SBPL De-Clutter Club

Use the Internet to Save Yourself Lots of Money

2012-02-11T11:10:00.003-05:00

I think the subject of coupons, thrifty living, how to economize and cost savers might be more prolific these days than even the subject of de-cluttering and organizing. I used search terms like “thrifty,” “frugal,” “coupons” and “economize” in Google and got more hits than I could handle in the way of sites that can help you keep more of your money in your pocket. Most of the sites include tips and instructions on how to use the information on their site (and others) to save you money. If you spend time reading through all these sites, researching and planning, you can save yourself lots of money – you won’t have time to shop, cook or eat so you won’t have to worry about over spending!

The site I mentioned in my last blog, www.becentsable.net, probably came after the publication of the book. Spurred on by the popularity of the book, Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee must have found that creating their own website to provide the kind of information they found in other sites they recommend in their book was a profitable business. Their site, like many others, is a great site to find coupons for the items you normally buy and for finding some new, perhaps less expensive and better discounted items that would work as well as any others.

One of the sites the authors’ recommended, that undoubted gave them ideas about what to include on their own site, is www.hotcouponworld.com. This is a site that has a full list of “training” information: Couponing 101, 102, 103 and Stockpiling 101. There is also a list of abbreviations that they use in their coupon database. These can be found in the box to the right of the opening screen labeled Couponing Basics.

Another site, I have even seen advertised on television, is Coupon Suzy’s website: www.couponsuzy.com. This site even has a calculator feature that can give you a total of the money you will save by using the coupons you print.

Perhaps the person that may have been one of the pioneers of this savings craze is Amy Dacyczyn who started publishing her Tightwad Gazette back in 1990. She is quoted in many of today’s “frugal ways” websites and blogs, including www.mydollarplan.com, www.mlife.com, www.thenonconsumeradvocate.com, www.thesimpledollar.com, www.yardsalequeen.blogspot.com, and www.frugalforlife.blogspot.com, all of which come up on a Google search of Amy Dacyczyn’s name.

Interestingly, a lot of the authors of these sites also have books to sell, which will cost you some money! Come to the library and borrow all the books you will ever want or need! We are one of the best cost savings available that is free to you to use as much as you like! Happy reading!

Be Organized About Your Couponing

2012-02-10T14:46:00.003-05:00

The next topic in the Be Centsable book by Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee (New York: Penguin Group, 2010, pages 11-18) seems to be a perfect combination of our group's foci of de-cluttering/organizing and couponing - Organizing Our Coupons! We have heard some basic information from many of the Organizing Professionals that seems contradictory to the idea of Extreme Couponing. We have been warned not to purchase in bulk or to purchase things that you don’t need, because it can add to your feelings of having too much stuff in your life. And I think that the idea of cutting out excessive amounts of coupons would be on the "Don’t" list of many de-cluttering experts, but we are going to find the justification for learning to control your expenses by using coupons wisely, and what better way than to find out how to apply all of our organizing knowledge to collecting coupons. The authors remind us of one of the “Golden Rules of Organizing: Touch it once!” This is the art of putting things where they belong as soon as they come into the house. They provide a system that will debunk the myth that clipping, sorting and filing coupons takes too much time. The system that they use is actually one that they got from Stephanie Nelson, the self-proclaimed “Coupon Mom.”

This “system” is done online – the authors call it a “virtual” filing system. They promise that the system will clear up your time to “plan your shopping trip, create menus and count up all of the money you will save…the coupons are sorted, filed and cross-referenced by some specific criteria with a simple click of the mouse.”

The “How to” of this system is described on page 14 of the Be Centsable book. They suggest you get an expanding box file with divider tabs to separate the contents by month or get a large three-ring binder with page protectors. Every insert you get should be filed, whole and unclipped, in a section of the box or in a page protector in the binder. The insert should be labeled on the front (using a blank address label) with the date that the insert was issued (either printed on the spine of the insert or taken from the date of the newspaper it was pulled from) and the source of the insert. Use the following code to identify the source of the coupons: GM: General Mills; KG: Kellogg’s; PG: Procter and Gamble; RP: Red Plum and SS: SmartSource. The inserts should be filed in date order.

The reason you want to do this is so that you can find the coupon you want when you want to use them. This will be done by using one of the free publicly available coupon databases on the Internet such as www.hotcouponworld.com or the one found on the authors’ own website www.becentsable.net. These databases list where particular coupons can be found such as online on the manufacturer’s site or in an insert issued on a particular date (i.e.: 01/05/12 SS). If you have filed your inserts properly, you should be able to find the coupon you need a few minutes just before you are heading out to the store.

The authors talk about ways that even expired coupons can be used. We had a collection box in the library for a while that was provided by the Greater Brunswick Area Womans Club. They sent 20 lbs. of expired coupons to the U.S. Army Base in Grafenwoehr, Germany. The authors of the book suggest visiting the Overseas Coupon Project website at www.ocpnet.org about where to send unused or expired coupons to military families stationed overseas.

But, as you might be able to tell from the brief description above about how to handle coupons and from watching the TV show Extreme Couponing, this kind of organizing does not come easily. It takes a lot of planning and discipline. Are you willing to take on this challenge?

Working Title: South Brunswick Savers

2012-02-07T15:42:00.001-05:00

Can you think of a better title to rename our De-Clutter Club into something larger? We have branched off in our conversations over the past few years to discuss coupons, free deals and ways to make money from your clutter, so now we are going to embrace this concept and add it to our agenda – to discuss the myriad of ways to keep your household budget under control and still live comfortably and be generous to your neighbors.

Kathy W. Quinto-David is a local resident who has been exploring these cost savings options for some time now and has great information she would like to share with other residents. She will join us for our meeting in March when we can discuss the expansion of our “mission” to include related topics such as “couponing” and resource sharing.

To get us started thinking along these lines, I am including some tips from some of the books I mentioned in my last blog that are available in the library on this topic. I will continue to share a few of these tips every other day or so until we meet again on March 1.

From Be CentsAble by Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee about coupons (Chapter 1: “Everything You Don’t Know about Coupons,” New York: Penguin Group, 2010, pages 1-23):

Couponing requires some research and strategies to do effectively, but with a little preparation time and rethinking the possible, the authors say that you can actually get brand-name items you use at a deep discount and even for free! They say that you need to use your resources to get coupons – your local paper has coupon inserts as well as the large regional papers and the local paper costs less to purchase or subscribe to. But not only can you get coupons from the paper, but there are many online sites that feature high-value coupons including manufacturers’ websites. They suggest joining the mailing lists of manufacturers that you use frequently; they will send coupons to their loyal customers by email and by snail mail.

Create a “junk” email address with Hotmail or Yahoo that you can use on the sites that require you to register. The authors say that most retailers will accept online coupons as long as they have a barcode and an expiration date and they also suggest printing them in black and white to save on the cost of ink! Great suggestion for most of your printing needs – you can find these print options under PRINT in your web browser; you can probably also select a draft mode that uses less ink but still prints a readable page.

They also remind you to look on the product itself for a peel-off coupon to be redeemed at the register. And there are coupon books that are sold as a fundraiser by a lot of non-profit agencies. The Friends of the Library used to sell the Entertainment® Books that you can also purchase online at the publisher’s website at www.entertainment.com; the books are 35% now that it is February. And, in order to stay competitive, magazines are including coupons that make their magazines pay for themselves.

And not all junk mail that you get at home is junk. Look through some of the circulars that are left in your mailbox or driveway – you could be throwing away free money!

Living Cheap

2012-02-06T07:00:00.001-05:00

You may have seen all of the coverage in the past few years on talk shows and morning news programs about the trend these days to cut your expenses and live cheap. There is a family that has even renamed themselves the Economides to embrace their new way of living on a limited income to be able to put more into their savings. They bill themselves as America's Cheapest Family. Out of this frugal trend that became necessary because of the shape of our economy, have come TV reality shows like Extreme Couponing.

The De-Clutter Club has always talked about ways to sell some of your excess to make some extra money - be it a garage sale or selling on eBay, so it seems natural that the group would be interested in discussing things like couponing. There is a wealth of information available in the library on this topic.

