reminds me of the importance of decreasing our carbon footprint by the familiar formula: reduce, reuse, recycle. Many families, including us: Typical recycling: Put paper, cans, glass, plastic bottles, anything with a triangle (Δ), into our city’s curbside recycling service Compost vegetables and yard waste Take reusable cloth bags to the […]
It’s the end of 2014. Over the past year when I noticed things I no longer needed, I’ve put them in a plastic bin that I keep for giveaways. These items don’t really fit into any neat category and didn’t merit a trip to St. Vincent DePaul just for a few miscellaneous items. I was […]
An email came from a friend about contributing household goods to a local refugee resettlement program. Most of the people currently being served are from Nepal. Lita invited our faith community to bring extra household items for the refugees to our next meeting. I thought I wouldn’t have much to contribute since I’ve been limiting […]
A magazine, Alive, asked to do an article about my year of giving away and wanted to do a photo. Unfortunately it’s hard to take a photo of what’s no longer in our home. I wondered if we would need to “stage” it to suggest the kinds of things that I gave away but no […]
Continuing my June 1 blog’s issue about how to donate rather elegant/expensive clothing, I now turn to the opposite extreme – what about donating rather substandard items? It’s virtuous to clear out the stuff that’s cluttering our home and simplify our material possessions. This helps us find things more easily, makes for a cleaner environment, […]
Jim informed me that I needed new jeans. He was right. A hole was starting in my “good” pair. No problem. I went to our trusty Gap Outlet where I knew I could get a pair cheap. I was on a tight schedule, however, so I quickly chose a pair of jeans missing the button. […]
To buy or not to buy – That is the question. The word “black” can be a source of pride or despair. In the Great Depression it meant the economy was in crisis. For the day after Thanksgiving it has come to mean the beginning of the Christmas shopping season when retailers move from red […]
