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Catherine Gacad

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Plain and Simple

Once when I was vacuuming, Dean said, “You don’t need to do that now. Why don’t you sit down and relax.”

I responded, “I don’t know if you noticed, but I enjoy vacuuming. It relaxes me.”

Every other week, I do a deep clean of our apartment. I dust EVERYTHING, scrub the stove top, wipe down the kitchen walls because there’s always goobledy-gock from cooking, vacuum the floors and rugs, swiffer the floors, scrub the kitchen and bathroom floors, clean the toilet, scrub the shower, and vacuum the couch. It takes hours to do a thorough cleaning.

While I was cleaning, I thought, I can’t imagine how people who live in single family homes manage. We’ve got this small apartment and it takes me hours to clean. How do people cope when they have several bedrooms, a den, an office, a dining room, an attic, a basement, a yard. Ohmygoodness!

Similarly, Dean and I don’t have a lot of stuff. I never thought about us this way before, but compared to the general population, we’re actually minimalists. I guess that’s why it’s easy for us to rent our place out. What can renters really steal? We’ve got a TV, an iPad, a 2004 MacBook, furniture, a bunch of kitchen items we are not attached to, books, clothing, and my jewelry. I can replace my wardrobe by visiting H&M, Banana Republic, and hitting a few second hand stores in the Haight. I keep my favorite books, sell the rest.

I’m always on the lookout for ways we can pare down. I was reading a blog on the NYTimes where the writer Carl Richards said that people don’t realize that there is a cost to keeping junk, including the cost of the space it takes up and the time spent thinking about these unnecessary items. I agree! He references a great site with helpful ideas on paring down http://www.lifeedited.com.

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08.11.12

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Welcome to my site, derived from an advice column I wrote while getting my MBA. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I give helpful, opinionated advice based on my own experience and from the expertise of my extensive network. For more, click here.

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