I firmly believe in the importance of getting enough exercise. My own motivation lies in the fact that my grandfather died of a heart attack and a few years ago my dad received a triple bypass followed by a pacemaker. I would like to break the cycle. When I was in the Army, exercise was always push-ups, sit-ups, and running, but it doesn’t have to be boring or expensive. I love mountain biking, long family walks around town, and have recently completed a few 5Ks. The great thing about those is that you don’t need much for equipment. You don’t need a gym membership and you don’t need an expensive home gym, but plenty of people are paying incredible amounts of money to get in shape. I found some statistics about the fitness industry in an article on Bloomberg. According to research from the International Health, Racquet, and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA), the average cost of health club memberships rose from about $43 per month in 2011 to about $54 per month in 2015. That’s in increase of about 25% in the US in four years. Here’s a few more takeaways:
I will admit that I’ve spent my share on exercise equipment. Some of it I even used. I can make a case for our elliptical machine. It has held up well and 12 years later we still use it. I also have a freestanding heavy bag that I probably don’t use as much as I could, but I love it. My son also uses it to practice some of his tae-kwon-do. If you just want to get started on some kind of exercise program and don’t want to build a home gym in your basement, I suggest you start with your phone. There are a myriad of couch-to-5K programs, fitness plans, yoga videos, etc. that cost little to nothing. Look around your neighborhood too. Online or local running groups are great and you’re bound to find one that meets your interests. Even the company I work for has an online running group with people from all over the world. Running especially can be an inexpensive exercise once you make the initial investment in shoes. Good running shoes are not cheap and I would encourage you to go to an actual running store where that is their specialty. Yes, I suppose you can run barefoot, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are a serious barefoot enthusiast. If you’re looking for some running motivation, I’m happy to make an unsolicited plug for my friends at Grit & Stride. You can also find them on Facebook. If nothing else, check out their great photos of Chicago. Whatever you plan to do for exercise, please make sure that you check with your doctor to make sure you’re healthy enough first. They say that your fitness level in your 30s and 40s will directly relate to your fitness level in your 70s and 80s so get going. It feels good to exercise our willpower muscle. I think it’s like our other muscles in that we have to exercise it once in a while to strengthen it. Otherwise our willpower gets weak. I’m happy to say I’m the proud non-owner of a few things lately. I recently bought a new pair of shoes so I got rid of two pair. I loved the new ones so much that I when I got an email that they were having a sale, I thought I should probably get another pair. I even had them in my online cart but finally decided against it. If they had a sale once, they’ll have it again sometime. When these are getting worn out, I’ll think about buying another pair. You may have noticed that have written multiple posts about books. I have a weakness for them and have difficulty resisting cheap or free ones. That makes it difficult when I’m at the local library and they have shelf after shelf filled with used books for sale at 50 cents each. A few months ago I bought an organizing book there hoping for some new ideas and inspiration. So far, it’s been a little disappointing but I’m still hopeful. However, I have resisted buying several other books that caught my eye so that must count for something. The biggest and most expensive thing I’ve managed not to own lately though was a camper. I keep thinking that it would be fun to take trips in an RV or a camper. I guess I have visions of the kids lounging on the couch or bed in an RV rather than buckled into the backseat of our SUV. I picture having all of our stuff packed in drawers and closets so that when we arrive somewhere it’s all available, rather than me making 14 trips to the car to carry in all the suitcases, backpacks, and sleeping bags. Then, reality sets in and I think about how it really will be. My kids will be fighting and wrestling, not sitting quietly. Our stuff won’t be stored neatly. They’ll have things all over the place. Then, there’s the maintenance. An RV is basically a small house combined with a truck. Both of them need to be maintained and can have expensive problems. I can’t even keep up with maintenance on the house I live in, much less a second one with wheels and an engine. It still sounds like it could be fun, but I’m glad I didn’t rush to buy one right now. So there you go. Three things that I’m happy to say I didn’t buy. It actually feels pretty good to know I still have that money I almost spent on something I didn’t need and I don’t have to find time and space in my life for them. Unfortunately, I don’t think exercising my willpower counted as real exercise and it certainly isn’t going to help me run that 5K I have coming up in a few weeks. However, I think it is important. You should try it sometime. I recently wrapped up a trip to visit my family for a long weekend.As always, it was great to see everyone for a few days even if I had to work for part of the trip. It’s a long story but my dad’s house was in disarray and he needed help going through boxes and rearranging. He knows he has too much stuff, but comes from a generation