Day 58: Switching the Lightbulbs

The Task:  To (finally) switch our incandescent light bulbs out for energy efficient Light Emitting Diode (LED) and Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL)

The Why:  It's kind of embarrassing that here we are on day fifty-eight of this journey doing the first thing most people do when they want to decrease their energy consumption.

When the CFLs first came out we did buy a box of them with a 50% off coupon and replaced three light bulbs in the house.  That was about all we could afford that day, so we figured we'd switch the rest out over time and it just never happened.

Incandescent light bulbs are notoriously inefficient. I've read many times that they release 90% of the electricity consumed as heat and only 10% as light!  Plus, they burn out more often, which means more manufacturing, more packaging to end up in landfills, and more fuel needed to ship them to our local stores.  

So this weekend we had some light bulbs than needed replacing, a reasonably fresh paycheck still partially unspent, and great sale at a nearby hardware store.  It seemed like a good time to upgrade.

The How: We replaced most of our lights with CFLs.  There is one light above the bathtub that we leave on at night as a sort of nightlight (we live in the country and there are no street lights outside, so we would literally be walking into walls on our way to the bathroom if we didn't leave some sort of light on!) so we splurged and switched that one out for an LED that uses only 4 watts of electricity.  Now I can feel so much better about leaving that light on all night!

There are two lights in the master bedroom that are on dimmers, and dimmable CFL's weren't on sale this week, and we aren't bazillionaires, so we're going to wait for the mega expensive dimmable CFL's to go on sale before making that last upgrade.

The Verdict: I added up the watts of our before bulbs and after bulbs.  Before making the switch we had 1546 watts of light in our house.  Now we have a total of 413 watts of light!

Plus, we did the math, and if these bulbs really last the 6 or 7 years they are supposed to, compared to the old lights that needed to be replaced approximately twice a year, we are actually spending less on light bulbs, albeit, all at once. So the situation feels kind of win-win.

We are doing one small thing (almost) every day for a year to create a simpler, quieter, more intentional life. Take a moment to read all About Us, check out The Rules of our year long project and sign up for our RSS feed or "like" us on facebook so that you can follow our journey to radical simplicity!

Day 55: Decluttering the Clutter Busters {ha!}

The Task: To get rid of some of the racks, dividers, totes and baskets that are now useless because I'm no longer trying to cram as much stuff as I can into our space!

The Why:  Today's task is as much a celebration as it is a chore.  In the last 55 days of decluttering we have made a huge stack of empty totes, bins, and organizers in our basement. 

Minimalism is turning all those storage solutions that we thought would fix our clutter problems into clutter!

The How:  I am keeping a few favourite baskets until we are done decluttering/reorganizing because I may find that a certain basket is useful in a place I haven't dealt with just yet.  I'm also keeping some large totes because they make for a great place to brood baby chickens (if you don't know what I'm talking about, that's okay)  but for the most part, these things can go. I can't believe that just 2 months ago we had enough stuff to fill all of these baskets and totes and bags and bins!  

I'm giving away some of these things to friends on facebook and I'm packing up our thrift store donations in reusable bins, the thrift store can either sell the bins or use them!

We talked about saving the bins until we move, but there isn't a move on our immediate horizon and free cardboard boxes are easy enough to come by.

The Verdict:   This just makes me smile.  It feels like a reason to celebrate.  I no longer stroll through stores looking for clever ways to stash my stuff.  Our closets have tons of room because they aren't filled with things that add nothing to our life.  I am loving how much easier it is to keep our spaces tidy and organized with less stuff.  Hooray!

Plus, I feel a little bit like we're "sticking it to the man", so to speak.  We are solving our clutter problem without making a trip to a fancy home store or buying the latest clever storage solution.  We're learning that the answer to a more peaceful, cozy, welcoming home is not about having the right stuff, but less stuff. 

What about you guys?   I know many of you are following along, radically minimizing your own belongings as well. Do you have a pile of totes and storage devices that are evidence of how far you've come?  Are you finding your home easier to keep tidy and organized with less stuff around?

We are doing one small thing (almost) every day for a year to create a simpler, quieter, more intentional life. Take a moment to read all About Us, check out The Rules of our year long project and sign up for our RSS feed or "like" us on facebook so that you can follow our journey to radical simplicity!