Books on personal finance can be found in 332.024. Here you can find Suze Orman's books on getting a hold of your finances and the many books that have been written lately about preparing for retirement since the Baby Boomers started to turn 65 in 2011. There are also a number of books like: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Stretching Your Dollar by Shannon Medisky; Suddenly Frugal by Leah Ingram; Be CentsAble by Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee and the lighthearted illustrated book The Cheap Book by Robin Herbst and Julie Miller.

Another section of the library that has books on similar topics is 640.73 where you can find book on Home Econimics, which is an archaic term that seems to have taken on a new life. Here is where you can find the Economides book Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half and other similar titles.

I hope that the new and improved De-Clutter/Extreme Couponing Club will take advantage of all of the ideas available in these resources to discuss with the other club members. If this kind of information is interesting to you, stop into our first meeting in the new format on March 1 in Program Room 1B.

De-Clutter Club to Go in a New Direction

2012-02-03T10:14:00.004-05:00

We had another meeting of our De-Clutter Club last night and discussed the future of the club. The interest in the club the way it has been running seems to have run it's course. I am going to be changing the nature of this club to include other ways to simplify your life and put dollars in your pocket. A patron has offered to run an Extreme Couponing Club. We discussed this last night at the meeting and it seems that this would be a popular diversion for the group.

I will have a changeover type meeting the first Thursday in March, on March 1, where we will discuss the future of the group. We can brainstorm about the direction it will go by adding in the extreme couponing component and discuss if there are other topics we want to explore.

I hope our regulars will come, that we will see some old friends back again and some new members will join us in planning what will be the best way to use our time.

A reminder from last evening - Jamie Novak, who has been to the South Brunswick library several times in the past few years, will be giving a "Spring De-Cluttering in 3 Simple Steps" program at the Monroe Township Library on Saturday, March 10, 2012 at 1:00 p.m. The program is free and available to non-residents but you must get a ticket from the Welcome Desk at the library before March 10. The Monroe Township library is located at 4 Municipal Plaza, Monroe Township, NJ 08831. There is a map and directions on their website at http://monroetwplibrary.org/location.

We also discussed a few more online resources for de-cluttering that take a little different approach from most of the others. On the OnlineOrganizing.com website, Organizer Kim Woodland writes about "Organizing for Creativity." She has her own website at www.extraorganized.com where she "writes about using organization in the service of relationships and adventurous experiences. She takes a fresh approach, blending organizing with mindfulness, simple living, and minimalism for a highly focused approach that anyone can use to shape a life that is meaningful to them." Her article can be found at www.onlineorganizing.com. Check out these websites; I think they make a nice segue into the new focus of our group.

Hope to see you all, and some new faces, at the next meeting on March 1, 2012

The Magic of Thought Logic Program Highlights

2011-11-12T11:36:00.002-05:00

We had a great presentation from Sangita Patel on November 1st about getting your thoughts focused so that you can declutter your life forever. Sangita Patel is a local Organizer and Coach based in West Windsor who serves as the treasurer of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and is a member of the International Coach Academy and Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD) Her company Kalakar Interiors has a website at www.kalakarinteiors.com.

I have read several books that touch of the very thing that Sagita talked about. It is important to do some self-analysis to find out why you hang on to things that clutter your life and learn to let go of those thoughts and actions to clear your house and your life which will allow you to do things that you really want to do. Part of this process is goal setting - imagine your life and what you could accomplish for yourself if you were not bogged down by the minutiae of everyday life. You need to set a goal for yourself that is more appealing and more promising than the idea of wallowing in your memorabilia or worrying about where to file your bank statements.

Sangita stressed the need to take care of yourself by clearing the cluttering thoughts in your mind and creating a clean and clear environment where you can learn to "fall in love with yourself."

Sangita suggests the following: "1) Make a list for day-to-day, weekly, monthly and yearly goals and prioritize them; 2) For your daily to-do list: Start with a 3" by 3" sticky note and jot down what is most important just for today. Take one thing at a time and stay focused until it is complete." Using a small piece of paper insures that your list will not be unmanageable to complete in one day. "3) Take frequent breaks in between work/activities and do some stretches or meditation. 4) Thank yourself, Reward yourself and Appreciate your efforts. 5) Focus on your accomplishments, not on what you have not done." Sangita suggests that you should use the SMART method of setting goals - make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Based. You can read more about setting SMART goals at http://www.mindtools.com/page6.html and other sites that discuss good management and leadership skills.

"De-cluttering and letting go helps you to trust yourself and others" and realize that you can make sound decisions that benefit you. Learn to delegate what can be delegated and choose the things you want to do yourself that will satisfy you and give you happiness.

Don't forget to come to the library on Thursday, December 1st for the De-Clutter Club's next monthly meeting. Clear out your pantries and bring your unwanted food to donate to the South Brunswick Food Pantry. We will have some refreshments to celebrate our accomplishments this year and discuss realistic resolutions for next year.

2011-10-26T10:57:00.002-04:00

Here is the first list of donations we will be collecting at the December De-Clutter Club Meeting, December 1, 2011, Program Room 1A/1B

Clear out your pantry and your cupboards for The South Brunswick Food Pantry. This is their list of items they need for the holidays:

•Jelly or Jam
•Parmalot Milk
•Canned Meats (Chili, Beef Stew, Canned Chicken, etc.)
•Snack Foods (granola bars, crackers, cookies, snack packs, etc.)
•Coffee
•Oatmeal/Cereal
•canned tomatoes
•canned beans
•canned vegetables
•boxed macaroni and cheese
•cereal/oatmeal/pancake mix and syrup
•boxed potatoes and boxed rice
•stuffing
•canned yams
•canned chicken broth
•soups
•Super Market Gift Cards

The Food Pantry collects food all year long, so they will take any other canned or boxed items from your pantry that you may want to move along to others.

Upcoming Events

2011-10-14T10:27:00.002-04:00

Since we have a program about De-Cluttering on Tuesday, November 1, 2011, I have decided that having our regular Thursday evening De-Clutter Club meeting might be too much in one week. I have cancelled the Thursday night meeting in November but will address the group that attends on Tuesday meeting about our December meeting and beyond. Members and those who are interested in joining this group are encouraged to attend the presentation to learn about us and give us your input.

As a holiday project to help us clear out some stuff from our lives and at the same time help others, I am compiling a list of things that the South Brunswick Food Pantry and other local social assistance organizations need that we might have just “lying around” our houses. I know that most of these places want new and nearly new items, but if you are anything like me, you have a few of those new and nearly new items lying around as well as your well loved and over used “stuff.”

I will make the list available and have boxes and bags at our December meeting to gather the items and then arrange to get them delivered before the holidays.

If any of you have a contact with a charity that you know that needs “stuff,” contact me and let me know if you would be willing to deliver those designated donations after the meeting. I will let you know as soon as I can what items are needed that we might be able to contribute.

Also, at the December meeting, we can discuss our successes this year, start to set reasonable resolutions for 2012 and discuss ways to have a stress-free holiday season by letting go of the clutter in your life and mind. We can make it an early holiday celebration! I will have coffee and cookies and maybe some other surprises.
Please come to the presentation on Tuesday, November 1 with Sangita Patel of Kalakar Interiors on The Magic of Thought Logic: Clearing and Connecting Your Mind-Space and Home-Space and then join us as we wrap up 2011 on December 1 in the other side of the room in which we usually meet; we are sharing the space that evening with a Girl Scout Troop.

More from a Therapist and Organizer

2011-09-03T10:37:00.003-04:00

I wrote about Cindy Glovinsky's One Thing at a Time a few weeks ago. I visited her website and saw that she has written several other books which I acquired through an Interlibrary Loan. These books are a complimentary pair. Both her second book, Making Peace with the Things in Your Life (New York: St. Martin's Griffen, 2002) and her third book, Making Peace with Your Office Life (New York: St. Martin's Griffen, 2010) are owned by the South River Public Library. According to the biographies in her books, Cindy Glovinsky is a licensed psychotherapist and an expert on organizing and mental health. Her books are more than de-clutter books; these are really self-help books based on psychotheraputic research and observations. Like several others we have discussed, these books are definitely designed to get the the root of the mental conditions that result in living a cluttered, disorganized life. If we can get to the root issues, it is hoped that the task of de-cluttering won't be so overwhelming and the sufferer will achieve that peaceful, ordered life that seems to always be just beyond reach. That is, of course, if we believe in being helped by psychotherapy.

