Special Collections
New Year, New You
Description: Jump start your resolutions with these books on wellness, nutrition, personal finance, and more. #general
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This Is Where You Belong
by Melody WarnickIn the spirit of Gretchen Rubin's megaseller The Happiness Project and Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss, a journalist embarks on a project to discover what it takes to love where you live. The average restless American will move 11.7 times in a lifetime. For Melody Warnick, it was move #6, from Austin, Texas, to Blacksburg, Virginia, that threatened to unhinge her. In the lonely aftermath of unpacking, she wondered: Aren't we supposed to put down roots at some point? How does the place we live become the place we want to stay? This time, she had an epiphany. Rather than hold her breath and hope this new town would be her family's perfect fit, she would figure out how to fall in love with it--no matter what. How we come to feel at home in our towns and cities is what Warnick sets out to discover in This Is Where You Belong. She dives into the body of research around place attachment--the deep sense of connection that binds some of us to our cities and increases our physical and emotional well-being--then travels to towns across America to see it in action. Inspired by a growing movement of placemaking, she examines what its practitioners are doing to create likeable locales. She also speaks with frequent movers and loyal stayers around the country to learn what draws highly mobile Americans to a new city, and what makes us stay. The best ideas she imports to her adopted hometown of Blacksburg for a series of Love Where You Live experiments designed to make her feel more locally connected. Dining with her neighbors. Shopping Small Business Saturday. Marching in the town Christmas parade. Can these efforts make a halfhearted resident happier? Will Blacksburg be the place she finally stays? What Warnick learns will inspire you to embrace your own community--and perhaps discover that the place where you live right now . . . is home.
How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind
by Dana K. WhiteBring your home out of the mess it's in and learn how to keep it under control. "The dirty little secret about most organizing advice is that it's written by organized people," says blogger, speaker, and decluttering expert Dana K. White. "But that's not how my brain works. I'm lost on page three." Dana blogs at A Slob Comes Clean, chronicling her successes and failures with her self-described "deslobification process." In the beginning she used the name "Nony" (short for aNONYmous), because she was sharing her deep, dark, slob secret. Now she has truly come clean--with not only her real name but the strategies she has developed, tested, and proved in her own home. She has learned what it takes to bring a home out of Disaster Status, which habits make the biggest and most lasting impact, and how to keep clutter under control. In How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, Dana explains that cleaning your house is not a onetime project but a series of ongoing premade decisions. Her reality-based cleaning and organizing techniques debunk the biggest housekeeping fantasies and help readers learn what really works. Chapter titles include My First Step: Giving Up on the Fantasy The Worst Thing About the Best Way Just Tell Me What to Do Conquering Laundry Get Dinner on the Table Putting an End to the Never-Ending Weekly Cleaning Tasks Don't Get Organized How to Declutter Without Making a Bigger Mess Fighting the Perceived Value Battle But Will It Last? With a huge helping of empathy and humor, Dana provides a step-by-step process with strategies for getting rid of enormous amounts of stuff in as little time (and with as little emotional drama) as possible.