Learning to live on your own in 31 days

A manly man from the Art of Manliness site

I'd like to let you know about a very interesting website - The Art of Manliness. I'm adding it to my list of blogs (on the right of this page in the Other Blogs list). I mentioned this site once before in my "Chestnuts bursting out the oven door" post. The Art of Manliness had a post about how to roast chestnuts that I recommended in my post. But I'd seen The Art of Manliness before and wanted to write about it but I just forgot. The post that introduced me to this site was its "Heading Out on Your Own: 31 Life Skills in 31 Days" posts. It's a lot of useful information gathered into one place. Some of it may seem silly to those of us already on our own. But to someone heading out for the first time, these are very valuable lessons. How to Do Laundry. How to Make a Bed. How to Shop for Groceries. All simple tasks that most of us take for granted. But what if you'd never done them before? Too often, we just assume our children will pick these things up as they help us and watch us do them. But have you ever taken the time to show your children (or young friends or nieces or nephews) how to do these?

Another manly guy from the Art of Manliness site

There are some items in the list that would be useful for anyone to review. How to Jump Start a Car. Establish an Exercise Routine. How to Manage Stress. Create a Budget - wow there's one some folks in our state capital and in Washington should read! There are some geared toward men (Essential Etiquette for Young Men for instance) but this is a site about manliness. And it wouldn't hurt for young women to know what to expect of a young man. Too often our young women just accept what they are given. I think it would help if more girls demanded that their boyfriends treated them with respect. And the same goes for young men. We've gone too far down the road of acting any way we want and expecting everyone else to just accept it. We all need to learn to be more civil with each other.

Take a look around this fascinating site. Learn four rules to get the most out of life. Or learn how to use a fire extinguisher. The women can skip Testosterone Week. And don't be put off by the preponderance of mustaches to be found around the page. Some of this stuff will come across as old fashioned. And I'm not one of those who says that things were so much better way back when. Some things were better and some things were worse. But we have the good fortune to be able to pick and choose which things we want to believe and which things we want to act on.