I’m not quite sure how to describe it. The more I give away to charity, the worse I feel. I’m fine giving money and don’t mind buying new things to donate. It’s giving away our things that’s hard for me. In reading this book, a light bulb went on for me. It’s crazy, but giving our stuff away makes me feel guilty.

How can giving make me feel guilty? When I find things we don’t use, I feel wasteful and foolish for having bought them in the first place. I think about all the people in the world who don’t have what we have. I know there are people who don’t have money, food, clothes, shoes, transportation and shelter. I feel terrible that we have so much stuff that we can’t even use it all. In fact, we have so much that we don’t always know what we have. I also think about all the things we could have done with the money we’ve wasted on things we give away.

We’re not rich by western standards. We are solidly middle class. But I know that compared to many people in the world, we are very, very fortunate. Because of this I feel foolish when I think about things we’ve bought and not used. It makes me want to try to find a use for the unwanted items so the purchase makes sense. If we do use it now, then I wasn’t so stupid and wasteful when I bought it in the first place. Never mind that we have more than we need and that item could be more useful to someone else, it makes me feel better to justify my purchase and get some use out of everything I bought.

And so we live with a little more clutter than I want us to. Don’t get me wrong. I have done a lot of purging and we have much less clutter than we used to and less than other people we know. I also try to shop smarter now. I try to purge one thing for every new thing we bring in. Better yet, before I buy something I think about where I’m going to put it, how I’m going to use it and if I will still want it a few months from now. It helps me make better purchasing decisions. Ironically, trying to buy smarter makes it even harder to admit when I make a mistake in what I buy.

In any case, I’m determined to find a bag full of things to give away today and I’m sure I can do it without too much trouble. I guess there are worse problems to have.

Greeting cards are often so detailed and sappy, I have to wonder how many people they really apply to. Unless you had a 50’s sitcom kind of life, I don’t see how most current greeting cards make sense for most people. It’s especially hard to find good cards for birthdays, anniversaries and Mother’s and Father’s Day. Who buys the cards that are out there now? Do people just pretend that’s what life is really about? Why can’t they just say something simple like “Happy Birthday” instead of trying to describe the ideal friend or relative?

The other thing that bugs me about cards is the shameless way card companies try to get you to buy as many different cards as possible. Instead of a Father’s Day card saying “From all of us”, they say “I”, “me” and “my”. We’re supposed to buy separate cards from each child and grandchild. If they are from more than one person, it’s usually “from the two of us”. So my husband and I can give a card together, but we have to buy another one from our daughter? Not this girl. I’ll keep looking until I find the right card or make it myself before I buy three cards for one event from one family.

I took my to do list and wrote every item on a card. I sorted the cards into the four stacks indicated. I stacked up my cards in order of urgent and important, not urgent and important, urgent and not important and I put the last set away. At the time I thought I better put them somewhere I could easily find them because I would need to do those things eventually. Now I don’t even know where the cards were or what was on them and I don’t care. I got the urgent and important things done right away. I looked at the urgent and not important cards and took care of some of them, but some of them didn’t seem so urgent any longer so I reclassified them to the hidden stack. Then I actually started to do the things that were not urgent and important. These were things like writing and taking classes that I kept putting off in favor of trivial tasks.

I started to look at my whole life through new eyes. What really is important to do and what’s not? I had already lowered my house cleaning standards a bit out of necessity. Now I look at each task and ask whether it’s important. Most of it isn’t. Five years or even five months from now, who’s going to care if the upstairs hall is swept every day? I mostly clean things that are gross, that we need to use or that would be hard to clean later if left neglected too long. I also think it’s important to put things away and stay organized so we don’t waste time looking for things. Apart from that, I clean before I have people over.  I’ve decided it’s not so important to make sure all the towels, napkins and underwear are folded just so. Who looks in your drawers and cabinets anyway? As long as you can find them easily, do underwear really need to be folded? I used to keep the clothes in my closet organized by color, but I decided it wasn’t important. What’s the big deal if the black shirts mingle with the brown and navy as long as I can find what I need?

The same principles apply to work as well. Is it really important to open reports that were automatically generated and sent over the weekend when nothing was updated in them? No, it’s not. If possible, I remove myself from these distribution lists or automatically route them to the delete folder. If not, I sort my inbox for them and delete them myself.  The temptation is always just to open things as they come and get one thing done before you move onto the next. Now I look at emails that are urgent and important first. I find I’m asking myself more and more before I open mail, “Is this important?” If not, I dispose of it or save it until later and move on to what is important.

