guest post by Tracy Sitchen

We all need to simplify our lives. For some of us, this means cutting back on our commitments and reducing stress. For others, it means learning to live more frugally. Not surprisingly, learning to live simply often means to do both, as the impulse to over commit and to overspend often come from the same place. The basic philosophy behind living simply is to identify what’s important in your life and to eliminate everything else. Here are some tips for how to do exactly that:

Plan Your Meals

Don’t wait until you’ve come home exhausted and don’t have the energy to plan or cook a meal. Sit down at the beginning of each week and plan all your meals. This way, you can plan around busy days or even cook ahead of time. You can also plan your shopping strategy so that you don’t overspend at the grocery store and aren’t as tempted to eat out — which will lead you to quickly overspend on your food budget.

Learn to Garden

Gardening ensures that you have a food supply that you can trust is all-natural and organic. You can also save money on produce and reduce your carbon footprint (food that you get from your own backyard doesn’t have to be driven across the country to arrive at your kitchen table). In addition, working in a garden is a great way to reduce stress.

Eat Healthy and Exercise

Doctor visits, a daily regimen of vitamins and pills, and stress and worry brought on by ill health are not conducive to simple living. Though some illness is beyond our control, there is plenty that you can do to help ensure your good health. Eat a balanced diet and get regular exercise. You’ll feel better, have more energy, be able to better manage stress, and spend less time in the doctor’s office.

Start an Emergency Fund

The economic recession and rising unemployment has taught us that nothing is guaranteed. Even those who were working for years at the same company found themselves without work. Make sure you’re ready for these situations so that your family will still have what it needs. Start saving to build an emergency fund to cover at least three to six months of expenses. It will bring you peace of mind.

Don’t Use Credit

Learn to save for the things you want. Not only will the practice help you to limit impulse purchases and to learn to identify what you really need, but it will also help you save money by not spending needlessly on high interest rates. You will also ensure that you don’t overuse credit and rack up more debt than you can handle.

Limit Toys

Children’s toys have a way of multiplying until they take over the bedroom and spill out into the rest of the house. And most of the toys fall out of favor after only a few uses. Limit toys to what can fit in a toy box. It will also teach your children to appreciate what they have. Donate old toys to neighbors or a charity.

Limit Books and DVDs

Take a look at all the books and DVDs on your shelf. Now ask yourself honestly: How many of those will you actually read or watch again? Sure, you may intend to read and watch all of them. But how much time do you really have to do so? Get rid of all but your favorites, and you will significantly simplify your room and your life. If you ever decide you want to re-read or re-watch one of the stories you donated, know that you can always do so by visiting the library.

Simplify Your Wardrobe

Look in your closet. How many of the clothes that you find there do you plan to wear “some day” or when you “lose that last 10 pounds?” Get rid of anything that you can’t comfortably wear right now. Focus on basic pieces that won’t go out of style, and don’t buy into trends.

Buy a Smaller House

The bigger your house, the more stuff you will buy to fill it. The bigger your house, the higher your mortgage payment, your taxes, your electric bill, and your water bill. The bigger your house, the more work you have to put into it to maintain it. Simplify your life by buying a smaller house — one that is only as big as you really need.

Bio: Tracy Sitchen is a veteran coupon clipper, stay at home Mom, and aspiring writer. While she loves shopping, she loves the chase of the deal even more! She’s recently been writing about Logans Roadhouse coupons along with Folger Coffee coupons over at her blog where she shares deals and discounts to help every day people save money.

Technorati Tags: buy a smaller house, eat healthy, exercise, simple living, simplify your wardrobe

I bought a Roomba 550 last week and I have  to say that I love it. Does it perform deep cleaning as good as an upright vacuum does?  No, but it picks up pet hair and keeps the dust bunnies at bay between heavy cleanings.

If you’re not familiar with Roomba, it’s a Vacuum Cleaning Robot made by iRobot. It looks kind of like a flying saucer, with dimensions of about 17.5″ in diameter and 5.5″ high.

When you press the Clean button, it starts cleaning in a circular pattern in that spot and then gradually works out to a corner of the room. Then it vacuums along the perimeter of the room and starts criss-crossing the room diagonally.

The Roomba has a dirt sensor and spends multiple cycles wherever it detects more dirt.  It takes about a half hour to clean an average sized room.  The key to success is to clean one room at a time because the dust bin gets full. You can “define” a room using the two included Auto Virtual Walls to block off open doorways.

