Minimal Daily Routine

I just found a great site by a Texan called The Fly Lady. She is really encouraging. She starts from the idea that if you're reading her site, you're probably feeling overwhelmed by all of your obligations, and your house my have become cluttered and dirty. That is not where I am, but I am always looking for new ways to give myself more time. She suggests baby steps that build into a routine over a month. If followed, by the end of the month one's house should have improved dramatically. I 'm not going to go into complete detail because you should really check this lady out, but here's my routine. (Bear in mind I keep house for a 79 lb boxer and fluffy cat as well as for my husband and myself.)
Morning Routine:
Make Bed, Wipe down upstairs sink and toilet
Shower, Get dressed
Take down glasses and one garbage pail
Put in a laundry load and empty either garbage, recycling, or compost bucket
water backyard and scoop poop
Clean Kitchen & Sweep floor

Afternoon Routine:
Wipe down guest bathroom, dust living room, wash hardwood floors
Fold and put away one laundry load
Hit a hot spot for 15 minutes

Possible hot spots: ( Anywhere clutter accumulates or places you rarely get to)
Shower
Downstairs
My closet and chair
Brian’s closet
Bathroom drawers
Bedroom end tables
Hall closets
Bookshelves
Spider webs, vacuuming
washing walls and windows

A Simple Cleaning Solution

Got a messy house? You can painlessly clean it over time by doing it during commercials. Here's how: When you're watching TV in the evening just get up during the commercials and do one thing or part of one thing at a time. Here are some examples: load the dishwasher, wash pots and pans, vacuum a room, dust a room, put in a load of laundry, etc. If you do this every night, you'll see your house start to turn around. While you watch TV you can fold laundry or clean out a drawer. Of course, If you get your family members to help your house will be cleaner sooner!

The Minimalist Kitchen - Fresh Food

More About Food:

My minimalist food philosophy is to eat fresh. So I shop at the local farmers market once a week. If you don't have time for that, you can get a variety of local produce delivered right to you door in most cities. Here in Portland we have Organics to You. Check the internet for companies like this in your area. Green Tip: Using food that was grown near where you live requires less transportation causing less pollution and thus your carbon footprint.

I cook from scratch quite a bit as well. If you don’t know how to cook, learn. It will save you a huge amount of money and your food will have a much higher nutritional content than if you eat processed food. You'll also be skipping all of the preservatives, additives and chemicals found in processed food.

Frozen Food: Freezers should stay full. This saves energy. If you don’t eat a lot of frozen food, you can fill it up with baked items like bagels, English muffins, and loaves of bread. Frozen vegetables are picked fresh then frozen. So they are healthy. Two of my favorites to incorporate into a lot of dishes are spinach and pureed squash. As I mentioned before, dry goods like flower and bread crumbs last longer in the freezer and nuts store well in the freezer because their oils won't go rancid. Storing these items in your freezer help to keep it full and frees up room in your cupboards. Of course, making extra portions of whatever you're making for dinner and freezing it for another day is a great time saver as well. The Renolds Handi Vac is an inexpensive way of vacuum sealing your food. It is small enough to fit into any drawer but works as well as those huge sealers.

Some people like to keep coffee in the freezer but according to INeedCoffee.com there are a lot of conditions around this, such as when the coffee should be used after it's thawed and how it should be wrapped. Check out the linked article for the details. The best way to store coffee is in an air tight cannister at room temperature, and it should be consumed within two weeks.

Fridge Items:
Keep your fresh vegetables at eye level so you remember to eat them. If you don’t, they can always live on as compost! Use the lower sections beer and soda. Green Tip: Buy juice in plastic recyclable bottles. Save your time by keeping my easy food like, French bread, cold cuts and cheese ready to eat. That way everyone can feed themselves!