2017s
- Social Media integration
- Limited email subscribe lists (only popups via MailChimp)
- Likes and Comments integrated for all WordPress.com users
- Tags show up in WordPress Reader searches
- WordPress.com and WordPress.org by Wordpress.com
- WordPress.com vs WordPress.org – Which is Better? by WPBeginner
- Coffee Cups (or drinkware) - I love coffee but really who needs to have around 30 coffee cups. I am not sure who we were planning on inviting over for coffee or hot chocolate but we realized that was way too many.
- Tupperware - How can we have so much of this and nothing matches. Where did all the lids to the small-sized containers go and why am I stuck with so many large lids with no containers. Let's just say we didn’t keep a lot and have paired this down so we can always find a lid and dish.
- Cooking Utensils - Don’t get me wrong it is always great to have a spare but I am not sure we needed 10 spatulas. It was more than likely we only needed 2-3 as we used the same one most of the time.
- Mismatched stuff - During our cleaning out we found lots of plates, cups, and other items that were not a full set even though we had one full nice set already. These were perfect candidates to not work back into the cycle as one cup isn’t as good as a nice set of 12.
Figure skating Boo… ⛸️👻 #backyardrink #skating
It was a great day to enjoy the Minnesota outdoors #backyardrink #hockey #family
Loving these cold temps in MN for the rest of the week. Tarp is down, and water is filled… Let’s get some ice! #backyardrink #minnesota
WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
Have you ever wondered which WordPress platform is right for you? Maybe you are just curious what some of the differences (pros and cons) between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. I am going to walk you through my most recent thought process because after using WordPress.com for the past two years I am moving it back to the self-hosted WordPress.org.
I loved the ease of which WordPress.com just works and you don’t have to worry about anything in the back end. If your goal is to just start writing and see where it goes I would recommend it. There is no hosting provider to find, no installs, no plugins, no making sure you backup data, no worrying about indexing, no worrying about SEO optimization or anything. You just walk through the steps on WordPress.com and create a site. The only time you need to think a little bit more is if you are actually going to pay for a domain name or pay for some of the other upgrades.
Two years ago I wrote Wordpress.com or WordPress.org and Why?, which outlined at the time my thoughts and reasons of why I was moving my self-hosted WordPress.org site to WordPress.com. The big reason as I touched on before was I just wanted to Write/Post. I didn’t want to get caught up in worrying about other things because at that time I didn’t care. WordPress.com makes it super simple to Like, Comment, and Follow other blogs. It really can make a new Blogger feel good about the progress you are making and honestly who doesn’t like knowing that people have read their stuff.
However, all of those easy features come with limitations. You realize that you can’t use Google Analytics in the cheaper versions, add some custom code linking to other forms or email captures, further tweaking of how themes look and work. I think when you get to that point you really need to consider moving off of WordPress.com unless you want to pony up to the Business Version. Here is a quick rundown 2 years later of my pluses and minus of each:
Wordpress Breakdown
|
WordPress.org |
WordPress.com |
|
| Overview | Completely flexible from the start but requires finding a provider to host your site. | Focus on your beautiful content, and let us handle the rest. |
| Hosting | Find a website host**, domain name, and perform all maintenance yourself (e.g., backups, security, upgrades, and optimizations). | Premium hosting and maintenance is taken care for all Plans (i.e., security, backups). Upgrade for custom domain names (e.g., StillThinking.me). |
| Themes | Endless possibility of free and purchased themes with advanced features. Or create your own using CSS and PHP. | Hundreds of amazing themes optimized for any device. Upgrade for Unlimited Premium themes and advanced Customization. |
| Support | WordPress.org community support forums for assistance. | Support is available in the community forums. Upgraded plans to have email and live chat access. |
| Analytics | Powerful analytics using Google Analytics by adding custom code in your theme or installing a free or paid plugin. | Limited analytics with their own built-in stats. No Google Analytics capabilities. Upgrade to the Business Plan for Google Analytics integration. |
| SEO | Install the best free or paid SEO plugins in order to unlock tools needed to maximize your SEO potential and achieve a higher Google search results. | Limited to no SEO control with most of their plans. Upgrade to the Business Plan for tools to maximize your SEO potential. |
| Sharing | Install plugins in order to access popular features and customize to have complete control.
