I received this book in exchange
for an honest review from the author.
We're all looking for ways to live a simpler life.
Having less in our life is one way of making things easier.
The difficult part is culling the items we don't necessarily need.
In the book '50 Things To Know To Downsize Your Life' Lisa Rusczyk
points us in the right direction. She lists fifty things you can do to nudge yourself closer to downsizing and she does it logically by leading you from room to room in your home. She begins in the bedroom, then the kitchen, closets, bathroom, and ultimately the kids rooms!
Things I Have Been Doing
- Don't carry credit card debt
- store small toys in bay wipe containers
- 3 'see through' drawers (in my daughter's closets)
- Hanging shelves (in my daughter's closets)
- Shoe racks
- Don't have a guest room
Things I Want To Do/Have Been Wanting To Do
- Digitize cookbooks or enter recipes into cooking software I own. This is a project. One I've been avoiding for a long, long time.
- Kitchen cabinet reorganization. Most of our kitchen cabinets are the way we want them since we had our kitchen remodeled 4 years ago. But theres two cabinets that are a royal pain in the rear and I would love to have them organized properly.
- The silverware drawers. Too much siverware in my opinion. Not according to my husband though.
- Meal Planning. Yes, another one of those things that needs to happen, but just hasn't.
- Jewelry organization. This is going to happen for me real soon! I bought some ice cube trays from the dollar store to organize sets of earrings and necklaces to put in the top drawer of my dresser. Yay Me!
Things I'm Not Going To Do
- Owning one set of sheets per bed
- Owning two towels per person
- Shower Necessities (we like our girly 'goop' s my hubby calls it)
About The Author (from Amazon.com)
Lisa Rusczyk is the creator of the popular blog Charlie The Cavalier and 50 Things to Know Books. Lisa is passionate about helping others in life. She also enjoys Cavalier King Charles Spaniels a breed that she have loved for years. Lisa is currently a stay-at-home Mom, but has been an instructional designer, software trainer, and technical writer in the past. She was recently featured on CNN's HLN for a fire pit project.
Lisa is a Doctoral student in Educational Leadership who happened to start writing her first book 50 Things to Know Before Having a Baby after her little girl was born. Her book sold over 1,000 copies in the first year on Amazon. Today, she has over 15 books and helps others self-publish. Further, she shares this information with the public via this blog, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and recently on a local Pennsylvania television station. Lisa knows that like her, there are a lot of people who would like concise information on a topic in one digital location. Lisa is known for her simple and effective tips.
Please check out Lisa's other books here.
So now that I've read the book I feel like I need to get my butt in gear and do even more Spring cleaning than I thought was ahead of me!
It's nice to have a plan and it will feel even better once the tasks are complete! Happy Simplifying everyone!
I received this book in exchange
for an honest review from the author.
We're all looking for ways to live a simpler life.
Having less in our life is one way of making things easier.
The difficult part is culling the items we don't necessarily need.
In the book '50 Things To Know To Downsize Your Life' Lisa Rusczyk
points us in the right direction. She lists fifty things you can do to nudge yourself closer to downsizing and she does it logically by leading you from room to room in your home. She begins in the bedroom, then the kitchen, closets, bathroom, and ultimately the kids rooms!
Things I Have Been Doing
- Don't carry credit card debt
- store small toys in bay wipe containers
- 3 'see through' drawers (in my daughter's closets)
- Hanging shelves (in my daughter's closets)
- Shoe racks
- Don't have a guest room
Things I Want To Do/Have Been Wanting To Do
- Digitize cookbooks or enter recipes into cooking software I own. This is a project. One I've been avoiding for a long, long time.
- Kitchen cabinet reorganization. Most of our kitchen cabinets are the way we want them since we had our kitchen remodeled 4 years ago. But theres two cabinets that are a royal pain in the rear and I would love to have them organized properly.
- The silverware drawers. Too much siverware in my opinion. Not according to my husband though.
- Meal Planning. Yes, another one of those things that needs to happen, but just hasn't.
- Jewelry organization. This is going to happen for me real soon! I bought some ice cube trays from the dollar store to organize sets of earrings and necklaces to put in the top drawer of my dresser. Yay Me!
Things I'm Not Going To Do
- Owning one set of sheets per bed
- Owning two towels per person
- Shower Necessities (we like our girly 'goop' s my hubby calls it)
About The Author (from Amazon.com)
Lisa Rusczyk is the creator of the popular blog Charlie The Cavalier and 50 Things to Know Books. Lisa is passionate about helping others in life. She also enjoys Cavalier King Charles Spaniels a breed that she have loved for years. Lisa is currently a stay-at-home Mom, but has been an instructional designer, software trainer, and technical writer in the past. She was recently featured on CNN's HLN for a fire pit project.
