When your household grows, the contents of your fridge somehow multiply out of control and you may regretfully find yourself tossing more. It’s a bit strange, since more mouths to feed increases your need for a strict budget. Courtney Carver suggests taking on the capsule kitchen challenge, family or not. For three months, try living on a defined, simplified shopping list.
Learn the benefits of simple eating at Be More with Less.
Category Archives: News and Events
Does anybody read those laundry tags? They’re supposed to be instructions for washing a garment, but they need their own set of instructions. Thankfully, About Laundry has a detailed guide to laundry symbols with large pictures so you can learn them one at a time. Even better, they are split into categories: washing, bleaching, drying, ironing, and dry cleaning.
It’s a resource and a lesson.
Let Crystal Paine tell you about one of her days. This particular day was frustrating. Crystal had some catching up to do after a trip, and the kids were not acting helpful.
Crystal kept an eye on herself and noticed she was getting more frazzled as she clawed for control. If she didn’t do something, she was likely to get snappy. So instead, she decided to drop the stress and have fun together.
I think the important thing to learn here is that while things need to get done, you have to consider all of your values as you run your home. Cleanliness is a value. But Crystal made sure that letting her stress push her over the edge wouldn’t hurt her more important values of modeling serenity, fair leadership, and safe authority.
Read Crystal’s story at Money Saving Mom.
Lauren Singer blogs on Trash is for Tossers. Margaret Badore blogs on TreeHugger. Together they form an inspiring team to show off Lauren’s cupboards and cabinets. You see, Lauren is running a zero-waste home. The contents of each cupboard are a useful lesson on how to avoid creating garbage in different parts of the house.
Take the tour.
Now that you’ve opened all of your gifts this season, you may realize that your house already had too much stuff. But some of us realize the same thing every year. Why do we keep shopping? Arthur C. Brooks lends some insight with the help of a New Delhi Hindu swami named Gnanmunidas. Their conclusion? Let go.
Visit Arthur at the New York Times
Here is a homemade radiant space heater that uses terra cotta flower pots and candles. It not only costs less to run than an electric space heater, but it is noiseless compared to a heater with a fan. It’s great in small rooms or if you’re going to be sitting near it for a few hours. This heater works best in households without two-year-olds and cats.
Visit DesertSun02’s YouTube channel for even more heaters and improvements to this one.
Thanks, Catherine Winter-Hebert and Inhabitat.
The New Year is a popular time to fix something in your life. Christine Tolhurst is sharing ways to improve your time management in 2015. What makes improving time management a great idea is that being conscientious about how you spend your time will improve your enjoyment and effectiveness at everything you spend it on.
You have time to click on Premeditated Leftovers.
As you think about your New Years resolutions, remember to think about how to set goals effectively. Setting real goals will help you choose resolutions that you have a chance at succeeding at.
There are 3 principles to keep in mind when setting goals. I’ll explain them using Katie Femia’s resolution ideas on Premeditated Leftovers for examples.
They’re doable.
You don’t have to set an impressive goal for New Years. Just pick something you’re not doing and start doing it. For instance, Katie’s Ideas 1, 13, 23 and 45 are easy habits to get into once you make a decision and remind yourself every day. Also notice that the list doesn’t contain anything about losing weight. That’s because losing weight isn’t something you do! What you do is you exercise. You eat less junk. You cook more. Then the weight kind of loses itself based on what you do and how your body works. Set goals that you can actually do.
They’re defined.
In order to make resolutions doable, you have to define exactly how much of that goal you will perform and when. For instance, the goal “Drink 8 glasses of water daily,” includes how much water, how often, and is going to work better than, “Drink more water.”
There are so many, you’ll find something you want to do.
You have to set a goal you want to set. Don’t set a goal you think you’re supposed to set because bloggers appear so great at doing them. The list has 50 goal ideas so that something might suit you, or inspire you to think of your own. If you try one resolution and fail, pick something you want more.
What’s best about these resolutions is that you can set them all year, whenever you’re ready. So now that you have three ways to judge which goal ideas will work best for you, I hope some of Katie’s ideas will stand out for you.
Read Katie’s List
If you’re still partying, you’re a trooper. Jillee has plenty of colorful, shiny and interactive New Years Eve DIY projects for you to try. Visit her even if you’re not hosting a party. Her blog will make you feel like you’re in one.
Three… two… one…
A craft and science kit subscription like Green Kid Crafts will keep the ideas flowing when you’re not sure what else you can do to teach environmental consciousness and keep your kids away from the TV. Now, Keeper of the Home is hosting a giveaway for a 6-month subscription for Green Kid Crafts boxes.
Enter before December 31.