Energy, Space & Time

I was surfing around the World Wide Web this morning and came across the words

Energy, Space & Time

These three words carry quite a punch. They speak of the universe and quantum physics. They speak of Star Trek and Firefly. But they also speak of what each of us strives for every single day.

We all want more energy to do what we love; start a business, work on hobbies and generally bring our dreams to reality. We all want more space to feel free and be ourselves. And we all want more time with our family, our friends and time to ourselves.

The great thing about these three simple words is that when they are put together in a magical way they lead to something much more than their individual parts. They can lead to happiness, success, wealth and satisfaction.

10 Household Items To Throw Away

I recently started cleaning my parents' house for extra money and I noticed that they have a lot of "cleaning supplies" that were supposed to "make cleaning easier". But after using some of them I convinced my mom that they should just be thrown away. So, bye bye to the steamer/vacuum and the fancy toilet scrubber with the one-time-use scrubber pad.

It's easy to get sucked into buying something like that. This is the 2000's, right? We were supposed to have flying cars and molecular microwaves or something. We shouldn't be cleaning our 21st century houses with the mops our grandparents used!

Quiet Questions

I often wonder what is was like for Americans back when they had to grow their own food and it took days or months to get places...on horseback.

Did they have goals? Did they enjoy their life? While they slaved away in the field did they have an idea that inspired them to create something?

What I've learned from Extreme Couponing

I have learned a lot from Extreme Couponing and frugal spending for the last few months. And I'm surprised how much of what I've learned has helped deepen my Sanity & Satisfaction.

1. I've been taught to love, and therefore buy, only certain types of brands. One of the first things you must learn to be successful at Extreme Couponing is to ditch brand loyalty. In order to save lots of money you must be open to using coupons for similar items you usually buy but aren't your favorite brand. It's a bit uncomfortable at first but after a while you stop noticing.

Simplicity & The Smorgasbord

I was doing yoga in my living room this morning and glanced at 3 of my exercise/fitness books. I immediately thought, "why do I need 3 exercise books". I also keep 10 exercise videos in my Netflix Instant Queue and have a binder with several teared out pages of exercises and tips I found in various magazines.

I've been wrestling recently with the ideas of Simplicity and Smorgasbord. Everyone tells you that you should reduce the amount of stuff (tasks, food, meetings, news, household items, etc) in your life to make it less stressful. I agree with this practice but it's hard to reduce stuff when you are trying to educate yourself or acquire new skills.