I'm Back.......

Well, I must admit I have missed writing this blog so I  am going to resume writing it even though it contradicts being a minimalist because writing three blogs isn't minimal. In truth, my life is quite complicated but maintaining a minimalistic lifestyle in my home. personal habits, and business organization is what keeps me sane. So here's where I am now.

If you've been reading my blog you know that I quit teaching after a 20 year stint to work with my husband and now almost 25 year old son flipping houses. When the economy soured our son got his general contractors license and we started a remodeling company. This journey has been wonderful for all three of us. I became so organized I  found time to paint and show my work which has totally changed my perception of myself.  I downsized everything and found out what is important and what isn't. That's really at the heart of what I write about. I just love to focus on practical ways to make life easier ways to tread lightly on our beautiful earth.

After teaching writing for so long it's fun to actually write to an audience that wants to hear what I have to say. I had no idea that so many folks subscribed to my blog to tell you the truth! So here's what the minimalist is up against now......

We just moved last month into a huge house that is too big for us but needed to be occupied as we couldn't sell it and having just renovated it, it was too nice to rent.  Our son and two renting friends moved into" the minimalist townhouse" downtown so he could live our downsized lifestyle!

This house is only a mile and a half from "the Hood" where we used to live but having to drive everywhere really changed my reality. In protest, I just drive right back there to do my shopping where I know everyone. We still hit happy hour at our favorite haunts, but can't stay as long.

Anyway, my new challenge is to minimalize this big place on 1/2 an acre and to fight becoming re-suburbanized! If that is something you can relate to,  I invite you to follow me on my new journey...... Repeat after me.... no Costco, no Costco, no Costco!!!

Thanks Readers!

Thank you to all my readers. I have decided to end this blog. I hope I have been helpful in your quest for simplicity. I feel however, that I need to devote more time to my art blog Banba's Artful Realm.

Meme Post

Okay, this is new to me, but for my readers I guess this is a way to turn you on to sites I like to read on a regular basis and don't worry they won't all be about garbage even though you know I love to rant about garbage! I have tagged these six blogs and to participate they can:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag sixish people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know he or she has been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

So here are six things about me:

1. Even though I was an elementary school teacher for 20 years, I never really liked it because other people's kids aren't always so wonderful. You know this if you've thrown a birthday party or two right? I did it so I could be home with me son by 4:00 and during the summers.

2. I am very ambitious: I got married at 22, had a kid at 24, got a masters degree at 26, and bought my first house with my husband at 27.

3. My son and my husband are best friends and business partners. They are my heroes and have allowed me to finally chill out!

4. I love my cat and dog and love to hang out with them. They're laying all over me right now!

5. I really wanted to be a rock star or an artist and now I actually am an artist.

Enough about me! Here are some great blogs:


No Impact Man
This guy is living green in the city. A guilty liberal who swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut etc.

Life Less Plastic
This blog is all about a gal who tries to live without plastic. It's really fascinating how much plastic we really use!

Granny Miller
This lady writes about her life on a subsistence farm. She cans and has critters. It's like a blast from the past and very well written with lots of great pix.

Bad Generation
I just like this kid. It's nice to know what the next generation is thinking!

The Offended Blogger
This chick is absolutely hilarious!

Paganway
This a cool blog about the pagan lifestyle. Gotta have an open mind for this one, but it's always a good read.

The Self Taught Artist

Here's a great artist who is not only living a minimalistic lifestyle, she makes really beautiful clocks and other artwork from  found objects. It's really worth checking out. You could end up with an fascinating clock in your living room!

So I hope you'll check these blogs out cuz I just love 'em!

Thanks to Flat Badger for tagging me. He has lots of cool film clips and interesting articles on his site too!

Don't let empty beer bottles get you down!

Now that I am here in this big house that was obviously enjoyed by a great deal of our 24 year old son's friends, it's time to deal with the garbage they left behind. Now you might say why don't you make him do that? If he were twelve I would, but he's 24 with the responsibilities of a much older man running a construction company. I guess in some ways he has an old soul. Anyway, he's working on our row house getting it ready to rent and dealing with the mess we left in the garage, restaining all the decks, overseeing painting etc.

So, I am dealing with the barrels of garbage that is mixed in with beer bottles and cigarettes, tile, drywall etc. The garbage pickup was yesterday and I was so happy to see some of it go. My main thing is I want as much of it to be recycled as possible. So I picked out two containers worth of bottles and filled the giant recycling bin with cardboard and cans and away it went. Today I will go through more of it and I suspect that after a few weeks I will have gotten rid of it all and then I will change to a once a month pick up because I find that if I recycle and compost that's all the garbage we make. Tomorrow I need to scope out a good spot for a compost pile as well. I left my compost bin for the renters of our row house and I hope they'll use it.

