My Year of Simplicity 2012

I haven't decided if I'm going to make a new blog or just use this one but my lifelong BFF and I have decided that 2012 will be our year of simplicity.  I'm going to work to get all my debts paid off (or as close as I can come) while decluttering my life, organizing, simplifying and generally just reducing my overall impact on the environment that comes from "stuff."

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to all of a sudden go green ... the environmental comment was more from my friend Barbie who lives in California and is into the green movement but she does have a point ... I need to consider the impact of what I do.

For example, a trip to Hobby Lobby (now as everyone knows, I'm a Hobby Lobby addict so this is just a quick example but you could substitute Walmart or any other place you go regularly) would be broken down into the following:

• Paper/time to print out the 40% off coupon or figure out what's on sale that week (we do get a coupon in our Saturday newspaper but I never think to cut out the coupon and it's easier to print one out).
• Time to actually go there (15 miles 1 way).
• Gas to get there (15 miles 1 way).
• Time spent looking at all the stuff, finding what I want and then waiting to check out (our HL is quite slow and it usually takes more time to check out than it does to shop.)
• Emotional impact of having a bunch of craft stuff or decorative stuff that I really don't need.
• Money spent even with coupons on stuff to make more stuff.
• Time spent on pinterest to find more ideas and make the return trip to HL.

With a little creativity (and less pinterest), I probably could save a lot of time, money and frustration by just cutting out a trip or 2 to Hobby Lobby every week.  This of course would mean I'd have to actually PLAN my Christmas gifts next year which I've decided will be purchased at the Hy-Vee gift card kiosk and my entire Christmas shopping will take 5 minutes.

Looking forward to seeing how the year of simplifying goes ... who's with me?