It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff
by Peter Walsh
from Free Press
When Peter Walsh, organizational guru of TLC's hit show Clean Sweep and a regular contributor to The Oprah Winfrey Show, appeared on national television shows and told people how they could reclaim their lives from the suffocating burden of their clutter, the response was overwhelming. People flooded Peter's website (www.peterwalshdesign.com) with success stories about how his book had changed their lives.
Peter's unique approach helped people everywhere learn to let go of the emotional and psychological clutter that was literally and figuratively choking the life out of their homes.
With his good humor and reassuring advice, Peter shows you how to face the really big question: What is the vision for the life you want to live? He then offers simple techniques and a step-by-step plan to assess the state of your home, prioritize your possessions, and let go of the clutter you have been holding on to that has kept you from living the life you imagine. The result is freed-up space, less stress, and more energy for living a happier, richer life every day.
Solar Power Your Home For Dummies (For Dummies (Home & Garden))
by Rik DeGunther
from For Dummies
Want to take advantage of solar power in your home? Whether you’re looking to save on your energy costs by adding a few solar components or you want to build a solar-powered house from the ground up, Solar Power Your Home For Dummies takes the mystery out of this energy source and shows you how to put it to work for you!
This friendly, hands-on guide is packed with tips for making your home more energy-efficient though solar power—and helping the planet at the same time. You’ll see how to survey your home to determine your current household energy efficiency and use, and evaluate where solar power would best benefit you. You’ll also calculate what the return on your investment will be before you make any decisions. Once you’ve decided on a project, you’ll see whether it’s best to hire a contractor or do it yourself. We leave no stone unturned—you’ll also discover how to:
- Choose and install your best solar system
- Handle small to large solar projects
- Heat and cool your house with solar energy
- Install exterior solar lighting
- Handle swimming pool, water heater, or ventilation solar projects
- Create greenhouses or solar rooms
- Build, buy, or sell a solar home
- Finance your solar investments
- Take advantage of tax rebates and incentives associated with solar power
- Avoid the worst solar mistakes
Featuring ten of the easiest and cheapest do-it-yourself solar projects, Solar Power Your Home For Dummies is the fun and easy way to meet your energy needs with this clean power source!
Parenting From the Inside Out
by Daniel Siegel
from Tarcher
How many parents have found themselves thinking: I can't believe I just said to my child the very thing my parents used to say to me! Am I just destined to repeat the mistakes of my parents? In Parenting from the Inside Out, child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and early childhood expert Mary Hartzell, M.Ed., explore the extent to which our childhood experiences actually do shape the way we parent. Drawing upon stunning new findings in neurobiology and attachment research, they explain how interpersonal relationships directly impact the development of the brain, and offer parents a step-by-step approach to forming a deeper understanding of their own life stories, which will help them raise compassionate and resilient children.
Born out of a series of parents' workshops that combined Siegel's cutting-edge research on how communication impacts brain development with Hartzell's thirty years of experience as a child-development specialist and parent educator, Parenting from the Inside Out guides parents through creating the necessary foundations for loving and secure relationships with their children.
"How many parents have found themselves thinking: ""I can't believe I just said to my child the very thing my parents used to say to me. . . . Am I just destined to repeat the mistakes of my parents?"" In Parenting from the Inside Out child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and early childhood educator Mary Hartzell, M. Ed., explore the extent to which our childhood experiences actually do shape the way that we parent. Drawing upon stunning new findings in neurobiology and attachment research, they explain how interpersonal relationships directly impact the development of the brain, and offer parents a step-by-step approach to forming a deeper understanding of their own life stories that will help them raise compassionate and resilient children. In this book, Siegel and Hartzell present a unique perspective on the ""art and science"" of building nurturing relationships with our children. Born out of a series of workshops for parents that combined Siegel's cutting-edge research on how communication impacts brain development with Hartzell's thirty years of experience as a child development specialist and parent educator, Parenting from the Inside Out guides parents through creating the necessary foundations for a loving and secure relationship with their children."
Joey Green's Fix-It Magic: More than 1,971 Quick-and-Easy Household Solutions Using Brand-Name Products
by Joey Green
from Rodale Books
Home Buying For Dummies, 3rd edition
by Eric Tyson
from Wiley
This may be the best comprehensive guide for home buyers. Home Buying for Dummies is coauthored by Eric Tyson, author of several other books in the For Dummies series, and Ray Brown, a long-time real estate professional. Like other books in the series, this one is an easy and even entertaining read. But it does not gloss over details in pursuit of simplicity. Home Buying for Dummies covers all the bases, providing clear explanations and reasonable judgments on how to select a mortgage, hire a real estate agent, find the right house, and negotiate a good deal. The book goes further than most in providing helpful, specific information. For example, in discussing ways to save money for a future down payment, Home Buying for Dummies even includes the phone numbers for various mutual funds appropriate to different investment time frames. --Barry Mitzman
Though fun and exciting, buying a home can also be complicated and confusing—and most people learn the hard way that a wrong move can cost dearly. In order to find the perfect home at the best price, you must have skill, foresight, and a little guidance from experienced professionals.
