How far will we go for convenience in the home, especially those who do not have kids living at home.

Recently I wrote a blog about doing laundry, or not doing laundry, it could have been interpreted either way. I spoke about how my Bride and I use the folding table in our laundry room to store clothes instead of actually carrying them to the bedroom and putting them in our dressers. Well the day after that as I was rinsing out my oatmeal bowl after breakfast I realized we have “simplified” other areas of our lives in similar ways. We do not have kids so that affords the two of us some latitude as far as when we eat, what we look at on the tube and how we have items arranged in our home.

As I finished rinsing my oatmeal bowl I recognized that I have used the same bowl for several weeks, the exact bowl. Like the laundry room folding table we also have a strainer sitting next to the sink. We first looked into and purchased the strainer it was an attempt to reduce our carbon footprint by reducing water usage and electricity with the dishwasher, with only two of us there we a lot of half full loads being cycled through. When we first started using the strainer we would rinse off the dishes and place them in the strainer, where they would sit until they dried and then we would put them away. Then came “mission creep” just like the folding table for laundry we soon found ourselves just storing the dishes, after we did them, in the strainer and using them directly from there.

So with that revelation firmly in mind I started looking around our house for other signs of efficiency, some might call it laziness but I am not there yet – it is a more efficient way to live our lives. Why spend valuable time putting away laundry and dishes for that matter. I was really amazed at how “efficient” bride and I had become, I am not sure we would be able to be so “efficient” if we had kids but getting the systems setup when we were DINKS (Dual Income No Kids) has served us well for the 20+ years we have been together. So some of the other signs of “efficiency” were things like leaving the personal grooming products we use to get ready sitting on the bathroom counter. We also designed and executed some “efficiency” plans very well, a purpose built shelf was installed directly above the washer to hold the cleaning products. The pantry was designed with shelves that lined the room but were mostly 5 inches deep so no item would be hidden from view. The living room was minimized of items that need constant cleaning or dusting and in the bedroom our night stands also have a built in book shelf underneath, we both read before going to bed.


So we were thinking about this and realized that some of the “efficiencies might actually be laziness on our part. Mostly things like the folding table and the sink strainer, here we needed a metric to determine which was an efficiency and which one was being lazy. It really boiled down to whether we put it away when someone was coming over, and even that had two categories, best friends to have coffee or a dinner party. We found that for best friends we would put the strainer away but not the laundry. If we were having a dinner party, especially if the guest had never been to the house, we would put the laundry away so to be able to include that room on the tour. So we found that we have a blend of lazy and efficient, the pantry has gotten rave reviews and I really enjoy not having to hunt for items that are hidden behind other items, but others we recognized as, just maybe, being lazy.

You know we talked about this and decided so what, who cares where we store our laundry, if you come to my house I assure you there will be laundry on that folding table. I cannot say that for the strainer, we are still on the fence about that one. We will continue to look for ways to simplify our home life, less cleaning, more efficient use of space, more efficient use of time and all that contributes to freeing time for other activities, beside dishes and laundry. I am hoping that if you come to our house it is not to inspect the laundry room or kitchen anyway. It did raise some concern though, we started wondering, if we finding “efficiencies” in our 40’s what will it be like when we get into our 50’s or 60’s or even our seventies, who knows but I hope and pray there is not a toilet built into my Lazy Boy recliner when I hit 75.

How “efficiently” do you run your house?