Operation House Purge

July 25, 2008

Housepurge — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:59:51 GMT

Saturday was my garage sale and it was a success! We had an $800 day, which I'm told is very good for a garage sale. What isn't good is that we still have half of our stuff, primarily the big stuff, remaining. It's all stuff that I won't allow back into the house. And, our garage is still mostly full (we have not purged that yet), so the garage sale remainders, for the time being, are sitting in our yard. Tacky, tacky. I have some of the items on Freecycle that will hopefully be picked up by the end of the week. Everything else will have one more chance to sell at our final garage sale, hopefully at the end of August.

At this garage sale, we eliminated a lot of furniture (or, at least tried to eliminate a lot of furniture). This was the best thing we did. It's really opened up our house and made a huge difference. In our living room we had two couches, two side tables, two recliners, an entertainment center and an occassional chair. In actuality, Josh and I always sit in the recliners, and the kids sit on our favorite couch. So, we purged the not-favorite couch, one of the side tables, and the occassional chair. Instead of arranging the furniture in the one way that allows everything to be crammed into this room, we can now arrange the furniture in an appealing way.

We have a "craft room" in our house. This is a house with a dining room and a breakfast nook. Years ago we decided that we needed a place for me to sew and craft more than we needed two places to eat. Unfortunately, what has the potential for being the messiest room in the house is in one of the most prominent places. Our craft room had my sewing and quilting table, my cutting table, several floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a china cabinet, the kids' computer desk, and the kids' art table. It was really packed in there and uninviting. A disaster, really. I haven't sewn in quite awhile because of it. So, at the garage sale we sold the china cabinet (along with the contents of the china cabinet). Now the kids' craft table can go against the wall, and the whole room has opened up significantly and become usable again. Now I'm in the mood to finish my four-year-old's baby quilt!

For this garage sale, we also purged the baby furniture. For the first time in seven years, we no longer have a nursery in this house. When Josh disassembled the crib, I cried. Hard. It was the first time in all of House Purge that I got emotional. I've been warned by friends and family that getting rid of the crib only guarantees that I will be pregnant within two months. Uh-oh...

The other most substantial furniture purge was a pretty antique table that used to be next to our refridgerator, as part of our dining room. It served as a really useful place to put food during Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, but the rest of the year it simply was a place to collect papers, mail and junk. By getting rid of that table, we were able to move our Crystal Springs water despenser next to the refridgerator, in a place where we can actually get to it. Now we don't have to throw ourselves over several dining chairs to get a glass of clean water.

All of this furniture purging and rearranging has been really good for the Feng Shui of our house. Ok, stop laughing and hear me out with an open mind. Feng Shui really works.

Before kids when Josh and I were living in Boulder and had a seemingly endless amount of disposable income, we had a Feng Shui consultant come to our house. I was skeptical, but figured, "Why not?" I was doing it "for fun". Besides, to live in Boulder, you have to have a crazy body piercing, a tattoo, and/or a Feng Shui consultant.

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese practice believed to utilize the Laws of Heaven and Earth to optimize energy flow to help improve one's life. Modern enthusiasts view Feng Shui as a practice of arranging objects (such as furniture) to help people achieve their goals. Some people use Feng Shui when building a house, choosing a place to live, and even for agricultural planning. I used Feng Shui to make my house feel better. To give it a free facelift, if you will. Feng Shui is not a supersition, religion or philosophy. It's simply the art and science of living in harmony with your environment.

The Feng Shui consultant went through our Boulder house, took everything in, made some suggestions on the spot, and then provided us with a full report on changes we could make and why. Most of the changes were easy, quick, and simply involved rearranging or purging furniture. Most of it was to rearrange in brilliant ways we had never previously thought of on our own. Many things, she said, we were already doing right, because people's instincts guide them to proper Feng Shui in the first place. We did as many of her suggestions as were feasible, and our whole house felt so much better! It really does change the way you feel in the house. You probably have a favorite room in your house, and you probably have a least favorite room. There's a reason for it.

While I don't necessarily believe in the new-agey, cosimic side of Feng Shui, the concepts make a lot of sense to my science-oriented brain. I remember our office in that house was our least favorite room. The consultant said it was because the desks were arranged in such a way that our backs were to the door. She said it was bad "chi" (energy flow) to have your back to the door, because it, on a subconcious level, makes you feel cautious to not know if someone is coming in the door or watching you. Of course, I would never sit at my desk and have a hard time paying bills because I was "feeling cautious", but there was a barely noticeable uncomfortable feeling that I really couldn't pinpoint until we rearranged that office to have both desks facing the door. All I knew was that before I didn't like that room. Moving the desks to face the door was all it took, and then we loved spending time in that room. I notice in my living room in my current house that when guests walk in and have a choice between the couch facing the front door or the couch with their backs to the front door, they go for the couch facing the front door everytime. It's just a sense of unease we all feel that we can't put words to, that sometimes takes a Feng Shui consultant to point out to us. (Of course, now that I've purged a couch, I've made the choice for you... You have to sit with your back to the front door. Sounds like it might be time for another consultation.)

Feng Shui also believes in a balance of "fire", "earth, "water", "wood" and "metal". Certain colors, shapes, surroundings and materials fall into each of those categories. When you walk into a 70s house with wood floors, wood panelling, wood furniture, and wood decor, it often feels dark and even overbearing - it's because it's lacking balance. In Estes Park we have so many log homes, located in the woods, with aspen log furniture. People may not realize how unbalanced it is until they feel the difference by being in a balanced house. It doesn't mean you can't live in a log home with log furniture out in the woods, it just means that with a few mirrors, fabrics, colors, and decorations your log home can feel so much more at ease.

While you may think Feng Shui falls along the same lines of horoscope readings - something entertaining and fun, but not something you take seriously - I am here to tell you that it is something that makes a difference, plus it's entertaining and fun. Whether you believe in the Chinese practice or not, a room that is balanced and properly arranged just feels better. You can call it "good design" or "nice and open" or "positive energy" or "psychology" or "chromotherepy" or "nice stuff" or "clean" or "favorite room"... I call it all of those things, and therefore "good Feng Shui". I believe that the room follows the laws of good Feng Shui, and we didn't know it, analyze it, or even call it that. And, I believe that most of the laws of good Feng Shui we already know intuitively.

If you feel so inclined, I would encourage you to get a Feng Shui consultant to come to your house. At the very least you'll get some new decorating tips, new ideas on how to arrange your furniture, and some tips that make a lot of sense. At the most you'll transform your house into something that feels totally different and can positively impact the moods and health of the people living there. Humor yourself and try it! And be ready to purge that excess furniture. Excess furniture equals bad chi.

For more information about House Purge, visit www.HousePurge.com.

July 18, 2008

Housepurge — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:12:19 GMT

I'm not going to lie to you... I'm a wee bit stressed out. Ok, so I did lie to you. I'm completely stressed out. Tomorrow is our first House Purge garage sale. There's really so much that can't be done until tomorrow morning, that I feel overwhelmed, and I'm not sure how I'm going to get everything outside and priced in time for the sale.

This past week has also been full of friends' horror stories about garage sale headaches, such as people trying to haggle a 25-cent item down to 15 cents. (Seriously? As that friend put it, "I'd rather give it to charity for free, and therefore to someone who really needs it, then for 15 cents to you.") I'm sure I'll have all kinds of interesting things to write about next week.

I, naturally, don't want you to come to my garage sale so that you can fill your newly purged house with my purged items. But, if you are in market for items that are needs, by all means stop by! The garage sale will be on Saturday, July 19 in Pinewood Springs - just start down the canyon toward Pinewood and follow the signs. The sale starts at 8:00 a.m. - no early birds, please. You'll just stress me out even more. There may be another family joining our sale, and there will be at least one other sale in Pinewood Springs that day, so it will be worth the drive.

Okay, enough plugging my garage sale already. Let's get back to purging. How about a paper purge, shall we?

