decorating & decluttering

My name is a fairly common name for someone of my generation. Usually, the only time someone gets my name wrong is if I don’t enunciate very well and the person I’m speaking with thinks I’ve said my name is Karen or Ellen. Every once in awhile I might get mail addressed to Aaron, but I understand that confusion since Aaron was an even more popular boy name when I was born. With a common name like Erin, though, people usually get it right when communicating with me.

My friend Krystal has the exact opposite experience. She gets mail addressed to Crystal almost every day. Additionally, she has a last name of Polish decent, which is riddled with Ks, Vs, and Is. When she and her husband decided to have children, they joked about changing their last name to Smith, simply to make it easier on the kids (they didn’t).

Summer is coming, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere, and taking the time to plan now will help you fit everything in you want to do. Here is a simple plan to make your fun-in-the-sun plans possible:

1. Make a list. Start your summer planning process by creating a list of all the fun things you (and your family and friends) want to do. Do you want to go to the beach a couple times? Do you want to go to the pool at least three times a week? Do you want to go camping? Put all of your great ideas on your list.

Many clothing labels recommend air-drying in order to prevent shrinking or damage to delicate fabrics. But skipping the dryer is an easy way to save energy as well. According to calculations done on TerraPass’s blog by air-drying just half of your loads of laundry you can save about $64 in energy costs and conserve more than 1,000 pounds of CO2. 

To make skipping the dryer a little easier, check out these drying racks.