She starts Making Peace with the Things in Your Life with this famous couplet by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child's Garden of Verses, "The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." We all know that things don't make us (or kings) necessarily happy! Most of the de-clutter books preach that the only way to truly be happy is to break our attachment with things so that we can truly be free to do what we want and to enjoy life. This is the premise of these two books.

Making Peace with the Things of Your Life covers subjects like Rethinking Things, Taking Inventory, Why Things Keep Overwhelming You and What to Do About Things, which are the headings for each of the four parts of the book. Part I is a kind of overview of the psychology of possessions and material objects. Part II starts to personalize the issue, giving you ways to access your thoughts and actions that have brought you to this point. Part III looks at particularly how you think about these issues and what your relationship is with the objects in your life and the power they hold over you. The last part is where the psychotherapy comes into play in getting you to confront these thoughts and try to rethink where you have been and where you are heading in life. There is a certain amount of practical information contained in these pages, but primarily, it is a plan to help you clear your thinking about things so that you can take control of your life.

The second book, Making Peace with Your Office Life is, I believe, the first whole book I have encountered that is dedicated to organizing your work life and improving your happiness at work. I find this to be the one that I am drawn to first since most of us spend far more of our waking day in an office of some kind. It would be interesting to know if the behaviors that incline us to gather things is universally brought to the workplace. Does anyone know of someone who lives a cluttered home life but has an ordered work space? Of vise versa? Because your work life is more than the things on and around your desk, this book gets much more into the task of decluttering and organizing your thoughts, actions and relationships at work.

I would say that these are both books that you would need to sit down with in some quiet place over a period of time to truly absorb the message that Cindy Glovinsky is imparting and remember, psychotherapy is not a short term process but for some, it can be life changing.

Missed Tonight's Meeting?

2011-09-01T19:35:00.003-04:00

I missed seeing everyone this evening for our De-Clutter Club. I had hoped to get a volunteer to run the meeting on October 6, but since no one attended tonight's meeting, I have decided to cancel the meeting on October 6 so that I can attend the Library's Author Dinner.

I had hoped to hear some summer success stories and to give you some information out of a book I found today, Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life by Gail Blanke (New York: Springboard Press, 2009.) This book presents a slightly different message than other de-clutter books. It is far more instructive and encouraging and simplifies the entire process down to four steps: 1) If the item you are considering (or the belief, conviction, memory, thought, friend, job - whatever) weighs you down or make you feel bad about yourself - throw it out, give it away, sell it, let go and move on! 2) If it just sits there taking up space and contributes nothing positive to your life - throw it out, give it away, sell it, let go and move on! If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward. Getting rid of the negative helps you focus on the positive. 3) Don't make the decision about keeping versus getting rid of something a difficult one. If you have to delibrate too long on something - throw it out! and finally 4) Don't be afraid. You have only one life and you should be living this life to the fullest. You don't have the time, energy or room for physical or psychic waste.

Like the title says, Throw Away Fifty Things and you will be well on your way to making a clutter free life a habit - forever!

2011-08-26T12:41:00.001-04:00

Our first De-Clutter Club meeting of the fall will be on Thursday night September 1, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. in Program Room 1A. I hope you all had enjoyable and productive summers and that you managed to conquer some clutter or that you have had enough time to rest so that you can dive into a few projects this fall.

We have another de-clutter expert coming to the library this fall to talk to us about de-cluttering our lives and maintaining a clutter free life once we have succeeded. The presenter’s name is Sangita Patel and she will be here on Tuesday evening, November 1 at 7:00 in the large meeting room. Sangita Patel calls herself the Chief Value Creator of her business, Kalakar Interiors, LLC based in West Windsor. She is the Treasurer of the Northern New Jersey chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.NAPONNJ.org) and a member of the National Institute for Challenging Disorganization (www.challengingdisorganization.org). She calls herself a “facilitator of self-awareness” and ends her emails with this statement: “Organize, Plan and Decorate with Awareness by Inspiring your Inner Explorer.” The presentation will be about “Thoughts – ‘The Magic of Thought Logic’ - Clearing and Connecting Mind space and Home space and for self awareness - how to regain inner calmness and to inspire in awakening our inner wisdom.” You can read more about her mission and her services on her website at www.kalakarinteriors.com.

I have contacted some other organizers whose names I got from some of our club members and from the referral service on the NAPO website. I don’t have any other dates set, but I will be looking for some time in the upcoming library schedule. We can talk about the availability of our club members at our first meeting and see if our current meeting date and time are still convenient to our members.

The night of our second meeting in the fall, October 6, is the date for the annual Library Foundation Author Dinner at Sir John’s Restaurant in North Brunswick. This event is always a lot of fun and this year’s author, Chris Grabenstein, mystery writer and former improve comedian looks to be very interesting and entertaining. I would like to discuss changing the date for our October meeting or asking if anyone in the club would be able to run the meeting on that evening.

Let me know your thoughts on these topics and let me know your availability if you are unable to attend our meetings on the first Thursday evening of each month. I look forward to seeing you all, and some new faces, on September 1. Be safe in the storm. I will write again before the first meeting about packing light to save money on checked luggage.

Have a clutter free day!

Another Expert Heard From

2011-08-08T10:15:00.000-04:00

I picked up another book titled: One Thing at a Time: 100 Simple Ways to Live Clutter-Free Every Day by Cindy Glovinsky, M.S.W., A.C.S.W. The cover says that she is the author of Making Peace with the Things of Your Life. With the author having a social work background, these books are more like one we discussed earlier on the psychology of disorganization and how to get over the attachments we have to our stuff to make room for the life we want to lead. I don't know how many times we can hear this message before it sinks in; it may be a matter of the approach taken by each author that will lead you to eventually find one that "speaks" to you.

This book, One Thing at a Time is unlike others that we have looked at. This book is full text - no pictures, no diagrams, no graphics. The one thing it does have is an extensive and descriptive Table of Contents where you could browse to find the topic that you feel like dealing with, rather than slog through the entire 100 chapters. There are chapters like: Things Don't Move Themselves; Make a List of Mini-Tasks; Throw Away Coupons; Don't Pile, Containerize; Leave it Neater than you Found It; and my personal favorite, Stop Perfecting, Start Bettering.

There is also a nice bibliography of other works that the author used to write this book and a short chapter called "Resources for Help with Organizing." The author's own website is listed: www.freshstartorganizing.com and lists two organizations that give referrals for professional organizers. The first we have looked at before: National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) in Georgia (www.napo.net) and the second, which refers professionals specializing in chronic disorganization: National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization in California (www.nsgcd.org). A quick look at these three sites told me that Cindy Glovinsky no longer has the Fresh Start Organizing site - that is a dead link and the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization now calls themselves the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD) and the link above relocates you to www.challengingdisorganization.org and they have relocated to St. Louis, MO. They have a link labeled "Clutter Hoarding Scale" which is a downloadable assessment measurement tool used to diagnose conditions that challenge someone's health and safety.

Cindy Glovinsky has a new site (www.cindyglovinsky.com) that describes her practice which seems to concentrate on those diagnosed with A.D.D. Other books and articles I have read have equated a cluttered lifestyle with A.D.D.; it would be useful to see if there are people who have trouble with clutter who do not have A.D.D.!

More from these sources at a later date!

Keep chipping away at the piles!

Ask the Expert

2011-08-06T11:50:00.005-04:00

Many of you have asked for the library to offer talks from other Organizing Professionals so that you may learn some new techniques or perhaps find an organizer that you think you might want to work with one-on-one to solve your organizational issues. As I said earlier, I looked at the websites for the National Association of Professional Organizers and at the Institute for Challenging Disorganization and did a search on finding an organizer in this area - within 25 miles of 08852.

The list was quite extensive on both sites about help available in the South Brunswick area. This means that you are not alone in feeling like you could use help with getting your life in order. I have contacted a few of those listed that live in the immediate area and I'm working with them to try to schedule some presentations this fall. We are concerned, however, that we cover some topics that we haven't covered so well in the past. I have one organizer that focuses on clearing your mind to clear your home so that you can achieve inner calm. Another that I have spoken with can talk about maintaining your de-cluttered space once you have achieved your goals or she has offered to do an "Ask the Expert" Q&A session to answer any questions you may have that pertain to a particular area or type of clutter.

