Guide to creating a minimalist home

Yesterday our friends (not that we’ve ever met, but they seem like some cool cats) over at Zen Habits published a great article about how to create a minimalist home. It’s definitely worth the read.

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Home energy audit

Make your home more efficient and ease up on your heating bill by getting an energy audit.

In Utah you can pay $25 and a representative from the gas company will come inspect your home, install a water heater blanket and a few other niceties and leave you with a report on how you can make your home more energy efficient. If you apply any of the suggestions you’ll get the $25 back as a credit on your gas bill.

Call Questar Gas for more info (1-800-323-5517) or your local natural gas company.

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Stop phone solicitors

The less your phone rings the better, right? Especially during dinner.

If you haven’t already, register your phone number with donotcall.gov. From their site:

The National Do Not Call Registry gives you a choice about whether to receive telemarketing calls at home. Most telemarketers should not call your number once it has been on the registry for 31 days. If they do, you can file a complaint at this Website. You can register your home or mobile phone for free. Your registration will be effective for five years.

I did this a while a go with my cell phone and I don’t think I’ve ever had a call. Registration is easy. Give it a shot

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Quit working on vacation

The whole point of taking a vacation is to avoid every day distractions and get out of the rat race for a while. Unfortunately, with Blackberries, e-mail, cell phones and the like it’s becoming increasingly difficult to leave your work at the office.

What’s the point in spending precious time off and hard-earned money if you’re still working? Enjoy yourself, relax and spend time with family and friends. That’s what a vacation is for.

CNN offers some helpful tips on how to do just that. Read the article here.

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Turn off your phone

Don’t be afraid to turn off your cell phone. Seriously. Your heart will continue beating, the world will continue to turn and the sun will rise in the East. This is an especially important concept if you feel like you’re always on the phone and can’t seem to get by without it.

For example, if you’re leaving for lunch, turn off your phone. Go on a walk. Breathe some fresh air. It’s hard to get away from it all when your phone is ringing. Instead, switch off your phone (or even better, leave it at your desk) and turn your attention to other things.

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Simplify your iTunes library

Getting duplicate songs in your iTunes library is inevitable. Fortunately, there’s a built-in way to easily eliminate your duplicate tracks.

On a Mac, go to View -> Find duplicates. At first glance you may be surprised at how many songs come up. Don’t panic. iTunes searches by song name, so if you have a favorite song you have from an original album, a greatest hits album and a live album, iTunes will flag all three.

A quick way to scan is to sort by song name, which iTunes does by default. Look at your Albums column and if you see the same album listed twice in a row, you probably have a duplicate.

I used iTunes for quite a while before I found this feature. I hope it’s as useful for you as it has been for me.

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Simplify your web browsing

Most people have a few favorite hobby web sites they view regularly: sports, celebrity news, current events, etc.

Instead of visiting each site individually, use an RSS reader.

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. If your favorite websites have this icon somewhere on their site (LivSimpl’s is just to the right above the “Subscribe by e-mail” box, but many are in the address bar.)

Click the icon, copy the address and paste it into the RSS feed reader of your choice. (I use Google Reader, a free, web-based option).

Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a centralized place where you can go to see if sites have been updated without navigating to, and through, each website you read. It looks like this (click for a larger version):

Using RSS feeds I’m able to skim through hundreds of headlines a day using a minimal amount of time.

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Make a menu

A little planning can go a long way. To save yourself from unnecessary trips to the store, and a few dollars in the process, make a menu for the week. Then flip over the menu and list what ingredients you need for each meal. Go to the store and buy those ingredients.

This simplifies life in a number of ways. First, if you have something planned for dinner you are less likely to eat out. You’ll save money and eat healthier.

Second, it’s cheaper to buy groceries than eat out every night. And by limiting your trips to the store you’ll be less prone to impulse buys.

Third, you only have to worry about going to the store once a week, simplifying your schedule and list of to-do’s.

Give it a try, and let me know how it worked for you in the comments.

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LivSimpl Tip: Bring a plant inside

Beautify your workplace with something living. Bring some plants inside. Not only will you break up the oft sterile work environment with something organic and natural, but plants can improve air quality as well.

If you don’t have a green thumb, visit a nursery and ask for recommendations for resilient plants that can thrive with little maintenance.

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GTD Week: Google Calendar

To conclude our week of GTD methods, we’ll discuss Google Calendar.

Google Calendar requires a free Google Account with which you can also get Gmail and other web services.

Google Calendar has quite a few handy features. Most digital calendars make you type in the name of the event and then using your mouse to select the date, the start time, the end time and then click another box to type in the location. With Google Calendar you can just type, “Dinner at Amy’s Saturday 7-9pm”. GCal understands what that means and will schedule the appointment appropriately.

You can also get alerts for appointments via a daily agenda e-mailed to you each morning, visual pop-up alerts and by text message. A mobile version of the calendar can be viewed on your mobile phone, or you can send text messages to your calendar to add appointments or see what your next appointment is.

Google Calendar Pros:
- Free
- Digital format makes it easy to change/edit appointments
- Manage multiple calendars at once.
- Publish calendars. If you’re in charge of the soccer team schedule, you can manage and make it publicly available to the rest of the team.
- Invite people to events
- Tight integration with Gmail (assuming you have a Gmail account)
- Lots of reminder options
- Available everywhere there’s Internet access
- Print a copy of your daily agenda to take with you
- Add public calendars. So if your favorite band publishes a feed of their concert tour, you can import it into GCal and see their schedule right next to yours.

Google Calendar Cons:
- Not everybody is a fan of the digital format, and would prefer a more tactile means of managing their day.
- No built-in to-do lists
- Dependent on the Internet to access your calendar
- Checking schedule from mobile phone costs at least as much as a couple text messages, and much more if you’re using data to access the mobile version on your phone.

I’ve been using Google Calendar for a little over a year and while I certainly have some issues with it (the lack of a to-do list comes to mind) I’ve found it works very well for my needs. I’ve even found some work-arounds for the missing to-do list function.

Who else uses GCal? Any tips, tricks or gripes you’d care to share? Leave word in the comments.

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