It takes about an hour to recharge the battery after you have cleaned a room. Then Roomba is ready to clean another room.  I did this last weekend with great success.  I cleaned the dining room, recharged the battery, cleaned the living room, recharged, etc. I proceeded through the whole house, one room at a time.

The Roomba negotiates hard floors, tile, and carpeting equally well. It is able to easily transition between hard floors and area rugs as well, so no worries.

OK, I admit it.  I stood there and watched for 5 or 10 minutes the first time I used my Roomba.  I was curious how it would negotiate doorways, around chair and table legs, and whether it would fall down the stairs.  The answer is no! It cleaned the hallway without falling down the stairs.  Yay!

The Roomba is one of those set it and forget it kinds of appliances.  Set it cleaning a room and then go off with other chores or activities.  It shuts itself off when it’s done cleaning that room.  When you return to the room and find it off, then return it to the dock to recharge the batteries.

The Roomba 550 comes with everything you need to get started. It includes: 2 Auto Virtual Walls, 2 Extra Filters, and 2 Extra Bristle Brushes. It even includes 4 “C” cell batteries for the auto virtual walls.

My dog wasn’t sure what to think about it at first.  But it’s not that loud and doesn’t move that fast, even though it’s about the same size as she is (she’s a beagle). She barked at it a bit at first, but now she just ignores it.

So if you have someone who’s “hard to buy for” on your Christmas list, check out the iRobot Roomba 550 Vacuum Cleaning Robot.

Technorati Tags: irobot, robotic vacuum, roomba 550, vacuum cleaning robot

In my last post I told you that the first habit I’m working on for 2010 is waking early.  The next step in the process is to break down that new habit into 8 baby steps.  Here are the baby steps for waking early:

1. get up within 5 minutes of alarm going off
2. go to bed at 10:00 p.m.
   
3. get up at 7:30 a.m.
4. get up at 7:00 a.m.
5. get up at 6:30 a.m.
6. get up at 6:00 a.m.
7. get up at 5:30 a.m.
8. get up at 5:00 a.m.

I should clarify that this is a 6 days/week plan.  I’m allowing myself one day per week to wake up without an alarm.  Most experts suggest that you should get up at the same time every day… mostly because that will train you to go to bed at the same time every night.  We’ll see how this goes.

Update: last night I reread the 6 Changes blog post and remembered that I needed to break down my change into 8 baby steps.  So I decided the first baby step was simply getting up with the alarm, rather than laying in bed dozing for another 30-45 minutes. (I use a clock radio so I would lay in bed listening to the local radio station.)

So today I got up a few minutes after the alarm went off.  Success on Day 1! 

photo credit sean dreilinger

Technorati Tags: baby steps, changes, habits, waking early

So it’s January 1st and everyone is writing about their New Year’s resolutions and goals for the year.  I found some new blogs this week that I’ve been reading and they inspired me to approach the start of this new year differently.

The first step was to pick the 4-5 things that are the most important to me.  This is from a post on the Zen Habits blog called Simple Living Manifesto. It didn’t occur to me right away but I soon realized that I had been writing them in my bio on social media sites:

• good food
• good wine
• good friends
• good health

The goal is to make time in your life for these things.

Next I stumbled onto another of Leo’s blogs where he describes the 6 Changes Method as an alternative to New Year’s resolutions and goal setting. Basically you choose 6 new habits that you want to form and cement in your life over the next year. So my 6 habits for 2010 are:

1. waking early
2. reading
3. listening to hypnotherapy CD’s
4. daily exercise
5. being present
6. having FUN

You work on each one of the habits for 2 months before working on another habit. I have chosen waking early as my first habit.  I’m declaring it publicly to you, my readers, so you can hold me accountable.

What does waking early mean? Ultimately my goal is to wake early so I can exercise in the morning before I go to work, rather than in the evening after dinner.  I’ve tried exercising in the evening before and my schedule was sporadic.

Since I’m not working now, waking early won’t mean o-dark-thirty… but it will mean earlier than I have been lately.  My intention is 7:00 a.m. tomorrow.  Haven’t been up that early on a Saturday in years.

I’ll be logging my progress here as well.  So hold me accountable… and maybe get inspired yourself along the way.

Happy New Year’s!

photo credit flightlessXbird

Technorati Tags: changes, goals, habits, new year's resolutions, waking early, zen