Now you can enable WordPress likes for posts and comments via JetPack! The only limitation to WordPress.com is Post Tags are not searchable in WordPress.com Reader. |
Popular features standard but with limitations
|
Some final thoughts…
Now that my site has been completely transitioned over I have been starting to find a couple things that show up differently. However, the nice thing is most can be tweaked/fixed with the right amount of Google searching. I still feel really good about my decision as it has also allowed me more control in other initiatives that I am trying to work on like building a Still Thinking.. On the Line... newsletter!I hope you found this article helpful in understanding some of the differences that I have noticed between both of them. There have obviously been other articles written about this in much greater detail on the pros and cons. Here are two of my favorites:
Happy Thanksgiving day run in my hometown while I watched the sunrise..
Lunch with my girls today.. Why wouldn’t you use chopsticks to eat Mac and Cheese 😂
Santa Claus and his reindeer are coming down the hallway 🎅🦌😂
I really do enjoy watching this one tear up the ice at Rookie Camp 🏒⛸️. Also, it cracks me up that she always has a smile while playing sports.
Wordless Wednesday 11/08
*First snowfalls always look great as they blanket the yard and trees. (December 2016)*
Yep… It is getting to be that time of year again ❄️🏒⛸️ #backyardrink #hockey
Wordless Wednesday 10/25
*Nothing beats coffee in with a tiger in it (August 2015, Pudong Airport, Shanghai, China)*
Using House Projects to help Declutter your Life
In our journey of living a more intentional life by decluttering our belongings and owning less. We have recently found out that house projects have helped us make larger strides in this overall journey.
Owning an older house provides you with lots of fun opportunities to work on projects that might include: updating rooms by painting or carpeting; discovering issues or fixing leaks that need a professional or home handyman; or even just finding a room that needs a full remodel like an outdated kitchen.
My wife and I have done all of the above over the last 9 years we have lived in our house. The worst part of any housing project is that you have to move all of your belongings from the area the project is taking place to another area. For most of our house projects up till a couple years ago, we would move everything from one place to another and then move it ALL back once we were done.
However, in the past couple of years, my wife and I have realized that we need to use those disruptions in our normal space and be very mindful of what we put back once it is all done. In looking back, we have probably moved every piece of furniture, toys, books, boxes, pictures, or other items from one room to another as kids changed rooms and home projects happened. It would have made too much sense during those moves to time to take the extra couple of minutes to set things aside and only slowly add back what is truly needed.
It probably wasn't until this latest project of our Kitchen remodel that we really took hold of this idea. We moved everything out of our Kitchen, Dining Room, and Living room as we had the wall separating all of those removed. It was a messy process that allows our family of 5 to get really cozy in the basement that only has 2 bedrooms.
Ultimately, the process by which we packed everything away but the couple single sets of kitchen stuff we needed follows that of what Ryan from The Minimalists described as a packing party. However, I am always under the mindset that you don’t really need a term or reason, you just need to figure out what works well for you. We are still on this long journey of slowly decluttering room by room and figuring out what makes sense for our family of 5 as we cannot take on too much at once or it would be utter chaos in our life.
Once our kitchen was finished and it was time to move everything back in we only moved in things we needed and made sure it had a purpose. For the kitchen, this was really easy as everything was in boxes we only brought stuff out that we used for cooking on a daily or weekly basis. A couple things we noticed during this process were:
There were lots of other examples of that were we just had lots or multiples of items that we didn’t need to continue to keep around cluttering up shelves or drawers.
