Get A Handle On Your Life

The secret to a tidy life, clean space, and peace of mind comes down to one question.

How many times do you handle things?

People with newspapers littered all over the place need to pay attention.

Got a garage full of excuses, er, treasures too valuable to part with?

The easy solution is read the paper, then recycle. If that’s too difficult, cut out and file the pieces you think you need, then recycle.

The neighbor with decades of Sunset Magazines stacked up until they have time to read them? Not going to happen.

What about the garage full of stuff? Two words, garage and sale. Everything that misses a buyer goes to the museum, Goodwill, or the dump. In that order.

The key is handling things once. Short of that, handle things twice. It doesn’t work for everything, but you have to try.

Read further for how to get a handle on things.

Baby boomers learned the basics include food, shelter, and clothing. You know it, too. Everyone does.

If there’s any questions, pass this link around.

• The more times food gets handled, the more chances of contamination.

This baby boomer blogger joins the farm to table crew for less handling.

Farm fresh means quicker to spoil, so you need to adjust your cooking skills, but the opposite is worse.

Anyone can shake a box of cereal into a bowl and pour milk on it, dump mac and cheese into boiling water, or unwrap frozen pizza. That’s your three meals for the day.

Nothing wrong with this meal plan, but everything on it has been processed and handled and packed.

Did everyone on the production line have clean hands? No one coughed on it? No sneezing?

If you wonder, then you’re a good candidate to seek less handled food.

Grow a garden, hit the farmer’s market, or just go to the store. Anything that doesn’t come in a box or bag means less handling.

• The new house smell you get when you walk into a home show is inviting.

It invites a host of diseases not listed on anything associated with graceful living.

The smell comes from all the new stuff off-gassing from new paint, to new furniture, to new plastic.

With the great ratings on new home heating and cooling and windows that seal against the elements, the off-gassing stays in the house.

If you have a neighbor who burns plastic in their firepit, you know the smell.

Since this writer is not a doctor, but is a former Army medic, I won’t say off-gassing causes cancer. But it does.

Get a handle on formaldehyde.

• The new shirt you bought is made from cotton or wool. You want it to last, so you take it to the cleaners. Good idea?

Your new dress is bright and pretty, and maybe deadly?

Since you can’t walk around naked all the time, as baby boomers have been told more than once, look at clothing labels.

Dressing for success is different than getting dressed by a mortician.

Get a handle on the basics, and go from there. There’s lots of life to live, and the younger generations stills needs to know how to do it right.

What else can you get a handle on? What do you handle most often? Least often?

Love to hear from you, so leave comments.