Author: Zana Hart

Simple Living in 15 Minutes a Day

Simple living is a great goal but it’s all too easy to let yourself get caught up in the complexities of life. What if you decided to spend 15 minutes a day simplifying your life? Here are some ideas for what you could do in that time. Actually, I find that when I get going on a project, often I easily make the time to finish it up, even if I thought I had no more than 15 minutes to spare. But if you wanted to hold yourself to 15 minutes, you could set a timer or your phone. What … Continue reading →

A Second Food Commodities Experience

A couple of weeks ago we had our first experience of receiving food commodities for seniors, and this afternoon we went to a different place for another one, also for seniors. This event, run by the Gospel Mission here in Silver City, NM, is monthly early in the afternoon on the third Wednesdays of every month at the Knights of Columbus hall, since moved to one of the churches, I think the Mormon one. I liked how this one went. My husband and I signed in and were given the number 55 as we were the 55th household to sign … Continue reading →

Receiving Food Commodities

Ever since we moved here (Silver City NM) three years ago, one of our neighbors has been encouraging us to go to the three commodity distributions that take place near our house. We figured we made too much money and never did. But after my husband Kelly and I were talking about how our business income has dropped recently, I decided to check out the seniors distribution that took place this week on Tuesday at the local rec center. I don’t know how old you have to be to count as a senior but whatever it is, we are well … Continue reading →

The Benefits of Beekeeping in Crafting a Sustainable, Flourishing Garden

Thanks to Ali Taylor for this article. I don’t usually use guest posts but this is such an important subject that I accepted her offer. At least 30% of the world’s crops and 90% of all plants require cross-pollination to spread and thrive, making bees a crucial component of crafting a flourishing garden in a way that doesn’t harm the environment. Whether you want to incorporate more beautiful flowers into your garden or love being able to have a positive impact on the environment, beekeeping is becoming more and more popular as a sustainable hobby. And, the great news is that it’s … Continue reading →

NoSalt, Real Salt, Tamari, or None at All?

When it comes to salt, we have a lot of choices. Here are some salts that I have tried… in fact, most of these are in the kitchen right now! NoSalt When I discovered that my blood pressure was somewhat higher than ideal, a good friend who is a doctor told me to switch to because it isn’t sodium chloride like we normally think of salt as being. Instead it is mainly potassium chloride and doesn’t affect blood pressure without the sodium. It happened that we were about to do our monthly shopping at the big chain store that has … Continue reading →

Your Emergency Evacuation Checklist

What if you had to do an emergency evacuation? How well could you do it, bringing along your essential papers and other things? It could be due to fire or wildfire, earthquake, hurricane, some human craziness, or other disaster. This article will cover the most useful tip I’ve found and that is to create your own checklist in advance and keep it someplace very convenient. How about on the refrigerator or in the front of a handy file drawer? We are all different, and no personal emergency evacuation plans template will be exactly right for your situation. They can be good … Continue reading →

When It Was Too Hot to Garden, Kelly Took Up Wood Sculpture

Last summer it got quite hot here in southern New Mexico, too hot for my husband Kelly Hart to work out in the garden. As for me, I don’t garden in the yard in the middle of the day. So he began doing wood sculpture, sometimes in his basement workshop, sometimes outside in the shade. He’s always been artistic in several ways, from animated films to water colors to photography so it didn’t surprise me. A new art form at 73? Sure! He’s kept on all year. He put a webpage up that shows all the sculpture he has completed … Continue reading →

Are You Ready for Summer? What We Do

Here in southern New Mexico, June is our hottest month. It’s barely rained for months and the rainy season usually starts in July. Add that we have a lot of windy days in the spring. There have been forest fires already around the Southwest. Even here my eyes have burned from distant smoke a couple of times. So I’m doing quite a few things to prepare for the new season. What you will do depends of course on where you live and what you cope with. I’m not gloating when I say I haven’t seen one mosquito yet this year! … Continue reading →

Surprised to Discover that I am Way Happier Now than in 1973

I’m working on my memoirs and recently I read through the bound volume of my 1973 journal. I marked things that caught my eye and am still in the process of making notes from those things for several volumes of my memoirs. All that is taking a lot of time and so I’m writing here a lot less. But I learned something so interesting that I thought it was worth sharing. I am happier now. Way happier. But I always thought of that year as one of the happiest in my life. Well, 1973 did have some very good parts. … Continue reading →

