michelejo.com

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  • Simple Holidays: Gifts – 2013

    I started my holiday shopping really early this year.  I ordered my first gift back in June and that’s really early for me, though I know a lot of people shop year-round to take advantage of bargains.  That doesn’t jive with my quest for a minimalist, clutter-free home for the most part and I usually…

  • Setting up a Minimalist Home: Part 2

    Over a year ago I bought a used square coffee table with good intentions to paint/refinish and then flip it.  I love doing refinishing projects and flips; it’s a way to finance my creativity. 🙂  I forgot about the coffee table; I recently found it buried under clutter in the corner of my photography studio.…

  • Setting up a Minimalist Home

    I’m certain that my level of minimalism probably pales in comparison to others’ but for my family, our current level of minimalism is a huge improvement over the way we used to live. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, we’ve had to buy some things to help us acheive our minimalism goals at the new house.…

  • Home, Sweet Home

    September 16th, 2013…the first day of the first chapter of the rest of our lives!  Closing day on our new home! Everything has gone extremely smoothly, with the exception of one teeny tiny thing…the title company missed a signature and hubby had to go back in first thing this morning to sign.  What a blessing!…

  • Methods of Avoidance…Costco

    I’ve been avoiding Costco the past couple weeks.  Bad, bad…I know.  I’ve hit up Target and Wal-Mart for milk, produce and other staples and even though the prices seem reasonable, you just can’t beat Costco’s prices.  Produce at Costco tends to be around half of what it costs at Wal-Mart.  Milk is similar in price…

  • A Year of Less: The Linen Closet

    How many sets of sheets and blankets and towels does one family need? Apparently not as many as we had…we had a completely filled 36″ wide, 10′ tall linen closet JAMMED and we hadn’t even been using the items in it but rather re-washing the towels, sheets and blankets already in use.  I knew I…

  • Hello again, Costco…

    Monday is my normal grocery shopping day, and I’ve been going to Costco most of the time.  This week I went to Fresh & Easy.   I met my goal of staying under $100 for the week, but I took the kids with me and ended up buying a lot of junk food I wasn’t…

  • Sunday’s house….

    ….was a total no-go.  Monday AM we found out that there were half a dozen cash offers and that the seller wouldn’t even read an FHA offer. So…back to the drawing board we went.  Tuesday I embarked on a long day of house-viewing with our agent, who had set up 8+ appointments and had made…

  • On the home front…

    We’ve been house shopping.  We live in a lovely rental in a beautiful neighborhood.  We were in escrow on the home across the street when we discovered it had several un-permitted additions and there was no way to bring everything up to par legally while closing within 45 day as planned. We had to cancel…

  • The Costco Experiment: Progress Update 2

    Last time I wrote, I was a day away from heading to Costco again for the bulk of our weekly groceries.  I spent about $245 that trip, which was over my goal of $200 but I did stick to that $200 if you only count food and household items.  I did spend an unplanned $30…