Simplified Living Solutions, Clear the path to a simpler life!

Food for Thought

If you hold on to the beautiful dish sets your mother collected after she dies, but they are wrapped up in boxes in the basement, are they really there as a memory of her? Wouldn’t it make more sense to save one of the dishes and display it? Or take a picture of the set and then pass them on to someone in need, or sell them?

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Making it Work

Since there was enough stuff in my spice cabinet to really fill two spaces, I separated the spices from the flour, sugar, etc. After raising a couple of the shelves in the cabinet so that the larger spaces were on the bottom two shelves, rather than the top two like it had been before, I began returning items to the cabinet.

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The Home

After determining your vision, sorting and then tossing your items, it’s time to determine where they should live based on their usage. I had an empty drawer in my kitchen that I hadn’t realized before. I shifted other items in my kitchen around so that the right size drawer was empty. I wanted to put my spices in a drawer so that I could make my vision for the spices a reality.

• I would be able to see the spices easily.
• I would be able to get anything out of the drawer I needed very quickly. And return the item to the drawer just as quickly.
• I could also reach in very quickly and get my Sweet & Low for my tea, rather than having to struggle with getting the box out of the cabinet each time I made a glass of tea.

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The Toss

After establishing my vision for the spice cabinet and sorting the items, it was time to toss or consolidate items.

1. Check expiration dates and toss expired items.
2. Consolidate duplicate and triplicate items.
3. Determine if you still need the items.

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The Sort

Once I figured out what wasn’t working with the spice cabinet, and what my vision was for it, I took everything out of the cabinet. Needless to say, there were many duplicate items and even more triplicates of items than I want to admit. After grouping like items with like items, this is what I found:

• 2 bags of sugar – one 1/2 full, one 1/8 full
• 2 bottles of virgin olive oil – both pretty full
• 3 bottles of vanilla – two full, one missing about 4 tablespoons
• 3 jars of chicken bouillon cubes – two missing about 6 cubes each, one 1/2 full
• 2 lemon peppers – one 1/3 full, one had about a tablespoon
• 2 garlic salts – one 1/2 full, one full
• 2 garlic powder – both about 1/2 full
• 1 bag flour – 1/3 full
• 1 bag brown sugar – 1/4 full
• 1 container coffee
• 1 package coffee filters
• 3 seasoning salts – one full, one 1/2 full, one 1/4 full
• 2 peppers – large one 2/3 full, small one 2/3 full
• 2 salts – one full, one 1/8 full
• 2 paprikas – large one 2/3 full, small one full
• 2 cinammons – large on 1/2 full, small one 1/2 full
• Several other random items

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The Vision

This spice cabinet in my home has not been working for a long time. It is crammed full of things, I can’t see what’s in there, and it’s a nightmare to get anything out of it. I’ve been putting off re-organizing this cabinet for so long because I didn’t want to stop and take time out of my busy schedule to do it. Saturday I tackled and conquered it.

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The Tree

I bought my house 3 years ago. There are two trees in the front yard that have been growing very haphazardly the entire time I’ve lived there. They look very messy and unkept. I finally tackled the trees this weekend and trimmed out all of the branches that were growing between other branches, going in the wrong direction or were too low. When I was finished, both trees looked like they had taken on a new life and a new direction. Finally free of the cluttered branches that weren’t serving them, and were actually harming them, they will now be able to grow stronger and more healthy.

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Paper, paper, everywhere!

I recently worked with a client that had 7-8 boxes of paperwork sort of scattered throughout her home. Dealing with the paperwork seemed daunting and overwhelming and so she just put it off. In reality though she was dealing with it every day by not dealing with it. She felt stressed, depressed, overwhelmed and out of control all of the time.

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My home is not perfect

People always ask me if my home is in perfect order, well it isn’t always. I do have a home for everything though, and so when it gets chaotic or I need to put everything back where it belongs, it doesn’t take long. You know, I have always been aware of the mental drain that a chaotic home or office environment has on people’s lives, but I recently got a taste of it first-hand.

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