I hate those security questions because so many of the choices are the same from site to site and, to me, most of them are bad.

One of the typical questions is “What was the name of the best man at your wedding?”. That should be easy right? Everyone knows the name of the best man at their wedding. Okay, so I select the question and enter the answer: Tim. Then I get a message that the answer has to be at least four characters. What to do? Our best man’s name is Tim, not Timothy. I could put in Timothy, but would I be able to remember that later since we have never known him as Timothy? What do people who had a best man named Bob, Rob, Jim, Bo, Ty, etc. do? Not everyone has a name that’s four characters or longer. Since I ended up locking myself out of my credit card’s website trying to answer this question, I registered my complaint about this question with their customer service department.

On to the next question. “What was the name of your high school?” This one should be no problem. It wouldn’t be, except I graduated from DeForest High School. I move on to the next question because I’m afraid my husband won’t remember the “F” is capitalized and won’t be able to look up our mortgage information.

Next? “What was the name of your high school’s mascot?” My high school’s mascot was a Norskie (a big, Norwegian Viking type guy). Twenty-six years after graduation and having moved away from the town where I graduated, I can’t remember the correct spelling for Norskie. What if I enter it the way I think it’s spelled today and then spell it some other way when I’m trying to access the site later? Even if I can get it right, can my husband?

Maybe it’s just me. Am I reading too much into these questions? What’s next? “What is your nickname?” Which one? One of the nicknames my dad had for me as a kid (Punkin’, Sugar, Tinker Bell)? What my eighth grade science teacher used to call me (Purple. It’s a long story.)? I really don’t have a nickname that I want to be known by today.

Who could have a problem with “What was the name of your first pet?” The first pet I remember as a child? The first pet my husband and I had? The first pet I had as a child was named PC. PC is only two characters, so there’s a problem. Plus my husband won’t be able to answer that one. The first pet we had together was named Binky. That won’t be a problem if I can remember that’s how I answered that question.

“Who was your first boyfriend?” The one I walked home with in grade school? The one who I went to a movie with in eighth grade? My first “real” boyfriend?

“Who was your first manager?” Is this for real? The manager of my first real job in college? I don’t remember. Tom, I think. Oops, that’s only three characters. That won’t work.

Some sites do have good security questions. In my opinion, these are the questions for which there can only be one answer, which is longer than three characters, and is something both me and my husband will remember, but will be hard for others to guess.

When I was 14, I had been in the same school district for more than two years for the first time in my life. It was also my first year of high school. My freshman year had some ups and serious downs, but overall, I had quite a few friends and was enjoying high school (at least compared to middle school). Then my mom and stepfather built a house in DeForest, Wisconsin. It’s since grown, but at the time it was a town of around 3,000 about 10 miles north of Madison. We were moving to “The Sticks”. I thought my world had ended.

Luckily for me, my mom attended Edgewood College in Madison at the time. That meant she could drive me to Madison every day so I could at least finish out my freshman year at East High School. For that I was grateful.

In the fall of 1980, I started my sophomore year at DeForest High School. I hated it at first, but I eventually adjusted. I made friends and enjoyed the rest of high school, but I still hated living in a small town. My plan was to become a lawyer, move to Chicago and get married at the age of 26.

Enter the boyfriend. When I was 17, I met my husband, David, in Madison. We each thought the other was the love of our lives. Though I was reluctant to do it so young, we got engaged at Christmas in 1982. I graduated the following spring and went to live in the dorms at Edgewood that fall. Even though I was back in Madison and he was only 20 miles away in the small town of Evansville, Wisconsin, I hated living there. I was one of the few in my college class who was engaged and working a lot, so I didn’t fit in. I didn’t drive yet so David came to see me several times a week. It wasn’t enough. We were inseparable and I missed him terribly.

After a few months, I moved in with David in the basement of his parents’ house. His mom worked at the same place I did and I drove with her or David to Madison every day. But it wasn’t long until two couples under one roof was one couple too many.

