Subject: A win-win-win-win solution
Last fall they started a big road "improvement" project in my area, which
had the short term effect of turning an already bad commute into a daily
much longer nightmare. One day a meeting at work ran over, and I ended
up
heading for home almost an hour later than usual ...but to my surprise, I
ended up getting home only *ten minutes* later than normal.
It struck me that this offered a great opportunity to get 'something for
nothing': if I could swap one hour lost to creeping-in-traffic for an
hour
of accomplishing something I wanted to do, Great! I tried several
different things (putting in overtime at work, shopping, writing personal
letters/cards, returning personal phone calls) but I've pretty much
settled
on two ways to use that extra hour before the commute:
I. I joined a gym near my job. Now I regularly get in an hour of
exercise
on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. This has improved my health (and I've
dropped
a dress size!) and lets me lie around on weekends if I want without
feeling
guilty about turning into a couch potato. :-)
II. I go to the public library in the city I work in on Tuesdays and
Thursday and spend one hour reading magazines. This had the miraculous
side effect of turning out to solve one of my major clutter problems at
home. I subscribed to a LOT of magazines: I got three different craft
ones, two about creative writing, a quilting magazine, two 'house
beautiful' types, and a handful of 'general women' type magazines. Over
a
month this added up to over 21 individual magazines!! And since I always
felt I *had* to look through them before I could get rid of them -- after
all, they might have something GREAT in them and besides I'd paid good
money for them -- I always had big piles scattered around waiting for me
to
find time for them.
Since I started the habit of reading at the library I've been able to let
all but one of my subscriptions lapse. I was nervous about two aspects
of
not subscribing at first.
The first was that I would miss out on something. I couldn't expect that
I'd always find the newest copy of whatever waiting for me -- someone
else
could be reading it or it might be checked out. What I've done is make up
a
few 3X5 cards to keep in my purse. One is for monthlies, one is for the
weeklies, and a third for those that come out any other pattern
(bimonthlies, the women's mags that are every three weeks, etc.). I drew
up a grid with the titles of the magazines down the left side and the
months (weeks, whatever) across the top. Now I simply check off each
magazine as I read it. If the August 'Writer's Digest' isn't on the
shelf
right now I don't fret. I know as long as that square isn't checked I'll
remember to look for again on future trips until I do see it.
The second potential problem was that sometimes there was a
story/article/project directions that I'd want to keep for my files.
This
turned out to be easy to solve: the library has a xerox machine just
around
the corner. And that cut down on clutter, too. Instead of magazines
sitting around for me to clip out what I want to keep, I have just a
folder
of xeroxed pages waiting to be filed. In the rare case that I absolutely
need to have the actual page -- for the color chart or maybe really
intricate details in a photo -- I go ahead and buy that magazine at the
newsstands. (That was why I decided to keep subscribing to the quilting
mag; I ended up buying almost every issue anyway.)
I've kept track for six months, btw, and assuming my pattern stays
basically the same, I will spend approximately $120 for xeroxing and
buying selected issues over a year. That might sound like a lot, but the
1
year subscription rates for all those magazines I've dropped added up to
$355 so that's an annual savings of $235.
So I'm winning all around:
I save time that would have been wasted waiting in traffic.
I save money by not buying the extra gasoline that would have been burned
idling during the commute AND by not subscribing to the magazines.
I save my house from the clutter of all those magazines lying around.
And I save myself from turning into a fat slug.
Gotta love it. :-) :-)
Susan Beth ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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