The first step to purging the house of unnecessary paper is to prevent unnecessary paper from entering the house in the first place. The best way to do this is to start at the mailbox. There are businesses and organizations that can eliminate 90% of the junk mail that comes to your mailbox. The organization I like best for this is www.41pounds.org. 41 Pounds states that the average adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail per year - that's 82 pounds for my family, alone! They are more interested in the environmental reasons to eliminate junk mail, and donate a portion of their fee to the environmental charity of your choosing. There are other Web sites that make a business out of offering this service, but I opt to keep it with a nonprofit organization. The fee is $41.00, and covers all junk mail elimination for five years.

Speaking of junk mail, I used to hoard catalogs, with pages dog-eared of all the stuff I wanted. My husband, Josh, would get mad at my catalogs when we first got married, and say, "But we can't afford that!" He didn't seem to understand that I had no intention of buying any of that stuff, I was just dreaming of buying that stuff. My dreams were taking up a lot of room in our home office. I've decided in recent months to forgo all catalogs. I know what companies I like. I know where they live. I will find them when I'm ready to buy something, and I don't need them finding me anymore. If you enjoy getting catalogs, by all means peruse them, but then recycle it when you're finished if you aren't going to buy something immediately.

Of course, some of the mail that comes in is important. Instead of letting the good mail pile up on any flat surface with an empty space, do something with it immediately. All mail is waiting for an action - to be recycled, read, paid or filed. Make sure that the mail gets to where it needs to be to stay organized and in control of the paper clutter.

Another option is to go digital. Most banks and credit card companies offer to send statements to your e-mail instead of your snail-mail box. Having these files on your computer can save space in the home office. Also, get set up with automatic bill pay on your recurring expenses, and eliminate those monthly paper bills, as well.

Clean out your filing cabinet. There are certain documents that need to be kept for certain amounts of time for tax purposes. (See: http://irs.gov/publications/p552/ for more information.) Not all old files need to be kept directly in your home office, though. Take all of the older files that you are required to keep boxed up and in storage. Bills that have been paid really don't need to be kept longer than a year. Peter Walsh, author of Its All Too Much, recommends filing bills and receipts by month of the year. The next year, when you come to July again, you'll throw out everything that was in the July folder and start fresh. When I cleaned out our filing cabinet, I found that my husband had been hoarding old propane bills since the first year we lived here. What ever for? The bills are gone now... and he won't even notice. (Please note: I am not suggesting purging files behind your spouse's back as an ethical purge technique.)

And what about all the old, sentimental letters, cards and artwork? The advice from Peter Walsh that I've passed along before is that if there's a sentimental item that is special enough for you to keep, you need to honor the item. Special notes should be framed, put in a shadowbox, or put in a scrapbook. Or, perhaps allow yourself one shoebox of your most important cards and letters to accumulate. Another option is to scan them. Having them on disk will allows you to enjoy it on your computer, or print it at a later date if needed.

The other big task of paper purging is magazines. Purging magazines involves keeping out the excess. Peter Walsh points out that there are 22,000 magazine titles being printed in the United States right now, and yet there are really only about six original magazine ideas, they are just rotated by the editors and given a new name and new photos. People keep excess back issues of magazines around for four reasons. The first is that it's part of their identity. "I am an outdoor person, so therefore I have to own three years of Backpacker magazine." (Guilty.) The second is that, as I mentioned with books last week, they think if they throw the magazines away, they lose the knowledge that came with those magazines in the first place. The third is that they think the magazines will be worth a lot on eBay as a collection. (Go ahead and research that on eBay to see that, in most cases, that isn't the case.) And the fourth reason is that people don't have time to read their magazines, but think that someday they will have the time. Limiting it to only three subscriptions, and only keeping the two most recent copies of each, will help eliminate those piles of magazines. If you haven't found time to read the magazine in two months, you really didn't want to read it all that much, did you?

Unlike other clutter in the house, paper is one of the easiest to lose control of because its free and its invading our houses, uninvited, every day. I have been implementing all of these tips over the past few months, and Im already seeing a big difference.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

July 11, 2008

Housepurge — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:42:05 GMT

ESTES PARK NEWS - With the kids out of school, I have been on a purging rampage all summer long. Last weekend I purged Hayden's nursery, while turning it into a bona fide toddler room. I'm sure if I had sat down and thought about each and every item I was purging, I would have gotten very sad. After all, the last baby is no longer a baby. But, I did it full speed ahead without giving myself time to mourn a babyless house. Besides, feeling nostalgic about my baby growing up has to do with Hayden himself, and not Hayden's stuff.

I was talking to my sister, Shannon, the other day, and telling her that I was absolutely drowning in purged stuff. While certain rooms are purged and are feeling cleaner and more streamlined than ever, the rooms that haven't been purged have become storehouses for the purged stuff. Shannon told me that I need to have a garage sale now. I told her that I can't have one yet. I'm not ready - my house is only half-purged. She pointed out that I have enough stuff already for a garage sale, and I need to clear it out to make room for newly purged stuff. That the garage sale, in my case, can be a two-sale process. Brilliant!

We moved to this house about eight years ago. When we moved here, we wanted to have a garage sale to sell the duplicate stuff we didn't need after combining households when we married. But, before we sold that stuff, I wanted to go through the rest of our stuff, too. Well, I never made it through the rest of our stuff. What I did go through happened in small increments. Over the years, our garage filled with stuff waiting for a sale. Our shed became the "garage sale shed". We've been waiting for years to be ready for a garage sale. And now, my brilliant sister has the idea of not waiting to be ready, but selling what is ready. I am so excited! We are finally going to get our garage and shed back. Why didn't I think of that?

So, mark your calendar: House Purge Garage Sale Part One - July 19 at 8:00am. (No early birds - We won't be out of bed yet.)

I've had a request to talk about book purging this week. I'm a bit of a book hoarder, so removing 75% of my book collection could be a bit challenging.

The first rule to remember, as with the rest of the house, is that I only have space to keep what I have space to keep. When I have books that don't fit on my bookshelves, I need to purge books until they all fit.

Peter Walsh, author of It's All Too Much, wrote that one of the main reasons people hoard books is that "people feel that owning the book is equivalent to owning the knowledge in the book, as well. [That] letting go of a book is tantamount to throwing that knowledge away." Of course, books that are collecting dust and are not in line to be read aren't giving me any more knowledge than I already have. I imagine it's all right for me to pass on my college textbooks now.

Peter Walsh also suggests that some people hold on to books because it's part of their identity. My husband, Josh, has about two-dozen books about kayaking. He's never read them and he doesn't plan to read them, but he has to own them because he's a kayaker. If Josh has a hard time letting me purge these books, I will help him explore other ways he can have the security of having a kayaker identity, such as... oh, I don't know... going kayaking?

There are several ways to purge books. If you are hoping to get money for them, I recommend taking them to a used bookstore. Do your homework - some stores offer cash, and some only offer store credit. The store credit is usually double what you would get from them in cash, but sometimes purging a box of books, only to come home with a new box of books, defeats the purpose. Keep in mind that a used bookstore only has space to store a certain amount of books, as well, so they likely will only take a small portion of what you want them to take.

There are also Web sites that allow you to sell your books to used bookstores. I've used www.cash4books.net. You enter the ISBN numbers of all the books you want to sell, then their Web site tells you which books they will buy, and for what price. Then, you ship the books to them, and they deposit the amount for the books, plus shipping, into your PayPal account.

If you don't need to get money for your books, donating is the best idea. Donating books that are in good condition to the Estes Park Public Library could put some of your books into circulation, and the remainder will be put in the Friends of the Library Book Sale, August 1, 2 and 3. The money from the sale goes toward supporting the library and its programs and services. Please make sure books are in good condition. There are some limitations on what they will accept, too, such as no computer or stock market books older than five years.

To maintain the purged status of your books, there's a fun Web site dedicated to passing books along when you're finished reading them. BookCrossing.com allows you to "set a good book free" by taking that book, writing a Book Crossing ID number on the inside cover, along with an explanation about what Book Crossing is, and then leaving the book for the taking at a coffee shop, waiting room, or any other appropriate place. The person who takes the book from where you leave it then goes to the Web site, enters in the book's ID number, and writes a little about who and where they are. They leave the book for someone else to take when they're finished with it, and through the Web site you can watch your book travel the world.