A Vegan Feast

Since I’ve been eating essentially in a plant-based way for over four months now, it’s getting to be very natural. I have taken a few nibbles of meat when my husband ordered something at a restaurant or when I went to a potluck, but I’ve been very pleased that they haven’t enticed me back to my old ways at all. Okay, the one exception to that was a small lamb chop, but I could be happy with one of those quite rarely. Here’s the article I wrote explaining my shift to pretty much vegan. Here are photos from a vegan … Continue reading →

I’m Eating the Whole Food, Plant-Based Way

I’ve recently changed what I eat. There are so many reasons to eat essentially vegan that I expect to make this a continuing habit. Well, sure, I may bend the rules now and then, but the principles I’ve learned are shaping my eating habits. Why Eat Plant-Based? What’s motivating me, more than anything, is my health. I’d like to stay at least as healthy as I am now, which is with no serious issues. Better yet, I’d like to say goodbye to lethargy, larger clothes, and brain fog. I’d much prefer to be energetic, slender, and clear-minded. Also, not eating … Continue reading →

Floods, Hurricanes, Fires, and Money May Point to New Ways of Living

I Used to Live in Sonoma County Whenever I followed hurricane news, I couldn’t help but wonder how life would unfold for people whose families and homes were affected. But when forest fires went roaring through Sonoma County and other parts of Northern California, I mourned for a city I loved. I had moved to Santa Rosa in 1969, as a young librarian with a new job, and I lived in Sonoma County for over ten years. I met my husband Kelly there. I had the pleasure of being the first librarian in the new Sebastopol Library. When Kelly and … Continue reading →

Doug’s Little Turtle

My long-time friend Doug Greener went to Sierra Leone with me and some other American college students back in 1963, as part of a workcamp project, Operation Crossroads Africa. He lives in Israel now, and I thought this blog post he did there was a great example of the pleasure you can get from simple living. By the way, he also has a beer blog. He writes: A few months ago, I found a baby turtle walking on a stone path behind our apartment building. He was very small, about as round as a silver dollar, and I have no … Continue reading →

Hot, Dry, and Smoky: Ways to Cope with Summer in the Southwest

It can be hot, dry, and smoky during the summers here in the Southwestern United States. Sometimes it’s just hot and dry. Other times it’s smoky from distant forest fires until the wind changes. So on a regular basis here, you have to deal with heat, very low relative humidity, and smoke… in varying combinations. (This article isn’t about coping with fire so close that you may have to leave.) What can you do? Quite a lot, it turns out. Here are tips to help you endure the worst of summer and still enjoy the best of it. The dry … Continue reading →

Seniors Making Money Online? Yes! Our Six Steps

Are seniors making money online? Absolutely. Kelly and I have been seniors for quite a while now, and we make most of our living online. (We never paid much into Social Security, so it’s not giving us a whole lot back.) I have a lot of senior friends who earn online too. Some are people I know personally and some are online friends. With this article, I’m starting an occasional series on online marketing for seniors, but if you are younger, it can help you too. We started before we were seniors, after all. In this article, I’ll talk about … Continue reading →

How to Make Money Gardening: 36 Ways

There are so many ways to make money from gardening projects. With the increased interest in gardening and eating fresh produce, opportunities range: growing plants, selling products, helping others with their gardens, blogging, and more. Here I list 36 ideas. Some require strength, some require tools,but many don’t. No matter your abilities and living situation, there are likely ways that you could come up with some gardening income. I’m not writing about gardening jobs here, though they do exist too. Some of these ideas are gardening-related rather than specifically requiring you to get out into the garden. I’ve added links to … Continue reading →

Expat Living in Uruguay: A Report from Montevideo

Before my husband and I returned to the US after living in Mexico from 2005 to 2010, we also gave thought to moving to Uruguay. Expat living there had appeal for several reasons, but home won out. Still, I’ve maintained a curiosity about a country that is unusually welcoming to Americans who want to live there. So when our good friend Peter Rice emailed me last week that he and his wife were in Uruguay, I asked him for a blog post. He obliged, and here it is. Peter is about half my age, so he didn’t write about Uruguay … Continue reading →

