RSS
Home
'Smart Home' declutters in favor of quality over quantity
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
True to its message, "Flanagan's Smart Home: The 98 Essentials for Starting Out, Starting Over, Scaling Back," is a tightly written and compact book on how to eliminate unnecessary stuff from our lives.
Author Barbara Flanagan describes her move from a drafty, oversized Victorian to a small Cape Cod yet managed to preserve her sanity and sense of space by eliminating clutter. Her real message is about not wasting time, space and money on junk and instead relying on a few quality items.
For instance:
A handheld can opener
Wall-mounted full-length mirror
A good cast-iron pan instead of a dozen nonstick pans of varying sizes Tansu furniture, which allows for storage and rearranging of separate compartments
All in all, she identifies 34 kitchen essentials; 13 bedroom items and 9 cleaning and repair tools among the items needed to make a home efficient and comfortable.
She names specific brands in many cases and outlines her arguments for her choices, explaining the history of the item, the pros and cons of other brands or styles. She also favors environmentally sensible choices where possible. Heavy wooden hangars are not her favorite because of their weight, cost and tendency to eat space, but neither are ones made of bamboo. Instead she goes with recycled retail VICS (Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards Association) hangers, the familiar plastic with steel hooks.Retailers occasionally resell their inventory for new ones and she recommends that individuals buy them instead of allowing them to occupy landfills.
Households with children are often filled with clutter and so some of these recommendations may not address the issue of clearing away spaces jammed kids' schoolwork, hockey sticks, books and other detritus that seems to travel around the house with youngsters.
But most of her ideas, and product recommendations, make sense and can be adapted.
Above all, this book is an argument against excessive consumerism in favor of a smaller, quieter lifestyle relying on quality and common sense. It's both a practical and a philosophical argument for a better way of living.
Related: "Backyard Homestead," by Carleen Madigan
"Flanagan's Smart Home: The 98 Essentials for Starting Out, Starting Over, Scaling Back," Barbara Flanagan, published by Storey Publishing
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
