Living Lightly

Susan Vogt on living more simply but abundantly

Browsing Posts tagged Electronics

Although over the years I’ve had stuff stolen from my home, here I’m not addressing thieves but rather how I’ve recently happily found people (friends, visitors, and nonprofits) who help me prune my stuff. It all started when our son who lives in Singapore came home for a 3-week visit. This meant that most of […]

Too many emails? Can’t keep up with social media? Don’t know which alerts are legitimate and which are just spam or phishing scams? Don’t know what “phishing” is? Besides just totally abandoning your computer or phone, how can a conscientious but time conscious person stay sane in this world of internet overload? These are important […]

Christmas is almost upon us. Perhaps you will receive some new electronics (a phone, laptop, TV, game system, etc.) Yea! But leap ahead a week or so and this also brings up the question of what to do with your older, maybe broken or obsolete technology items. How do you recycle these responsibly? I did […]

Even though Lent has been over for a month and Easter candy has been consumed, I continue to ponder some lessons of creative fasting. Sure, during Lent I fasted from sweets and attachment to some of my older, unused possessions, but what about fasting from electronics and electricity? ELECTONICS – TV, radio, computer, phones TV: […]

Having just finished 4 blog posts on the limitations of recycling plastics plus one post reminding us to commit to reducing our possessions, Christmas 2020 arrived. It hasn’t been a pretty year with the pandemic, racial unrest, and polarizing political tensions. Yet, many of us at least have probably received some nice new Christmas presents. […]

In my ongoing challenge to clear my life of clutter, Covid-19 has helped me identify four areas: 1. WORKSPACE CLUTTER: Although I consider myself a pretty organized person, I’ve found that having more Zoom meetings has resulted in more scraps of paper accumulating on my desk. Since I don’t have to actually pick up these […]

Basements and Garages are natural storage places so this is the likely place to find a lot of things to give away. It’s also likely to take a lot of time to sort through stuff accumulated – possibly over decades if you haven’t moved recently. There are 3 basic kinds of storage items: 1. Seasonal […]

Yea! A couple days ago our new solar panels were activated. This is probably the opposite of my recent Keep it Simple post, because it wasn’t a simple or cheap endeavor, but it was worth it. Over a year ago we started thinking about getting solar panels for our roof. We contacted an installer, got […]

Now that one office file cabinet is pretty much pruned and reorganized, I decided to tackle my two bookcases which hold work related books. I had a happy conundrum. Friends who were moving out of town offered me one of their bookcases. It matched my main bookcase in size and style so I was happy […]

I had a good two part plan for Lent this year: *Clean out my work files and shelves *Clear my mind of the political funk that was crowding my spirit The process seemed logical: Step 1: Clear off the ping-pong table, aka my extended desk of papers that were “in process.” Step 2: File papers […]

On October 21 my cell phone died. At first I thought it was just sick and I tried to repair it. I’ll spare you all the gory details. Suffice it to say I spent way too much time on the internet diagnosing the ailment, on my landline phone with 3 different tech support people, and […]

OK, technically, I did finish cleaning my desk up by Easter, BUT I conveniently omitted the fact that the file cabinet next to my desk had a lot of paper clutter and odds and ends on top of it too. I had intended that to be part of my Lenten clean up but just didn’t […]

This past week I was away at a meeting so I didn’t have time to go through my remaining desk drawers. I figured I’d focus on my companion Lenten resolution – to listen more mindfully. On the last leg of my flight to Louisiana my ears popped. You know, that uncomfortable feeling that you sometimes […]

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 […]

Phones are a handy, nay essential, means of getting information and connecting with those we love. Can there be too much of a good thing? Explore with me the pros and cons of the different kinds of phone use – their cost in time and money. LANDLINES: The phone rings at dinner time. I can almost guarantee […]

It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, we take advantage of it – Community Sponsored Hazardous Waste collection. Once or twice a year my county provides a place to take items like pesticides, paint, medications, old electronics, etc. Jim and I save these items throughout the year and take them to the collection place […]

About a year ago our electric lawnmower died. I agreed to find a fitting home for its final resting place. We bought a new mower and I procrastinated about researching how to recycle old lawnmowers. Well, it’s grass mowing season again and Jim reminded me of my promise. Spurred on by the recent grim reports […]

Finally, with the kids at home over Christmas I was able to get technical advice on what electronics we were storing were worth keeping and which were so obsolete they should be taken to that recycling center in the sky. A few decisions were easy but there is always the temptation to think that some […]

Yesterday, I sent out my periodic email Blog Alert to friends. I do this every 2 or 3 months so as not to pester people. (Not everyone checks my blog compulsively every day 😕 ) Since I’ve recently changed my email to a Gmail address, I decided to use Gmail for this bulk mailing for the […]

For a variety of reasons, I recently decided to change my email address from a local carrier to Gmail. Mostly it was to simplify my life when I travel. With Gmail I have access to all my archived emails which I used to keep neatly categorized with Outlook. My secondary reason, however, was that I […]