Lisa is a Doctoral student in Educational Leadership who happened to start writing her first book 50 Things to Know Before Having a Baby after her little girl was born. Her book sold over 1,000 copies in the first year on Amazon. Today, she has over 15 books and helps others self-publish. Further, she shares this information with the public via this blog, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and recently on a local Pennsylvania television station. Lisa knows that like her, there are a lot of people who would like concise information on a topic in one digital location. Lisa is known for her simple and effective tips.
Please check out Lisa's other books here.
So now that I've read the book I feel like I need to get my butt in gear and do even more Spring cleaning than I thought was ahead of me!
It's nice to have a plan and it will feel even better once the tasks are complete! Happy Simplifying everyone!
Posted at
12:19 PM
| by
Elle
Hello readers! I did not mean to go missing in action (MIA) from my brand new blog, but it happened. My oldest daughter's birthday, shopping, Christmas, decorating....you get the picture. What matters is I am back and hoping to add more posts as the year progresses. I'm not exactly sure what direction I am taking this blog, that is why I have left it open for many subjects. I thought of a lot of topics to post about over the past few months, but unfortunately I did not write my ideas down. Live and learn.
For now I will just chat a bit about things that I have been focusing on and goals I am going to try to reach for the new year.
Organizing My House
Now that 99.9% of the Christmas decorations are down and put away, it makes it much easier to focus on de-cluttering the house. And to change things around a bit since we spend a lot of time inside. This isn't the biggest challenge though. The monkey on my back is the laundry room/workout area and the back room where 'things' seem to just accumulate and there is no rhyme or reason where to find things once items start to pile up. My TBR (to-be-read) bookshelf is back there and needs to be re-organized, my husband's albums (he got some turntable thing that connects to his computer for Christmas so he can convert them), my scrapbooking supplies, his worktable to fix electronics & what not, my craft shelf of all kinds of crafts (kind of organized), and there are 2 wardrobes back there where we keep our clothes that are not in season (that is pretty organized too). I started on the laundry/workout area last week, but it's in limbo right now because I kind of get sick of the 'time it takes to decide what to get rid of, where to go with what' scenario. I did workout on my elliptical machine three times in the past week because I had been working at straightening up that room and felt guilty that I had not used the machine since April '09! So good things are coming from my efforts. I just need to continue so I can finish what I started.
Computer Organization
Files, bookmarks, programs I use, ones I don't, finding sites that can help me accomplish my organizing goals online and so on. I will get more in depth with this once I tell you some of the things I have found and am still in search of to help me with my online life.
Well, I gotta run! Happy 2010 Everyone!
Hello readers! I did not mean to go missing in action (MIA) from my brand new blog, but it happened. My oldest daughter's birthday, shopping, Christmas, decorating....you get the picture. What matters is I am back and hoping to add more posts as the year progresses. I'm not exactly sure what direction I am taking this blog, that is why I have left it open for many subjects. I thought of a lot of topics to post about over the past few months, but unfortunately I did not write my ideas down. Live and learn.
For now I will just chat a bit about things that I have been focusing on and goals I am going to try to reach for the new year.
Organizing My House
Now that 99.9% of the Christmas decorations are down and put away, it makes it much easier to focus on de-cluttering the house. And to change things around a bit since we spend a lot of time inside. This isn't the biggest challenge though. The monkey on my back is the laundry room/workout area and the back room where 'things' seem to just accumulate and there is no rhyme or reason where to find things once items start to pile up. My TBR (to-be-read) bookshelf is back there and needs to be re-organized, my husband's albums (he got some turntable thing that connects to his computer for Christmas so he can convert them), my scrapbooking supplies, his worktable to fix electronics & what not, my craft shelf of all kinds of crafts (kind of organized), and there are 2 wardrobes back there where we keep our clothes that are not in season (that is pretty organized too). I started on the laundry/workout area last week, but it's in limbo right now because I kind of get sick of the 'time it takes to decide what to get rid of, where to go with what' scenario. I did workout on my elliptical machine three times in the past week because I had been working at straightening up that room and felt guilty that I had not used the machine since April '09! So good things are coming from my efforts. I just need to continue so I can finish what I started.
Computer Organization
Files, bookmarks, programs I use, ones I don't, finding sites that can help me accomplish my organizing goals online and so on. I will get more in depth with this once I tell you some of the things I have found and am still in search of to help me with my online life.
Well, I gotta run! Happy 2010 Everyone!
Posted at
2:15 PM
| by
Lisa E.
