Its tough to live simply sometimes, the spiral of change.....

[Teacher Terry]

WE do zones and that works great.

[Ultralight]

WE do zones and that works great.

details?

[Teacher Terry]

DH's mess must stay in his office ( I have my own), 1 car garage and large shed. I can easily close the door to his office when company comes. The rest of the house is neat and uncluttered.

[Ultralight]

DH's mess must stay in his office ( I have my own), 1 car garage and large shed. I can easily close the door to his office when company comes. The rest of the house is neat and uncluttered.

So for the rest of the house is it one of those deals where he messes it up and then you come through and clean right afterward?

[Teacher Terry]

No,he is generally not allowed to mess up the rest of the house and rarely does.

[Ultralight]

...not allowed...

Love it!

[Teacher Terry]

Well we came to this agreement mutually shortly after moving in together 18 years ago. I knew that I could not live with a slob in chaos and he was willing to compromise.

[SteveinMN]

I started volunteering at a equine rescue nearby. I love a quiet morning at the barn doing chores. The other volunteers can be way too chatty and yackety yack. So, I go down the other end of the barn and just focus on the task. I hear comments, oh she's down the other end again, she's over there. If you do your own thing, it brings out attention not sought. Some folks get upset when you do your own thing.

For some (many?) people, volunteering is a social outlet as well as a way to do good works. So, yes, there will be chatting and yackety yack.

I have, too often, seen people doing lots of things beside the task at hand, which bothers me (because I know it's difficult to get so many people together in one place and moving in one direction; why dilute the effort?). But then I realized that, without the social aspect of it, many folks would not come out at all, so I'm happier for whatever gets done rather than how much gets done.

[sweetana3]

Yes Steve. My husband is a big time volunteer at Habitat for Humanity. He supervises other temp. volunteers and has to keep them all involved, working toward a goal, happy and safe. He has worked with teenagers, retirees, business owners, military, etc. Some are individual volunteers and many belong to groups who signed up together. They are all different and within groups there are great differences in work and chattiness. So some jobs just take a little longer than others.

He loves getting a project done but volunteers as much for the social and "getting out of the house" as for the actual work. For an IT guy with no construction experience, he has learned a huge amount.

[sylvia]

Hi everyone, its been a while for this thread however I wanted to say that Mariekondo method helped with the clutter. Now I have my answers how to select. I now have a simple living vision that is congruent with my life mission of less stuff. Ive been trying to achieve this frugal/simple living/ minimalism, and it looks like Im finally getting results. The big picture I want to approach the end result (Similar to law of attraction-visualize outcome.) I will not be feeding the crawl space storage monster under our house. So I am not keeping anymore new seasonal decorations, only a few boxes left. Resulting in not going in there ever, no more stuff rerouted there. The garage is a big problem, my son puts everything there, I toss everything there. But its DHs turf he will be responsible for clearing it out. He is fed up-trust one more warm weekend and out it goes. Living simply is a personal journey , you go step by step what works for your situation.