I would like your feedback about what kind of presentation you would like us to provide. I will bring up this discussion at our first De-Clutter Club meeting of the fall on September 1st at 7:00 p.m., but if you could let me know ahead of time what you would like to learn from an expert in the field, I can get some presentations scheduled before the calendar is entirely booked.

You can email your suggestions to me at outreach@sbpl.info or you can reply to this posting. I hope you are all having a great and productive summer de-clutting your environment. I have seen a lot of garage sales starting to pop up around town - these must be people who spent some of those super-hot days indoors, sorting through their "stuff." Let me know what your issues are and we can see if we can find some answers or find the "perfect" professional to help you get closer to a clutter-free life!

More Clutter Control Help at the Library

2011-08-05T10:11:00.002-04:00

There is a Guide to Organizing Your Life by Donald Laskowski that is included in the colorful, easy-to-use Dorling Kindersley (DK) K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Series. I am a big fan of books published by DK for both kids and adults. They seem to have their finger on the pulse of people in the 21st Century by including illustrative color photographs to break up long paragraphs of text. We are all used to getting our information in short “bites” and crawls. In order to mimic the methods we are familiar with, DK breaks up pages of text with tips and related information in call out boxes including trivia, definitions, Internet links and visual examples of any written forms or lists they are suggesting as a solution. There are also graphic “characters” used to interject “Very Important Points” and ideas that are “Getting Technical” to remind you to pay particular attention. They also call out “Complete No-Nos” and the “Inside Scoop.” However, the topic of “Organizing Your Life” may be more complex than even DK can make palatable to swallow. They have a “magic formula” to help you “change your life” and it is only 20 steps!

The book is divided into four color-coded sections – Section One is an introduction to the concepts of prioritization - “balance and control” in your life. Section Two deals with crises management and procrastination. Part Three gives more detail about the how-to of the organizing tasks of maximizing your time, keeping your work area clear to maximize your productivity and using tools to achieve your goals. The fourth section is all about controlling or managing your time to avoid interruptions and more tools to create systems which you can work within to maintain your new organized life. A lot of the information is geared toward conquering this process at work, and the transfer of these skills to your perhaps more complicated home life is described toward the end. The Table of Contents for this book is 12 pages long and there is an Appendix and an Index, so you could easily work through the book in a way that may make more sense to you. Even just a skim through can be useful to absorb some useful tips and insights. I am sorry that a newer version of this book has not yet been published. The one that I looked at has a copyright date if 2001, so very few electronic tools are discussed. There is a Complete Idiot’s Guide to Organizing Your Life (5th Edition) that was published in 2010 that most likely would cover newer technologies but only the Kennedy Branch of the Piscataway Library owns a copy. You can place a hold on that copy and request to pick it up at the South Brunswick Public Library.

Although the list of self-help books on our “favorite” topic of Clutter Control is long, this is a slightly different approach than many I have seen and may be the one that will “speak” to you. Books on organizing and clutter control can be found in several sections of a Dewey Decimal sorted library. All are found in the 600s which is the section for Technology and Applied Sciences. There are basic overview books in 640, the Home Economics and Family Living section, books in 648 which is the housekeeping section where the how-to books on storage solutions and clutter control are found and there are books like this one that can be found at 646.7 which is the number for life-style management issues. If you just want to browse to see what kind of help is available, it is worth looking in all three sections in both the regular stacks and in the new book section.

Hope you are all having a clutter-free summer!

More Timely Tips

2011-07-20T17:07:00.001-04:00

To cure yourself of impulse buying, the Editors of FC&A Publishing, in their book 1001 Timely Tips for Clutter Control, suggest to ask yourself these three questions before you buy anything: 1) Do I really need it? 2) Will I really use it in the next week or the next month? and 3) Do I have a place to put it right now? If you answer "no" to any of these questions, then walk away from the purchase. The authors say, "If you only buy items that meet these three criteria, your home will stay clean and uncluttered." That is of course once you get it uncluttered in the first place!

Organize your refrigerator? Yes, why not. Like with all clutter-control projects, group like items together and designate a place where they will be kept. This will save you from purchasing a duplicate of something you already have and will help, in your refrigerator at least, make sure that some unknown item doesn't go bad in the corner of a drawer.

When you dust (during TV commercials if you read yesterday's blog), carry a plastic trash bag with you for collecting trash or items that are "out of place." The authors of the book say, "With just one trip around the house, you can get everything dusted and put away." Sounds good, doesn't it? Let the group know if this works for you.

When traveling by car, the authors suggest to hang your clothes in garment bags (or even just an old plastic bag you got from the laundry) and lay them down on the back seat or trunk. Packing them in suitcases makes them wrinkled and in need of an iron. They also note that laid down takes up less space than bulky suitcases. I would say that this would depend on the number of stops you will make on the trip where you have to carry the clothes in and out and on the number of other items you have to stow in the car like coolers, backpack, gift and souvenirs. Garments in plastic bags are slippery and unless they are laid absolutely flat, they are apt to slip off the hanger into a heap and be more wrinkled than if packed properly in a suitcase. An alternative suggestion they make in another tip, to reduce wrinkles, is to put clothes on hangers together in a plastic bag from the laundry and then fold the whole bunch once or twice to fit the top of your suitcase. That seems more practical to me than having the clothes loose in a bag in the trunk.

There is a section of the book that gives some suggestions for creating an inexpensive closet organizing system using furniture and containers you may already own. A small dresser or set of bookshelves put into a closet work well for folded items and accessories; milk crates on their sides stack well and can be used to hold purses and scarves; woven baskets look good on shelves to hold belts, t-shirts and socks; and an extra shower ring on the clothes rod can hold handbags and belts.

The last tip sounds more like a Hint from Heloise. They say that tea makes a good remover for old polish, dirt and grime on your wooden furniture. Add two teabags per quart of water, boil and steep until you get a color you like because the tea will stain the wood! Cool before using and test on a part of the furniture that is not too visible in case you are unhappy with the results.

More from this book and others soon.

Some tips from 1001 Timely Tips

2011-07-20T16:11:00.001-04:00

Below are some of the 1001 Tips from the back cover of 1001 Timely Tips for Clutter Control by the Editors of FC&A Publishing.

Keep your car clean for little cost. Keep a bag in your car to gather trash into and throw the trash out daily. Also keep a container of baby wipes (or other wipes that don’t contain oil) to keep the dashboard and steering wheel clean and to wipe up sticky hands.

Instead of sitting around watching television commercials, use the time to do short house cleaning tasks – dusting, vacuuming and picking up the mess.

If you do these five things before you go to bed each night, you will have a much calmer morning: 1) recycle the newspapers 2) go through the mail and recycle the junk 3) load the dishwasher and turn it on – electricity costs less in the wee hours of the night 4) put dirty clothes in the hamper and 5) lay out your clothes for the next day.

When you go through the mail, stand by a trash can or recycle bin. Throw away the junk mail as soon as you recognize it. File the rest of the mail in an accordion envelope or into a stand-up file of hanging folders under bills (which you can file by date), to-do items, pending items, items to send or pass along and items to file. Make sure you review these folders at least once a week. We have heard from Jamie Novak a good way to handle these files and she would say not to have a folder labeled to file because that means you have to handle the material twice. Evaluate the material you want to file and see if it really needs to be saved. Realize that most information you will need can be found quickly using the Internet.

Garage sale tips include: 1) organize and plan early including getting your manpower invited and trained before the day of the sale 2) advertise wisely to make sure there will be a steady stream of customers 3) price competitively by researching what items are selling for in your area and 4) sell sensibly by being willing to negotiate and “Don’t be greedy. You’re better off selling something cheap than being stuck with it at the end of the day.” Having a box or two where items are set aside for a future garage sale is a good de-cluttering tool.

Shop for gifts and cards throughout the year. Have a list of upcoming weddings, graduations, etc. and buy an appropriate gift and or card when it is on sale. After Christmas sales are particularly a good time to stock up on gifts. Check the item off your list and store them in a bin, drawer or closet where you are able to retrieve them when they are needed.

More tips coming soon.

