It’s time for new year’s resolution, again! People’s most popular resolution is “to get fit, work out more, make time for the gym …” In other words, be fit and healthy. Well, I actually started mine several weeks ago. I enrolled in a weight management program (WMP) that not only teaches me how to eat the right foods, it also includes how to bump up my metabolism through exercises and trim those giggling stored fat cells with the end result of losing weight and toning the body. I do not consider this a “diet”, gone those and each time they work, once I get off them, I gain the weight back and then some. Sounds familiar? Yes, because diets usually deprive you with the food you like to eat. Once off the diet and your back eating the same foods that got you to be over-weight and fat! [Read more...]
10 Steps for Clearing Your Clutter
Uncluttered Room
I used to devote a day or two clearing my clutter and organizing my home. This usually happens either when I have company coming over or when I can’t barely move around the room causing me so much emotional stress. Yes, I dreaded those days so I procrastinated and did not do it often enough. When I finally committed myself to simple living lifestyle, I poured over magazines, books and Internet postings about how to declutter and get organized. I came to realize that clearing your clutter needs not only determination, but a practical plan from start up to maintaining the uncluttered room .
The best way to clearing clutter is to do it in baby steps, following a Kaizen way of personal life. This way, the task does not become overwhelming and it does not take all your time to create an organized, uncluttered room for your simple living lifestyle. While in the process of clearing your clutter, put your buying binge on hold. [Read more...]
Sold Our House In This Down Housing Market
Almost two years ago, we decided to sell our Southern California home of 13 years when we found out that we will be moving overseas and that there is slim possibility of moving back to Southern California after that move. Our real estate agent warned us that it may take a while to sell our house due to the down housing market. There are houses like ours that have been on the market for almost a year and are still not sold. I told her that I will give it a try and I will ask God to help me find a buyer.
Several weeks before we sign the listing contract, we started to prepare the house for sale. It was quite hectic. Firstly, we had to get rid of all our unnecessary “stuff”. My husband and I have different opinion on how to handle this situation. His style of getting rid of the stuff is to load them in a rented dumpster and let the dumpster’s company to deal with the stuff. I did not want all the stuff to clutter our landfills. I wanted to either sell the stuff on Ebay, Craig’s List or through a garage sale, and donate those that did not get sold. We also did not agree on what is unnecessary. Since we did not have a lot of time to agree on what to get rid of, we took the lame way – we got rid [Read more...]
Kaizen for Personal Life
Kaizen is a combination of two Japanese words, 改 (“kai”) which means “change” and 善 (“zen”) which means “for better”. Put together, Kaizen indicates “change for better”. It has been translated universally as “continuous improvement”. It signifies the possibility of change through slow, incremental constant steps, creating powerful quality improvements in business and manufacturing processes. Having been trained in management and quality engineering, I used Kaizen in my former corporate life.
Kaizen’s concepts are real simple, yet it takes discipline, consistency and determination to be able to adapt them in our personal life.
The Road to Prudent Simple Living
Happy Life Simplified
Does simple living = a happy life? Yes! Does happy life = simple living? Not necessarily!