For the crafty type, there are many crafts that can be made out of your old books. Visit www.housepurge.com for instructions on turning your old books into wall sconces, bookends, iPod cases, secret hollow books for hiding valuables, table legs, and more.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

July 4, 2008

Housepurge — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:04:12 GMT

For the last two weeks I've told you about Dancing Rabbit, an eco-village in Missouri that my family went to visit last summer. (Visit www.dancingrabbit.org for more information.) No, Im not procrastinating about my purging there really is a moral to the story.

There were three kids and a baby who lived at Dancing Rabbit while we were visiting. The three kids belonged to Jennifer. All three kids were well-socialized, polite, and all-around good kids. One of the most impacting days at Dancing Rabbit was when Jennifer gave us a tour of her home. Downstairs was a living room with a futon where Jennifer slept. Upstairs was a loft where the three kids slept. The kids each had their mattress for their bed, and then to divide the mattresses up, they made walls out of their toys. That's it - their only toys had to fit between their bed and their siblings'. And yet, those kids were bright, happy, and seemed to have everything they wanted. I realized that my main excuse for having too much stuff in my own house, that it's all the kids' stuff, and that kids need a lot of stuff, was invalid. Kids don't need stuff. They need love, attention, creativity, education, and whole lot of other things, but they certainly don't need stuff.

My kids also showed me then that they don't need stuff. At Dancing Rabbit, the words "I'm bored" never came out of their mouths. Who can be bored when there are bikes to ride, ponds to swim in, herbs to gather, cookies to bake, people to interact with, homes to build, pictures to draw, and music to dance to? They had the time of their lives. And, all the toys (and most the luggage we brought) never got brought in from the car. We had an unnecessary amount of stuff in our car - not to mention in our home in Colorado.

One of my favorite visuals from our trip was one day, when it was raining, yet very warm outside, three-year-old Ryan was barefoot, walking along the dirt road, covered in mud, picking flowers off the side of the road, and singing sweetly to himself. He looked like a perfectly happy little hippie-child. All he needed was some rain, mud and flowers.

The thing I loved most about Dancing Rabbit was living in community. It's the way people have lived for thousands of years. Living in your own house, on your own land, not knowing your neighbor, let alone working with them, is a modern, unnatural way to live. Why does everyone on our street have a lawn mower, when, really, just having one to share is plenty? Why do we all run our errands, make our meals, clean our houses and watch our children, when if we combined our efforts, we'd all be so much more efficient? Living in community is about sharing, helping, and working as a team, and I just so loved that. Socially, it was wonderful, too. I think about how far in advance my friends and I have to make plans to go out, just to make sure it fits into everyone's schedules, and that childcare is lined up for our kids. Well, when living in community, you can essentially "go out" every night - people who want to stay up late having fun, can. People who need their sleep can go home and get their sleep.

When raising kids, the saying, "it takes a village" is so true. I now see that the kids of Dancing Rabbit who are being raised by a village have so much fuller, more enriched lives. Instead of two adult role models, they have thirty, and each brings something special into that child's life. Of course, those kids were very close to their mother, who had all say on discipline and how her kids were to be raised, but you could tell each of the kids had other adults they felt close to, also. And, other adults they'd go to for certain things - Thomas for art projects, BJ for computer lessons. If Jennifer wasn't around when one of them fell off a bike and hurt themselves, another adult was right there to scoop them up, give them a band-aid and a hug. I could see that all of the kids were loved by all of the adults like family. How lucky those kids are to have so many people care about them that much.

Living in community is something that is once again gaining popularity in the United States. We even have an intentional community in development here in Estes Park. Mary's Meadow Cohousing (www.marysmeadowcohousing.com) will be over by Mary's Lake. While they intend to be built "green", I don't get the impression from their Web site that they will be as radical about sustainability as an Eco-Village is. But, they will still be an intentional community, and that was what appealed to me most about Dancing Rabbit.

So, what wasn't there to like about Dancing Rabbit? Well, at the top of the list are the ticks. More ticks than you can imagine. We'd go outside, walk across a field, and we'd have at least five ticks on us. These were dog ticks, which don't carry diseases like our own deer ticks, but they're still creepy and crawly and I don't like them one bit. I pulled 35 attached ticks off my family of five in seven days.

Dancing Rabbit was like nothing I've ever experienced before. It is a place that Josh and I still think about on a near-daily basis. We think about the great people we met, the lessons we learned about living responsibly and more sustainable on earth, and about how incredibly cool, and yet far-fetched at this point, it is to be living in a small community with its own food source, its own economic system, and, essentially, its own consensus-style "government".

It had a large impact on the kids, too; Aaron chose to write about Dancing Rabbit at a writer's workshop this year, and he's talked about it at Show-and-Tell at school. Ryan was only three years old when we went, and some of the things he remembers surprises me, as well. Both kids keep asking when we're going back. Aaron called it paradise.

And, we will go back. Next time we'll go for three weeks. We'll take the workshops we took the first week, and then live amongst the village the other two weeks, to really learn what life there is like. It would be very hard for my family to ever leave our beloved Rocky Mountains, but if we ever did, there's a good chance that this is where we'd go. If we were brave enough. I feel very strongly that the only difference between the Rabbits and us is that they were brave enough to make the choice to live this radical lifestyle... a decision that takes even more bravery when young kids are involved.

When we got home from Dancing Rabbit, we looked around our house. After a week with just the necessities and a few luxuries, everything in our house just looked so... excessive. Unnecessary. Wasteful. Burdensome. It occurred to us that we have so much stuff, we couldn't move to Dancing Rabbit if we wanted to. And then we felt trapped by our belongings. We could live as well and as freely as we did at Dancing Rabbit, if only we had about 75% less. And, so, House Purge was born.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

June 27, 2008

Housepurge — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:02:38 GMT

Last week I introduced you to Dancing Rabbit (www.DancingRabbit.org), an Eco-Village in rural Missouri that is striving for complete sustainability. This week I'm going to tell you about my familys weeklong visit there.

Our trip was so incredible, and so unique, I know I will have a hard time cramming it into one column. I also know that I don't have the writing skills to really paint a picture for you. So, all I can say is, if you ever have the opportunity to stay in an Eco-Village, jump on it! And, if you don't have the opportunity, go seek it out! It will be the most memorable vacation (and cheapest!) your family will ever take.

One of the highlights of our trip was working on building a community kitchen out of cob, which is clay, sand, water and hay. (Think Adobe and Tudor.) We were building walls for the pantry of a new common kitchen. It was fun to work with our hands and get dirty. The kids got to help, too. And, cob is beautiful - they artfully put colored glass in the walls for decoration and cool lighting effects.

Being in the kitchen was also a highlight. Cooking meals is not a daily, boring chore to rush through, the way it is at my house. At Dancing Rabbit, people are assigned to make one meal per week. They spend all week thinking about, looking forward to and planning that meal. They collect the greens they need from the garden. They start preparing everything from scratch at about two o'clock in the afternoon. They make enough to feed their food co-op that night for dinner, and leftovers for lunch the next day. Usually other people will help, and it becomes a chance to chat with neighbors. The following day, people would be on their own for breakfast (they kept homemade granola, quick oats, and ingredients to make pancakes in stock), then whoever was responsible for dinner the night before would heat up the last night's leftovers. This meant everyone was always eating well, and yet only had to make about one meal a week. Such a nice thing about living in community - sharing the workload. At Dancing Rabbit, food is something that takes time and heart - just as it did on this planet for thousands of years.

One of the food co-ops specialized in gourmet vegan food. Eating with them was always a huge treat. (They even keep a really neat blog here: http://ecovegan.blogspot.com.) I never realized that vegan food could be so delicious. (And this is coming from someone who doesn't eat any vegetables!) Eating a vegan diet for a week really made me feel healthier than ever. I can also attest that vegan bodies aren't stinky and don't require deodorant. (I'm speaking of Josh, of course, because I always smell like roses, anyway.)

