The challenge:  To eat popcorn for a snack

This might sound like a challenge that doesn’t quite fit into the 52 weeks to simplify your life, but in essence it does.  How many times a week do you grab those chips, cookies, or other snacky foods to fulfill your cravings? What I want you to do this week is swap out your favorite snacks in exchange for air popped popcorn.

Why make the change:

For most of us, we eat badly.  We eat processed foods because they taste great.  We are over weight.  We are bound to snack companies for their foods that make us fat, clog our arteries, and are turning our children into diabetic adults.  We need to stop this madness.  It all begins with a bowl of air popped popcorn.  Sounds simple right??

Did you know that popcorn seeds are very inexpensive?  They cost a fraction of the price of a bag of chips or bag of candy.

Did you know that you can get the benefits of eating whole grains with popcorn?  Popcorn contains fiber—a necessary dietary need, which for most of us –we do not receive enough in our daily diet.

Did you know that popcorn is a dieters dream come true???  Popcorn is a great “filler” food that when properly made, can contain only a trace amount of calories per serving.  Which in turn means that you can eat a huge abundance of it and not gain very many calories from it.

 

 

How to make the change

In our family it begins with a 25 lb bag of popcorn seeds.  We keep this in a 5 gallon bucket in our basement.  We fill up our 2 –air popcorn poppers and start popping.  It fills our largest bowl.  After the bowl is filled with spray it lightly with spray butter.  Then we sprinkle it the sea salt.

For those that would like more of a flavoring but still stay healthier than a bag of chips?  I would recommend getting popcorn flavorings.  We enjoy the white cheddar and ranch flavors.  They are a much better alternative than oil laden potato chips but still give your popcorn a nice flavor.

 

We have popcorn on a regular basis around our home.  The little ones look forward to it, and I enjoy it as it is a great filler food when I feel the need to snack on foods.  Anyone for a movie??

Try this for a week, see how much better you feel by substituting this for snack foods.  Continue doing it for the next few weeks and see the difference in weight loss.

The challenge: to declutter a room

Do you ever feel that when you look around your room it is like you are living in chaos?  Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the amount of work that it takes to keep up in your rooms?  When looking for things, does it take hours to search for things because there is so much to sift through in your rooms?  If you have answered, YES to any of these questions then this challenge is definitely for you.

Why make the change:

Simplifying or decluttering a room can sometimes be overwhelming.  The amount of stuff that you have in your life along with all the things that you have to do can seem like an enormous mountain which you are unable to climb.  But guess what?  It is NOT something that you need to tackle in one day.  It is not something that you have to tackle alone.  This is the point to the 52 ways to simplify your life challenge.  I want you, to pick and choose which areas of your life are overwhelming to you and start simplifying them to bring you peace and contentment in your days.  It all starts with one thing at a time.  This challenge is just to declutter one room.

How to make the change:

Now it is usually better to declutter in small steps.  Like say just do one drawer or one closet, but this challenge is for those that want to do an entire room in one sweep.  I want you to pretend that your room is a clock.  Pick the noon time and start there.  Continue moving around your room in a clock pattern until you end up at your starting point.  Now during this clock momentum, I want you to go through the items in that time zone.

Work with one drawer or one shelf at a time. Here is how you declutter:

1. Dump entire contents of drawer or shelf in a small work area.
2. Next decide, immediately what is trash and throw that away.
3. Grab items that do not belong in this area to be put in their proper place
4. Sort through items and decide immediately if they are a keep or a discard.  If you have to give it a moment or two thought then just get rid of it. More than likely you will never need it.
5. Items that have not been used in 6 months, will more than likely not get used.
6. Wipe out drawers and shelves with proper cleaning tools.
7. Place items back in drawers or on shelf.
8. Continue this way until all areas have been cleaned.

When finished, decide which items to give to which people and sort into plastic bags or boxes and place near an area so that they do not get overlooked to deliver to them.  Throw trash away immediately, not giving you a second chance to keep it.

Working this way, you should be done in 1-2 hours.  If the room is really cluttered than maybe 3-5 hours.

When finished, sit back and enjoy a peaceful setting. You will be glad what you did.