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One of my intentions for this year was to complete one small home organization task each week. One this to make one small area better than I found it. Today, I choose the cleaning supplies under the sink. This has been an area of mess and confusion for as long as I have lived in this house (almost 10 years).

I threw out stuff, combined same items, and put like things together. I then put the least used stuff in the back and the most towards the front. No more digging. So much better!

It still amazes me how one hour of effort can be a solution to ten years of frequent vexation yet, how slow we are to recognize the problem and act. How easy it is to blow off something that, once done, gives such satisfaction and relief.

Why I don’t want stuff | Derek Sivers

Why I don’t want stuff | Derek Sivers

In Your Next Letter

by Carrie Shipers

In your next letter, please describe
the weather in great detail. If possible,
enclose a fist of snow or mud,

everything you know about the soil,
how tomato leaves rub green against
your skin and make you itch, how slow

the corn is growing on the hill.
Thank you for the photographs
of where the chicken coop once stood,

clouds that did not become tornadoes.
When I try to explain where I’m from,
people imagine corn bread, cast-iron,

cows drifting across grass. I interrupt
with barbed wire, wind, harvest air
that reeks of wheat and diesel.

I hope your sleep comes easy now
that you’ve surrendered the upstairs,
hope the sun still lets you drink

one bitter cup before its rise. I don’t miss
flannel shirts, radios with only
AM stations, but there’s a certain kind

of star I can’t see from where I am-
bright, clear, unconcerned. I need
your recipes for gravy, pie crust,

canned green beans. I’m sending you
the buttons I can’t sew back on.
Please put them in the jar beside your bed.

In your next letter, please send seeds
and feathers, a piece of bone or china
you plowed up last spring. Please

promise I’m missing the right things.

Our Penny Universities

Our Penny Universities

Conklin’s Handy Manual of Useful Information. One of my most prized possessions. “Everything worth knowing” printed right at the top. So good. Published in 1891 as best as I can tell.

I often consider creating a Twitter or Tumblr around it and post random “facts” many of them outdated but many spot-on but concerning old subjects.

Important subjects concerning ocean travel? It’s in here. How to properly season and store timber? Yep. Five cent interest schedule? You betcha!

When the shit goes down, you better believe this will be in my bug-out kit. It might just be the thing that saves me.