Day 54: Choosing a Better Thrift Store

Not everything we're getting rid of is going to a thrift store.  Some things are passed on to friends and family, some to people we know in our community who need them, some to shelters, pregnancy crisis centers and other charities.  A few large items have been sold online (with the caveat that we must immediately give away or put the money we receive from it towards our debt!)   But many of the things we are decluttering are going to the thrift store.

In the city near our home, there are a number of thrift stores.

There is one that is situated in the fancy, shiny, commercial part of town.  It's a giant department store style thrift store that sells things for just a tiny bit less than they would be new. It's not uncommon for dollar store items to be priced at 99 cents or a pair of jeans to be seventeen bucks! 

This store is really easy to donate to.  They're located across from the mall, around the corner from our church.  They are open long hours every day of the week and they have one of those bells that rings when you pull up to the donation centre so that a store person can come out and help you unload all of your junk.

Up until recently, we didn't give it much thought. We just took stuff to the convenient donation centre at the side of the great big fancy thrift store. Our motivation was to get the things out of our home, not to see them redistributed to those who need them.

In contrast, all over the city there are small not-for-profit thrift stores that are intentionally located in the parts of town where they are needed most.  These places have a reputation for selling baby clothes for a quarter and giving deals to single moms with armloads of back to school clothes.  Many of them use the proceeds from the thrift store to fund valuable community services such as food banks and shelters.  They aren't as convenient to donate to, they have fewer hours of operation and no extra staff members to help you unload.  But for us, once we thought about it, the decision was easy.

The word redistribution has been on my mind a lot lately.  Some of us have way too much while many have too little.  We are carefully choosing to take our unneeded items to a store that was designed to redistribute these things to those who need it, and it's desire is to serve and bless the community.

So that's today's task.  To be more intentional about where our stuff goes.  And to give things away with reckless abandon knowing that it will end up in the hands of somebody who needs it far more than I do. 

By the way, this post was originally slated for yesterday. But then Luke's work crew, who was planning to be out of town on a job all week finished their work early and Luke came home unannounced 2 days early,  surprising me with a few flowers and fancy truffles from a lovely little chocolate shop on route. 

 So I ate chocolate and snuggled my man instead. 

We are doing one small thing (almost) every day for a year to create a simpler, quieter, more intentional life. Take a moment to read all About Us, check out The Rules of our year long project and sign up for our RSS feed or "like" us on facebook so that you can follow our journey to radical simplicity!

Day 52: Sorting and Storing Kids' Clothes

The Task:  To radically reduce the amount of kids clothes we have stored in the basement.

The Why:  Our 6th baby (a girl!) is due in December, less than a week after my oldest child will turn 6.  That means that we are approximately one week short of having six kids in six years.  When you are perpetually pregnant, you acquire a lot of baby clothes. 

It isn't uncommon for friends who are done having kids to give us big black garbage bags filled with clothes. We've also received clothing as baby gifts and I've been known to browse my local thrift store for great deals, especially when that pregnancy nesting urge causes me to swoon at the sight of anything itsy-bitsy.

 My solution, up until now, has been to immediately donate any items I know for sure that I won't use and to store the rest in totes, sorted by size.  This "solution" has resulted in us collecting hoards of children's clothing.  It's like a Baby GAP outlet in our basement.

This is embarrassing...

Eeek!  Insane, right?  Yesterday I had to haul all of this up from the basement (in my pregnant, tired, grumpy state) tote by tote and sort through it all.  I swear that the best way to become a minimalist real quick is to haul all of your crap a long enough distance from where it was hiding that you just don't want to haul it all back!

The How:  My favourite decluttering technique that I've embraced on this journey of less is to set limits for our stuff.  It allows us to keep only what we've decided we can reasonably use and store, and it discourages shopping because we have a limit on how much space our stuff can fill up.

So I set a limit of four bins of clothing for our kids to grow in to: one for the baby girl on the way, one for our twin girls, one for my little boy, and one for my two oldest girls (who are close enough in age and size that things get handed down without needing to be stored anywhere in between.)

I'm giving away all of the clothing items that I never particularly liked or that we have too many of.  Very worn and ratty things are becoming rags.

Also, I'm giving away all of the boy stuff my son has grown out of.

*sniff*

I asked a good friend yesterday if she would like some of the baby boy clothes for her son and she responded by asking me the very thing I had been asking myself.  You're getting rid of the baby boy clothes? But what if....?

What if we have another baby after this one?  And what if it's a boy?