So I got my license and David and I got our first apartment in Monroe, Wisconsin. David had worked in Monroe since he graduated in 1981. With a population of around 10,000, Monroe was a cross between the little towns of DeForest and Evansville and the “big city” of Madison. We lived together there until we got married in the spring of 1984. I drove to school in Madison every day. For the next couple years, when I wasn’t in school, I was working at Hardee’s in Monroe.

After that, we moved to a new place in Monroe, and stayed there about six years. First we were in the upstairs apartment, then we moved downstairs in the same house. During that time, I held a few different jobs, including deli cook and movie theatre cashier. David worked at Advance Transformer the whole time. About the same time we moved, I transferred from Edgewood to UW-Madison and changed my major to Secondary Education-French. After I graduated, I worked as a substitute teacher, Adult Basic Education instructor and feature writer for the local paper. We liked Monroe well enough, but it never really felt like home.

Then, before I could find a permanent teaching job, I got pregnant. After my daughter was born, we moved to rural Janesville, near Footville, Wisconsin. We wanted to buy a house and we got a great deal sharing the farm house turned duplex where David’s aunt and uncle lived. We both still commuted to Monroe for work. By then, I had taken a part-time job at the Swiss Colony Call Center which turned full-time after a couple years. David was still working at Advance.

We soon decided country life wasn’t for us. However, getting married and, especially, having a child had changed my outlook on life. I no longer wanted to live in a big city either. What I wanted more than anything was a home of our own in a safe and quiet small town where we could raise our daughter. After four years of scrimping, saving and searching, we found our house in Brodhead, Wisconsin.

Brodhead is a city of around 3,000 people about 35 miles south of Madison. My daughter, now a teenager, feels the same way about Brodhead that I first felt about DeForest. She thinks it’s boring and there’s nothing to do. I, on the other hand, love living in Brodhead. It’s pretty, the people are friendly and best of all, it’s conveniently located not far from Madison, Janesville, Beloit, Evansville, Monroe and Rockford, Illinois. It’s also relatively quiet and there is very little in the way of crime. I still commute to work in Monroe, but David works in Janesville now.

I’d live forever in our 100 plus year old Victorian house in Brodhead if it wasn’t for the cold. David and I have come to despise winter. I wish we could pick up all of Wisconsin and move it south.  He wants to drive his Corvette year round and I just want more warm weather and to wear summer clothes for more than a few months each year.

One of these days we might move to North Carolina. My sister moved from Wisconsin to North Carolina almost 20 years ago. She loves North Carolina and, after visiting her there several times, we love it too. Though she’s in the Raleigh area now, she first lived in western North Carolina. One of the places she lived was the small town of Franklin. We really liked Franklin. It’s in the beautiful Smoky Mountains and it’s close to Asheville. The only drawbacks would be moving away from family, friends and my beloved Wisconsin. For the moment, we’re staying put in Brodhead. I love small town life in Wisconsin. I only wish it were warmer!

Brodhead Depot Museum

In our home, we do some of the common things such as compost, plant a vegetable garden, use cloth napkins, reduce, reuse, recycle, get off mailing lists, buy locally, combine trips or walk, use a steel water bottle, use motion lights, a low-flow shower head, a 1.6 gallon per flush toilet (although I’ve heard they have better ones out now) and a front loading washer.

We also do some things maybe not everyone else does. We recycle everything, and I mean everything, we can. We are fortunate to live in Brodhead, Wisconsin, where they accept all types of recyclable plastic so every single plastic item with a recycle symbol goes in our recycle bin. Bin is really a misnomer. Our recycle “bin” is really a 30 gallon garbage can in our pantry. Even though we’re recycling a lot, that probably means we’re still buying things in too much packaging to begin with. We’re working on that.

We also recycle all types of paper from junk mail to food packages to cardboard. We have a large recycle bin in our pantry for that.

In Brodhead, we recycle paper one week and plastics the next. Each week our recycle containers are overflowing.

Even though there are a multitude of articles on the subject, one thing a lot of people don’t realize is that using a dishwasher not only gets dishes cleaner, but also uses fewer resources than hand washing. When you load those dishwashers and put the rubber gloves away, you’ll do yourself and the environment a favor.

There are all kinds of little things a person can do to help the environment, but little things all add up. We used to leave a light on in the kitchen at all times when it started to get dark. Now we use a night light so we can see where we’re going at night. Another little thing I do is write the things we need at the grocery store on the bottom of the pad so I can tear off only that part to take to the store and use the rest later. 

