Could Online Shopping Be Good For Your Time and Budget?

Let me start by saying that I greatly dislike shopping. I do not like taking precious time from my day to drive to the store or several stores to find what I need. I do not appreciate being in crowds, searching through the aisles of products, being tempted to stray from my shopping list by items that are strategically placed on sale in front of me, and even being harassed by salespeople of the daily deals in store and the other suggestions to look at new arrivals. The only exceptions are if I would need to purchase something that I need immediately and can't wait for shipping, or I need to purchase an expensive item like a new laptop or musical instrument and comparing models and checking out the product physically would be necessary.
 
In the quest for simplicity, financial organization, and time management, I have found that often, online shopping  helps me quickly find what I need to purchase, stick to my budget and shopping list, and most of all save on precious time that could be spent doing things I love like reading or creating music.

So, how can something that has often been vilified when it comes to trying to save money and trying budget, actually help me? When I have a list and I want to stick to it, it is a lot easier to go straight to the item on Amazon, or a store that has shipping, and just search it, pick it out and pay. Easy! A recent example of this is a perfume that my husband wanted. He ran out and mentioned a name of a sample that he had tried and would like to have. Instead of searching several stores, I went on Amazon (I have prime with 2 day free shipping) I found the perfume, I checked to see if the price compared with other online stores. Voila, click, buy, and receive to my doorstep two days later.  I always try to use pay pal linked to my bank account so every purchase is a debit from my account, not credit. If I must use credit, I make the payment to my credit card immediately. This helps me with sticking to what I really planned on buying too. How many times have you been in a store to buy one thing, only to exit with an extra item just because it was on sale?

I shop for my groceries online quite often too. The first time I told my husband that he would need to stop by the store and pick up our order on the way home from work, he replied, "well, that's kind of lazy isn't it, why didn't you go to the store, instead of getting the store to prepare your order? That is a weird way to shop for food. After all, it is your day off from working in the studio. "Exactly! It is my day off...why ever would I want to spend any part of my day off in a grocery store? I would rather sit at my laptop with my cup of coffee, dogs by my feet in my slippers and order it all from home. Grocery stores with online shopping actually allow you to save lists too. So you can re-purchase the essentials weekly if you wish. I can also just shop all of the deals in the flyer if I want. I can also see my total as I shop so I can budget better, and then look over my virtual cart and remove things that I realize perhaps I don't need yet. I can get up from my computer and look in the fridge to see if I forgot something too. The thing I like best, is I can make a list and completely stick to that list, no free samples to try and then decide on the moment to buy, no smell of freshly baked bread to entice me. I can actually grocery shop while I am hungry and not come out of it with more than I had first planned.

Sometimes I purchase pharmacy items online too. Once again, I can choose my shampoo, conditioner, facial cleansers, q-tips, mascara, candles, even headache remedies and any other item you may find in a drugstore, online. It once again keeps me on my list, on budget and most of all saves me the time of driving and shopping.  I almost always come out of the pharmacy over budget and this way I don't. It takes discipline to only buy what you went into the store to buy. Many times I would buy something I am going to need soon, just to avoid going back to the store in a week. Online shopping helps me buy only what I need when I need it.

Clothing is a difficult one, especially something that you would need to try on. I have a hard time finding anything that fits well. That is probably why I dislike clothes shopping so much. Usually when I need shoes or something that needs trying on, I set aside a time during the week and purposely go out in search of what I need. I can't say that I like doing that very much though, but I just can't imagine ordering shoes online. I guess I could. Perhaps one day when I need some, I will try.  I don't own many articles of clothing, but recently I needed a couple of new hoodies because my old ones were getting pretty ratty looking. I knew what I was looking for and the brand that I know fits me really nicely, but I would have had to drive about 30 or 40 minutes to go the store that I wanted the clothing from, then drive another 30 or 40 minutes back. That is a lot of time driving just for a hoodie or two. Thus, once again an online purchase was in order. In two days I got my clothing with free shipping because I had purchased 2 items. They are exactly what I wanted and needed.

 Through online shopping I saved my time, mental sanity by avoiding crowds, I stuck to my list and budget, and saved on gas and driving time. I also got to read several chapters in a book that I am in to lately, write a blog post and drink a few cups of coffee all in the comfort of my wonderful home. May I also mention that it is minus 30 degrees below zero Celsius here, and the thought of going out shopping for me really sucks at the moment. Perhaps if you asked me during the summer, I may even find it fun to go walking though a farmer's market to buy fresh vegetables for supper. I would appreciate the lovely drive to the store that is 40 minutes away. There are certainly times that going out and doing the physical shopping may be pleasant, but one thing is certain, online shopping is a pretty good time and money saver in many circumstances.

