The Art Of Making Life Easier And Loving It!
Cute Title
About Me
My name is Laine and I am a blogger, writer, mother and grandmother living
in the Midwest. I completed a BA with history major, english and sociology
minors while raising two children alone. Took thirty years to complete.
My kids were good company in the single divorced middle of my life. But I
have lived alone now for ten years, because my 2nd husband died in 2010.
So I am blogging about how to live alone and love it, even if it takes a while
for you to realize that you are making a good, satisfying life for yourself.
Whether widowed or divorced or early on choosing to live a life on your own.
It is my opinion that everyone should live on their own at some point in
their life as it builds character and lets you discover who you truly are.
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We had been married for twenty-two years and though I had raised
those two children alone, I later became dependent on this wonderful
man who liked to cook, run the household, and even wash windows.
Which I didn't. Windows, I mean, not cooking. He even did all this
before his retirement.
I had joked about wanting a houseman to manage everything at home
while I was executive director at an insurance agency. So his happy habits
suited me perfectly.
I tell you all this so you understand that I was not a helpless woman.
I just gave in to the easy way to keep him happy. And got very lazy
in knowing how to run a household and keep the house in repair,
inside and out.
I had to re-learn all these responsibilities after he was gone.
Bummer, for a while.
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After missing him for several years but growing in better control of
my own house, I discovered that I actually liked living alone. It was
the first time I had not a mother, or husband, or children for company
in my home.
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Since that lightbulb moment I stopped feeling sorry for myself at being
a solitary householder-live-aloner and became a woman who loves the
freedom of making my life just how I want it to be without compromise
at home.
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Not that I like everything about taking care of a house all by myself.
But more about that later in more practical detail.
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My site is a work-in-progress, just like life. So please come visit with me
while I keep writing about what might help you and add to the pleasure of
your own living alone life.
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More Past Life
Me Living Alone
Life is Work In Progress
Books On Living Alone
A few books I've read on women living alone are so varied in their choices of lifestyle that they encourage the reader to find her best life and live it. They go from living solo in the sprawl of New York in 1936 to a widow who sells her home in America and makes a new life in a Paris apartment. Check them out.
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LIVE ALONE & LIKE IT: A GUIDE FOR THE EXTRA WOMAN by Marjorie Hillis.
In 1936 this Vogue editor, a preacher's daughter and spinster, who's twenty year career with the magazine was unprecedented for that era. Her book challenged the prevailing social norm that a normal woman desired marriage and would only live alone if a spinster with no family to serve as unpaid caretaker. This small book gave advice on how a woman living solo could make a very satisfying life for herself. Her opinions were so unusual for the time that the delighted shock of women and stunned backlash of men and ministers made her famous. In the Thirties women were still expected to be married and be quiet. She spent her life living alone, writing books, and lecturing and had a good time doing it all.
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THE EXTRA WOMAN by Joanna Scutts.
This cultural critic discovered Hillis's 1936 book and in 2018 published her own exploring "the revolutionary years following the Live-Alone movement". Her book reads easily as it traces Marjorie's busy life and its influence on writers through the next four decades. Live Alone & Like It gave birth to bestsellers encouraging women to take charge of their own life, even while homemaking. Like Irma Rombauer's popular The Joy Of Cooking, also in the thirties, contrasting with Betty Friedan's decades later,The Feminine Mystique, both of which took for granted women's right to make their lives what they wanted them to be. Scutts shows how these four decades gradually grew into the women's social norm of choice in the modern world we live in today.
C'EST LA VIE by Suzy Gershman.
Gershman's experiences as a professional shopper for New York stores and her love of Paris shops and flea markets gave her the courage to sell her house and move there after her husband suddenly died. She discovered that visiting Paris and living there were two vastly different approaches to life. With finding an apartment and living there the hard one. Her French was inadequate, her cooking in a ramshackle kitchen difficult, and her one sexual adventure with a French count not romantic or worth her effort at being a middle aged Cinderella. Suzy's book is funny, her new Parisian life a parable of caution, and her admission that she skipped the depressing parts makes one wonder what was even worse.
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Books On Living Alone
A few books I've read on women living alone are so varied in their choices of lifestyle that they encourage the reader to find her best life and live it. They go from living solo in the sprawl of New York in 1936 to a widow who sells her home in America and makes a new life in a Paris apartment. Check them out.