Home Buying for Dummies, Third Edition provides just that! Packed with invaluable advice in an objective, down-to-earth style that will have you sitting in your dream home in no time, this friendly guide contains everything you need to know to play the home buying game. It has the tools you need to:
- Improve your credit score and select a mortgage
- Choose a time and place to buy
- Determine the price you want to pay
- Assemble an all-star real estate team
- Make use of the wonderful world of the Internet
- Negotiate your best deal
- Inspect and protect your home
- Handle and become responsible for the title
- Cope with buyer’s remorse
Featured in this guide are tips and tricks on things you should do after you seal the deal, as well as things you ought to know about real estate investing. Also included is advice on how to sell your house, as well as a sample real estate purchase contract and a good inspection report. Don’t get chewed up by the real estate market—Home Buying for Dummies, Third Edition will lead you to the home you want!
Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance
by John Storey
from Storey Publishing, LLC
This is the book for anyone who wants to become more self-reliant, from suburbanites with 1/4 of an acre to country homesteaders with several. The information is easily understood and readily applicable.
More than 150 of Storey's expert authors in gardening, building, animal raising, and homesteading share their specialized knowledge and experience in this ultimate guide to living a more independent, satisfying life.
Readers will find step-by-step, illustrated instructions for every aspect of country living including:
Finding country land
Buying, building, and renovating a home
Developing water sources and systems
Understanding wiring, plumbing, and heating
Using alternative heating and energy sources
Vegetable, flower, and herb gardening
Traditional cooking skills such as baking bread and making maple syrup
Preparing and preserving meat, fruits, and vegetables
Building and maintaining barns, sheds, and outbuildings
Caring for common farm and ranch animals, and pets
Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan
by Lisa Katayama
from Chronicle Books
Japan has a way of thinking that is just . . . different. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Tokyo-born journalist Lisa Katayama's collection of urawaza (a Japanese word for secret lifestyle tricks and techniques). Want to turbocharge your sled? Spray the bottom with nonstick cooking spray. Can't find someone to water your plants while you're away? Place the plant on a water-soaked diaper, so it slowly absorbs water over time. The subject of popular TV shows and numerous books in Japan, these unusually clever solutions to everyday problems have never before been published in English until now! Urawaza collects more than 100 once-secret tricks, offering step-by-step directions and explanations in an eye-catching package as unconventional as its contents.
Canning & Preserving for Dummies
by Karen Ward
from For Dummies
Thought about canning and preserving your own food? Maybe you haven’t given it a try because you believed it would be too involved. The truth is, today’s methods and procedures for home-canning, freezing, and drying food are simpler and easier than ever. And now, with this easy-to-follow book, you’ll get the information you need to can and preserve food safely.
Canning and Preserving For Dummies makes putting up fruits and vegetables in your home as easy as pie. Featuring up-to-date safety guidelines and simple, fun techniques, this practical, friendly guide is for anyone who wants to enjoy delicious, do-it-yourself treats year-round—or even give them as gifts! You get all the juicy details on:
- Water-bath canning
- Pressure canning
- Freezing
- Drying
- Finding the right supplies and equipment
Canning and Preserving For Dummies also features yummy, eas y-to-do recipes that include preparation times, cooking times, processing times, and the yield you should expect from your efforts. You’ll see how to make everything from apple butter, pear-raspberry jam, and bread and butter pickles to chicken stock, tomatillo salsa, and white chili. You’ll also discover how to:
- Know the acidity level of your food
- Pick and prepare fresh fruit
- Line your jars with liquid
- Create jams, jellies, and marmalades
- Preserve chutneys, relishes, and sauces
- Pickle vegetables
- Combine foods for convenience
- Select food for freezing
- Protect the life of your dried food
Providing troubleshooting tips for home-canned creations, sources for locating equipment suppliers, a metric conversion guide, and definitions of preserving terms, Canning and Preserving For Dummies has just what you need to fill your pantry with savory homemade fare.
The Pocket Parent
by Gail Reichlin
from Workman Publishing Company
It's instant relief for when your 2-year-old is on the floor of the toy store, pitching a fit. Or when brother and sister discover that they can't stand each other. Or when your son can't say no to video games.
The Pocket Parent is, literally, a pocket-size book of tried-and-true advice, common sense, parental wisdom, and sanity. Written by two professionals who've reared six children between them and made a career out of helping others with parenting issues, this handy book will be a lifesaver for every parent of a 2-to-5-year-old. It begins with an overall view of the Pocket Parent approach to discipline. Based on unconditional love but firm limits, and aimed at keeping the child's dignity and self-esteem intact, here are strategies that include "I" statements, modeling, family meetings, and "one word" requests. Once the ground rules are set, the guide moves to an A-to-Z compendium of common problems. Just look it up-Anger, Bad Words, Biting, Chores, Doctor Visits, Fears at Night, Lying, Separation Anxiety-and find the "Sanity Savers" list of suggestions, easy-to-follow bullets, anecdotes, and more.
For the bag, glove compartment, backpack, or shelf in the kitchen, it's there for you whenever you need it.
The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series)
by Kelly Coyne
from Process
The Urban Homestead is the essential handbook for a fast-growing new movement: urbanites are becoming gardeners and farmers. Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities.
If you would like to harvest your own vegetables, raise city chickens, or convert to solar energy, this practical, hands-on book is full of step-by-step projects that will get you started homesteading immediately, whether you live in an apartment or a house. It is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and Internet resources on self-sufficiency topics.
Projects include:
- How to grow food on a patio or balcony
- How to clean your house without toxins
- How to preserve food
- How to cook with solar energy
- How to divert your grey water to your garden
- How to choose the best homestead for you
Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this illustrated, smartly designed, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. Authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen happily farm in Los Angeles and run the urban homestead blog www.homegrownrevolution.org.
+++