schooled in the “you might need it someday” philosophy. We spent an entire afternoon going through boxes and moving things around to get somewhat prepared for the garage sale he was planning to have the following weekend. I am not complaining about helping and I was glad to do it. However, it occurred to me later that this is a perfect case for not spending our lives accumulating stuff. Spending time with my sisters and my dad was still fun, but if he didn’t have so much stuff sitting around, we could have spent the day just visiting or doing something else together. The problem with stuff is that it can get in the way of spending meaningful time with family and friends.Instead of playing a board game or sharing a bottle of wine over good conversation, you end up spending weekend visits sorting through boxes of old books and VHS tapes. (I’m not kidding, every time we turned around it seemed like we found another box of VHS tapes). In one box, we came across an unopened cribbage game. I’ve never played cribbage and have no idea how, but one of my sisters plays. We talked about how after we finished, we should open it and she could teach us how to play. When I headed home at the end of the weekend, the cribbage game still sat unopened. I challenge you all to not live your life with that possibility of spending quality time with your friends and family because you’re too busy rearranging the boxes of stuff in the garage. Maybe cribbage sucks. I don’t know, but it will be a little while until I have the chance to find out and play it with my sisters. On a positive note, we spent the following day just sitting around and visiting with family at my nephew’s graduation. Some of us even excused ourselves from the party for a little while to visit the brewery across the street. I lost a bet with my brother-in-law and had to buy but I enjoyed one of the best oatmeal stouts I’ve had in a while. Overall, it was a great visit and I came home reinvigorated in my pursuit to get rid of the excess stuff sitting around my home and to spend more quality time with my family. I hope you will do the same. Last November I wrote about my trip to visit familyand how I managed to pack everything I needed in a backpack. Doing it again for Memorial Day weekend, I started preparing by reading my old post and updating my packing list. For this trip, I needed some multipurpose clothes since I was going for a graduation but also needed to help my dad with his house. For travel light tips, I checked out the Go-Light Guru at OneBag.com. One of the great debates for cramming as much as possible into a bag without it all coming out a wrinkled mess, is should I fold or roll my clothes.In the Army, we were always taught to roll everything, and depending on where you look on the internet, some travelers insist that this saves space. Other websites recommend packing containers and folding boards. Well, I was surprised to find that the Go-Light Guru actually recommends none of these. Instead, he recommends a method called bundle-wrapping. The basic idea is to wrap your clothes, in a specific order, around a core object like a pouch roughly 11 x 16. This avoids folds which cause creases. I don’t think I can explain it better than he does, so go read about his method here, then come back. The obvious disadvantage to this method appears if you need something from the middle of the bundle.Certainly you want to be smart about how you bundle so you don’t put important things you need in the center. Also, don’t put something in the center that may look suspicious on the X-ray machine when going through security at the airport. I decided to give it a try for my trip.Unfortunately, it was getting late the night before I left so I was in a hurry and didn’t think to take pictures. Also, I couldn’t decide what to use in the center to wrap my clothes around. I didn’t want to pack something just for that purpose. Extra stuff would defeat the point of packing light. Then, I remembered the tin my sister had mailed to us filled with her home made peanut butter cups at Christmas. I always make sure to return them so she’ll send us more the next year. I filled it with some small things and although it was smaller than what I was looking for, I figured it would do. Either I did it wrong (which is entirely possible) or the round tin was definitely not the right thing to use for bundle-wrapping. When I arrived, I pulled my clothes out to find the shirts very wrinkled. I’ll keep researching and let you know if I figure out some tips. On the way home, everything was dirty, as it should be, so I just folded it and slid the pile into my bag. It didn’t seem to take up any more or less room than when I bundled it. I’m still a little skeptical on the bundle-wrapping thingbut curious if anyone else has tried it. If so, please share any packing tips or travelling-light tricks you have for everyone’s benefit. Thanks. January 2018 UpdateI thought I would write a follow-up to this post and it just made sense to append to the original. In December, I took another trip to visit my family, carrying just my backpack. I also made the trip by car last summer with my family as we do every summer. Packing for each is a very different ordeal. I can travel light by myself but when we all pile into the car, everyone seems to have three times as much stuff as I think they need. My recent trip was for a wedding and travelling light turned out to be a blessing since the trip didn’t quite go as expected. When my dad wasn’t feeling well he didn’t make it to the wedding. My only opportunity to see him was to borrow my sister’s car and make the 70 mile drive. Without going into details, the rest of the trip was a lot of time hanging around the