2011-07-16T14:12:00.002-04:00

We have a new clutter control book that came in June 2011! It is called "1001 Timely Tips for Clutter Control: Knowing What to Keep, When to Toss and How to Store Your Stuff." It is by the editors of FC&A Publishing, "a family-owned and family-friendly company that strives to provide information and products that improve your life." The company is based in Georgia and the book is copyrighted 2007 but it was just added to our collection. It looks to be a fairly comprehensive book but I think that much of the info is tips we have already discussed.

The information, like other books, is organized by location: Kitchen, Family Room, Dining Room, Home Office, Bedroom, etc. The final chapters go outside the house to the Attic or Basement, Garage and the Car and then to Shopping, Time Management, Relocating (which is differet than other books), Holidays and Entertaining and Traveling. Each chapter has a small introduction and then arranges the information into 4 steps that you can take to: 1) Cut the Clutter 2) Increase Storage, 3) Get Organized and 4) Keep it Clean. Each of these steps are followed by a section called Super Tips, which must be where they get the title claim of 1001 tips. There is also the obligatory first chapter called "Before you begin" that tells you how to get started. One of the nice features of this book is for each section they give you a "permission list" called "Toss Without a Thought." This comes as straight advice - no explanation or excuse necessary - just toss. These lists include things like: in the kitchen - old food which is a no brainer; but also chipped or damaged dishes, glasses or mugs; broken appliances; burnt, rusty or damaged pots, pans and bakeware amd broken utensils and gadgets and in the Home Office - articles or brochures you haven't needed in years; old grocery receipts; junk mail and advertisments; expired insurance policies or related papers; expired coupons; and warranties for items you no longer own.

Every chapter has graphics of sticky-notes to remind you of basic de-clutter rules. There is one that says, "Remember...make a wish list, be realistic, set priorities, identify your clutter problems, label your zones, and set a timeline. There is another "sticky" that says, "Keep in Mind...make a decision to keep, toss, donate, sell or pass on and to follow purging rules to decide quickly, handle items once, set limits, pass the "keep" test and recognize garbage. These are the activites that are described in the first chapter and are added to each chapter as a reminder...maybe making actual sticky notes to put up nearby would be a useful activity but make sure you throw them away and don't let them become clutter.

I will give you some of the tips in my next post which I hope to get up in the next week or so - the back cover gives a teaser for what sounds like a bunch of really useful tips. Stay tuned...

A Clutter-Free Evening with Jamie Novak

2011-05-24T12:30:00.001-04:00

We had a fantastic turn-out at the South Brunswick Public Library on Tuesday evening, May 17, for our Get Organized Today event with celebrity organizer Jamie Novak.

Jamie was a very exciting speaker; not only did she provide many bits of useful information about organizing your home, office, car, and life but she was also engaging and entertaining. While book-signing, she generously answered every person's questions in detail, neither hurried nor judgmental.

During the workshop, the world's most relatable organizer focused on her "3 steps for peace of mind." She advised the clutter-challenged to first: set a timer for 18 minutes, confront a pile of clutter and pick one thing in it. Second: Make a decision about the chosen item or unfinished project and follow through immediately! Third (and most important): keep it that way! Tackling a pile 18 minutes at a time, she says, makes the job effective but not overwhelming.

In reference to paper piles, her advice is instead of doing the "scoop and dump" before guests arrive, use a desktop box for hanging files or an expandable file folder. Keep it in a public area, she advised, such as the kitchen, to ensure you maintain the contents as their usefulness expires.

Certainly, every one of the 60 or so clutter-free wannabes in the audience went away with some encouragement and new-found skills. My personal favorite was to have a "lost and found" box in my home.

As attendees said their good-byes, she pleaded with them to go straight home and attack even just one bit of their clutter and disorganization that very night. Big clutter problems go away "one bite at a time!" She seemed confident we would succeed once and for all as she wished each of us to "have a clutter-free life!"

Jamie brought copies of her latest book Stop Throwing Away Money which she autographed for those who purchased a copy. You can find Jamie Novak on her website at www.jamienovak.com where you can register to get her newsletters, as well as on Martha Stewart's Whole Living website: go to the Community tab, select "experts' blog" from the dropdown menu and then click "organization" in the left-hand column.

Don't miss her weekly Bite Size Radio Show on Wednesdays at noon on BlogTalkRadio. In addition to the radio, she has been found in television shows on HGTV and QVC.

This Library event was generously sponsored by the Friends of the South Brunswick Public Library. Thank you to everyone who helps support our Friends!

If you missed Jamie's workshop don't despair. The Library has many free resources to help you de-clutter and organize your life.

After her first visit with us more than a year ago, the Library formed its De-Clutter Club. It is an open group for individuals to meet informally and brainstorm de-clutter ideas. They meet at the Library the first Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. in Program Room 1A/1B. Members all have tried to clear away the clutter and to organize their lives and the members share their challenges and successes.

The next meeting of the De-Clutter Club is on June 2. We will determine at that meeting if we will continue to meet during the summer or decide to take July and August off and resume meetings again in the fall. Check the library's event calendar on our website at www.sbpl.info for updates and to read the library's De-Clutter blog.

The Library also has numerous books and magazines to borrow on the topic, including Real Simple, Martha Stewart's Living and Whole Living.

By the way, if you are purging important files there is free help in South Brunswick from Middlesex County on June 4. (Jamie suggests a seven-year life for some documents, but check her website for more details.) County residents can recycle their old documents and confidential files safely and securely on Saturday, June 4, from 9 a.m. to noon for free at the South Brunswick Senior Center, next door to the Municipal Building on Ridge Road. Please do not bring books, magazines, newspapers, or plastics. For more information, pick up a flyer at the Library or contact the County Division of Solid Waste Management at 732-745-4170, solidwaste@co.middlesex.nj.us.

As Jamie says, "have a clutter-free life!"

Spring Cleaning Tips

2011-02-26T11:16:00.001-05:00

March is practically here – how are your New Year’s resolutions going? Is it time for spring cleaning? Well, we are in luck if we need more fuel for our motivational fire. The March issue of O – The Oprah Magazine is all about De-Cluttering Your Life and getting organized – this month we can say that the O stands for Organization!

She has articles by Nate Berkus, Suze Orman and Peter Walsh to name a few. The main content section titled, “Our Stuff, Ourselves” starts on page 154 leading off with Nate Burkus’ article, “The House Whisperer” that “tells about his design for living.” This is followed by a feature article about New York designer Peri Wolfman’s well organized loft showing some of her organization solutions; an article about turning your photo clutter into wall art; an article by Peter Walsh about “cleaning out the ultimate junk drawer” - the Garage; an article about the psychology of clutter and how to let go of “heavies” that “weigh on your heart” and a few pages of short ideas on where to donate items that still have some use called, “Who Wants My…?”

A few donation sites that we have not talked about yet are mentioned in this last article. Of course, the Vietnam Veterans of America will take clothing, but did you know you don’t have to wait for the bags to show up in your mailbox - you can schedule a pick-up at your home at www.clothingdonations.org. An organization called SAFE (www.stuffedanimalsforemergencies.org) donates gently used stuffed animals to homeless shelters, hospitals and emergency aid workers; wood planks and construction materials can be donated for eco-friendly construction projects through www.planetreuse.com; Brides Against Breast Cancer sells new and used wedding gowns to help fund the wishes of breast cancer patients (www.bridesagainstbreastcancer.org); Clean the World (www.cleantheworld.org) sends your unwanted toiletries, including the thousands of hotel shampoos and soaps you have collected, to areas around the world where hand-washing will help stop the spread of disease; and you can Google “Creative Reuse Centers” and find places that will take art materials or as O says – “things you never knew were art materials.” The following are some other useful sites for organizations who will connect your unwanted goods with deserving recipients: www.kidflicks.org will take children’s DVDs you no longer want; Habitat for Humanity will turn your unwanted vehicle (or practically anything with a motor) into cash for building materials and sends you a receipt for tax deduction purposes (www.habitat.org/carsforhomes or 877-277-4344); www.greendisk.com will take any old “technotrash” such as old PC Cables, CD-ROMS, computer devices, CDs, DVDs, VHS and cassette tapes, and other such items; www.iloveschools.com will help connect you with schools in your area that could really use your old office supplies; www.childrensbookproject.org will take gently used children’s and young adult books (as will the library); www.soles4shoes.org will take shoes; and you can send old blue jeans that are finally too old to wear to www.cottonfrombluetogreen.org who will transform old denim into cutting-edge eco-friendly insulation for communities in need like those still recovering from Katrina.