In the living and dining rooms, our goal was to remove excess furniture and things on the wall to get a more minimalistic look. By removing excess furniture and having floor space, it allows us to now clean up more quickly. Not only is it a new space, where I enjoy the open floor plan, but I really enjoy having less stuff in the room. I feel like a burden has been lifted off us and it seems much more peaceful to enjoy. As I look around there is less to clean around and more space to just have fun with the kids and not have it feel so cramped because of the stuff we owned. One of the bigger changes we made during this time was to not keep any toys in the upstairs living room. That doesn’t mean the kids don’t bring their toys there to play or use the dining room table to draw, color, or play with play-doh on. It really just meant that we didn’t want that stuff to be stored in the living room as we found before that led to creating more mess. To accomplish this, we made sure those items previously stored in the living room that the kids wanted to keep had a place in their bedrooms or the toy room downstairs.
Before:
After:
As you can tell we couldn’t be happier with the space and are looking forward to enjoying it for years to come. Even though the remodel was a big project in itself, I feel a great side effect of it was that we were able to pack everything away and then Intentionally choose what to bring back into our living space.
Once we had our living space set up as we liked it and brought back the items we felt were a good fit in our life, we donated the rest. This is another crucial step as you don’t want to be hanging on to boxes or stuff in another place of the house. I understand that you might not want to get rid of those items right away and if that is you, I would suggest you set a calendar reminder to find that box(es) buried in the garage that you need to donate at a specific date in the future.
Have you had a housing remodel or project in the past and found it a good time to declutter items? If so I would love to hear how it went for you and if you think it was successful. If not and you have a project on the horizon let me know about it and share your success after it is all done.
Wordless Wednesday 10/18
*Glowing moon in the night sky over the bay (August 2017, Phippsburg, ME)*
Glowing moon in the night sky over the bay (August 2017, Phippsburg, ME)
Keeping your Focus
Becoming more focused requires an even greater skill at keeping your focus.
As I have been trying to write more, I have realized that sometimes when I am about to call an article (or topic) good and close my document for the day… Another idea pops into my head and I then start writing out words and thoughts about that topic. In fact, it is happening right now as this is the third blank document that I have started writing today and each topic is different but related.
I always find it interesting when and how ideas come and go. There will be times when I just sit and stare at a blank screen wondering what I could write. I have a whole bunch of ideas but they don’t interest me at that specific time. Then there are other times where I am writing away and going to call it good for that topic only to jump over and start a new topic because I am in the zone.
“Everyone should write a blog, every day, even if no one reads it. There’s countless reasons why it’s a good idea and I can’t think of one reason it’s a bad idea.” - Seth Godin on the Unmistakable Creative Podcast
To that point, I couldn’t agree more when people say to just write every day. Just let the words flow out on-screen (or paper) even if it is something you will never publish. The worst thing that happens is that you spent some time writing. The upside, however, is that you just crushed it and wrote a whole bunch of amazing content.
Now to flip the discussion… Is it a bad thing to write about different topics and have a lot of them going at the same time?
I would say I fall into this camp and I am not sure if it is a good thing or not. The only downside I can see right now is that I write a little bit about each of the topics I am working on and never fully finish any of them. Because I keep jumping around from one to the other adding a sentence here or there or just rereading my thoughts.
On the other hand, when I get to a point of not knowing what to write, I have some drafts already started that I might be able to just pick right back up where I left off and hopefully complete it.
What do you do in order to keep focused on your current writing or the drafts you have going?
Happy 11th Anniversary @aprilgottwalker! The weather might not have been what we wanted but it was still a great day with family down in Iowa.
Wordless Wednesday 10/11
*Peaceful view of the night sky from the light of the moon on an evening walk (October 2016)*
Encouragement
Sometimes things happen (Crash!) and it is something that you don’t or aren’t really sure if someone is going to tell you to try again. Or give you that extra encouragement/voice you need to get back up and try it again. After that post, I wasn’t up to what I had hoped for motivation as I struggled to motivate myself in the least.
My instincts were telling me to continue to plug away at this injury slowly and that it was for some reason important to overcome this so I could get out and run like normal. In July I tried again to just get out and run but honestly, I had even less motivation to do that as I blamed my upcoming family vacation and the extra work I needed to do prior to vacation as my crutch.
