There are very few photos of the early days of my parents’ relationship. They were busy, yes, but that’s not all. When my parents were young, their house burned to the ground. They lost everything, including all of their books and photos. Luckily, these days we can turn to the digital world for help. When the same thing happened to a friend of a friend, their family lost all of their photos of their small children. Friends got together to create an album for them. The two events combined to make me realize that those memories are something that I … Continue reading →

Using grocery coupons and buying food in bulk can do a lot to save money, but if you don’t have a good system in place for storing your bulk goods, it may wind up costing you in expired food or just a lack of space. Before you go warehouse shopping or stock up through extreme couponing, first figure out where you are going to store your purchases. Will you have one centralized place, such as shelves in the basement or a large walk in pantry, or will you store your food in multiple locations, wherever it will fit, such as … Continue reading →

You can save yourself a lot of extra work, not to mention extend the life of your clothing when you store it the right way in your home. Here are the tips that you need in order to do just that. Let us start with dry cleaning. If you have items dry cleaned, please take them out of the plastic bag as soon as you get home. The plastic can trap fumes that can breakdown your fabric or cause it to yellow. Button down shirts should be hung, not folded. Button the top button at least, to prevent the shirts … Continue reading →

At our old house, we were blessed with huge closets which made storing everything so easy. We even had a walk in cedar closet! Our current home, however, is a little anemic in the closet area, at least compared to what we were used to. Instead of a huge closet to store all of our bedding (and health and beauty stockpile items, and the iron, and the hairdryer, and seasonal stuff), we now have a tiny linen closet in the hallway that barely holds our towels and wash clothes. This little storage situation has forced us to simplify our bedding … Continue reading →

“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes” – Erasmus Is your home suffering from too many books or just not enough places to store them all? If you are like me, and Erasmus, books hold a special importance in your household. But if you find that you aren’t able to fit them all on your bookshelves, consider some of the more creative places that people store their books. Okay, I will start with me. I have to admit that I have a number of books being stored in … Continue reading →

When it comes to storing books, some people have them arranged by genre as we do. Others have them arranged alphabetically by author. Still others find the shelf height dictates how books will be stored, so they are sorted by size. For this reason a bookcase with adjustable shelves is ideal. Most of our bookcases, and we have a number, have one middle shelf which is fixed and the others are adjustable. It saves the problem of having a large book and nowhere to put it. In our home, books are housed in the family room, lounge room, spare bedroom … Continue reading →

How and where to store books can be a problem for some people especially those of us who collect books the way children do dirt. Then there is the problem of where to put them all. Before you try and sort out where to put them, the first thing is to decide do you need them all. Are they books you are likely to re-read? If not why are you keeping them? Mick is a big re-reader of books. Some like the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, he has read any number of times and still gets just … Continue reading →