Do you online shop? Has it been a help or a hindrance to your time and budget?

Manage Your Time Like Your Precious Money

If the saying goes "Time is Money" then why do so many of us spend and even waste our time like it doesn't matter? To me my time is the most precious thing I have. Money can be earned if it gets spent, but we can never earn back time. We all have differing amounts of this precious and limited resource that life has given us, but one thing that is static, is that everyone on this planet has the same 24 hours in a day to budget with.

So why not treat our time the same way that we are supposed to manage our finances? These are my top 5 ways to treat our time like money. If we begin treating it like the priceless resource that it is, perhaps we will find that we actually can use it far more wisely than we have been in the past.

1. "Pay yourself first when you get paid"
When we arise in the morning, we start our "time debit account"rolling. The day's events much like the bills that come in, begin to take priority. I suggest that when you arise, you pay at least one hour to yourself, that is one out of twenty-four. It may mean waking an hour earlier than everyone else. (which is hard to do if like me, you are already a zombie in the morning even after a full night's sleep.) But making that extra hour for yourself will start you on creating the life you dream of. And that is exactly what you will do with that "savings" that you are paying yourself with. Take that time to dream of what you want for your life. Make yourself a coffee and read a chapter or two in that book that you never get around to reading. Take an extra long bath in the morning listening to music. Go for a morning run, or walk the dog. Start writing on a blog that you dreamed of creating, sit and meditate and find peace in the quiet morning hours.  Just do something that makes you really, really happy. You are forbidden to do anything for anyone else during this time. No emails to answer, no housework, no laundry, no lunch making, no bill paying, or anything else that is not complete bliss. This is your time, nobody else's.

2. "Make a budget and stick to it"
Just like we are all advised to make and stick to a budget where money is concerned, we often just put ourselves on autopilot and don't plan where our time will be spent. Make a schedule of your daily, weekly, and monthly "time spending habits." Like a budget, there are the static bills, electricity, food, shelter, cable, phone, etc. Our time "bills" are very much the same. We have work obligations, the commute to work, meetings you need to attend, etc. Those are static "time bills". In future posts I will discuss how to reduce those bills, but for now, they are what they are, you need to deal with them. For the rest, figure out where your top priorities are for spending your extra time, and put them on the calendar. schedule things all the way to bed time. Then stick to that schedule. Make a family movie night in the week and block off a 2 hour spot on the calendar. Schedule a time for supper and clean up, schedule a time to help the kids with the homework, make yourself a time schedule and truly fill up every hour with a plan of how you will spend your time. You will quickly see where and when the wasted time is happening.

Many financial planners will tell you to write down everything you spend your money on before you start an actual budget. I feel that for one week before starting your time budget, just write down for a few seconds in a notebook, everything that is taking your time. EVERYTHING. It seems tedious, but you will quickly see where it is going.

3. "Be a conscious consumer"
We are taught to think about our purchases and ask ourselves if we really need this thing,  but when it comes to our time, very often we consume our time thoughtlessly.  We wish we had more time to read, but we spend time watching TV instead. We say yes to meeting at our child's school, but really we don't want to be there, and they would survive without us. We go out for lunch dates with friends when we don't have time, and really once every few weeks would suffice, but we always say yes because we don't want to hurt their feelings or miss out. Whatever it is that is consuming your extra time, think hard about if you love that "time purchase" or don't. If you are not happy after that purchase...it was not a good one.

4. "Have a long term plan"
Where do you want your time to go? What is your dream? Travel? More time to sleep? More time with friends and family? Plan where you want to be in the long term and how your spare time can help you achieve that goal. Perhaps you wish to change jobs so that you can spend more time with your family. Maybe you wish to travel for several weeks out of the year but it will take a career change. How will you achieve that career change? Perhaps you wish of starting your own business. This is how you will consecrate some of your spare time, in the planning of your future. It takes some money planning too. They do go hand in hand.

5. "Think like an investor"
When investing money, you do it wisely. You ask, "will the payback be good?" Do the same with your time. When you say "yes" to any long term commitment of your time, ask yourself, "Will the payback be worth it?" If you say yes to working in a volunteer group, will you come out of that commitment fulfilled and happy, or drained and scrambling for time in your life? If any investment is not paying great dividends, cash out now. It is a waste of your precious resource. You wouldn't stay invested in a money pit of a company or fund, so why do it with your time?


The most important way to save time, is not to spend it unwisely. We can't create more, so the only thing we can do is waste less of it. Future blog posts will discuss how to waste less and get more out of your twenty-four hours. It is achievable, and when you regain your time, you regain your life.

