I’m not what I would call a social media maven. I’ve only used this blog in the past to document the steps my husband and I took to downsize into a smaller house. I have a Facebook account (SandyNork) that I look at once or twice a day (and, by the way, repost a lot … More Today’s Coffee: Origin Story. A little project grown large.
I’ve read a lot recently about how new purchases can set you up for “the domino effect.” Here is how it happens: you buy a new thing for your house, let’s say a new couch. The couch arrives at your home, and the delivery guys put it in place, and it looks great. But then … More Downsizing: The Domino Effect
My husband and I are about to buy a couch. This is our first major non-appliance purchase since we chose to downsize. Downsizing was a terrific experience for us. We worked hard, going through our belongings, deciding what we wanted to keep, getting rid of the rest. Downsizing was a long, exhausting process that now … More Downsizing: When It’s Time To Replace Furniture
It’s been a year since my husband and I cut our house and household in half and moved to our current home in Olde Orchard Hill. We are so glad we did it. We love it here! But we also know it’s time to fine-tune our downsizing. We decided when we moved that we would … More Downsizing: One Year In
Clearing out and donating items can be a happy and rewarding activity. Look at the kids in the graphic above, carrying their boxes of material goods away to someplace that will reuse them. From the look of their expressions, they are happy. In most cases, this is a great reflection of how it feels to … More Downsizing: The Hard Truth
For someone who never thought she had an affinity for math, I seem to do an awful lot with numbers. Taking inventory of supplies, checking grocery tallies, looking over the bill after lunch or dinner at a restaurant all require a certain amount of skill, not to mention accuracy and patience. Recently, counting helped me … More Downsizing: Counting
A lot of people are saying that 2016 is not ending soon enough. A lot of bad things have happened, they say, and it’s time to turn the page and move on. We have lost a lot of good people, many long before their time. We had a contentious election. We poisoned our water and … More Downsizing: 2016, Not a moment too soon
What is minimalism? It seems obvious, doesn’t it? It’s living with the minimum that one needs. The funny thing is, minimalism is different for every situation and for every person. The trick is finding out what that minimum level is for YOU. When I started out this journey, I did what comes natural to me: … More Downsizing: Minimalism
The first week of June, we were still living at the old house, but by our closing date, we were ready to move the last of the furniture and set up a new household. Appliances arrived, including a front-loading washer and dryer that dwarfed our new laundry room. At first, we were a bit taken … More Downsizing: Moving On, Saying Hello
While the flies still buzzed around the groundhog’s head in the back yard, I searched online for every angle I could think of about disposing of a dead animal. Legally, we couldn’t throw his corpse in the river. Tempting, but illegal. If we buried him, we’d have to dig at least six inches down into … More Downsizing: The Marmot’s Tale, Part 2