At Dancing Rabbit, they recycle and compost everything. In one week, the only thing I threw away was the container that my kids' rice milk came in. Those can't be recycled. I also threw away a tea bag, but was then informed that they could actually be composted. I believe the landfill trashcan at the common house was only filled up once in the week we were there, and well over 30 people were using it! It really was amazing. I really think in our house of five, we have way too much trash. We buy things at the store that come with too much trash in the first place, instead of buying in bulk and using our own containers.

As far as trash goes, my biggest accomplishment was that at Dancing Rabbit, I went an entire week without using a single paper towel. I didn't realize until I got to Dancing Rabbit that I have a serious paper towel addiction. When I got to Dancing Rabbit and found out they didn't use paper towels, I started panicking, having heart palpitations, feeling dizzy, having headaches, twitching, and having just about every other withdrawal symptom you can imagine. I had detoxed from paper towels by the end of the week, and realized that life did, indeed, feel better without them. I went home vowing to never use another one. That lasted about a week. I had one spill that I was convinced needed a paper towel, and not a rag, and that was all it took to fall off the wagon and be a paper towel addict once again. Sad.

At Dancing Rabbit they only have two cars. The people in the driving co-op pay weekly for the opportunity to use the car, which covers gas and maintenance. Then, there is a bulletin board with all of the major nearby towns listed, and people leave notes when they need to go to one of those towns, or have something picked up from there. Then, when someone is using the car, they check the bulletin board to see if anyone else needs to go, or if they need to run errands for anyone else. It was amazing to me that 30 people could easily get by with two cars. For small grocery trips and such, there was a small, organic, Mennonite-run grocery store about two miles away that could easily be walked or biked to.

On our second day there, our baby, Hayden, had pink eye, and my doctor called in eye drops to a pharmacy about 20 miles away. I was going to go get the eyes drops (we did, after all, have our own car there), and one of the members insisted I let her get it while she was in town that afternoon. I felt like I was imposing on someone I barely knew, although I appreciated the favor. Then I realized that what was more important to her was doing the environment a favor by not letting me drive our polluting and resource-using van 20 miles for a tiny bottle of eye drops, when she'd be going that way herself. So, I gave her money and our insurance card, and a couple hours later we had eye drops.

Next week, Im going to write about Dancing Rabbit one last time. I want to share with you how it inspired House Purge, and also changed our lives. And then, I promise well get back to purging!

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

June 20, 2008

Housepurge — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:14:34 GMT

This summer has sure been busy! I've still been very good about purging my house of junk, I just haven't had the opportunity to write about it. My summer's been filled with out-of-town family and friends visiting, Wildland Fire Academy, a trip to the Great Sand Dunes, and putting together the Kids with Altitude publication with Families For Estes.

Having visitors has given me an extra excuse to get purging done in preparation for their arrival. The quickly approaching garage sale deadline is also keeping me on my toes.

This week I wanted to write about my largest inspiration for purging 75% of our material items.

A year and a half ago, my husband, Josh, and I were watching a television show called 30 Days. The premise is that they take a person and drop them into a lifestyle completely outside of their comfort zone for 30 days, and see what kind of changes they have in viewpoints and values when living in someone else's shoes. One episode, called "Off the Grid", followed two gas-guzzling, non-eco-friendly New York City urbanites as they lived off-the-grid in a self-sustained Eco-Village in rural Missouri for 30 days. (If you ever get the opportunity to rent the show, definitely do! It was very entertaining and educational.)

The eco-village where this show took place was called Dancing Rabbit. I think some extreme aspects of eco-village communal living could turn people off - sharing everything, having a communal car, recycling everything, including, *ahem*, "humanure", eating a strictly vegan diet, having to work hard, laborious hours to maintain your own gardens to grow your own food, not buying things brand new, having to build your own house from cob (a straw and mud mixture), and having to live simply, with only the bare necessities.

Josh and I saw this eco-village and were not turned off at all. We were inspired. When the TV show ended, we turned and looked at each other, eyes wide, huge smiles on our faces, and said, "We have to go there!" Josh and I are always open to trying new things. When I die, I'd love to be able to say, "I tried it all." I really saw this as a different, unique, potentially life-changing experience that I just had to try.

I found Dancing Rabbit online at www.dancingrabbit.org, and applied for my family of five to go there for a week. Applying involved an application and a "getting-to-know-you" essay. Several months later, we learned that we were invited to go. We got the kids excited about our "vacation" to go live "naturally". (They pictured we'd be living in teepees, but they were excited, nonetheless.)

Dancing Rabbit is essentially an experiment. It's a group of people that are showing by example that it is possible to live a sustainable, self-sufficient life in modern times. What Dancing Rabbit is doing can seem very radical, so they remain transparent. They welcome the general public into their community and homes to show that what they're doing is doable, and not as "out there" as one might suspect. They focus on educational workshops and outreach programs to help others see that responsible, sustainable living is completely achievable. Dancing Rabbit now has about 40 members, plus some interns, but has plans and goals of growing to a town supporting a population of 500-1,000.

The village, itself, was made up of a Common House, which included a kitchen, computer lab, children's playroom, grand piano, living/meeting/dining room, bathrooms, showers, library and offices. Surrounding the Common House were individual houses (some made of cob or haybale, some done in shanty-style, and some made of reclaimed wood), an outdoor kitchen, a swimming pond, solar showers, an Ultimate Frisbee field, and numerous gardens belonging to the various food co-ops of the village.

Dancing Rabbit had about 35 residents, aged 10 months to mid-50s. Most of the people were college-educated. Everyone was unique, interesting, bright, outgoing, fun, and easy to get to know. At first glance, the people seemed like extreme examples of different parts of society. By the end of the week, I found I was able to relate to all of them in some way, and I found bits and pieces of my friends back home in all of them. They were just ordinary people, living in an extraordinary way, making lifestyle changes that most people aren't brave enough to make.

The people of Dancing Rabbit operate under full group consensus, which made them all superior communicators. I found that their ability to always speak their minds and work through problems in a non-confrontational manner was refreshing. There were many different politics, philosophies and religions in the group, but all were treated with respect. They love to think and talk, and Josh and I had some of our deepest and most meaningful conversations with the folks of Dancing Rabbit.

Dancing Rabbit runs off of solar and wind power, so they still have all of the modern luxuries we have. Most of them use computers. A few have televisions. They have weekly game nights, movie nights, and other fun get-togethers (such as a swing dancing night while we were there.) They have community celebrations and parties, and weekly meetings about the community. For work, some people have internet businesses, some are artists, some work exclusively for the eco-Village, and some are retired. A couple people I talked to are able to live off of $1,500 per year. The most lavish person in the village lives off of $15,000 per year. (Lavish would include paying other people to grow your vegetables, do your building, and do your chores, so that you don't have to.) Most people get by with $5,000 - $6,000 per year.

This is your introduction to the Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village. Next week I will tell you about my family's week with them, how it changed our lives, and how it inspired my House Purge project.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

May 9, 2008

Housepurge — Wed, 14 May 2008 05:12:42 GMT

I purged so much stuff from my living room this week, and it feels GREAT. I'm finally starting to make a dent. My kids keep saying, "Thank you so much for purging the house, Mom. Will you purge my room next?" I never thought they'd be asking me to purge their toys. It must feel really good to them, too, to have so much less clutter.

As I've been purging, I've divided my stuff into the following categories: Garbage bags of stuff to donate, garbage bags of stuff to eBay, boxes of stuff to sell at a garage sale, and, of course, trash in the trash can.

A garage sale can seem like a huge, daunting project. We've lived in this house for eight years, we've intended to have a garage sale every year that we've lived year, and we haven't had one yet. We even called the shed in our backyard the "Garage Sale Shed." Then it became the "eBay Shed". Now it's back to being the "Garage Sale Shed". Some of the stuff has been out there so long that it's probably not sellable anymore. So, this summer, I have to have a garage sale. I'm determined. I can't use excuses like, "But I'm too pregnant to have a garage sale," or, "But the kids are too young for me to be able to pull off a garage sale."

One of the most cumbersome tasks in having a garage sale is getting everything priced. It's hard to know what your stuff is worth. Keep this in mind: Whatever you think that item is worth, divide by four and then take the square root, divide by four again, and then round down to the nearest cent, and that is around what people are willing to pay for it at a garage sale. That's right - next to nothing. Go to www.housepurge.com to see the lists I found on recommended pricing for garage sales.

