stepping stones

10 Steps for Clearing Your Clutter

November 17, 2011 By Pat Leave a Comment

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...]

Filed Under: Organizing, Wellness Tagged With: Kaizen, organizing, simple living, stepping stones

Living Debt Free

October 24, 2011 By Pat Leave a Comment

We live in a society that constantly inundates us with advertisement for this and that gizmo; why we deserve to own it NOW, coupled with the added enticement to pay later (“we accept credit cards” or “get easy installment payments” ). No wonder so many of us are in deep debt. I used to buy based on emotion – the ads convincingly enticed me that I really need it, so therefore I should buy it and buy it now. With no second thought, I used to pull out my wallet, pick out one of my assortment of plastics and proudly proclaim, “charge!”. You correctly guessed what I ended up with, mounting credit card debt.

When I finally became cognizant that I needed to change my lifestyle to pursue prudent living, I chose [Read more...]

Filed Under: Money Matters, Stepping Stones Tagged With: handling debt, money matters, personal finance, stepping stones

Budgeting Made Simple

October 22, 2011 By Pat Leave a Comment

Do you know where your money goes?

Budgeting is for everyone – rich or poor alike. It is a useful tool for tracking where our money goes. It helps us to live within our means and get out of debt. It can also help us save for the future. Budgeting, simply put, is a spending plan.

However, before we can accurately set up a household budget, we need to have a good understanding of what we’re spending our money on.

Here are the stepping stones on how to create a budget:

SS-1: Keep Track of Every Penny Spent for the Next 30 Days

Buy an inexpensive small notebook and list every expenditure you make however small it may be. If you put a quarter into a parking meter, write that down, too. This is the best way – writing it down right after you spend. If this is too tedious for you, the next best thing is to recount the expenses you made throughout that day at the end of the day. This will require a good memory and not more than 15 minutes each day. Because I tend to forget [Read more...]

Filed Under: Money Matters, Stepping Stones Tagged With: budgeting, money matters, personal finance, stepping stones