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LIVE ALONE & LIKE IT: A GUIDE FOR THE EXTRA WOMAN by Marjorie Hillis.
In 1936 this Vogue editor, a preacher's daughter and spinster, who's twenty year career with the magazine was unprecedented for that era. Her book challenged the prevailing social norm that a normal woman desired marriage and would only live alone if a spinster with no family to serve as unpaid caretaker. This small book gave advice on how a woman living solo could make a very satisfying life for herself. Her opinions were so unusual for the time that the delighted shock of women and stunned backlash of men and ministers made her famous. In the Thirties women were still expected to be married and be quiet. She spent her life living alone, writing books, and lecturing and had a good time doing it all.
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THE EXTRA WOMAN by Joanna Scutts.
This cultural critic discovered Hillis's 1936 book and in 2018 published her own exploring "the revolutionary years following the Live-Alone movement". Her book reads easily as it traces Marjorie's busy life and its influence on writers through the next four decades. Live Alone & Like It gave birth to bestsellers encouraging women to take charge of their own life, even while homemaking. Like Irma Rombauer's popular The Joy Of Cooking, also in the thirties, contrasting with Betty Friedan's decades later,The Feminine Mystique, both of which took for granted women's right to make their lives what they wanted them to be. Scutts shows how these four decades gradually grew into the women's social norm of choice in the modern world we live in today.
C'EST LA VIE by Suzy Gershman.
Gershman's experiences as a professional shopper for New York stores and her love of Paris shops and flea markets gave her the courage to sell her house and move there after her husband suddenly died. She discovered that visiting Paris and living there were two vastly different approaches to life. With finding an apartment and living there the hard one. Her French was inadequate, her cooking in a ramshackle kitchen difficult, and her one sexual adventure with a French count not romantic or worth her effort at being a middle aged Cinderella. Suzy's book is funny, her new Parisian life a parable of caution, and her admission that she skipped the depressing parts makes one wonder what was even worse.
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Books On Living Alone
A few books I've read on women living alone are so varied in their choices of lifestyle that they encourage the reader to find her best life and live it. They go from living solo in the sprawl of New York in 1936 to a widow who sells her home in America and makes a new life in a Paris apartment. Check them out.
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LIVE ALONE & LIKE IT: A GUIDE FOR THE EXTRA WOMAN by Marjorie Hillis.
In 1936 this Vogue editor, a preacher's daughter and spinster, who's twenty year career with the magazine was unprecedented for that era. Her book challenged the prevailing social norm that a normal woman desired marriage and would only live alone if a spinster with no family to serve as unpaid caretaker. This small book gave advice on how a woman living solo could make a very satisfying life for herself. Her opinions were so unusual for the time that the delighted shock of women and stunned backlash of men and ministers made her famous. In the Thirties women were still expected to be married and be quiet. She spent her life living alone, writing books, and lecturing and had a good time doing it all.
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THE EXTRA WOMAN by Joanna Scutts.
This cultural critic discovered Hillis's 1936 book and in 2018 published her own exploring "the revolutionary years following the Live-Alone movement". Her book reads easily as it traces Marjorie's busy life and its influence on writers through the next four decades. Live Alone & Like It gave birth to bestsellers encouraging women to take charge of their own life, even while homemaking. Like Irma Rombauer's popular The Joy Of Cooking, also in the thirties, contrasting with Betty Friedan's decades later,The Feminine Mystique, both of which took for granted women's right to make their lives what they wanted them to be. Scutts shows how these four decades gradually grew into the women's social norm of choice in the modern world we live in today.
C'EST LA VIE by Suzy Gershman.
Gershman's experiences as a professional shopper for New York stores and her love of Paris shops and flea markets gave her the courage to sell her house and move there after her husband suddenly died. She discovered that visiting Paris and living there were two vastly different approaches to life. With finding an apartment and living there the hard one. Her French was inadequate, her cooking in a ramshackle kitchen difficult, and her one sexual adventure with a French count not romantic or worth her effort at being a middle aged Cinderella. Suzy's book is funny, her new Parisian life a parable of caution, and her admission that she skipped the depressing parts makes one wonder what was even worse.
