Boiling Water, Or Being Aware of Stress
There’s an old wives’ tale that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water he will jump out, but if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and slowly raise it to boiling the frog will allow himself to be boiled to death.
The “temperature” of our lives is our stress level, and we react the same way.
If we have a sudden onslaught of stress, where everything goes to heck in a handbasket all at once, we know we’re under stress. Our bodies react to it, and we manifest all sorts of physical and [...] Continue Reading…
9 Ways to Simplify Your Bathroom
My bathroom and kitchen are my two most complicated rooms in the house. They are also the ones that need to be cleaned most often. I have found that cleaning my bathroom was much easier after I simplified the bathroom, because there was less to clean, and less to clean around. Here are nine ways I simplified…can you add a 10th?
1. Limit the Linens
I went through my closets and left two sets of everything for each person: two towels, washcloths, hand towels. I also limited the bed sheets to two sets per bed. It freed up an amazing amount [...] Continue Reading…
20 Ways to Save Time In the Kitchen
In our busy lives, we look for ways to save time. Unless you eat out all the time, preparing food can be a large chunk of your free time. Here are twenty ways to save time in the kitchen:
1. Have a Plan
The number one time saver in the kitchen is knowing what you are going to make before you get into the kitchen. Menu planning is a big step in this (see Simplifying Dinner: Four Steps to Simplify Planning). By figuring out what you are going to have, you save yourself from I-don’t-know-what-to-make as well as the I’d-love-to-make-x-but-I-don’t-think-I-have-the-ingredients.
2. Do [...] Continue Reading…
How To Use Up Leftover Bread
I like to make and eat home-made bread. Having been raised on home-made bread, I find most commercial bread rather lacking. At the same time, making bread at home usually leaves me in a scramble to use it up before it gets moldy.
I put myself to think about how I could use leftover bread, and here is what I came up with. I have tried all these methods, with varying measures of success, as noted:
Bread Crumbs
Why buy bread crumbs when you can make them yourself? I use bread crumbs as an ingredient in many dishes, including meatloaf, hamburgers and [...] Continue Reading…
Saving Money on Books
I am a reader. I consume books at a rapid pace, and I usually have two or three in progress at any given time. To feed my habit, I also used to buy a lot of books. I went on a new book buying moratorium back in August (see Can You Stop Buying Books? I’m Going To Try at my sister blog, SimpleProductivityBlog.com), and I have found that I have cut back my spending dramatically. But I still need a source for books.
Here are my five sources for free or low-cost books:
The Local Library
This is the biggest source of [...] Continue Reading…
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