Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Guilt And Chain Emails

I'm sure I'm not the only one that has those two or three friends who have not gotten the memo about not sending chain-emails.  Many of them end with (or start with) "In the next 10 minutes..."  They are about how wonderful you are, or what you can get out of sending them, or love and friendship; and it seems they are always sent by people you love very much.  So what do you do?  Do you send them or do you delete?
I have finally come to the point of deleting them without guilt, although it's taken me some time.
To be perfectly honest there is very little I still use email for.  Most of the people I know, and keep in touch with on my computer, use Facebook and it's internal messaging system.  There are a few hold outs and generally these emails come from them.
As I said these are folks I love.  I just hate the emails.  I don't understand why people still send them.  Maybe they enjoy getting them...or maybe they are in the same position I am.  Someone special has sent them and they feel compelled to send them back out.  Either way I've decided that to simplify my email I'm going to give myself permission to simply delete them.  I'll still respond happily to personal email.  But the chain email guilt replies are over.


Wednesday, October 17, 2012

To Merge Or Not To Merge???

As some may know I have several blogs.  Somewhere along the line I was told that I should zero in on one topic for a blog; and since I'm interested in many topics I ended up originally with four blogs (one general, one Christian, one political, and one on Simplicity which you're now reading).  The more I think about this the sillier it seems.  I have been thinking of merging them and just writing one blog with whatever is on my mind.  I haven't decided if I want to do that yet.  It certainly would simplify my life, and encourage me to write more since I wouldn't be trying to decide what to put where, and what subject to write about today.  I'd just write what I was thinking about.  The sheer simplicity factor alone makes it a great idea.  But still...they are such divergent topics....

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Mess!

These are pictures of the little room off the bedroom that used to be an art/storage area.  Yes, it was a royal mess.  See below for pictures of what it looks like now.  It's a little kitchenette.  I'm handicapped at the moment and living in a townhouse it makes it much easier to have a small kitchen on the second floor...and yes it simplifies my life.


The Kitchenette

These are pictures of what the new little kitchenette looks like.  I no longer have to ask people to bring me things from the kitchen downstairs.  Plus all the mess is gone, and no it's not somewhere else in the house.  The room isn't quite done, but it's close.  I think I'll go and make a cup of tea.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Storage Containers

It's been a while since I posted.  Been very busy sorting, purging, shredding, organizing...
I have a lot of pictures to post of what happened to the little room off the bedroom, but first just a word about storage containers.
If I've learned one thing in the last month and a half...has it really been that long...it's that storage containers do have their place but we can't let them become a crutch.  
It's way too easy to toss all the stuff we don't want to deal with in there, seal it and put it in a closet or on a shelf and think we've simplified.  Heck, things look neater, they look simpler.  The problem is that all the mess, the clutter, the junk, is still all there, it's just masked with a nice neat clean storage container.  Worse yet, a storage unit.  
Since Sept 2, I've lost count of how many storage boxes of all different sizes I've gone through.  They were full of books (donated for the most part), papers (shredded and a minimum filed), CDs (donated for the most part...some still need to be downloaded) and just plain stuff that for the most part I've donated or simply thrown away.  
All I have left are: 4 large plastic storage containers that hold 4 specific groups of things.  They are neatly stacked in what was my completely empty closet (except for clothes and since I've never cared much for clothes there wasn't much in there).  They hold 1) Office Supplies 2) Yarn and Knitting Needles 3) Journals, Scrapbooks and Personal Correspondence I've decided to keep like handmade cards 4) Bible covers (I've elected to keep only one Bible...I donated 10 document boxes of them to Feed The Children)  So now I have one Bible and 4 Bible covers, and about 10 prayer and other religious books.  All other books, religious and secular, will now be on my Kindle.
I also have a two drawer filing cabinet for papers and bills I need to keep, and a plastic file box with hanging folders that hold my knitting patterns.  I'm still mulling over donating that to a local church that has a knitting group.  Almost any pattern I'll ever need is online.
I have a document box of very neatly organized pictures.  There are a bunch of shutterbugs in my family, and I'm fairly certain that my children and grandchildren are the most photographed humans on the face of the planet.  There are hundreds and hundreds of pictures in that box.  When I started going through the four storage boxes I had of them I was planning on sorting, scanning them into my computer and keeping one (or on the outside two) albums of real pictures.  I spent many days just going through and sorting them down to a box of big and small pictures and slides.  I've had to settle for waiting for a later date to take them out and really give them the attention they require.  I expect it to take a month or two.  So for now my one box...waiting patiently on the shelf in my closet...will have to wait.  
Lastly I have two plastic shoe boxes with office supplies and things I need right at hand next to my desk.



These shelves are a far cry from the way they used to look loaded down with books, papers, office supplies and everything else you could imagine.
So in closing ~ storage containers do have their place.  I can use them, but I have to be careful how and when I do.