This Online Course on Prepping Can Give You a Big Boost

How prepared are you for the uncertainties of life? Do you have some water and food stored? What about your crucial documents? Despite writing about the importance of preparedness, and having purchased some good books on it, I have to admit that other things tend to take priority. If something disrupted my routines, I would have enough toilet paper and AA batteries for a while, but I’m not sure how well I’d do overall! Chances are that you too have gaps in your versatility. That’s why this online course is such a good thing. It’s put together by Daisy Luther … Continue reading →

A Free or Low Cost Standing Desk for Your Laptop

Have you thought of trying a standing desk? I’ve read a number of enthusiastic articles by people who have found that sitting less gives them more energy. They extol the benefits of better posture, less strain than sitting still, more focused concentration, and so forth. There are even more significant health benefits that I cite below, from an article in the Smithsonian Magazine. Since my husband and I work at home, we put effort into creating good work environments for ourselves, and that’s what got me researching these devices.Evidently something like a couple of hours of standing can make a real difference. … Continue reading →

Cherish the Ladies: Enjoy Their Celtic Music Online

We went to a delightful Sunday afternoon community concert this week. Cherish the Ladies is a longstanding Celtic group of women musicians. They had two really good male dancers with them as well. At least the one named Gary was superb, but Jason had an injury and just made a cameo appearing, walking stiffly. “He’s only eye candy today,” cracked Joanie Madden when she introduced him. They have already left Silver City for another town in their peripatetic life on the road, and I can’t go back in time to the magical moments they created. So I have found some … Continue reading →

When the Internet Went Down

Here I’ll tell you a story, a sad but short tale of life without internet. Then I’ll follow it up with some thoughts on big-picture implications. Wednesday started out normally enough, with me checking email and weather first thing. But by the time I got back to my laptop an hour later, the internet was gone. Around 9 AM we called our wifi service provider, Comcast, and an automated voice said that they expected service to be resumed by noon. Yikes, We Lost the Internet Was it a snag in their service or something larger? Was it local, regional, or … Continue reading →

The Best Vegetable Steamers Cost Very Little

Vegetable steamers are great! For many years I’ve had a stainless steel one that fits in a 2-quart saucepan, but unfortunately more than once I’ve also let the water boil out and ended up with a tough scrubbing job on the bottom of the pan. I’ll keep my non-electric steamer for emergencies, like if the power goes out. Here’s a link to . We all know that vegetables are an important part of our diet, but people who cook rarely or not at all are missing out on them. Steaming is just about the quickest, easiest way to cook vegetables. … Continue reading →

Kelly’s Tiny Earthbag Dome

This video is about a small earthbag dome that my husband Kelly built early in 2015, on a small piece of land we have in the New Mexico desert. The dome is 8 feet in diameter, and he built it while we were roaming around NM in our motorhome,with our home base still Colorado. He explains what he was doing in the video… It was shot some time later by a couple who have a lot of videos up on youTube. We enjoyed them and the kids! Updated: Wednesday, April 12, 2017

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Crazy Weather Is Not New: Tales and Tragedies of 1816

In April of 1815, an Asian volcano blew its top. Mount Tambora, on an Indonesian island, let loose with explosions that sounded like cannons to Stamford Raffles, the Lieutenant-Governor of Java 800 miles away. The immediate results killed thousands of people in the area around the volcano. This was just over 200 years ago and word did not spread quickly around the planet. It was months before word reached the United States, and Americans had no idea what drastic effects the event would have on their lives. In fact, they would never know what hit them. It would be over … Continue reading →

Inspired by Alvin Alexsi Currier and Anastasia Currier

We recently met Alvin Alexsi Currier, as he and his wife Anastasia have been living nearby for a couple of months. Friends of friends, we’ve had several meals and good conversations with them. Soon they will drive back to their home base in Wisconsin and she will stay there (quilting like crazy, no doubt) while he returns to places he often goes to in Europe. So what is inspiring about that? Two things! One: Alexsi, as we call him, will turn 85 this week, and that picture of him was taken a few days ago, in front of one of the … Continue reading →

The Tiny House Summit Going On Now, Complete with My Husband!

The 2017 Tiny House Summit is an online program going on for the next few days, and that link takes you to their homepage. Over 40 people who are involved with tiny houses and small-scale living are doing presentations. My husband, Kelly Hart, is one of them. If you go there during this week, each day you can watch a bunch of the presentations for free. Here is what they offer. I had to ask Kelly what skoolies are… they are school bus conversions. (Kelly was living in one when we met and I moved in with him.) Presentations about … Continue reading →

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things

The 2016 Indie film of the year, Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things, asks the important question, How might your life be better with less? That link goes to the film’s website, which is quite minimal itself, but it does have links to Netflix (where I added the film to my list), itunes, Amazon (where it’s not available at this time in Amazon Prime but you can rent it or buy the DVD),google store, and Vimeo. I’m too much of a minimalist to spend money watching this film that I already agree with, but since I can watch it … Continue reading →

Why Make Sauerkraut in a Jar?

