Once upon a time… I owned the beautiful antique reed pump organ in these photos*. It was black walnut and oak with intricately carved panels and delicate calligraphy lettering on the red velvet encased stops. It provided a workout when played, because the air forced through it to create sound was produced by pumping its large pedals. It was one of the first antiques my mom purchased back in the 1960’s and it was the first “piano” … Read More
Why Do You Shop? Have you ever thought about why you shop? If not, I urge you to give it some thought. We all shop for different reasons. We shop because we need things like food or shelter. We shop because we want things, like tools to make our lives easier or trendy clothes so we can feel stylish. We may even shop as a means of coping, what some term “retail therapy.” There was a time … Read More
I need to buy a new computer this year. I have a six-year-old Mac with a 512K hard drive and it’s not long for this world. I was planning to upgrade to a terabyte of memory, but was shocked to learn that doubling the memory would cost me $400! This quickly made me wonder how much storage space I really needed. If you’ve been reading for a while you know that I’m minimizing the rest of my … Read More
It seems everyone I’m coming in contact with lately is adding one more task to their list or one more activity to their calendar. There’s even a commercial on tv that challenges us, “Who wouldn’t want more?” As someone who is actively minimizing I’m paying close attention to the idea of “more.” We’ve been conditioned to believe that more is better. My husband and I often joke about one of our college accounting professors instilling in us … Read More
We all experience unfortunate situations that throw a big old wrench in our plans. For me recently, the wrench was a power outage on a Friday morning in December. Whatever its nature, the wrench is almost guaranteed to create internal dialogue like mine when the power went out at 8AM: “Ugh! How am I going to shower and get dressed in the dark before the painters arrive?“ “Oh no, the painters! They can’t possibly finish … Read More
It’s been almost a year (September 2015) since I shared with you in this blog. In September 2015 my husband and I were on the verge of minimizing our world by moving to a smaller house nearer the city center and closer to my husband’s office and our favorite activities. It was a move that would allow us to experiment with living a life more closely aligned with our emerging values of a healthier lifestyle, simplicity, a smaller … Read More
I’d like to share a comment from a reader who played the #MinsGame in February. She was excited to report the release of a significant number items and sent me the following message: Hi, Andrea – week one of the challenge – Collected things throughout the week and escorted them out of the house today. 28 items and 40 more pounds gone – YAY!!! Items included blouses/shirts, a mini trampoline, my cross-country skis (I used to have so much fun … Read More
When do you do your best thinking? Your most productive thinking? The thinking that yields the most AH-HA!!! moments? When do you have the most energy? When are you most ready to take on the world? Morning, afternoon, evening, or after everyone else has gone to bed? Which day of the week do you get the most done? Are you a hit-the-ground-running-on-Monday-morning person or do you need Monday to ramp up so you can knock it out … Read More
This is a big month for releasing! I’m playing the #MinsGame with a number of you this month. If you’re like me and you value the environment it’s important to keep as many discards as possible out of the landfill. Today I want to share a few of my favorite tools for more environmentally friendly disposal of your cast-offs. 1) One of my favorite tools for helping my local clients find an ideal release site is the Cuyahoga … Read More
I recently attended a monthly meeting where a couple of people stopped to ask me how my holidays were. This wasn’t casual conversation though. They were genuinely curious because they had last seen me in mid December when I shared that my family was experimenting with skipping Christmas in 2014. When I shared the results, one of my colleagues suggested I blog about it, not next October as I had planned, but now while the holidays are … Read More