There are several other ideas that are good to know that we can discuss at our next meeting. I will bring this issue to our upcoming De-Clutter Club meeting on March 3, 2011 in our new craft room – Program Room 1A/1B to the right past the Check-Out desk in the South Brunswick Public Library. Hope to see you all there and don’t forget to save the date of Tuesday, May 17, 2011 to see Jamie Novak and hear all of her latest advice on “Bite-Sized Living.”

Happy New Year

2011-01-15T14:43:00.002-05:00

It was nice seeing some new faces at the De-clutter Club on January 6. It is a new year and we all have new resolutions to keep! At the meeting I announced that Jamie Novak will be coming back to the library to give us another boost in our efforts to live an organized life. You should not miss this presentation on Tuesday evening, May 17 at 7:00 p.m. Jamie Novak, the world’s most Relatable Organizer, is the author of four bestselling books on organizing and de-cluttering, the latest of which is "Stop Throwing Money Away: Turn Clutter to Cash, Trash to Treasure and Save the Panel While You are at it." Jamie has been seen on HGTV and QVC and has written many articles in magazines such as Real Simple and Everyday with Rachel Ray. Her latest venture, as the founder of Bite Sized Living, is featured on a weekly Internet radio program on BlogTalkRadio and a monthly call-in “Bookclub by Phone.” You can read more about Jamie at www.jamienovak.com where you can register to receive her Bite Sized Newsletter or read her Blog.

I have a colleague who brings me the magazines that she is done with if they include an article about de-cluttering or organizing, and as we have discussed, clutter is such a universal issue with people that it is one of the most popular ways to tempt people to buy magazines other than "see the latest hairstyles" or "look better in a bathing suit." Right now I have three magazines in front of me with teasers like "Organizing Made Easy: 5 Questions that make clutter disappear" or "Quick and Easy Organizing Ideas" or just the plain imperative, "Get Organized." These are undoubtedly popular because they make it seem like there are really only 5 questions or three simple rules that will solve all of your organization problems. If only…

We have talked about one piece of advice that we all agree with - get a handle on what you have to store before you run out and buy anything new to store it in! As George Carlin might have said, "Don’t stuff your house with stuff designed to handle the stuff until you know if you need the stuff." Just about every one of these magazine articles ignores that basic rule and tries to tempt you with the latest and the greatest organizing solution – after all, magazines are all about advertising aren’t they? However, there are a few things that I have seen that are unique and might be helpful. In the February 2011 issue of Family Circle magazine in an article titled "30 Quick and Inexpensive Ideas" they describe a product called a Cable Box. This box is large enough to hold a surge protector and all of the excess cable that is lying in a heap below your computer. There is a slot at either end where the cables emerge and is a lot easier than bundling with some of the other products. It really is just a matter of reducing visual clutter, but it looks pretty neat and they have a whole range of fun colors. (www.bluelounge.com) A few other items are listed on websites that are known for useful organizing items. There is an adjustable shower caddy at www.simplehuman.com, where you can also find other well designed household tools and gadgets; some fun “crunchable” hampers with handles at my favorite store and website www.containerstore.com; some stackable canisters recommended by HGTV’s Sabrina Soto at www.sabrinasoto.com; and thin, velvet covered “Huggable Hangars” that keep your closet orderly from www.hsn.com that are also available at Lowe’s for a lot less.

In the same magazine, there are some useful websites to reduce paperwork coming into the house: a finance and bill paying program that is independent of your bank at www.doxo.com; a way to get rid of your unwanted catalogs at www.catalogchoice.com; a place to register to get off mailing lists for credit cards, insurance offers, etc. at www.optoutprescreen.com; and for about 70 cents per month www.nonprofit41pounds.org will keep you and your family member’s names off of consumer mailing lists for the next 5 years.

21st Century Advice for an Old Problem

2010-12-02T16:56:00.001-05:00

Part Two of the book, “Getting Organized in the Google Era” by Douglas Merrill, titled “The New Organization and How to Achieve It,” gets down to the nitty-gritty of 21st Century organization skills. In the first chapter, Merrill debunks another “commonly held assumption” – that organizing solutions are (or can be) the same for each and every one of us. We have proven this to be false ourselves through all of the discussions we have had in our Declutter Club meetings. This may be because each of our organizing needs is different but it also has to do with our temperaments, styles and skills or experiences. He points out that there are “fundamental guidelines to being organized that can apply to many people in many circumstances – things like to-do lists, carrying a small notebook at all times and putting everything in a certain place and remembering where that place is” (page 73) but adds what he sees as a fundamental certainty to the “new organization we need now” the following principle: “Don’t file your information, search for it.” And by saying search for it, he means doing an electronic search either on your computer or on the Internet. I would also add that if things continue as they are now, things like to-do lists and carrying a small notebook will soon be digital for almost everyone either on their hand-held device or their phone (or on some technology we can’t even imagine) which will make searching even those items possible and practical.

He spends the next chapter discussing the “art of the search.” We, as librarians, think of ourselves as search experts because we do this “for a living” but his advice comes from “inside” one of the most popular search engine companies ever: Google. A few of his tips, which start on page 63, are: 1) pay attention to the words you use in your search - entering a singular or plural noun can affect the outcome of your search since Google interprets your search phrase to determine your intent; 2) use as many descriptive and essential words as possible to target your search but skip the common works like a, the, how, where, etc.; 3) Use quotation marks around a phrase if you are looking for an exact phrase to occur in a web page but search strings are not case sensitive even inside the quotations; 4) add adjectives to your search to get closer to your desired answer – use words like cheap or new or small and add a tilde (~) directly in front of a word to have Google search for your word (cheap) and other words like it (affordable, inexpensive, etc.) or use the (Boolean) search term OR and suggest your own alternatives (the tilde “wild card” may not work in other search engines); 5) Exclude what you don’t want to include in your results by using a minus sign (-) directly in front of the word or use the word NOT. Because of this feature, using the word “not” in your search string as something you are looking for may backfire on you – for instance, searching for the title Death be Not Proud will exclude any websites that mention the word “proud” in your results. This is a perfect example of when to search the phrase using quotation marks.

There is so much information to share, I will continue with this topic in my next blog but in the meantime, Google (and I suspect other search engines) have a cheat sheet to their shortcuts posted right on their homepages albeit hidden in the small print. In Google, you can get a handy list of these tips under Advanced Search>Advanced Search Tips. I will be discussing ways that we have already started to use technology to assist us with organizing in tonight’s Declutter Club meeting, December 2, 2010 at the library. Hope to see you there.

More Help from New Books

2010-11-10T15:19:00.000-05:00

I am continuing to read Douglas Merrill’s “Getting Organized in the Google Era.” (Random House, 2010). Compared to what I have read in other books and articles on this subject, Merrill offers a unique way to approach the problems we face in getting our lives together. A third of the book gives us insight into new ways to approach our life in the 21st century and challenges us to take a really good look at what we are doing that is out-of-date and no longer relevant. We need to consider what we can do to change those patterns and use new technologies to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. He continues numbering his principles of organization. His sixth principle I found to be particularly intriguing, being what I like to think of as an information professional. Douglas Merrill’s Organization Principle Number Six is: “Knowledge is not [or is no longer] power. The sharing of knowledge is power.” Merrill points out that we no longer succeed by hoarding knowledge to build ourselves into “unique” indispensable beings at the center of an organization but rather by sharing and combining our individual knowledge with others’ knowledge - by “building a team.” He points out that this is particularly advantageous when we share with others who are different than us in style, background and approach. Perhaps that is the secret of the combined knowledge of our De-clutter Club.

The next principle - Organizing Principle Number Seven - is “Organize around actual constraints, not assumed ones.” His point here is to encourage us to recognize what constraints or limitations we might personally have that hold us back from getting organized, or from doing anything else that we wish to do. This process will hopefully lead to finding ways to rethink the way we “have always done” things and eventually overcome those constraints by the logical use of technology. However, the principle reminds us to focus on actual constraints, not assumed constraints that may have been “based on past experience, history, what others have told you, or the structures of society” so that we don’t “waste time and energy on things we can’t really change.” In identifying our constraints, he tells us to apply Organizational Principle Number Eight, “Be completely honest – but never judgmental – with yourself.” Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses and get feedback (and agreement) from your family and friends – those that know you the best. The purpose of this exercise is to discover “patterns of behavior that cause you to ‘get in your own way.’”

