Living Large In Our Little House

There are days when head­ing to the mail­box is just a drag. Bills and more clut­ter fill the space. Then there are days when the mail­box is full of won­der­ful sur­prises: Checks owed to me, and almost as excit­ing is one of two cat­a­logues I love, or one of two magazines.

I really hit the jack­pot if a check is in with one or two of my favorite pub­li­ca­tions! Living smaller is about choos­ing only to keep the things you love. For the sake of the envi­ron­ment, I’m also a big advo­cate of fewer cat­a­logues, that’s why I main­tain a free account at cat­a­logue choices, a web­site that allows you to reg­is­ter cat­a­logues you don’t want and con­tact the com­pa­nies for you to have them stopped. I’ve reg­is­tered to halt all but two of my favorites: North Style and Black Forest Décor. As well, I’ve stopped all of my mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions with the excep­tion of Country Living Magazine and Mother Earth News.

Now, we all know I don’t need any­more stuff, but a girl can still look!

North Style was once a 50/50 mix­ture of clothes and home décor (and I bought plenty over the years), but has a big­ger selec­tion now of cloth­ing. I love black bears. I have them on my shirts, my jack­ets and my paja­mas. We have black bear lamps, sheets, the lit­tle guy hold­ing the sign in the photo and din­ner­ware, and most of it came from North Style. My mom gave us many of the things we have dec­o­rat­ing The Little House. After we built it, com­ing up with a Christmas list of ideas for her was no problem!

North Style is where I’ve bought most of my “Life is Good” cloth­ing and hats. I also have a tiny log cabin charm neck­lace that I love, which reminds me of The Little House. I wear it a lot when I’m away from home.

I miss brows­ing the home décor there – and there are a cou­ple of things they still carry that I hope to one day buy and fig­ure out where to place — but that’s why I’ve kept the Black Forest Décor cat­a­logue. This is my “ulti­mate dream” cat­a­logue, as most of the items in there are too expen­sive to even allow in reg­u­lar dreams. J

If I don’t have a “Dream Book,” as my mother always called cat­a­logues, there’s noth­ing bet­ter than hav­ing a cur­rent copy of Country Living Magazine or Mother Earth News.
Country Living Magazine is a fam­ily tra­di­tion. My mom started tak­ing it when it first came out in the 1970s and used the pho­tos and tips to first dec­o­rate our lit­tle green bun­ga­low and then the 1920s brick Tudor they pur­chased and restored when I was a teen. I’ve taken Country Living ever since I got my first apart­ment. Receiving a copy of it is like vis­it­ing an old friend each month. I love sit­ting on the party deck on a warm sunny Saturday after­noon and savor­ing each page.

Mother Earth News has been around for a while and when we built The Little House, I began sub­scrib­ing to it, and what a great mag­a­zine! Full of advice for home­stead­ers who live in the coun­try or oth­ers who just wish they did, I haven’t received a copy yet, in which I didn’t find some great arti­cle with good tips.
My mag­a­zines and cat­a­logues give me some­thing to look for­ward to when peer­ing into our big, rural mail­box and any day I find one of them there, is a good day.

Today’s Question: My mag­a­zines get a new life as I donate them to the county nurs­ing home in hopes some­one else will enjoy them as much as I do. When I’ve looked at my cat­a­logues about a dozen times, they go to the recy­cling bin. Where do your mag­a­zines and cat­a­logues end up?