Am I the only one confused about this whole “adulting” thing? Why wasn’t there ever a crash course on how a person is supposed to keep it altogether?!? I just keep telling myself that I can’t be the only one lost at trying to create a life and home and lifestyle for myself and my family. In creating this blog, I hope to create an online resource for myself – and others – to refer back to with all of my online research in creating my dream life. As I was doing research on how I could create my dream life, I wanted an online way to keep it all organized; and I thought there must be other people like myself out there looking for this same information. So this blog was born.
Basically, I am just sick of having a ridiculous amount of scratch pieces of paper and random spiral notebooks littering my desk. Hence the idea for an online blog to keep all of my ideas organized in one central location. There will be a number of different topics that I will be researching, and I hope to keep it all organized for easy retrieval of recipes, ideas, and book reviews.
What’s the one thing I hate being asked every single day; especially when I have just walked in the door from a long day at work: “What’s for dinner?” Seriously why do these kids want to eat every single day?!?! And while I will typically tend to attempt to live off coffee alone, even I like to eat too. Before the kids and hubby came along, I ate nearly every meal either out at a restaurant or driving through fast food. This was neither healthy for my body nor my wallet. After my first son was born I started Googling easy recipes to make at home so we didn’t have to eat out as much. I immediately noticed that my stubborn “last five pounds” very quickly melted away and as an added bonus we had a little extra money each week. Trust me when I say that if I can learn to cook, then anyone can! So I will spend a lot of time researching super easy (usually one-pot) meals and saving them here on my blog so I don’t have to deal with cookbooks.
Soon after I started meal-planning – and actually grocery shopping for more than just good coffee- I found this crazy show on TLC: Extreme Couponing – these ladies were crazy! And while I have never been able to buy $900 of stuff for only $20, I have certainly had fun seeing how much “paper” money I can use to buy things at the store. It’s like the paper money from Monopoly came to life and we are allowed to finally use it to buy stuff! Only it comes every weekend in my Sunday paper and I have a little too much fun cutting out my coupons. And since I am trying to work my way through Dave Ramsey’s baby steps, I am trying to save as much money as I can at the store; so I will be sharing weekly couponing deals here.
I admit I am an avid reader, so when I have a problem or question about something I will usually start with a simple Google search and eventually end with ordering too many books for my Kindle! We are all so busy that I know taking the time to read an entire book seems daunting, and I know that not everyone likes to read as much as I do. Having said that I want to share with you a sort of “cliffs notes” version of each book I read so maybe you don’t have to take the time to read the whole thing, especially if you are not as avid a reader as I am – I hope this information helps you as much as it has me. My intention is to create an entire section of book reviews here. If you decide you do want to read the book there is a link to each book on Amazon. This is an affiliate link and won’t cost you extra, but it will help me offset the cost of hosting this website and blog domain.
Lastly, another project that has been weighing on my mind and heart (and pocketbook!) is my ridiculous need to hold onto things forever. I can’t be the only one who watches “Hoarding: Buried Alive” just so that I can feel better about myself and reassure myself “See! At least I am not that bad!” But in all honesty I don’t want to be “not that bad” I want to be a good steward of my resources, and continually holding onto things that I don’t need isn’t helping when I am trying to incessantly clean behind a very curious toddler and keep him safe at the same time. I invite you to follow along here in my journey to attempt to not only downsize my life but really the better term might be “right-size” my life as I have spent too much time and money living an oversized lifestyle.
We are all on this journey called life together, and I hope that my few thoughts and ideas can be helpful to at least one other person as we try to put it all together; so come along for the ride and enjoy!