New Thinking About an Old Problem

2010-10-30T10:35:00.001-04:00

Remember when I told you that the book "Clutter Busting" by Brooks Palmer was a great motivational book on getting around the mental obstacles that keep us from getting organized? Well, I have found another. I went to the 650 section (where many organizing and decluttering books are shelved in Dewey libraries) on the new non-fiction shelves and found a real gem. I often check this section to see what we have that is new on “our favorite” topic but have not found much that inspired me since “Clutter Busting.. This organization book comes at the problem from an entirely new direction. The book is called “Getting Organized in the Google Era” and it was written by Douglas Merrill, the former Chief Information Officer of Google. Talk about excellent qualifications! Did you know that Google’s mission is to “Organize the World’s Information?” What a claim! And this is the man who was hired to help them achieve that mission! But on a more human or realistic side, Douglas Merrill lets down his guard by admitting that he has dyslexia and despite this learning challenge, he earned a doctorate in cognitive science. In fact, he believes that having dyslexia and having to truly understand how his brain works is what led him to cognitive science and made him the perfect candidate for a job on organizing information. And because he had to overcome his issues, he is very empathic to others and gives very kind advice not only about letting go of the negative beliefs about clutter but affirming that our brains and our 21st century life styles do not really equip us to lead an organized life! In other words, it is not our fault that we are disorganized!

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is about us as thinking humans and how we are affected by our often out of date society. As “old school” thinking he questions the merits of memorizing multiplication tables and keeping 9-5 working hours that were devised for factory workers in the Industrial Age. In the second part, he shares the “tips, techniques and strategies [he’s] developed over the years for getting and staying organized.” Not surprisingly, many of these solutions involve computers and new technology and this part of the book was probably out-of-date before the book was even off the press. The third part of the book deals with how to roll with the changes and challenges that we face as we move forward. He promises that “I’ll show you how being organized can help you tap into the energy and brain power you’ll need to handle the unexpected when it comes – because is will come.” (Merrill, Getting Organized in the Google Era, Random House, 2010, pg. xiv) I have only just started reading this but I will share other tips and encouraging words that I find useful. I hope to see you all this Thursday evening at the South Brunswick Public Library at 7:00 for our monthly De-clutter Club meeting. The Quiet Study is in the middle of being renovated so we may not be able to meet there. I will put up signs if the location changes and let the staff at the Information Desk know where we are.

Keep on Clearing!

One Hour Clutter Cutter - is that any way to treat your home?

2010-08-04T10:14:00.003-04:00

Now that I have found the secret to the “If you only have one hour…” pearls of wisdom listed in the BHG “Storage” issue, I suppose that you want to hear what they are! The first was in an article about Kitchen Spaces – Solutions: Corner Storage that was all about using the “wasted space” in the corner of your kitchen counter and cabinets. They suggest that you buy “bins or baskets the width of the cabinet opening and place them on each shelf inside a corner cabinet. Fill each container with small items (utensils, dessert plates, dry goods) and pull out to access.” They go on to say, “While you do sacrifice some space in the back and side of the cabinet, you’re less likely to lose items.”

In my kitchen, I couldn’t afford to lose that valuable space in the back and side of the cabinet; the width of the door is very narrow compared to the size of the cabinet inside. In fact, the corner cabinets are some of the larger cabinets in my kitchen, particularly the lower cabinet. My lower corner cabinet came with a two-tier turntable that I use for pantry type items – taller oil and vinegar bottles, large coffee containers and bags of things like sweetener or flour that I use less often. Sometimes I might spin the contents around a time or two before I locate an item, but as far as I know, nothing has ever fallen off the back. This round object in a relatively square space allows me to store items in the back corners and just inside the door and still not block the free spinning of the turntable. I have tall items like a thermos in the back corners because I can see them when I need them and just inside the door I can fit some skinny bottles that might topple if they were placed on the Lazy Susan.

If your cabinet didn’t come with a turntable feature, you can purchase separate Lazy Susans for each fixed shelf in the cabinet or remove the shelf and purchase a double or triple-tiered turntable that can be found in many home stores. I have found an assortment of sizes at The Container Store or online at www. containerstore.com and there is even a website called www.lazysusans.com that not only has graduated diameters but also space saving stackable kinds. Pay attention to the door of your corner cabinet. Some have a double-panel door that closes into a 90 degree angle but some, like mine, have a single door set at a 45 degree angle to the adjacent cabinets. The double door type cabinet needs a turntable that is notched to get maximum use of the available storage.

By the way, the turntable options are listed in the article itself on Corner Storage, but the Clutter Cutter box is where the idea of a basket just inside the door was suggested. I am not sure that in BHG’s haste to create quick fixes, that they are offering the best solution. It goes back to the idea that a quick fix is not the best fix…take your time and do it right! Number 2 coming tomorrow!

Go on a Clutter Diet and Shed Pounds (of junk)

2010-08-03T12:14:00.001-04:00

Judy, one of my fellow staff members, purchased the Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication titled, “Storage: Get Organized Today” which has the enticing message on the front “Second Printing - Back by Popular Demand!” One of the items listed on the cover to be found inside, in fact the first item listed, is “One-Hour Clutter Cutters.” This was the reason that Judy purchased the magazine at the princely sum of $6.99. She combed the contents and thumbed through the magazine but never found an article on One-Hour Clutter Cutters so she gave it over to me for our de-clutter club. I too dug through the contents for some time trying to locate this holy grail of de-cluttering advice. Finally, I found it! In the very end of the letter from the Editor (who reads that?) I found the following message: “…we’re thrilled to share our quick tips for making storage your own. In particular, look for the ‘If you only have one hour…’ tip boxes throughout the issue.”

I went back through the issue and sure enough there were these little boxes, outlined with a dashed line, as if you might cut them out, hovering over a few of the pretty photos of clean, uncluttered interiors. But in another exhaustive search I found only four of these tip boxes with no more than two or three sentences each! Since I did not pay the seven dollars, I am not going to feel cheated, but it does go to show you what the editors of Better Homes and Gardens thought would best sell the magazine to consumers – the promise of cutting clutter in just one hour!

Now let’s be realistic. Just like losing weight, the pounds (and the junk) that we have accumulated took many years to add up. You are not going to shed any significant amount of weight (or clutter) with a quick-fix plan. These are useful tips included in these pages, but you are not going to solve your clutter problem without giving yourself permission to take it slowly, one step at a time. Remember the 20 minute rule of setting a timer for anywhere from 15 to 20 minute increments and stopping before you wear yourself out. If you enjoy the work and do it thoroughly and logically, it seems to me that you are more likely “to keep it off permanently.” But, as any good doctor or de-cluttering coach will tell you, you have to modify your behavior to not acquire the stuff in the first place, just like to have to be careful for your whole life what you put in your mouth.

2010-07-15T10:48:00.002-04:00

I promised you more from the April 2010 Redbook article “Julie Morgenstern Sorts out all of your Stuff.” She has a great list of the “8 things you can toss without guilt – right now!” They are:

“1. Kitchen items you haven’t used in a year or longer.” She suggests donating the bulky items like a little or never used bread maker or panini press and “enjoy the extra space.” But don’t fill it up with other things you might never use!

“2. The entire contents of your junk drawer” or junk drawers if you have more than one! Are you afraid that you may throw away something you might need? Empty all of the junk (aptly named because it usually is) into a box. During the next month (or two if you are truly paranoid) put any item you use back into the drawer. At the end of the month, throw the remaining items away! This piece of advice can be applied to many things you think you may need (but actually don’t). Using this trial separation method of de-cluttering will go a long way to prove to yourself that you don’t need the items that you are keeping “for a rainy day.” Living with a few extra containers for a month or two is far better than keeping your house full of clutter “just in case.” And realizing that little or nothing from these containers will actually make it back into the drawer or closet will give you confidence next time you have doubts about just throwing something away. My suggestion about putting stuff back is not to just create another junk drawer by tossing it back in an empty drawer. Invest in one of those divided sorting trays that are available in many kitchen and office supply stores (or at my favorite de-clutter heaven Hold Everything or online at www.holdeverything.com). An organized drawer or closet is less likely to attract more junk. Julie Morgenstern suggests thinking about the drawer in a new way as your “newly functional drawer.”