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Books On Living Alone
A few books I've read on women living alone are so varied in their choices of lifestyle that they encourage the reader to find her best life and live it. They go from living solo in the sprawl of New York in 1936 to a widow who sells her home in America and makes a new life in a Paris apartment. Check them out.
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LIVE ALONE & LIKE IT: A GUIDE FOR THE EXTRA WOMAN by Marjorie Hillis.
In 1936 this Vogue editor, a preacher's daughter and spinster, who's twenty year career with the magazine was unprecedented for that era. Her book challenged the prevailing social norm that a normal woman desired marriage and would only live alone if a spinster with no family to serve as unpaid caretaker. This small book gave advice on how a woman living solo could make a very satisfying life for herself. Her opinions were so unusual for the time that the delighted shock of women and stunned backlash of men and ministers made her famous. In the Thirties women were still expected to be married and be quiet. She spent her life living alone, writing books, and lecturing and had a good time doing it all.
​
THE EXTRA WOMAN by Joanna Scutts.
This cultural critic discovered Hillis's 1936 book and in 2018 published her own exploring "the revolutionary years following the Live-Alone movement". Her book reads easily as it traces Marjorie's busy life and its influence on writers through the next four decades. Live Alone & Like It gave birth to bestsellers encouraging women to take charge of their own life, even while homemaking. Like Irma Rombauer's popular The Joy Of Cooking, also in the thirties, contrasting with Betty Friedan's decades later,The Feminine Mystique, both of which took for granted women's right to make their lives what they wanted them to be. Scutts shows how these four decades gradually grew into the women's social norm of choice in the modern world we live in today.
C'EST LA VIE by Suzy Gershman.
Gershman's experiences as a professional shopper for New York stores and her love of Paris shops and flea markets gave her the courage to sell her house and move there after her husband suddenly died. She discovered that visiting Paris and living there were two vastly different approaches to life. With finding an apartment and living there the hard one. Her French was inadequate, her cooking in a ramshackle kitchen difficult, and her one sexual adventure with a French count not romantic or worth her effort at being a middle aged Cinderella. Suzy's book is funny, her new Parisian life a parable of caution, and her admission that she skipped the depressing parts makes one wonder what was even worse.
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Books On Living Alone
A few books I've read on women living alone are so varied in their choices of lifestyle that they encourage the reader to find her best life and live it. They go from living solo in the sprawl of New York in 1936 to a widow who sells her home in America and makes a new life in a Paris apartment. Check them out.
​
​
LIVE ALONE & LIKE IT: A GUIDE FOR THE EXTRA WOMAN by Marjorie Hillis.
In 1936 this Vogue editor, a preacher's daughter and spinster, who's twenty year career with the magazine was unprecedented for that era. Her book challenged the prevailing social norm that a normal woman desired marriage and would only live alone if a spinster with no family to serve as unpaid caretaker. This small book gave advice on how a woman living solo could make a very satisfying life for herself. Her opinions were so unusual for the time that the delighted shock of women and stunned backlash of men and ministers made her famous. In the Thirties women were still expected to be married and be quiet. She spent her life living alone, writing books, and lecturing and had a good time doing it all.
​
THE EXTRA WOMAN by Joanna Scutts.
This cultural critic discovered Hillis's 1936 book and in 2018 published her own exploring "the revolutionary years following the Live-Alone movement". Her book reads easily as it traces Marjorie's busy life and its influence on writers through the next four decades. Live Alone & Like It gave birth to bestsellers encouraging women to take charge of their own life, even while homemaking. Like Irma Rombauer's popular The Joy Of Cooking, also in the thirties, contrasting with Betty Friedan's decades later,The Feminine Mystique, both of which took for granted women's right to make their lives what they wanted them to be. Scutts shows how these four decades gradually grew into the women's social norm of choice in the modern world we live in today.
C'EST LA VIE by Suzy Gershman.
Gershman's experiences as a professional shopper for New York stores and her love of Paris shops and flea markets gave her the courage to sell her house and move there after her husband suddenly died. She discovered that visiting Paris and living there were two vastly different approaches to life. With finding an apartment and living there the hard one. Her French was inadequate, her cooking in a ramshackle kitchen difficult, and her one sexual adventure with a French count not romantic or worth her effort at being a middle aged Cinderella. Suzy's book is funny, her new Parisian life a parable of caution, and her admission that she skipped the depressing parts makes one wonder what was even worse.
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