So my message today is don't let the empty beer bottles get you down. We can always recycle them and rock on!

I'm Here! The Minimalist's Move

Well, I'm here in my new house and in spite of my best efforts to avoid it, I have been stressed out. After all, I thought I was a minimalist! The idea was that I should be able to pick up and move at any time since we are real estate investors and need to be flexible especially in this market! But the new house is beautiful and we're basically moved in. It's a different feeling to be in such a larger house. Ironically, this house is bigger than the one I downsized from when we moved into our row house. However, I am for now resisting the temptation to buy more furniture to fill it up. I just put the wicker garden furniture in the living room for now.

From this move I learned an important lesson. I learned that that moving things into the garage isn't really minimalism! It was the garage that really made the move harder because it was filled with tools, left over paint, and everything that I had pitched from the house to make it minimal.  To make matters worse, I have moved into a house with a garage filled with the remnants of various people's belongings who lived here while our son renovated the house, as well as building materials and tools. But I'm not going to freak out. I'm just going to take it one bite at a time and get rid of as much as I can. 

Freecycle is a great resource for getting rid of things. It's a Yahoo group where people post things they are looking for or looking to get rid of. Of course, this isn't a money maker. But why should we think we should make money on things that are no longer useful to us? Did we think about their resale value when we bought them? Of course not. We bought them to use or just because we wanted them. Be it a painting or a paint brush, most things unfortunately end up in the land fill. The only way not to participate in this travesty is not to buy the stuff in the first place. But for now, I'll just lighten my load by passing it on to someone else.

Am I Moving? A Minimalist's Move

Well, you all know how unpredictable this economy is right now. As a result I may have to move! You see we've had a beautiful property on the market all summer and it's time to stop the hemoraging of cash flow. We have one more person to look at it today and if she doesn't buy it we're moving in to keep it on the market while we live in it and renting out our downsized Minimalistic Lifestyle townhouse. The big house is on 1/2 an acre and has 2400 square feet.

Not to panic  though because it's only 1.5 miles away! That's how Portland is, country in the city. I'm not looking forward to packing but because I have decluttered on a regular basis there aren't that many loose items except for the kitchen of course. That's really the key to a together house and easy move, having things in containers. The worst parts are disconnecting mounted TVs and things like that. Really glad I use a laptop now!

What happens if  it sells in a month? We'll put our furniture into storage and rent a one bedroom apartment for awhile until the lease on the townhouse is up, then move back here. Phew! I couldn't even have thought about such things if I hadn't minimized our belongings. 

You might think for a minute and ask yourself. What if I had to move suddenly due to a transfer, illness, or other unforeseen event? What would that look like?

Minimalistic Stress Reduction

Most of us are pretty organized at work. We walk in, check over our emails, create a list of things we need to get accomplished, enter deadlines into our planners, etc. As we all know, if we fail to do these things, we will certainly hear about it. (Oh, sorry I forgot about that meeting doesn't cut it at work.) Yet, it is all too easy to feel like we've had enough of this ultra organization by the time we get home and just want to relax, as if our personal lives would just flow along without any organization at all.

But we can use the same tools we use at work at home without over organizing our lives. Take email for example; we can set up many bills to come to us as emails and then pay them with on line banking which gives us a record of when they were paid. This is a huge time saver and cuts down on paper mail which helps me to be a better tree hugger!

Sadly, we spend less waking hours at home than at work,  so our to do lists for home should be much shorter, say two items. This may not sound like a lot, but after a week, you will have crossed off 14 items that you may have been putting off for months! It may be sending a thank you note, making an appointment, or making a phone call, etc. You may have to make a call during business hours and thus accomplish this on your lunch break. You still get credit for this though, because if you assign yourself too many of these things to do you will get even more stressed out. As you clear these types of items off of your list you may want to add items that help organize your home such as go through one drawer, organize your wallet or purse, or list an item on eBay, Craigslist or Freesell.

Just as you use a planner at work to make sure you are where you should be when, you can use a home calendar in the same way. Just like at work, when you make an appointment you write it down. You can go one step further and write a detail that gives you a record of what that appointment was about. You can note phone calls as well, giving you a record which may come in handy in the future.

I challenge you all to try my two item personal life "to do" list for one week and see if you can declutter 14 items from your stress list. Good Luck!