Then we were finally during the middle of our family trip to the East Coast, and something deep inside me had me throw in my running shoes. Thankfully I did as after nine days into the trip, our final day in Boston before we headed up to Maine, I laced up my shoes to hit the streets. For some reason, I was up really early and figured now is the time to get out and just run around the neighborhood and see the sights of this city I don’t live in.
I am really glad I did! I was able to see the places I had seen the day before but with no one else in sight. In fact, it was just so peaceful out there if it wasn’t that I wanted to get back to the hotel at a specific time I am not sure where I might have ended up.
That one run though helped start me on the path of getting out of my funk. In fact, it kind of reminded me that that is what helps me stay grounded. As I reflect back I was remembering the video I saw that I was going to post around the time of my Crash and was hoping to at a later point in time but completely forgot as I never really got out of that funk.
My example was getting me back to running and I will even say today I am finally feeling 100% back to normal running which is what I have been waiting to say for a long time. Everyone always has something to be down on, depressed about, or are just mopey about something. The challenge is trying to find something that works for you to get out of your current funk or mood.
I have never gone on a run or a bike ride or anything outside and thought back to myself I shouldn’t have done that, that was really dumb to go on a run. Never! It’s always a good thing. - Ryan Van Duzer
The video I have included below by Ryan Van Duzer (@duzer) is what I had watched right before my Crash! and there is some really good nuggets of insight and motivation that he offers while running in the hills of Colorado to get out of his own funk.
I can relate to his methods of remembering there is a whole lot of good things in life. Also, for me, one of the best ways for me to do that when things are stressful at work, home, or just something hard that I need to overcome, is that I just love getting out there to run. It clears my head and gives me a good start or end to the day.
*via Running Out of a Funk - YouTube*Now it is your turn, what do you do in order to get out of a funk or slump? Leave it in the comments below.
Guess shorts and a t-shirt might not have been the best choice for my morning run #running
Who said kindergarten soccer games don’t need a cheerleader… 👻
Fall Clean up and Clean out
Fall is definitely that time of year when things need to be cleaned up. You need to head out to the garage and start putting summer stuff away and bring out the winter stuff (wait not yet.. please not winter yet..). Honestly, though this is the perfect time of year to start decluttering. My wife and I did this last year and pretty much downsized our bedroom to 1 dresser (total) and a closet that is only 8x4. Needless to say, we got rid of a lot of stuff and it was the best thing to do.
Our Approach
We honestly didn’t have a specific approach in mind as well have just cleaned rooms from time to time over the 8 years we have lived here and as kids grew up and changed rooms we would then clean that room. More specifically, we would just move the junk to another room. So we finally realized that with 3 kids and all the stuff they have we obviously needed to make some changes and we felt that our room was the best one as it was a space we could control. So instead of doing lots of spaces or things at once we just focused all our efforts on that one room. It did help that once we got started we had the goal in mind of getting rid of one dresser in order to feel like we had more space in our bedroom and it didn’t feel like everything was stacked on top of each other.
*Bedroom Before - Honestly I can't believe we let it get this bad*
*Bedroom After - Now that is more like it. Almost has a calming effect.*
A year later and we have still been working on the other rooms of our house but it is something that takes time. Decluttering your house is not an easy feat unless you are just moving from college and haven’t acquired anything. We got derailed this past year with the kitchen remodel but in a way that helped us declutter all of those rooms affected. The one thing if you move from room to room like my wife and I are doing you need to make sure you don’t just go dump things back in a room you have already cleared out. However, that is one of the hardest things so when you get down to only a couple rooms left (like we are now) it gets harder and harder to get it to what you want. However, I am looking forward to the challenge this fall again as the seasons are changing.
If this is something that interest you and you have been wanting to get rid of a lot of stuff I would suggest that you check out what Anthony Ongaro is doing over at Break The Twitch. In fact, the video below is a good way to get started with the 6 most Popular Methods.
*via 6 Popular Minimalist Decluttering Methods on Break the Twitch.*Another good resource and guide is “The Art of Tidying Up: A Complete Guide to a Decluttered Life” by Rebecca Moses
Do you use Fall or a change in seasons as a good time to clean up or clean out around the house? If so what is your best method of doing so or how do you approach it?