Simplify

I love my cat, but I hate litter boxes. I recently found a simple solution - the Scoop Free Automated Litter Box. Now this isn’t one of those contraptions that throws cat waste around and scares the daylights out of your cat. It’s very well-designed. My cat switched to the new litter box in a few short days. Here’s what I love about it:

• Most days, I do nothing - I mean nothing. The cartridge needs to be changed once every 30 days and takes about 2 minutes.
• It’s always clean and it never smells.
• I never see cat waste. The contraption rakes it away into a hidden compartment.
• My cat absolutely loves it. I have a finicky cat. If I missed a day scooping her old box, she would pee in my laundry. She loves the new box and my clothes have never smelled better, (By the way, I also recommend Nature’s Miracle Laundry Detergent.)

I also invested in an automated feeder with a timer, so I can sleep in on the weekends. Both have simplified my cat chores and leave me more time to enjoy my cat.

While I love real world bookstores, I also love the convenience of buying from Amazon. I can spend countless hours browsing books via the “Customers who bought this also bought …” feature. It’s addictive and time consuming.   

In the past, if I wanted a book, I would add it to my cart and keep browsing until I had $25 worth of books to trigger the free shipping. I realize I wasn’t really saving money by doing this - in fact, I was doing exactly what Amazon wanted me to do by purchasing more - but I rationalized it by thinking I’d rather spend my money on more books rather than just shipping. What I didn’t account for was the time I was wasting. Every time I wanted to buy a book, I’d spend another 1/2 hour to an hour browsing other books until I crossed the $25 threshold.  At that rate, I might as well go to a real world bookstore and buy the one book I was originally looking for.  

Thankfully, Amazon introduced Amazon Prime and solved this problem for me.  I pay $80 a year for free 2 day shipping.  My average purchase price has dropped from over $25 a purchase to about $10 a purchase and instead of spending an hour on Amazon each time I think of a book I want,  search for it, click on the 2 day 1-Click option and go away. I spent less on books and I save time.   

The only problem I see with this new system is the wastefulness of shipping one book at a time. If only Amazon offered a feature where they added an option to wait until I had some number of books in my queue before they shipped them. Of course, then I’d have to reconcile my “I want it now” urge with my desire to be friendly to the environment.  

Over the past year, I’ve switched from doing my grocery shopping in stores to having my groceries delivered. It saves both time and hassle. Here in the Bay Area, I use the following services for my groceries.

West Side Organics

I get fresh, locally grown, organic produce delivered to my house every friday. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and am more or less living by this service. Unlike other produce delivery services, this one allows you to customize your delivery order up to 24 hours in advance. Their web site is easy to use, the produce is always delicious and they even throw in recipes with every delivery. As an added bonus, you don’t have to be home for the delivery. They pack your produce to survive a day on your door step until you get home from work.

Safeway

I use Safeway delivery for the rest of my groceries. My order rarely changes and Safeway’s site allows me to quickly browse and buy from my last order. It means I can get my grocery shopping done in about 10 minutes. Only drawback is you have to be home for delivery. But they do offer 2 hour delivery windows which is much better than the standard 4+ hour delivery windows.