I also picked up some garage sale price tags at True Value Hardware, and have been putting price tags on the items as I purge them. This will make it that much quicker on the day of the sale to simply pull items out of boxes and set them out.

It's also important to pick a good day for the sale. Contrary to what I originally thought, holiday weekends are not good weekends for garage sales. I'm not sure whether that's true for tourist towns like our own, but it's something to consider.

Once the day is picked, you may want to inform your neighbors of the sale as a courtesy, and make sure that your property owner's association doesn't have rules against sales or signs.

The week before and of the sale you'll want to advertise it. The newspapers are an effective place to do this. There are also free Garage Sale Listings Web sites, such as www.weekendtreasure.com. On the day of the sale, you'll want to put up signs. Make sure your signs are legal in placement, and not in the right of way or on someone else's land. One great tip I found online is to use brown paper grocery sacks to write your sign on in bold paint or permanent marker, fill the bottom of the bag with sand, stuff the rest of the bag with newspaper, and staple the top closed. Voila! A wind-proof sign!

Do things to add value to your items. Putting things back in original packaging, if you have it, can add value. Some people also print off the item description and price from the Web for higher-end items, then tape it to what they're selling. This will give official details about the item without you needing to do so. Definitely clean and dust off the items.

On the morning of your sale, when setting up, make sure things are organized. The easier it is to sort through your stuff, the more you'll sell. Baby stuff stays together. Kitchen stuff stays together. Clothes stay together. Borrowing big tables from your friends or church can help you organize. It can also be helpful to label tables with "Everything on this table - $5 each." Or, "Everything in this box, $0.25 each." This could save time with pricing. Make sure you have a cash box of bag with an assortment of bills and coins to make change with. Not being able to make the proper change could lose a sale. Posting an "All Sales Final" sign will prevent people from trying to get their money back the next day. (Can you believe some people have had a problem with that?)

Don't be annoying at your sale. Don't hover over shoppers. Don't be ridiculously firm on over-inflated prices. Don't tell shoppers the story behind every item, like "Timmy's first toy car." Don't claim things are new when they're clearly old and used. Don't say, "That size four dress is not going to fit you."

This sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? If it sounds too overwhelming for you to do this summer, then consider one of the many charity garage sales our town hosts each year. The money will go to a good cause, and the volunteers will do all of the hard work. You can also write off your tax-deductible donations.

One of my favorite charity garage sales is THIS WEEKEND. It's the Second Annual Garage Sale benefiting Families For Estes, an organization I hold near and dear to my heart. You can drop off your donations TODAY at 1520 Axminster, here in Estes Park, from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. If you don't have anything to donate, please come to the one-day sale tomorrow, Saturday, May 10, from 8:00am to 1:00pm. We promise there'll be lots of irresistible deals! Of course, I am not encouraging you to buy stuff simply to fill up your house with more stuff that needs to be purged. So, if you're participating in House Purge 2008 and swing by to make a monetary donation, I promise we won't make you take any items home. You can learn more about what Families For Estes is doing for the families and children of Estes Park by going to www.FamiliesForEstes.org.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

May 2, 2008

Housepurge — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:59:09 GMT

Now I'm into the thick of "purging that counts". The purging that will make the most difference in my family's quality of life is the Toy Purge.

While keeping open dialogue with my kids about this project, I've exclusively used the word "purge" when talking about it. "Purge" is a fun project that makes our house healthy and magically turns unwanted toys into a Disney Cruise. "Cleaning" is not fun. The kids want to "purge". They do not want to "clean".

As I mentioned last week, I started this process by letting my kids make a list of the ten things they do not want to purge. This opened my eyes to what toys they actually treasure. Silly me to make assumptions about such things - I was way off. (That preposition was for you, Katie.)

My next step was to give the kids a garbage bag, and tell them to purge the toys they do not want. There's no sense in causing stress, debate, hurt feelings, or power struggles over toys they're readily willing to purge. Aaron, my six-year-old, loves to purge. I actually wonder whether it's healthy for him to be as unattached to his things as he is. Then I think about how proud I am that he is so unattached, and that I would like to be more like him. It is, after all, just stuff. On the other hand, I can't get Aaron to purge any of the trash he collects from the playground at school that fills his pockets. (Oh, excuse me - it's not trash; It's either "treasure" or it's for his "experiment".) Ryan, my four-year-old, on the other hand, is a very selective purger. He walks around with a garbage bag that's as tall as he is, looks at every teeny-weeny item, and every now and then throws a button or a Lego into the bag. He's also creative with his non-purging: "Mom, I want to purge this big firetruck. But you should keep it for when Baby Hayden gets older."

A good place to start the toy purge is with stuffed animals. These accumulate so quickly. They are also the dirtiest toys and affect the air quality of your home. This is especially a concern for families with an asthmatic family member or someone with bad allergies. Stuffed animals are a sponge for dirt, pollen, mold, dust and dust mites. The stuffed animals that kids sleep with may seem like they wouldn't be as dusty since they get used more, but the skin cells that sluff off of the kids are an all-you-can-eat buffet for dust mites. People rarely wash stuffed animals, because the toys get ruined and lose their shape and texture in the wash. So, I recommend getting these down to the bare minimum appropriate for your child and for the amount of space they have.

Books can also be a place of over-accumulation. Books are, of course, a good thing, but you can only keep the amount of books that you have room to store. If all of the kids' books don't fit in their bookcase, it's time to purge some. Nancy Johnson, Director of Lifelong Learning of Estes Valley, warns against OVER-purging the books, however. She advises against "getting rid of all those board books and toddler books when you think your children have outgrown them. As children learn to read, those are the books they can return to and will love even more because they can read them by themselves."

Now let's address the toys with the teeny-weeny pieces. The toys that are useless once the pieces get separated from each other. The toys that end up firmly implanted in the bottom of your foot whenever you walk without shoes. The toys you occasionally have to fish out of the baby's cheek. In my house those toys are called "Legos" and "Playmobil". In your house they might be called "Polly Pocket". These toys drive me nuts. Especially the Legos. Back in the olden days, Legos were these terrific, multi-use building blocks with endless options and opportunities to create. In modern days, Legos are bought in specific sets and include complicated books of instructions for use. The Legos don't even resemble Legos. The Legos have to be used to make a specific thing. Once you lose one of the pieces, the set is rendered useless. The bottom-of-the-lamppost Lego is literally only good for making the bottom of the lamppost. If you lose the middle-of-the-lamppost Lego, you now have a useless Lego set. I recommend for the teeny-weeny toys to have a good system of organization that the kids can easily maintain. Without the teeny-weeny pieces being organized, and therefore usable, you have a waste of toy space, and unnecessary risk to the windpipe of your baby and the bottoms of your feet. I intend to toss the teeny-weenies in my house and start fresh with a new organization system that allows for a manageable amount of teeny-weenies that will actually be used.

If you have enough toys in your house to open a toy store, you can certainly afford to be choosey about what you keep and what you don't keep. Let's think quality and not quantity. High-quality, lead-free, multi-use, multi-age toys that are educational or inspire creativity and imagination should certainly be given priority over those that are junk.

Hopefully this will get us started on the toy purge, something I expect to take at least a couple of weeks in my house. We are absolutely drowning in toys, and I'm so excited to get this part of the House Purge finished.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the project's Web site at www.housepurge.com .

April 25, 2008

Housepurge — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:26:42 GMT

I'm not going to have much time for House Purging this week. I am busy, like many of the musicians in town, with Estes Park Sings rehearsals. And it's worth it - the show is going to be very entertaining, and is for a great cause: the Estes Park Rotary Scholarship Program which gives out over $30,000 in local scholarships every year. Support the college-bound teenagers of Estes Park by coming to see the show tonight or tomorrow!

With me not having time to purge this week, I will finally address the most requested topic by you, and the most dreaded topic by me. Purging children's toys. You can feel free to knock yourself out with it this week, while I'm having fun singing and dancing.

