The New Year is already two days old and I’m getting antsy to let go of some old baggage (this is not a Newt dig but I’ll take the credit for it anyways) and start this year with some clean up, fess up and smarten up moves. You  may want to try at home, too.

• Clean out my closets and donate clothes, shoes and books to Goodwill. There may be better places to donate, but Goodwill makes it so easy to drop off your stuff and then slip inside their retail shop and buy some new crap I didn’t know I needed.
• Take all my dead wine corks to Whole Foods Market. The have bins to recycle wine corks. My year could be written in review with the wines we consumed…but better red than reread so corks begone!
• Pore through the medicine cabinet and bathroom drawers for all our expired medicines, lotions and potions and bring them to the local police station. They have a hazardous waste collection box.
• Switch from bottled detergents to powder, from liquid soaps to hard bars. There’s so much less plastic packaging this way …and why pay more for the water that makes these products liquid? A bar of soap in the hand is worth two in the well…you get the idea
• Sort through the kitchen drawers and get eliminate the duplicate utensils (how many pie servers do I need) and donate to Goodwill (see above)  or give to a friend’s kid starting their first apartment.
• Unsubscribe to all the e-newsletters that litter my inbox because I succumbed to the fantasy that I’d win an exotic trip or receive a life-changing program. I am making a life change..and cheapcaribbean  is not gonna be part of it!
• Replace our dead smoke detectors with new ones that work. That horrendous Christmas fire in Stanford, CT  was a wake up call. Nuf said.

  

• Collect all the dead batteries in various drawers  and recycle safely.  Many retailers take these so I’ll do a quick google search for that. Vow to avoid buying any more stuff that need so many batteries.
• Get a portable solar charging pack and keep it handy for dead phone syndrome and other electrical emergencies. Let me mention here that I hate my Droid phone because the battery wears out in less than a day, making late night outings a sometimes scary proposition.  A solar charging pack would come in handy, don’t ya think?
• Eat less crappy, processed chocolate (kisses, twix bars etc)  and splurge for the good stuff– Lindt Dark Chocolate with Orange is a current fave. I’m not suggesting anyone give up chocolate– it is a life essential in my book– but the good stuff is worth the splurge (it has health benefits, too, but who cares).
• Check the expiration dates on all the canned food in my cabinets. Many of my ambitious menu ideas requiring obscure ingredients have filled my coffers with expired coconut milk, black bean sauce, dried out spices (as opposed to just dry spices) and Nam Pla sauce way past its due date. (If expired fish sauce doesn’t sound appetizing to you, either…get thee to thy cabinets and purge!)

Let’s all strive to lighten our load & consume less of the stuff that isn’t good for us or for our planet and experience more of the stuff that is…friends, family, fresh air and fine times.

Happy 2012. I think it’s going to be a fantastic year. What stuff can you do without? I hope it’s not reading my blog!

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