What are your strategies for managing your time effectively?

Is Minimalism About Decluttering and Owning Less?

                        

Minimalism has become a very hot and in fashion topic in the past few years. There is a growing interest in tiny houses, and people that wish to take on the 100 things or less challenge. There is also a great interest in decluttering and organizing, getting out of debt and downsizing to a simpler and less hectic life.

 There are many reasons why in 2016 people are making a deliberate shift towards minimalism. I feel that we as a western society are just "saturated". We are saturated in consumer debt, which leads us to need to work and work and work just to pay the bills to survive. We are saturated in obligations to our employers, our colleagues, friends, family, children, husbands, and wives. We fill our frustrations, stress and general unhappiness with our jobs that we must do, not necessarily want to do, by consuming more, buying luxury items on credit and going deeper in debt because the outwards appearance of prosperity and abundance makes our chaotic lives seem in control. Everywhere we turn there are advertisements to consume more, to do more, to be more, but the fact is we have all have a limited amount of resources and time at our disposal. Especially time, tomorrow could be the first or last day of the rest of your life so to speak, and that being said, I think that many of us are coming to a breaking point and are starving for a change. Thus the allure of minimalism.

What is minimalism? Is it about getting rid of possessions? Disposing of unused items is a result of the life shift towards a more deliberate and simple life, but it is not what makes a person a minimalist. I read once that owning a statue of the Buddha does not make you a Buddhist any more that owning 100 possessions makes you a minimalist. That really rang true to me. Being minimalist is first deciding what the very most important desire of your life is, whether or not you think it is achievable. Is it your health? Is it your relationships with family and friends? Is it having more solitary time for yourself? Is it travelling? Whatever that desire is, usually other things in life are cluttering our time and using our resources so that our true passion becomes unattainable. Minimalism gets rid of the excess and leaves room for what is the most important to you.  

Where does stuff fit in? Stuff and material holds us to it, it owns us, we don't own it. We need to care for it, store it, or trip over it. We attach importance and memories to our possessions. Many of us derive our artificial sense of self-worth and importance from it. That is why getting rid of any possession that truly does not bring us any level of comfort, usefulness, or joy is not worth keeping in our lives. 

The same goes with non-material things like commitments that occupy your time. Do you love being on the parent's committee or coaching the soccer team, or you said yes, but now feel it taxes your time and you are no longer enjoying it? If you don't enjoy it anymore, stop. And yes, be selfish, don't worry about letting people down, they will survive without you on the parent's committee, they will "get over it". I used to say yes to people's offers, and I just learned to say "Thank you, but my time just does not permit". It is as simple as that. If you were to die from stress tomorrow, they wouldn't have you on the committee anyway, so start thinking about yourself. You have heard it before, that you are no use to anyone if you are not healthy, so your mental sanity and happiness counts towards that health.

You can own a Keurig, and a TV, you can even own skis and camping equipment if you are minimalist... You can own a thousand things as long as those things add value and happiness to your life. If you use them happily, then they belong in your life. The clutter in the hall closet that you know you need to get through and organize doesn't. 

Think about what you love, what you are passionate about, and if there was all the time and money available to you, what would you do with it? That is your first step towards a minimalist life and living with passion.

Laundry and Life Lessons on Organization

 It is easy to get organized but to stay organized is not always easy...things start to return back to their disorderly state. In my quest for more time, I learned a lesson from laundry that I try to apply to the rest of my daily tasks. It is that every task has a start and a finish. If we apply that principle to our daily lives, we will find that we are able to better organize our precious time far more efficiently.

Doing laundry has a set of steps that have a starting point and then have an actual finishing point. The start is collecting the dirty laundry and the end point is the clean laundry being out of sight back in its rightful place in your closet or drawers.  So, how many of us have a basket, or pile of clean laundry still in the laundry room, or in a basket on your bedroom floor?  I used to be the one with the pile of clean clothing in a heap on top of the dryer, and would sometime get around to putting it away....one day...almost never. The clothing actually would just end up getting picked from the pile and worn again and end up in the dirty laundry again before it ever saw a closet.  My bathroom which doubles as a laundry room, basically was almost like a cluttered clothing closet.


When I decided to unclutter everything, my bathroom was actually the first place that I started.  I needed to feel peace when I took my morning shower, and looking over at a pile of clothes on the dryer was not peaceful, it was a reminder that I had unfinished tasks. STRESS. (low grade stress albeit, but stress that can accumulate.)