Where to even start? Our house is simply overrun by toys. Truly. We have so many toys that the kids are so overwhelmed by the choices they have, that the big kids would prefer to play outside, and the baby would prefer to play with belly button lint.

Here are some seemingly obvious tips to get you started:

If it's broken, purge it.
If it's been outgrown, purge it.
If the kids never play with it, purge it.
If it's run out of batteries, and you never intend to have the batteries replaced because it's obnoxious, purge it.

Those are my rules. I know it's not quite that easy, especially when you factor in the kids' opinions, and the mental block of, "But this might buy me 15 minutes of dishwasher loading time if I hang on to it."

Consider an experiment I once tried. Using "Love and Logic" technique, when the kids had a messy room, I said, "Feel free to clean up any toys you want to keep." They cleaned up their "lovies", and not too many other toys. Everything else was stuffed into garbage bags and put into storage. (They were not happy about this - believe me.) The kids then only had about ten toys remaining. They played with them all the time. They found new ways to play with them. They found ways to combine all the toys to use together. They had a reasonable, maintainable amount of toys. They could keep their toys cleaned up. I could afford to keep up with battery replacement. It was pleasant. I had planned to give the "thrown out" toys back to them once they could show me they could keep their room clean, but I didn't need to give them back. They weren't missed.

Throw one holiday into the equation, and an insane amount of new toys from the spoilsome grandparents, and we were back to drowning in toys. The kids lost all interest in everything again, and were back outside playing with sticks, rocks and dirt. (Which I like to encourage anyway, I might add.)

Parents want there to be less toys. I believe strongly that kids want there to be less toys, too, even though they may not recognize that. Less inside toys mean more outside time. It also means more time for art, music, imagination, and creativity in general. Let's make this toy purge about whittling down quantity to get to the quality toys hiding at the bottom of the toy box.

To avoid a lot of distress, power struggles, and trauma (written with the back of my hand dramatically placed across my forehead), it's important to enlist the kids' help in this process. It's important that they feel that they have some control over what is happening to their belongings.

We talk about purging for a "healthier" house all the time with the kids. They've seen Mommy and Daddy setting an example by purging their own belongings. So, when I started talking to them about purging their toys, they understood what that meant, and why we're doing it. You will definitely want to have that dialogue with your kids.

It may also help to have a reward or incentive. My family's incentive is that we are saving money from our House Purge to go on a Disney Cruise. We are trying to prove to ourselves that we have so much money tied up in stuff that we don't use, want or need, that we could afford to fulfill a dream that we do have by purging that stuff. Yes, that dream is a Disney Cruise. Admittedly, dreams are readjusted to accommodate the three young children in our lives. My six-year-old, Aaron, says that, "We have to get rid of toys to turn them into a Disney Cruise." Yeah, close enough.

Just out of curiosity's sake, I just had my four- and six-year-old make a list of the ten toys they DON'T want to have purged. The items that made that list were surprising to me. I was also surprised how hard it was for them to come up with ten things. I'm going to consider this list the "protected" toys, as silly as some of their choices may seem to me. They have survived the toy purge unscathed, and I will leave them alone. All other toys will have to go into the Toy Purge Gauntlet and fight for their lives in this house.

Child development expert and Director of Lifelong Learning of Estes Valley, Nancy Johnson, suggests allowing grade school kids to donate the toys. "This age group will be very interested in charity to other children." Charity would be a great way to get a grade-schooler to be excited and cooperative about paring down their stuff.

Purging the toys of a preschooler might require more trial and error than the toys of a grade-schooler. "You might put preschoolers' toys that you plan to get rid of in a box for a month and see if the child misses them and asks for them. Sometimes it is difficult to anticipate what toys your child can't live without!" Nancy suggests.

This week, start a dialogue with your kids about the dreaded Toy Purge. Explain how much easier cleaning their room will be once a lot of the toys are gone. Find out what's important to them, and what they would voluntarily purge. I'll go into details about books, stuffed animals, teeny-weeny Legos, and sentimental items next week.

April 18, 2008

Housepurge — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:25:58 GMT

I am well into the fourth month of the House Purge, and I'm feeling like I've barely made a dent. People come over to my house, have a look around, and ask, "So, Kristen... ummmm... How's the House Purge coming along?" The living spaces of the house - the rooms that people see - are still overflowing with stuff.

I like to tell my friends, "I know it looks bad, but come see my bedroom, or under my bathroom sinks, or the kids' dressers..." Alas, most of my purging thus far has been under the surface.

It's time to stop dinking around, and actually make some headway in the rooms that people see, and the rooms that the family uses. I'm such a procrastinator, and have been dreading doing purging that "counts". I originally had planned to write about purging my mailbox this week, but my husband, Josh, said, "That doesn't count! This living room better be the next room to purge!" So, purging the mailbox will have to wait a few weeks. Tackling mountains of real clutter will finally have to begin.

This week will begin the living room purge. I'm going to start with collections, then move onto toys, sentimental items, multimedia and furniture.

Are you a collector? What do you collect? Why do you collect it?

Collections are as diverse as the collectors themselves, and people collect for all types of reasons. Peter Walsh, author of It's All Too Much wisely states that there is a very fine line between a collection and clutter.

I have many collections in my house: koalas, Willow Tree figurines, log cabin decor, DVDs, porcelain dolls, fabric fat quarters, and many more.

My mom forced several of my collections on me. My mom is a "happiness" collector. She believes happiness is derived from collections. If I casually mention, "I really liked that last Harry Potter movie," I find that the next holiday I am inundated with Harry Potter paraphernalia. Because that will bring me joy, right? Or, if I really enjoyed one Willow Tree figurine, my mom assumes that ten Willow Tree figurines would bring me ten times the amount of joy. I collected koala bears as a child, and I still find that a koala will sneak its way back into my life every now and then. After all, koalas brought about so much joy when I was nine years old.

My husband, Josh, on the other hand, is an "investment" collector. His mom doesn't impose collections on him the way my mom does on me. He imposes collections on himself. He finds things that are "going to be worth something someday". When I met Josh, that macho man I was dating actually had an enormous collection of Beanie Babies- probably close to a hundred of them. They were still in their packaging, protected from dust and harmful UV rays, taking up every drawer of an antique dresser. Well, here's a reality check: Anything that is mass-produced by the millions is most likely not going to be worth a lot of money in this lifetime. And, let's face it - almost everything produced in this day and age is produced in mass-produced. On eBay right now, there are 13,264 listings for Beanie Babies. I see an auction for a lot of 120 Beanie Babies up there right now that is over tomorrow, and still doesn't have an initial bid of five dollars. Do a little research - you may be surprised to find that you couldn't pay someone to take your mass-produced "investment" collection.

Another type collection in my house is the "habitual" collection. Stuff that we've had for so long, we just can't get rid of it. We've moved it from house to house to house. We don't know why we've moved it, but that's not the point. My family and that collection have a history together.

The final type of collection that we have is the "sentimental" collection. This falls into a category all its own, and I will elaborate on how to purge sentimental items at a later date.

In my house, I've decided that collections are clutter. They are things that have to be dusted. They make surfaces hard to clean. They take up space. They take up thoughts. They take up time. They certainly take up money. They're just plain silly. If I were to do a search on eBay, I would find that my "valuable" collections actually hold no value at all. Nobody else wants this stuff, why should I?

Peter Walsh says that for something to be considered an actual collection, and not clutter, it has to meet the following requirements:

It's displayed in a way that makes you proud and shows that you value and honor it.
Looking at it brings you pleasure.
You enjoy showing it to others.
It is not an obsession that is damaging your relationships.
It is not buried under other clutter.
It doesn't get in the way of living the life you wish you had.

The life I wish we had is a life where our house is clean and stark, just like a Pottery Barn catalog. We would own a manageable amount of stuff, so that the entire house could be cleaned very quickly, and stay clean. This would give us less time doing housework and so much more time enjoying the kids and doing fun things together as a family. I definitely think my collections are contributing to not living the life I wish I had, and I'm going to knock out that small contribution this week!

April 11, 2008

Housepurge — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:21:11 GMT

The summer of 2002 will always be remembered by my community
as the summer of the Big Elk Fire.

