Day #19 of 30 Days to a Simpler Life --- Run Fewer Errands

Today, create a box for errands.  You can use a great-looking basket, plastic tub, or shopping bag.  Whatever works.  Keep it by the door and fill it with film to be developed, shoes to be repaired, purchases to be returned, and papers to be taken to the copy center.  On errand day, take the box in the car.  When you come home, it will be empty.  What a feeling! (30 Days to a Simpler Life, p. 123)

OR for serious simplifiers only...

Run errands just one day a week.  Designate a particular day and write it on your calendar.  Obviously, some errands are urgent and cannot wait for Errand Day.  Learn to discern the difference between urgent and non-urgent errands.  To run fewer errands, look for the underlying reasons behind your errands.  Then eliminate the reasons! (30 Days to a Simpler Life, p. 130)

Let just say straight up---I don't have any film to develop (ha ha), but I do have a heck of a lot of photos I need to back up and get into scrapbooks.  For everyone who is in that boat with me, Day #25 is coming!  I think the idea of an errand box/bag/tub is brilliant.  I have to figure out where to put it and what it should be...hmmmmm.  I'll report back tomorrow.

As far as my quest for the safe combo goes, I found it, I wrote it on a Post It, and posted that Post It in a safe place.  Let's just hope I don't forget where I posted it.  :-)  Hopefully, that will prevent any chance that during a disaster situation you'll see the Cobbler and I carrying the safe down the street.

I have something else I'm working on that's not part of the 30 Days to a Simpler Life.  I'm calling it Habit Training for Grown Ups.  One of my educational muses, Charlotte Mason once said, "Whether habits are planned and created conscientiously, or allowed to be haphazardly filled in by chance, they are habits all  the same. Habit rules ninety-nine percent of everything we do."  And I have some BAD habits that I don't want to rub off on to my kids.  One of my habits I hate the most is that I put everything I don't know what to do with on the kitchen counter.  This is what it looked like this morning---

It then took me an hour and a half to make it look like this---

I was legitimately putting stuff away off the counter, not just tossing it in a closet or another room.  Now I want to keep it this way.  In habit training, you're only supposed to work on one thing at a time, and I'm going to become the best kitchen counter cleaner that you've ever seen.  Watch for more counter pics over the next couple of weeks.