hospital and an unexpected night in a hotel. My flight home was delayed causing a missed connection in Chicago. I had a leisurely 6 hour layover at O’Hare airport and got home around midnight. Every bit of that was made easier by having nothing but a backpack to keep track of. A new resource:I could write pages on how we travel as a family over the summer. But I recently found an article with a massive list of packing suggestions. They have tips on everything from your carry-on to how to pack jewelry. There is a section devoted to packing tips for families. You can check out the list at Your RV Lifestyle. While it’s geared toward air travel, many of the suggestions are just as relevant to other forms of travel. I zeroed in on the family packing suggestions and the first one is spot on. Bring snacks. My kids are always hungry and unless you want to spend a fortune in money and time to feed them, you will want plenty of snacks on hand. Other tips from that group include bringing a small first-aid kit or at least some bandages, and have the kids each carry their own small backpack. I may not agree with everything on the list (like bringing three pairs of shoes), but there were suggestions that were new to me. Everyone knows that when flying, liquids need to be in a plastic bag, but the idea to put some plastic wrap under the cap and screw it back on over that is genius. One final note:The writer recommends rolling rather than folding your clothes and doesn’t mention bundle-wrapping at all. I have to agree based on my limited experiments. In the Army we were taught to roll our clothes to save space and I remember cramming what seemed like an impossible amount of items into a rucksack. When I travel now, I take into account what I’m packing and what type of luggage it’s going in. Some things fit better folded flat and others seem to work out better rolled up. The bundle-wrapping thing seems too complicated and inconvenient for me. Whatever your favorite packing method is, go check out the packing list at Your RV Lifestyle and let me know your thoughts either in the comments below or on Facebook. Everyone can benefit if you would like to share your packing and travel tips as well. Thanks. What are you holding on to even though you know you should let it go?I think everyone has something like this. Maybe it’s a collection of something you’ve had for a long time or something that belonged to someone you miss. Maybe it’s an old shirt that’s falling apart but you keep it anyway? Equipment for a hobby or sport you haven’t participated in for several years? For me, it’s all my stuff from my time in the Army.I still have everything:
I deployed to Iraq 12 years ago and left the Army Reserve 10 years ago. You would think I could have gotten rid of some of this stuff by now. The BDUs have been used as Halloween costumes a few times and I chose the most tattered set as painting clothes. I do wear the boots but really don’t need 4 pairs. For some reason, I just can’t seem to get myself to get rid of these things even though I can list all sorts of reasons I should. I’m not getting back in the Army and they probably wouldn’t take me at my age anyway. Most of the uniforms I have are not in service anymore. I don’t even hunt or play paintball. Most of this sits around collecting dust and filling up closet space. Why then, do I hold on to it all?I did contact a friend from the Army who opened an Army surplus store after returning home from Iraq. Check out Battle Boy Surplus if you need anything and support a Veteran-owned small business. He offered to take some of it and asked me to send him some pictures. Even for him, I still can’t get myself to gather it all up. I guess the real reason is that I still look back on my time in the Army as one of the best parts of my life. Being away from home for a year sucked but I would do it again in a heartbeat. I often wish I would have stayed in but I didn’t want to deploy again. I was so busy with grad school and my family that I couldn’t do everything to the level that I felt I should have. I couldn’t be a good student, good officer, good husband, and good dad all at the same time. As long as I see those uniforms hanging in my closet every day and I can wear my old combat boots, I can still pretend that the Army is part of my life. Every time I look at them, I think of those I served with and especially those that didn’t come home. I know it is crazy to hold on to all of it though so I will start getting rid of some things. Where to start though?There are a few recommended strategies for getting rid of sentimental items. First, I need to gather it ALL together in one spot. For anything, just looking at the sheer volume will help you realize how much you have and therefore make it easier to eliminate some of it. Next, take pictures. I have a few pictures of me in uniform, but I could take a few pictures of me in each type of uniform. Then, get rid of the uniforms. The challenging part will be the trunk full of newspapers, magazines, and pictures that friends and relatives sent me while I was deployed. I know that if I don’t do something with it, the paper will just decay in my basement. I need to start going through it and scanning anything I want to keep. It’s likely I won’t even remember why I kept a lot it. It won’t be easy but as I’ve said before, I need to fully purge my own stuff before I hound my family to get rid of their own things. I’ll keep you posted of my progress and let you know what other tips I come up with along the way. Keep an eye on my Facebook page for updates and feel free to share some of your own suggestions for how you let go of sentimental items. Thanks. |
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