My husband and I were working from home the day the fire started. We heard a siren going off at the fire station. It was not a truck siren, but a very loud siren that lasted nearly five minutes. A siren we'd never heard before. So, naturally, we ignored it.

About 10 minutes later, we looked out the bathroom window and saw a huge, black plume of smoke. It was so close- just on the other side of the ridge. The fire started only a mile from my house, as the crow flies. That is very close, but is seemed even closer. I was more terrified than I'd ever been in my life. I'd never been so close to a wildfire before. How long did we have to get out? Five days? Five hours? Five minutes?

The feelings of terror and great sadness that we were experiencing were amongst some of the most intense and raw emotions I've ever had. Residents of Pinewood Springs and Big Elk Meadows who were working at the office that day did not have to know the threatening panic of immediate evacuation that the residents at home were presented with. Very few people know the terror of having twenty minutes to get out, knowing that anything not in their cars- people, pets and belongings included- could potentially go up in smoke.

We watched the smoke plume in terror. I held my baby, Aaron, tightly to me, ready to... I don't know... run? It became apparent that our lives were not in immediate danger. The plume, albeit huge, was not any closer than when we first noticed it. We knew we knew we had time to safely get ourselves out of Pinewood Springs.

Since it was no longer about lives for us, it became about stuff, and protecting the stuff. We had to look at everything differently. What was so important that it deserved a place in one of our two small cars? What could not be replaced?

Josh and I ran about the house, packing up, in an emotional, adrenaline-charged, freak-out frenzy. After twenty minutes of Supermarket-Sweep-style packing, both cars were over-stuffed with the most important things from our house: Photographs, home movies, insurance and financial files, computer hard drives, favorite antiques and sentimental items. With our lives safe, and important belongings safe, we then scurried about the house taking photos of our most expensive belongings, for insurance purposes.

Baby's First Wildfire

My mom, who was working at the time, saw the smoke plume from her Denver office, and after pleading with police in Lyons to be allowed to drive to Pinewood Springs, she was able to come over and let us pack up her car, too. Knowing that our baby cradle, that my dad made for me when I was born, and our 30+ years of Christmas ornaments were now safe in my mom's car was just icing on the Safe Possessions Cake.

We got a reverse-911 call that said that evacuation for us was only voluntary. The fire was moving away from Pinewood Springs and toward Big Elk Meadows, and our community was not in the immediate danger that Big Elk Meadows was. If we evacuated, we had to let the fire station know our house was clear, and we could not come back.

With the cars packed, we could sit on the deck, relax and "enjoy" the fire. It was exciting to watch the slurry bombers and helicopters dropping water and fire retardant on the fire. There was a media circus at our mailboxes. Emergency response vehicles were racing up and down the canyon. Aside from those vehicles, the canyon was deserted. We felt like we had the best seat in the house. We helped one neighbor move his woodpile away from his house when he got home from work. It was a nearby neighbor we'd never had the chance to meet prior to the fire.

You may be wondering why my House Purge article is about the Big Elk Fire this week. You would be correct if your guess was that I am procrastinating about having to purge my living room this week. You'd be correct if you thought I was stalling. But, I also think a wildfire can really put stuff and belongings into perspective.

Once our most prized possessions were ready for evacuation, it was a strange feeling to walk about the house and not care about what was left in it. Josh and I even thought about how if the fire did take out our house and what was left in it, it might've been kind of nice to have a fresh start. (We were knocking on wood, of course.) We didn't care about nearly as much about our belongings as we once thought we did.

The first thirty minutes of the Big Elk Fire were all about stuff. An entire community was racing about to fill trucks, cars and rented moving vans with their stuff. The Big Elk Fire ended up being about meeting neighbors who were previously strangers, bringing communities together, and honoring the brave firefighters who protected Big Elk Meadows, Pinewood Springs and Estes Park - with three brave pilots losing their lives in the battle. It really put the silly stuff we all raced to save in perspective.

As I start to purge the main living area of my house this week, I will be thinking about whether each item would be important enough to evacuate in a fire. The things that matter most to me can fit into two vehicles - three tops. That leaves room for a lot of purging.

April 4, 2008

Housepurge — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:17:51 GMT

I am just yearning for spring. I know it technically is spring, but I yearn for those three weeks in late-May / early-June when the grass is green, the days are long, the hummingbirds are back, the flowers are blooming, the bugs aren't out in full-force, I can wear shorts and sandals outside, and yet the sun's not so hot that I have to go into shaded hiding after 10:00 am. Those three weeks are the best weeks of the year, and I spend all year getting excited for them.

For about a month, I've been tricking myself into believing that an early spring has started. I wear shorts in hopes of scaring the distant snow clouds away with my stark-white legs. Around the last week of April, I always make the mistake of thinking, This is it! This is REALLY spring now, and I'm going to plant my tomatoes! And every year, my tomatoes die a cold and bitter death. I then vow not to plant my tomatoes that early the following year. Alas, every year I am so excited for spring to come, that I throw all wisdom and experience to the wind and plant those darn tomatoes.

To keep the tomato-temptation at bay, this year I decided to get prematurely show my excitement for spring by busying myself with a yard purge. I started my yard purge several weeks ago, but was too embarrassed to admit in this column that springtime had arrived at the Owen household during what is usually the snowiest month of the year.

My yard purge started with the trash. That's straight-forward enough. I found everything from paper cups left outside by the kids to roof shingles that had blown in over the winter from a house three doors down.

Next I purged the kids' toys. Some toys were broken from being thrown around in the wind. Some toys were purged naturally by the wind, and are probably being enjoyed by a child somewhere in Lyons by now. Some toys the kids had outgrown, and I added them to my garage sale box. To further ready the yard for spring, I'll be picking up a fresh layer of sand for their sandbox this week.

Now I'm cleaning up the landscape. My four-year-old, Ryan, is enjoying the distinguished assignment of collecting pine cones to be used as fire starter. This is a very important duty, mind you, and nobody is allowed to interfere. I also need to till the garden, purge the weeds, and, sadly, purge one of my favorite blue spruces that's been dying over the last couple years.

The firefighter in me needs to remind you that if you live in or near a heavily wooded area, as many of us do, that one important part of the yard purge is readying the land for wildland fire season. Wildfire mitigation involves purging dead trees, dead leaf piles, slash piles, low limbs and overhanging branches on some trees, highly flammable vegetation, and tall grass. Moving woodpiles and sweeping pine needles off the deck and roof are two easy things to improve your house's defensible space. There is a lot of information on the Internet that can help you protect your house from wildfire. My favorite site on the subject is www.FireWise.org.

In the Estes Valley we are lucky enough to have Sue Pinkham, an Interagency Wildfire Educator. Sue is an expert on wildfire mitigation. She can do a survey of your own yard, and consult with you about your house's defensible space. She has suggestions and tips that will improve the safety of your house in the event of wildfire. Surprisingly, mitigation has little to no impact on the beauty of your yard, and actually makes the land look healthier. Don't be afraid! She does not bring a chainsaw with her, and take out your favorite tree. It's simply a consultation. The service she offers is at no cost to you, as she is paid by the agencies she represents. She is an excellent resource to tap into. An appointment can be made by e-mailing to spinkham@estes.org or by calling (970) 577-3682. Encourage your neighbors to take advantage of a free defensible space survey, too, to protect your land all the more.

If you're too shy to ask for a free defensible space consultation, perhaps you'll want to come to the BeAware & Prepare Wildfire Fair, put on by the Estes Park Volunteer Fire Department. It is on Saturday, May 15, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm at Barn W of the Fairgrounds at Stanley Park. There will be experts on hand to talk with you about wildfire dangers, defensible space, wildland firefighting, Xeriscape and fire resistant landscape. Smokey the Bear and Sparky the Fire Dog will even be there to entertain the kids!

Now, if we can all get our yard purge finished in a timely manner, I'm certain that spring will come early this year. Maybe even a month early. And, I'm going to plant my tomatoes just to prove it.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and registered eBay Trading Assistant. More information and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

March 28, 2008

Housepurge — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:50:22 GMT

ESTES PARK NEWS - In telling you about the different ways to purge items from your house as we de-clutter, I'm going to take one more week to write about eBay. Bear with me I just need to get this whole eBay-thing out of my system. As I said before, eBay can be as complicated as you want it to be, and I could write exclusively about it for months. But, I'll just give you one last set of tips so that you can effectively eBay some of your higher-value purged items.