Why make sauerkraut? And if you are going to make it, why make sauerkraut in a jar? I’ve recently started keeping one jar fermenting as a regular thing, and here I’ll tell you how I have learned to make sauerkraut in a mason jar. It’s quick and easy to get it going, but not exactly quick until you can eat it… it needs to ferment for maybe a month. But it’s worth the wait. Now, there is sauerkraut as a side dish on the table frequently when we eat. Besides being tasty, it has health benefits in aiding digestion. That’s … Continue reading →

No Miracle Cure for Tinnitus But…

Recently the tinnitus I’ve had for decades was louder than ever. So I did what I always do when something puzzles me, headed for the internet. I learned some things about what works and what doesn’t. I will share them here, with lots of references. I don’t necessarily believe anything that I read, but I did get an overall picture, and I think I figured out why my tinnitus acted up. Tinnitus can have many causes, but often it starts from too much loud noise, whether that is from being a heavy equipment operator, going to rock concerts, or other … Continue reading →

Why I’m Not Very Political

This website has its personal moments (like the love letter I wrote my husband one day), but I’m sure a lot of people who come here just get the information they are looking for and go on. At least, that’s what I try to provide with many of my blog posts. How to do this or that, which product is best, etc. A dear friend of mine who I don’t see very often phoned me today. After being reclusive, she has recently become much more of an activist for our Mother Earth. I said that I haven’t felt to go … Continue reading →

Quick, Unique Bread from Your Bread Machine… Why Not?

When we invite friends over for dinner–which is quite often–we always ask if they eat bread. They usually say yes and so then I tell them that my husband Kelly will be making homemade bread in our bread machine. (if they are eating gluten-free, he can pull out his recipe for that.) It’s always a hit, specially with the homemade jam he also makes in the same bread maker. We’ve even had friends ask us if his bread will be on the menu when they accept an invitation. I like doing it because the fresh, hot bread is part of … Continue reading →

Organize Your Stuff: A Little Every Day

If you organize your stuff a little every day, it won’t be long before your home begins to look nicer. You may be surprised at how much better you feel as well. The reason that many people advocate a minimalist lifestyle is that it simplifies their lives and gives them more freedom to do what they want. Now I’m not quite a minimalist but I do love the results when I clean something out. Even just one drawer or box. There may be things that you want to keep “just in case.” Some of those things may be worth keeping … Continue reading →

Brie Baked in Puff Pastry with Homemade Jam and Nuts

Recently some friends served brie baked in puff pastry with fig jam and pecans. Rich, you bet, but even a small bite was quite a lovely blend of flavors! I had to try making it myself. I got directions and it was really very simple. You can make puff pastry from scratch, but my friend and I used a frozen one. You just sprinkle a little flour on a clean counter and then roll out the pastry. I don’t have a rolling pin anymore but a quart canning jar worked fine. I spread the dough out to not quite a … Continue reading →

How to Remove Facial Hair on Women at Home

It took me a while to figure out a system that works for chin hair removal, so I thought I’d pass this information on. For me, the most essential item is the Tweezerman mirror that I bought. Just now, when I looked it up on Amazon, I was surprised to see that it has been nine years since I got it… it still looks like new, despite wear and tear. Even with new eyeglasses during those years, I find it easiest to leave my glasses off and use the high magnification of the mirror. Seeing what your chin looks like that … Continue reading →

Why Intermittent Fasting Is Really Working for Me

Does intermittent fasting really work? You bet it does. Why is it working for me? Because I bought and read this book: . I’ll share some of my main takeaways from that book with you here, but since we are all different, you might want to read the book yourself. How Much Weight Have I Lost with Intermittent Fasting? Umm… don’t laugh. I’ve lost three pounds in a month. THREE POUNDS and I’m telling you this method works? Absolutely, because I lost those three pounds in December. I have NEVER in my life lost weight in December. Let’s see, in this … Continue reading →

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Author Archives: Zana Hart