Can You Live With Less?

I think this guy has perfected the art of living in a small space.  It is truly remarkable how he has maximized such a small space.

Temptation

I come from a long line of shoppers.  My grandmother and mother are professional shoppers by all accounts, they take it very serious.  It is more like a sport, think of their credit card balances as a score card, the one with the smaller balance wins.    These two know how to work the system to get the best deals, shop the sales before the sale and then return the items during to sale only to re-buy them at a lower price.    They know all the sales people at the department stores.   When my grandmother died she had 4 closets full of clothes, shoes and handbags, most of which still had the tags on.  She didn't like wearing the clothes as much as she liked the idea of having something new and the game of buying.

As a kids I was conditioned to shop.  I would be taken along on these all day shopping sprees and even had to bring extra shoes in case my feet hurt.   This spilled over into my life and I love to shop, I love to go into store and look, I love to shop online.  So not buying anything for a year is going to be very hard, so to help myself I am removing temptation . . . unsubscribing to any retail store's emails,  cancelling catalogues from retailers and cancelling my magazine subscriptions.

Fingers crossed this helps, at least it's going to save some paper!

Going Green for 2015

This year as part of my 2015 goals I decided to go more green and reduce the amount of waste that I generate.    This was all brought on from a vacation I took where the beautiful beach was littered with plastic containers and bottles from everyday items.  It made me mad, but then I thought I only have myself to blame as I was a consumer of the same type of items.

This blog will chronicle my journey to be more waste free over the next year.    I have given myself four rules to follow.

1)  Only use re-usuable cups - so that means bye-bye disposable coffee cups.
2) Compost
3) Buying nothing new for 1 whole year, so I am going to have to be resourceful or go without some things.  I can accept new gifts, but I have told my family that for birthdays and holidays either don't get me anything or instead give an experience.
4) Buy food in bulk rather than packaged food and using my own containers and bags to put these items in at the grocery store.