Therefore, I made it my goal that every task, was to be completed from start to finish. Laundry was to be put in its place as soon as it came out of the dryer. Supper begins with cooking, then eating, cleaning up and all dishes and utensils being put away...no dishes left drying on the counter afterwards. As soon as the dishwasher has finished its cycle, the clean dishes go back in the cupboards. (Sometimes that means first thing in the morning if the dishwasher runs at night, (and really there are no excuses, it takes less than 5 minutes.) Oh and this one I learned from a blog called the FlyLady, I even clean and dry my kitchen sink before bed, when the kitchen sink is clean, it has an effect on the rest of the home, try it, it really is magical.


When I arrive back home from being out, my keys go back in their rightful place, shoes go back into the closet, and coat gets hung up in the same place. When I receive mail, and come in the door with it, it goes onto the table where I take 3 minutes and toss the advertising and then open and file the bills and important papers in a binder. Everything gets sorted through immediately. I have a binder and hole punch near my door on a shelf, no mail goes past that point.


Basically, everything we do, does have a completion point, but so often we only start, or get halfway though. Laundry that is not folded and put away, is not done. You only started the laundry, not finished it. When we adopt the habit of taking the few extra minutes to actually finish the tasks that we start, our lives become more organized and we end up creating more time for ourselves. You know the saying "It takes money to make money, well I believe that it takes a little time to make more time"


Try it with your laundry, and see how it translates into the rest of your day. Now I in fact need to go fold my laundry, I was multitasking when I was writing, and my dryer made its "finished beeps." (I am actually not kidding.)

In your routines, what constitutes "finished" and how do you organize your tasks to completion?

What If I Need It Later? Ways to Let Go of Useless Clutter.

   Do you have a difficult time removing clutter from your home because you are worried you may regret getting rid of an object? You are not alone in that feeling. It is human nature to hold to the security that some objects bring to us. I grew up with parents that used to say to me "waste not-want not". Obviously that mentality stuck, and as I grew older, I would often hold on to things that may have proven useful in the future, even if at the moment, I had no use for it. That belief leads to holding on to antiquated objects that serve to clutter our lives, more than actually being useful.

  I have three main ways that I get over the need to hold on to "stuff".

1. Can I replace it for less than $20 in the future if I absolutely realize I needed it?
    I learned this trick from the minimalists, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus on their blog "The Minimalists". Basically if I am not using it, and the question arises if I may need it in the future, I just ask myself if I could replace it for 20 dollars or less. If the answer if yes, it is a definite "get rid of it" moment. It is that easy. I can actually say, I have not yet needed to replace anything I have gotten rid of.

2. If it is of sentimental value, take photos of it and let it go.
    I do think that certain objects that are heirlooms or things that are inherited should never be gotten rid of unless you really don't ever even look at them or they are just stuff you hold on to "because" and you don't really even know why. What use are they to you in a box in the attic? Is it really that sentimental? Is it one of a ton of sentimental objects? At some point when everything feels sentimental, it is time to evaluate their true meaning to you.  I have one medium sized box of a few special objects from my childhood. A ballerina music box my mother bought me when I passed my first ballet exam. Some old diaries that I wrote in as a young girl, and a few other things that bring back some memories. I know the memories are in my heart, but I just have a hard time letting those things go. And really, there is no need to, unless I planned on taking a trip around the world for the next 5 years. Which I am not.
    I did have more objects, that I had memories of too. So, instead of keeping boxes, I took multiple photos of the objects and then gave them away.  I actually look at the photos from time to time when scanning through my picture collection, and that is a lot more than I even did when they were in boxes. They still bring back the memories as strong as they did when they were in my possession
    Try it and see, do this on a few "slightly sentimental" things and then look through the photos a couple of weeks later. If the photos suffice, give away the object.

3. The "I don't know" box.
   I mentioned this one in a previous post. If you really are not sure what to do with the thing, then put it away out of your immediate space and revisit the box in a month. Ask yourself if you really missed it. If the answer is no...you know the drill. (You may need a couple of months to decide, even a year, but if after a year you still have no need, get rid of it.)


Whittling possessions down to the bare minimum is for many people a very emotional process. Cleaning out my plastic container drawer was totally not emotional...well, yes, I suppose it was emotional.  I was joyous tossing and recycling most of my old plastic containers that were way past their prime. I replaced them all with a few pyrex glass storage containers. They will last a long time, and not get all gross and stained from leftover pasta and tomato sauce. (I know it has happened to you) I have 11 glass containers now with matching lids. The drawer is clean and organized. It is actually a miracle...I have never seen my plastic container drawer so perfect in my life. (Small achievements make me happy.)

Good luck with your minimizing, Please share your tips on how you deal with sentimental objects.