Drum Roll......

These are the last few ideas I want to share to simplify your life. As you can see, a lot of it is creative and pretty simplistic. Once you get your creative juices going, it's really fun and beneficial.

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1)Reuse everything you can, from jars and containers to nails to clothing. You will need to buy much less new stuff.

2)Borrow or rent large items that you don’t use often, such as tools, garden equipment and party utensils. You can even rent a car for trips.

3)Don’t fall for the new advertising gimmick using the language of simplicity to sell all kinds of things. Simplicity isn’t about having the right stuff. It isn’t a style. And don’t fall for the idea that you need a lot of special containers, boxes, and so on to organize your stuff and thereby achieve simplicity.

If you and/or your family practice "simple things" in your family, I would love to hear!

Less Waste

Start a compost pile for yard waste and food waste from the kitchen. This may seem less simple than throwing everything into the garbage, but it will help you to waste less food as you become more aware of where it is going, while reducing garbage, which could save money. The side benefit is, of course, a rich soil additive that will make your garden and all your trees and shrubs grow healthier.

Buy products with the least packaging possible. You will save money as well as resources and reduce your garbage.

A few examples of cutting down waste: 1) when purchasing produce, don't use the plastic bags for them. Just place them in your shopping cart/basket 2) use cloth bags instead of plastic at the grocery store 3) use mason jars to store food and leftovers in instead of plastic storage 4) Wash and reuse ziploc bags.

Be creative with it. It can be fun. If you have other ideas, I would love to hear!

Cheaper vacations

Instead of traveling to faraway places for vacation, look closer to home. Explore the place you live. You will save money on travel as well as accommodations and food, which always cost more at popular vacation spots.

Learn to mend clothing, toys, furniture and other items. Sewing holes in shirts and pants can be a relaxing activity. Darning socks and tights is a bit more difficult, but can double or triple the life of these items.

Another idea is to cut off pants when they start getting too short on the kiddos. It prolongs the life of that piece of clothing and makes something "new" for warmer weather. It works for adults too ;).

Voluntary Simplicity

I came across some interesting information (http://www.greatriv.org/vs.htm#vs) on making our lives a little more simple. I think there are some very good and creative ideas in it that I wanted to share with you. I hope you find them helpful and beneficial for you and your family. It's pretty lengthy so I will break it up over several blogs. If you already incorporate these ideas in your life, let me know how it is working for you. I would love to hear!


1) De-clutter your house. Go through clothes, kitchenware, knickknacks, gadgets, small appliances and other possessions and give away or recycle some.

2) Try cooking more meals from scratch. This may sound like the opposite of simplifying, since cooking from scratch can take more time and be more complicated than microwaving a meal from a box, or ordering a pizza. However, you can make larger quantities and freeze the extra for a quick meal later. You also can avoid huge amounts of packaging, which is expensive and wasteful.

3) Buy in bulk. Food co-ops have many foods available in bins from which you fill your own container.

I am getting so excited

Our house is coming right along. Today the walls were worked on and most of the rafters went up. Holy cow! I can't believe it. It's crazy how big it looks. It makes the existing house look so small (I am not at all complaining. It's actually kind of cute.) Here are some pics from today. Let me know what you think. They aren't completely done putting up the plywood and they will cut out the windows when that is done. So it will look a little different when that is done.

First wall up!!!!

There will be a window on this side

View from the road.

Sale News!

There is a pretty big sale going on now. Check it out at http://www.themodernbabyco.etsy.com/.
Really good deals are in store for beautiful, one of a kind, handmade items.