We have a surprising amount of paperwork. Despite trying to deal with all our paperwork electronically, we've still gathered enough of it to fill two drawers of a filing cabinet. Quite a lot of that has been tax returns over the years, but I'd also filed away all kinds of … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 16 – Paperwork Edition
Road Trip Preparation
3 Months Until Our 50 State Road Trip – Here’s How Our Planning’s Going
Back on July 1, I shared our preparation plans for the six months leading up to our 5 year, 50 state road trip. Well, it's been three months since I wrote that post which means it's only three months until we leave. I was curious how much of that preparation we'd done, so … [Read more...] about 3 Months Until Our 50 State Road Trip – Here’s How Our Planning’s Going
Extreme Minimalism: Week 15 – Hot Stuff Edition
It's week 15 of our Extreme Minimalism challenge and it's definitely getting harder by the week. We're now just over 2/3 of the way through the challenge. However, we're not even halfway through based on the number of items. That's because we have to let go of an increasing … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 15 – Hot Stuff Edition
Extreme Minimalism: Week 14 – Easter In September Redux Edition
"What's all this crap on the floor?" At Easter back in 2010, Shae and I were group home parents (full-time foster care parents) in California. Like I mentioned last week, holidays are a big thing in our house. Shae therefore planned all kinds of special stuff for our girls to … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 14 – Easter In September Redux Edition
Extreme Minimalism: Week 13 – Easter In September Edition
We're all about holidays in our household. Santa visits our home every Christmas and Shae leaves him cookies and milk as well as carrots for the reindeer. She also sometimes leaves him a note to let him know that she's been good that year. One time, Santa left a note in reply … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 13 – Easter In September Edition
Extreme Minimalism: Week 12 – Random Crap Edition
Most weeks of our extreme minimalism challenge have had some kind of theme. There's been kitchen stuff, wifey stuff, puppy stuff, stationery stuff and more. Well, this week's theme is... random stuff. While Shae was going through one of our closets, she pulled out all kinds … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 12 – Random Crap Edition
Extreme Minimalism: Week 11 – Stationery Edition
OK, so for the last two weeks I haven't really gone to extreme lengths when minimizing our stuff. We had a couple of busy weeks of travel looming, so I went for the low-hanging fruit of minimizing our overstocked pencil and pen collection. Considering we hardly ever write … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 11 – Stationery Edition
Extreme Minimalism: Week 10 – Still Sort Of Cheating Edition
As you might have read last week, I sort of changed my self-imposed rules for our Extreme Minimalism challenge by counting 27 coloring pencils as 27 different items. That was because we had a busy week-and-a-half of travel coming up, so I'd wanted it to be a quick … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 10 – Still Sort Of Cheating Edition
Extreme Minimalism: Week 9 – Sort Of Cheating Edition
By the time you read this, we should have landed in Dublin, Ireland for Shae's non-surprise birthday trip. That's after spending a long weekend up in Washington D.C., so it's been a busy week leading up to this. That meant when I was picking out the items for this week's … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 9 – Sort Of Cheating Edition
Extreme Minimalism: Week 8 – Cupcake Edition
Our kitchen was the target in the first two weeks of our Extreme Minimalism challenge. It was time to return there to find what we needed for this week's installment. It's week 8 of the challenge and so that meant getting rid of 24 items. It was actually pretty easy this week … [Read more...] about Extreme Minimalism: Week 8 – Cupcake Edition