The math of the matter suggests that if we have another baby after this one (undecided) and it's a boy (turns out the whole "it must be a boy, since you have so many girls" thing is not actually scientifically sound), my son will be nearly 5 years old by then. That is a long time to be hoarding adorable little boy clothes, just in case.

It should be a crime to keep spiffy little outfits like this hoarded in the basement when some other little man could be wooing hearts in it. No?

The Verdict:  I know I told you all a while back that I'm not very sentimental, but I'll confess; packing up the little boy clothes choked me up a little bit. I'll get over it.

I have 5 big blue recycling bags full of clothes to take to the thrift store, plus a box of girl stuff for a friend having her first baby girl this winter and a box of the best of the boy stuff for my friend's little man.

And I'm left with my 4 totes of clothing plus 3 smaller totes of winter gear such as snow suits and boots.

And my favourite part: because I got rid of so much stuff, I'm able to store everything I'm keeping in matching totes.  Yes, that's the kind of thing that makes me giddy!

The Lessons We're Learning:  Honestly, decluttering is a hassle.  I don't want to do all this work and then keep collecting and consuming stuff and have to do it all again in another 5 years.  We don't want to spend our lives moving our stuff around, and having yard sales, and finding versatile organizational solutions so that we can cram as much as possible into our storage areas.

We need to be more careful about what we bring into the home, pickier about how many hand-me-downs we accept (although we are certainly grateful for them!), and quicker to redistribute things we don't need. 

Oh, and free stuff is never entirely free.  It costs time, energy, space, and sometimes even a trip to the mall for a cute little cardigan to go with it.

We are doing one small thing (almost) every day for a year to create a simpler, quieter, more intentional life. Take a moment to read all About Us, check out The Rules of our year long project and sign up for our RSS feed or "like" us on facebook so that you can follow our journey to radical simplicity!

Day 51: No More Answering Machine

Can I start by letting you all in on the embarrassing truth that every single conversation Luke and I have had, ever, about an answering machine has resulted in at least one of us breaking out in the chorus of this ridiculous song.  It's actually been stuck in my head all morning. Now it's stuck in your head too. You're welcome. 

The Task:  Ditch the answering machine (and the double handset cordless phone it's attached to!)

The Why: 

1. I'm home, like, 95% of the time.  Seriously, it's kind of sad. 
2. Pretty much every time that I don't answer the phone because I'm busy snuggling a baby to sleep or changing a diaper and I think to myself  "I'll just let the machine get it", the caller doesn't leave a message.  And then I'm mad at all of humanity for no good reason.
3. We really don't need to be accessible at all times. Do we?
4. If it's important, they'll call back.
5. Or they could call Luke's cell phone, or email me, or facebook us. Or drive to our house and leave a note on the door.
6. And if somebody isn't able to do any of those things to contact us they are  probably just calling to sell us tickets to the circus, or invite us to take a short customer satisfaction survey.

The only reason we have an answering machine is because somebody gave us one for free and then it broke, so we replaced it.  And when we replaced it we bought one that comes with two cordless phones because that's the kind of phones people have these days, right?  But then we had to keep our cheap 7 dollar no-electricity-needed phone  for the not uncommon occurrence that the power fails in our rural community.

So now we have three phones.

In a 1000 square foot house!

And the really funny part is that the cord on the cheap 7 dollar phone is so long that you can actually walk pretty much anywhere in the house with it, making the (two handset!) cordless phone purchase kinda, um, dumb.  I don't know what we were thinking.

The How: We listed the cordless phones with answering machine for sale on kijiji, and plugged in our zero-electricity old-fashioned plain-jane wall phone.  Although the energy savings from this switch won't make a noticeable difference on our electricity bill, I like that we aren't wasting electricity on a completely unnecessary device.

And imagine how much electricity we would save as a society if everybody ditched the electronics they could happily live without?

The Verdict:  I can see why answering machines were a great thing when they were invented. There was a time when it was difficult to relay information to people.  But with cell phones and email and facebook, I think we are far more likely to suffer from being too accessible than not accessible enough!

And if I'm snuggling a baby and the phone rings and I choose not to get it, I can be pretty sure that I'm not missing out on anything more important than the precious moment I'm enjoying.

New here? Welcome!  We are doing one small thing (almost) every day for a year to create a simpler, quieter, more intentional life. Take a moment to read all About Us, check out The Rules of our year long project and sign up for our RSS feed or "like" us on facebook so that you can follow our journey to radical simplicity!