The question that brought my home into organizational homeostasis
Wikipedia defines homeostasis as “the property of a system [to] regulate its internal environment and tend to maintain a stable, constant condition.”
Well, my home’s constant condition was chaos, until I figured out the core of my problem. It will help you prevent clutter build up and have a happier house, too.
Spring clean your computer in 6 steps
Spring might be a ways off (especially in the Southern Hemisphere) but any time is good for a clean-up — for your computer as well as your home. This advice is for Windows XP, Vista or 7 (sorry Mac/Linux users but I wouldn’t know where to start!) and should be super-easy for anyone to follow.
Go paperless at home: 7 ideas for less clutter, less stress, and more free mindspace
So much paper comes into my house that I just don’t care about. Bills that don’t change month-to-month but that I should keep for my records, receipts, healthcare info, manuals — it’s all stuff I don’t WANT but I need to keep, just in case. Sound familiar? In an effort to make all our lives less cluttered, here are seven ways to get after a paperless house.
Tricks for storing holiday decorations so you can actually use them again
I love Christmas decos — it’s a chance to hide all the bits of the house I don’t like. But by March or April I really have to take them down again. Luckily, I’ve gotten really good at putting those decorations away so I can use them again next Christmas — no more broken baubles on the slate floor.
You owe me a dollar! A self-improving way to save for big goals.
My beloved and I are not the neatest people on earth. We try, and we spend quite a bit of time each week cleaning up our humble little home, but ultimately the place is usually a little messy.
That being said, he has a habit of leaving his shoes smack in the middle of the front door, and I trip over them every day when I get home from work. This shit drives me INSANE.
One day I snapped. I told him every time he leaves his shoes in front of the door he owes me a dollar. The habit persisted, and every dollar he gives me goes straight into our wedding bank.
How to blend two schools of thought about cleaning under one roof
I try to do daily cleaning until I get behind and overwhelmed. Then he will take a weekend and do a massive cleaning. We both end up feeling like the other one never does any cleaning. How can we find a better compromise?
Our family closet: we wash, dry, and store our clothes in one room
Family closets are usually used by large families but you don’t have to have five or more kids to benefit from a family closet. Heck, you don’t even need to have a kid to enjoy the ease of keeping all the clean laundry in one place.
De-mane the drain
My mane is a formidable opponent to my shower drain. After a few weeks of hair washing my nightly showers turn into shaths — that uncomfortable combination of showering and wading in backed up bath water.
I feel like I’m doing a great disservice to the environment by reaching for the Drano, and often envision a whale keeling over when I use it. I was wondering if any Homies have some proven natural concoctions for drain unclogging.