One of the most important things to do for buying or selling on eBay is to open a PayPal account. PayPal is an on-line bank that can be used all over the Internet. It is legitimate and can be trusted. It is free to sign up and have an account - just go to www.paypal.com. You can transfer money between your PayPal account and traditional bank account. You can use your PayPal account to buy things from any Web site that accepts PayPal, or any place in the world that accepts your optional Visa debit card. As a Seller, you can collect instant payments from eBay Buyers who have PayPal, and you can collect credit card payments from people not set up with PayPal. Many people will not bid on auctions that dont accept PayPal payments, myself included. If your plans are to buy or sell on eBay more than just a couple times per year, this would be worth your time to set up. There is a small transaction fee when you are collecting payments with PayPal.

Another thing that will get you more money for your item is to do some research. First, I like to research my item by looking at the manufacturer's Web site to read the product specifications, and to learn more about the item than I ever knew, or cared to know, when I was actually using it. Then I like to go on eBay and see how many similar items are currently up for auction, to look at the competition. Next I go through completed auctions to look at other auctions that had similar items listed, and find out: Which ones sold, and which ones didn't? What price can I expect to get for my item? What should I start the bidding at? What day of the week should I start the auction? What category should this item be listed in to have the most success? What keywords should I include in the title of the listing? Doing research may seem laborious, but it could mean the difference between zero bids and twenty bids.

Another important step in the eBay process is customer service. Sellers will often write to ask questions about the item you're selling, or ask questions about shipping charges. Providing fast, personable and professional replies will increase interest in your auction, and get you better feedback in the end. (Feedback is your eBay reputation.) If you take too long to answer their question, they likely will have already bid on someone else's similar auction.

Good photography is an essential part of a successful auction. Photos really aren't even optional anymore, in my opinion. There are quite literally millions of auctions that are active at any given time. The odds of a bidder finding your same item, except with a good photo included, are high, and then you lose the bidder. Also make an effort to take a good photo. I am much more likely to bid on something with professional, or close to it, photography, then a picture of an item taken on someone's wrinkled, tacky, floral bed sheets. (Ok, I've been guilty of using a tacky bed sheet for a backdrop... but do as I say, not as I do.)

Not to be a huge eBay-dork, but it really is very fascinating. eBay is like it's own economic microcosm. People sell merchandise on eBay. The money they make, they turn around and spend on eBay, buying everything their family needs, except groceries. Some people make a living selling postage supplies on eBay to other eBay sellers. Some people make a living writing articles, not much different from this one, and then listing it on eBay as How to Set Up a PayPal Account only $9.99! and then they'll eBay the document to you after receiving payment. Some people buy wholesale lots on eBay, and turn around to auction the items individually. Its interesting how many people may end up making money off of the same exact item. Many people even gamble on eBay: You can bid on a secret to success, a lucky blue dot (going for $54.00 right now!), or a chance to choose an envelope, with a prize being in one of three envelopes. Sometimes people put joke auctions up (such as Great State of Ohio Shaped Cornflake) that people bid on just to show their support for the joke, or in hopes of landing a free gift with the silly auction. People have gotten very creative with finding ways to make money through eBay.

Hopefully my column in the last three weeks has inspired you to give eBay a try, and has shown you that it's fun and not something to fear. However, if you have items to sell on eBay, and want someone to take care of it for you, that's something I can help you out with. I am a registered eBay Trading Assistant, and can give you more information if you e-mail me at kristenco@yahoo.com.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and eBay PowerSeller. More information, topics, and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .

In My Defense...

Housepurge — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:45:17 GMT

When I copy and paste articles into PNN, all of the apostrophes are dropped for some reason. I correct them when I see them, but don't really take time to check. Rest assured, I know where apostrophes go, and these articles were published with apostrophes. ;-)

March 21, 2008

Housepurge — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:42:51 GMT

ESTES PARK NEWS - Last week I introduced you to the idea of selling the unwanted things you are purging from your house on eBay. I also encouraged you to be brave and choose an item to put on eBay this week. Repeat after me, "If I can operate Web sites and my e-mail, I can eBay my own stuff."

I'm going to tell you the easiest, simplest way to list your item. Ill throw in more complicated things as we go, but if the complicated things are going to intimidate you away from being on eBay, ignore them.

Start by getting online and going to www.eBay.com. You will need to open an account. At the very top of the page, click on the word Register. It will walk you through the process of getting an account. Registering on eBay is free. If youve ever bought anything on eBay, you already have an account and will use the same account to sell items.

Once your account has been registered, click on the Sell button at the top right corner of the page. Type the object you want to sell into the box, and click the button that reads, Keep it Simple. We definitely want to keep it simple this first time.

The first and most important step is to come up with a title for the listing thats 55 characters or less. When Buyers are searching eBay for things to buy, they are searching for words in the title. Any important words that someone would use to search for your item would need to find a way to be squeezed into the title, even if its doesnt read like fine poetry. If your item is new, definitely say so here. Make sure everything is spelled correctly, too. There are actually people who make a living by buying items on eBay that were spelled incorrectly, and therefore not generating bids. They turn around and sell it with a correctly spelled title for a large profit. (The most common spelling errors? Dimond and Labtop Comuters)

The next step is to choose a category that best represents your item. Click on the Find a Category button next to your title, and eBay will automatically suggest categories. Choose the one that best represents your item.

Step three is a photo. If getting a photo of your item onto your computer via digital camera or scanner is easy for you, definitely do so. More than 90% of listings include a photo. People want to see what they are bidding on. The photo should accurately portray the item, and look as appealing as possible. If you dont have a digital camera, just skip this step you can still play with us.

Step four is where you write the item description. Think of this as a classified ad, with an unlimited number of words. Give all of the details color, size, condition, brand, specific measurements, and any information you would want if you were considering buying this. Be very honest. Buyers would rather have too many details than not enough. Its ok for your item to not be perfect not everyone is in the market for something perfect and new. But, be forthcoming so people can bid accordingly. You dont want to disappoint the Buyer by not disclosing the imperfections.

Step five is to set a price and shipping amount. When setting the starting price, remember that people come to eBay looking for deals. If they wanted to pay full price, or close to, they would buy it new from a reputable store. The lower you start the price, the more bidders you will attract. But, if theres not enough people interested in it to start a bidding war, then you risk not getting as much for it as you wanted. Its a gamble, and finding the balanced starting price is something that takes practice. (Thats why youre starting with an item that you honestly dont care about how much money it fetches.) Be fair with the shipping costs, too. If your shipping charges are too high, most Buyers will choose someone elses auction over yours. Charge exactly what the shipping charge will be, plus whatever you pay for the shipping supplies, and then I always add a little extra to recover some of the listing fees.

The final step is to select what forms of payment you accept. For this first, bare-bone listing, you may want to only accept checks and money orders. If thats the case, you dont want to ship the item until you receive the payment and it has cleared. Most people in the eBay community use PayPal. PayPal is an on-line bank. If you already have a PayPal account from buying online, you will use that to collect payments, as well, for a small fee. I will talk more about PayPal next week.

Selling on eBay is not free. You will be charged a small fee just to list the item, whether it sells or not. You will then be charged a small percent of what the final sale price was, as a second fee. eBay will send an invoice to you once a month, so you dont have to pay the fees right away.

Go ahead and get your first item up on eBay. The whole process is easy to walk through, and it doesnt hurt to try. If your item doesn't sell, you might be out 35 cents. If it does sell, you'll have extra money in your pocket, plus you may find that you have a new hobby! If you have success with your first eBay experience, I want to hear about it.

Next week youll be a seasoned pro, and will be ready for some of the advanced eBay selling tips I'll have to offer.

Kristen Owen is a longtime blogger and eBay PowerSeller. More information, topics, archive and helpful tips about House Purge can be read by going to the projects Web site at www.housepurge.com .