neadods | The 5 Best Ideas of 2007

This morning I posted my resolutions for next year; this post is for summarizing the things that were THE most useful lifestyle changes of 2007, in the hopes that they may help/inspire someone else.

1) - The Sunday Seven/Seven Items Project. By breaking up the frighteningly massive job of decluttering into something manageable, I've been able to clear out something like 1/5 of my unwanted possessions. (Which reminds me - there's going to be a couple of things up for LJ swap soon.)

2) - The morning yoga/evening strength training. (Routines here) What has made them so sustainable, I think, is that neither routine takes a long time or requires anything special, and they're both built into regular parts of the day. The strength training hasn't shown a lot of effects yet, but it has only been started relatively recently. The yoga has definitely paid off in balance and flexibility.

3) - Bentos. Yes, it's a bit of a toy, but it has also put a major focus on my making my own lunches rather than buying them (significant money savings) and pay attention to nutrition (in the effort to have the traditional 5 colors per box.) Although I have a lot of boxes at this point and my favorites have been constantly shifting, the ones that I turn to the most often right now are the Tiger Lunch Jar and Aladdin Lunch and Go Salad Set. The Tiger with its leakproof 1-cup container is good for soup-based lunches, with a muffin in the small container and fruit and a sweet in the large one. The Aladdin salad container is superior to their lunch box because it has a half-cup leakproof container. The Aladdin is too large to fill to the brim in proper bento style - it would be far too much food - but the larger shape beats the traditional tiny bento boxes because you can put oddly-shaped things inside, such as chips. And you don't have to cut sandwiches into odd strips to fit them. Also, I like to fill my bentos several days in advance sometimes, and the traditional boxes allow things to go stale after about two days; the Aladdin doesn't. It is also leakproof, so you can put jucier things inside than the traditional bentos.

Also, the Aladdin and a Stonyfield yougurt drink container (they're washable and reusable) both just fit into my insulated lunch tote. And neither one spills if carried on edge.

4) - Moleskine Weekly Planner Notebook (second on the right as you scroll down). I had a palm pilot, but I got so comfortable with this specific planner that the batteries on my palm pilot died from neglect. I'm a compulsive listmaker, but the problem with most paper diaries is that I end up copying list items from one day to the next if they don't get accomplished. So with these, I put daily stuff in the daily page, but make my lists on the lined page. (I've penciled a line down the center, like a steno notebook, to double the listmaking space.)

5) - LJ. No, seriously. Knowing that I am going to post my status has kept me honest and focused.