The Simple Life: Always Keep Your Gas Tank Half Full

My parents have been telling me for years to keep my gas tank half full and within the past few months (beginning when gas became really expensive) my husband and I took their advice. You really never know how a simple habit like keeping your gas tank half full simplifies your life until you run into a sticky situation where you run out of gas at an inconvenient time and place.

This habit has been easy for us to maintain because we’re within five minutes of many gas stations. But for those who live farther, a little time and planning can help you keep your tank filled. Even with keeping our tank half full we only fill up about once a week since we don’t do that much driving.

In addition, if an emergency were ever to arise where gas was scarce we know we can get by for a few days. And if there was ever a catastrophe we would have enough gas for the hour-long drive to Tim’s parents. Since you never know when a catastrophe could occur, this simple habit could make a huge difference.

The Simple Life

Part of achieving simplicity is counting your blessings and being content with what you have. Making a list of what you are grateful for truly puts life into perspective.

Every Thanksgiving I make a thankful list. By doing this I feel so much gratitude for what I have and I realize the most important things in life aren’t money or things. Below are twenty of the things which I am grateful for, and this is just the beginning.

• God
• Family
• Friends
• Health
• Youth
• Education
• Freedom
• Food on the table and in the cupboards
• Warm clothes
• Shelter
• Running water
• Hot showers
• Sight
• Hearing
• Running car
• Technology
• Beautiful world
• Husband’s employment
• Savings
• Opportunity to stay at home and raise my child

The Simple Life

Today is part two of my series on “stuffitis”. Last week I talked about the perils of “stuffitis” and this week I will offer suggestions on how to conquer it.

Let me first put in a disclaimer that I am probably as organized/disorganized as the next person. But I have read many books on becoming more organized and I am starting to implement some habits to create a simpler home environment. My home this week was a lot more organized than last week, and that is how I measure my progress.

I get most of my inspiration from The Fly Lady. She has a list of 31 baby steps to begin decluttering your life. She stressed the power of simple habits to maintain a simple, uncluttered home and life. If you want to learn more you can also sign up for her mailing list here.

Here are 3 important things to consider when you begin to declutter your life

1) Remember that it took you months and years to accumulate your clutter, so it will take some time to organize and eliminate it. Don’t try to do too much at once or you’ll get discouraged and give up. Start with one simple area or room.

As I tackled my decluttering this week I realized I could only do a couple of areas without feeling burnout. My decluttering wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated because we’ve moved within the last year and got rid of a lot of stuff, but I still didn’t accomplish all that I wanted. My towels and kitchen cupboards are now organized but there are a few other areas to declutter in the next few weeks.

2) Challenge yourself to donate or toss as much as you can. Be harsh when deciding if you really need certain items and if you’ve really used them. Like I said last week, when we were without many of our items we really didn’t miss them.

3) Once it’s clean keep it that way. This was my major project of the week. Last Friday I spent a few hours completely cleaning the apartment with the goal to keep all of our living areas clean and clutter free. This meant unloading the dishwasher first thing in the morning, putting clothes straight into the laundry basket and picking up my son’s toys during nap.

This has been a challenge (and our bedrooms didn’t quite keep up with the rest of the house) but it has been well worth it. I have found I have more time to spend with my family and I feel less stressed knowing that the chores are done and my life is a little simpler.

The Simple Life

Part of being frugal and wise with your resources is learning the value of simplicity and order. Every Friday I will do a post on achieving simplicity. Today’s focus is the first of a two-part series on the perils of “stuffitis” and how to conquer it.

In this busy world of materialism, we can often get caught up in having “stuff”. This is detrimental in many ways to an orderly, peaceful home.

We had an eye-opening experience about “stuff” during the second year of our marriage, before children. We were moving from Idaho to Arizona for four months for an internship and job. We knew we could only take what fit in our Toyota Corolla and we put everything else in storage.

We ended up living in a small studio apartment. We bought a few pieces of basic furniture from Craigslist such as a dresser and an old couch. We used an air mattress as our bed. We didn’t have a microwave or many of our normal kitchen appliances.

Since we would be there only a short time we knew it would be pointless to accumulate stuff we couldn’t take back with us or sell when we left.

Yet the incredible part of this experience was that we didn’t notice most of the things we were missing that were in storage. We only had half of our clothes but we didn’t miss the other half. We only had half of our kitchen items but we didn’t miss those either. We could truly get by with less.

Now we are in a two-bedroom 1100 sq foot apartment and sometimes feel a little cramped. When we first moved here I was wondering how we would fill all the space but eventually “stuff” creeps up on you. Looking in my closets this week has had me reflecting on “stuffitis” and wondering if I have caught a bit of the bug myself.

I’ve learned that it takes time and money to purchase, store, organize and care for your stuff. The less stuff you have, the less time you need to find things, clean your home and organize your spaces. Also, if you have too much stuff and clutter you are more apt to lose things and then you’ll have to spend the money and time to replace them.

Also space is limited. If you have too much stuff you will need to spend money on either a bigger place a storage unit. Just like any limited resource you need to be wise about how you use space. 

For instance, a few months ago I bought two very large jugs of vinegar for cleaning. But now I’ve only used about 4 cups of one and the other is unopened. I thought that I’d be saving money by buying the larger item at a smaller unit price, but by saving pennies it’s costing more in space that I could use to store something else.

In addition clutter creates chaos and makes it more difficult to achieve a peaceful home environment.

There are different reasons people struggle with “stuffitis”. Some are trying to “keep up with the Joneses”. This quest is never-ending and only leads to discontentment and ingratitude. In addition, the compulsion to accumulate more often leads to buying more than you can afford and getting into debt. Contentment and gratitude are the keys to battling this quest.

Others struggle with “stuffitis” because they find security in “things” and can’t get rid of things because “someday I just might need this”. If this is you, take an honest assessment of items and how much you use them. If you haven’t used an item in 3-6 months, perhaps it’s time to donate it or toss it.

I find myself in the second group, keeping things because “someday I’ll use them”. However, my goal this next week is to do a deep inventory of what we have and what we could possibly donate, sell or toss to simplify our lives.

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