What  a weird topic for my Tiny Tip on a Thursday. I’d lost money for sure had someone bet me this would ever be a blog post.

There’s really not much to like about wearing a mask (I know the purpose but I don’t have to like it) other than maybe it hides the m-acne. mask + acne = m-acne. Just me? I’m blaming the mask and not the 5+ lbs of m&m’s consumed during the quarantine stage of all this.

Perhaps it is just me (and I very much do brush my teeth!) but the smell inside those masks the first time I did not do much to please my olfactory senses. Yuck. Someone invent scented masks and quick!

Meanwhile, I did find a way to help this with this problem. When I wash them, I add in a couple drops of essential oils.

I favor the two pictured above. Mainly because when I signed up with Young Living, the rep told some story about Thieves being named after the grave robbers during the plague. They used the mix of oils to avoid the plague or some such nonsense. Still, a great story and I like the serendipity of using it. Oh, and the smell of the oil as well. That’s important, too. Purification,  name says it all. To me, it has a light lemon scent.

Note: I think any brand of oils would be fine for this. I just happened to have the Young Living brand on hand.

Although, these can go in the washer and dryer, I still prefer to hand wash and simply air dry our masks. 

Is it just me, did you find wearing masks stinky at first? Maybe I should just change toothpaste? Ha!

This year, I’m determined to stay on top of my inbox.

I don’t know about you but my e-mail inbox can shoot up to 500+ messages in days. It’s worse around major holidays with stores shouting at me about the savings!

Of course,  don’t want to miss out on any great coupons so I tend to be a little lax in my unsubscribing ways. Plus, it doesn’t seem to work very well to unsubscribe.

At the end of last year, I made a small change in how I was deleting my e-mails. Mostly out of necessity as I had over 2000 e-mails stacked up at the time. Had to go through them all. Important ones regarding school dates, personal information mingled with messages shouting save lots of money by giving us all of yours! A rather tedious process.

At some point, I decided to select all and just “remove” the important looking ones. I hit the delete button. Guess what? All those important ones moved up to first place in my inbox. I took a minute, read through those taking any action steps or saving them if needed (I have an e-mail filing system…school, bills paid, etc).

Then, it was back to select all and repeating the process. Went so much faster than trying to read through each one and decide what was important.

An important mantra for me when sifting through the store ones (especially in January!):

There will always be another sale!

Think this may become a Saturday morning routine for me. It feels nice to have an inbox number of 4 as opposed to 4000.

How do you keep your e-mail clear?

Did you read as much as you wanted last year?  Me either.

My reading habits left me far short of the 52 books in 52 weeks I accomplished a few years ago. I hope this reading tip helps me achieve that again.

The credit for this tip does not belong to me. On my initial post about reading 52 books in the year,  Patty commented about stopping every day at 3p.m. and reading:

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I read all the time. I stop what I’m doing most days at 3:00 and have a coke and read for about half an hour. I’m a fast reader, too, so I can get through a lot of books with just 30 minutes a day. Not that I limit myself to only 30. Sometimes I read too much. If I’m working on a quilt, I usually quilt in the evening, but if I’m not, I read.

What a great idea! As one of the 18 things I’d like to accomplish in 2018 (list of those coming soon), I am adding in this habit.  I’ve decided I’ll stop what I’m doing at 3:30 (may move that up to 3:00 as 3:30 is when J walks in the door from school), make a cup of tea, maybe grab a snack, and set the timer to read for 30 minutes.  Timer starts when the tea is ready and not a moment earlier. 

My List Of 18 Books For 2018:

Here are 18 books I’d like to read in 2018. Hopefully, I’ll read more than 18 books but these titles are ones I know I want to make a priority. Forgive me, they’ll simply be in a random order.

1. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Curious if it fits my word of the year)
2. Raising a Responsible Child by Dr. Don Dinkmeyer and Dr. Gary D. McKay
3. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
4. The Naughty Nineties by David Friend
5. Silence in the Age of Noise by Erland Kagge
6. A World in Disarray by Richard Haass
7. Leap Year by Helen Russell
8. Gone Viking by Helen Russell
9. The In-Between: Embracing the Tension Between Now and the Next Big Thing by Jeff Goins
10. The Second Lives of Honest Men by John R. Cameron
11. Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation by Joseph Weizenbaum
12. The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes
13. The Demon Crown: A Sigma Force Novel by James Rollins
14. Under The Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan
15. Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin
16. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Elliot
17. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
18. Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness by Candace Cameron Bure

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Wow, those titles are so random. Wondering where I came up with my list?

I have an ongoing word file of books I’d like to read (first created in 2012). Also, I have a small text file on my phone where I’ll jot down titles if I hear of something interesting or see a television character reading a book that piques my curiosity (# 6 up there made the list during an episode of Madam Secretary).

While I plan on using my reading tip to  read all the books in my list, my hope is to double (or triple! or quadruple!) the number by the end of the year.  Some of the titles listed are the first in a series, some authors have other books I’d also like to read, and then, I have a few books I’d like to go back re-read (re-reading books feels like visiting old friends to me).

How do you select the books you want to read?