I see a lot of cloth recycle bags flying off the shelves, but I see very few people actually using them in stores. I admit I’ve forgotten a few times, but I’m getting better. I’m a bit concerned about the resources that go into producing those bags if they’re just going to end up in a drawer or donated to Goodwill as people go on using plastic ones. I think the only way to break people of the plastic bag habit is for stores to stop using them. Other countries are ahead of us in this area. When we were in France several years ago, imagine our surprise when we got to the checkout counter at the grocery store and there were no bags. French people carry tote bags or mesh sacks with them. I even saw a woman stick a loaf of bread in her rather large purse.

In France, we also could not find a phone book to save our lives. We were told they don’t print them any longer. This was in 1990. I am increasingly tired of all the phone books delivered to our home each year. What a waste. There’s a lot of duplication in what the phone books cover. We rarely crack a phone book any longer unless the power is out. That’s what the Internet is for, right? I have called, written and tried a junk mail service to stop phone books, but they keep coming. I guess I’ll have to try harder.

There is more that we can do and we’re working on doing it. My husband drives a 12  year old Explorer and a 1979 Corvette. We’re going to replace the Explorer with a more fuel-efficient vehicle like a hybrid or a midsize car. He doesn’t drive the Corvette a lot. It’s something he’s always wanted to own and he loves it. Surprisingly, it gets up to 17 MPG sometimes as does the Explorer. That may not seem like good gas mileage, but for those vehicles it is.

I don’t know why the idea of not driving for a day would seem so crazy to me. I love driving my Mini, but I commute to work every day and sometimes I like to just stay home or be “chauffeured” around by my husband. There are many weekend days when I don’t even leave the house.

The question I immediately asked myself is “How do they expect me to get to work?” It’s not like I can skip work that day.

I live in a small city that’s about 15 miles away from the slightly larger city where I work. So how can I get there without driving? I could carpool, but someone would still have to drive and I wouldn’t be getting there with my own power.

I can’t walk 15 miles to work and still have time to work. I could ride my cheap, old, discount store bike to work if I could find my helmet. But, there are no bike trails between the two cities and the idea of riding a bike on the highway, or even the back roads, scares me. I know people do it all the time, but I’ve seen too many close calls and accidents to feel good about riding along side of vehicles driving at highway speeds. 

Even if I was comfortable riding my bike on the highway, I estimate in the shape I’m in (sort of mediocre), it would take me about an hour and a half each way to ride the 15 miles to work. My days are jam-packed with my 30 minute one way commute in my car. At this point, I don’t know how I could find the additional two hours it would take to ride my bike there.

Don’t get me wrong. I think this is a fabulous idea, especially for anyone who lives within walking distance of their workplace or doesn’t need to be anywhere on Friday. When we still rented, we used to live six blocks away from my job and I walked to work all the time.

So what can I do to decrease my carbon footprint on World Environment Day? I’m already driving a fuel efficient vehicle so I feel good about that. I combine my trips as much as I can and try to stick to the speed limit (a real challenge in a Mini Cooper S). I also went to MINIUSA.COM and pledged to not drive 10 miles on Friday. I’ll drive to work and let my car sit all day instead of running errands or going out to eat during my lunch hour. Once I get home, I’ll leave my car in the garage. If I have errands to run in town I’ll walk. This way I feel I can still make a difference, albeit a small one. Who knows? Maybe it will even catch on and become a habit for me and others.

I’ve read that you should only blog about one thing. People say that you should find a niche and write about that. If you want to write about more than one thing, you should have a separate blog for each topic.

I say I’m a person with many dimensions and interests and not enough time to write multiple blogs. Since it’s my blog, I can write what I want. Therefore I plan to write about a variety of things that interest me such as health, fitness, weight loss, family and relationships, reading and books, music, technology and more. I think I have some interesting things to say. I know I’ve had an interesting life so far. I love to write. If other people want to read what I write about, that’s great.  If they don’t, that’s okay too.

Who am I? I graduated from the UW Madison as a French teacher. I’m currently a call center manager at a large Wisconsin catalog company for whom I have worked since 1990. Among other things, I formerly worked as a feature writer for a small town newspaper, but I haven’t done much writing in a while. I’ve just celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary with my husband David and we have one great daughter Ariel (pronounced Ah-ree-el, not like aerial).