“3. Clothes that no longer fit.” By the time they fit, they will be out of style…let someone else enjoy them while they are current.

“4. School Work from high school or college.” Like the clothes that no longer fit, the material is most likely out of date. Julie suggests to “save your favorite papers in an archival box” but the rest, including textbooks, should be trashed. Most of the places that take book donations don’t want old textbooks either.

“5. Baby Gear.” Julie reminds us that “safety standards change so quickly that car seats and cribs are generally outdated just a few years after they are manufactured.” If you already have the next baby on the way, these would obviously not be the items you should discard.

“6. Random Receipts.” After you check the totals against your statements, keep only what will be needed for taxes or expenses and then only for seven years.”

“7. Half-used bottles of shampoo, conditioner, or makeup you tried but did not like.” It wouldn’t be hanging around as clutter if you had liked it that much.

“8. Books that you have never read or books that you might read again. Donate them and save space on your shelves for the books that speak to your soul.” We in the library world, like to point out the we have more than enough reading material for you here and we keep them dusted and in order so that you can find what you want when you are ready to read it! Now that some money has been restored into the state library funding line items in Governor Christie’s budget, Interlibrary Lending has been saved! So if we don’t own it, we can generally get what you want within a week or so.

We all need to thank Julie Morgenstern for giving us the permission to toss this huge pile of junk! Go ahead and let it go!

Summer Success

2010-06-26T10:52:00.002-04:00

The South Brunswick De-Clutter Club will be taking a few months off from meeting, but don’t take time off from freeing your life of the things that are holding you back! Take time this summer to start to whittle down the piles or clear the aisles! Start with whatever bugs you the most but go easy on yourself. Allow yourself 15-30 minutes a day and then relax the remainder of the time. Get rid of the guilt with the clutter. If you make a plan, and don’t over schedule yourself, and stick to the plan, you are half way to your goal!

I just got through reading yet another “Clear the Clutter” column that appears in every magazine at least once a year. This time, however, I actually read a few things that I had not heard before! I thought I would share some of those insights with you today.

In her article, “Julie Morgenstern Sorts out all of your Stuff,” found in the April 2010 issue of Redbook, Julie Morgenstern, author, professional organizer and columnist for many popular magazines, tells us that “most people only use 20% [or one fifth] of what they own in any category.” WOW! That means that you could throw away up to 80% of what you have in your home and never break with your standard routine!! Imagine that! You could downsize your house and your housing expenses by that same amount if only you really could (and would) clear away that much stuff! The reality is that there are things that you aren’t going to throw away. This would mean that if you had china and flatware for 10 (one category of stuff), you could throw away 8 of the 10 plates, cups, bowls, forks, etc. And if you live alone, the only furniture (another category of stuff) you would need would be one chair, one bed, one small table, and one lamp. Of course that doesn’t make sense because these items are bought and kept for the eventuality that you will need them when you entertain. I suppose there was a time in colonial days when people carried their own eating utensils and if they gathered to share food, everyone would come with their own implements, but we don’t live like that anymore. It is a sign of our wealth and prosperity that we have the luxury of having more of any one thing than we need at one time. But certainly, there are items where this is not applicable and there must be a point at which we say, “enough.” For instance, we don’t keep extra shoes so that we can share them with our guests and we certainly wouldn’t share our paperwork with others (although that would be one solution to decluttering.) So for the things that we have that are not kept for sharing, we can start to apply the 80% out rule!!

Julie suggests to look around a room and imagine that everything in that room was suddenly gone. Think about what items you would truly miss if this were to happen. She says that chances are there would only be a few items and she calls these “our treasures.” She suggests that you keep these items in mind as you begin to clear out the clutter – if it is not a “treasure” – let it go. If you lose sight of the goal, refer back to your “keep-or-toss test” results. And does 80% sound like an unachievable goal? Well, to paraphrase a popular quote: "Reach for the moon. Even if you don't reach your goal, you will land among the stars or be farther along than if you didn't reach at all."

I will share more of Julie Morgenstern’s advice in this blog next week. Until then, keep up the good work and enjoy your summer.

Email and Voice Mail Clutter Control

2010-04-27T10:50:00.000-04:00

I am still basking in the glow of de-cluttering my office but I have found it to be impossible at home just yet. I have been working hard on completing a slew of things for a convention that I am attending this weekend and I am hoping that when I return from the convention, I will have the time and motivation to start in on my home office.

At work I have been successful at one thing that I intend to try at home. I have a spiral steno notebook at my desk that I have in front of me every time I take messages off my phone and it is at hand every time the phone rings so that I can record information from the caller if needed. When I return the call, or complete the requested task, I put a check mark next to the name in the book so that I know that I have completed that task. Many times I have had to contact someone that called me at some point and I have been able to find their contact information in my notebook. My dilemma is keeping track of my emails with the same ease. I monitor about 5 email accounts and invariably, the information came in on an email account on another computer. The problem, I know, is that I use Microsoft Outlook to retrieve my emails, which brings the emails onto my computer and erases them from the email server. If I left the emails on the server and used the server’s folders to sort and retain the messages, I could always access them from anywhere. The downside to this is that I monitor 5 emails, at least three that are current and active. If I used the email server, I would have to login to three separate servers to retrieve my email. I know that it is old school computer thinking to feel safer if I have my emails on my computer. I think this goes back to the days when email services used to tell you to clean off your email because they were running out of space and your account had a limited amount of storage space, but this system has been working for me for the most part.

Some of you are saying, consolidate your email addresses into one, but I have to have one for work on our intranet and I have two for home, the main one and a Gmail account that has been very handy for access to Goggle products such as the blogspot software and for entering into websites where I am afraid my email address will be sold for spamming. The other two accounts are the accounts that I had with the cable service I had before we moved to Monmouth County. The accounts are with Comcast, and although I can’t send through Comcast, I can still receive emails on those accounts. No matter how many times I tell people to change my email address in their address books, I still get about 5-10 personal emails at my old address and at my husband’s old address. Are you diligent about changing email accounts in your computer when you are notified of a change? I suspect that most people are not.

Is this familiar to any of you? How do you all monitor your emails? Have you ever successfully changed an email account and not lost touch with a percentage of your contacts? I would like to discuss this at our next meeting on May 6 at the library. I have some suggestions for giving some incentives to get our houses in order. Bring your successes to the meeting so that we can all feel good about someone’s progress and bring your questions and frustrations to see if others can offer solutions. I won’t be posting again until Tuesday May 4th, if I can find the time on that day. I hope to see a lot of you at the meeting on Thursday, May 6, at 7:00 in the Quiet Study and in the mean time,
happy clearing!

Don't Forget to De-clutter your Office too

2010-04-09T13:48:00.002-04:00

I am sorry to say that my tendency to retain useless things affects me at work as well as at home. I only have a 30" x 60" desk and one 4 drawer vertical file to house my work information for all the hats I wear here in the library. I organized my drawers and even color coded the labels a few years ago but I proceeded to fill those drawers to bursting. I told you all how motivational I am finding the Clutter Busting book. Well, I tried out the author's theory - to throw away anything that you are no longer using - and the experience is indeed "freeing." I started yesterday after lunch (even a late lunch) and had the recycle bin and two garbage cans near my desk filled to overflowing! I finished the desk and file this morning filling the same three containers again. I feel so unencumbered! I can't wait until Sunday when I can get at some of the piles of papers I have at home as well! I even cleaned the places beneath the desk, but I haven't done what is on the top of the file yet, nor the stuff that has started to accumulate on and under the table in the office I share, but there is no more room in a trash can today!! Except for a few files that I use regularly for invoices and bills, the majority of what I threw away was put there over the past few years and never referenced again, so clearly, these were not things I needed to keep in the first place. I highly recommend this exercise. Go for it...it is wonderful!

Spring Cleaning and Garage Sales

2010-04-07T15:06:00.002-04:00

Spring is the time we open all the windows and clear out the winter accumulation of musty air and sweep out the dust and debris of our winter "hibernation." It is also a good time to have a garage sale, before the weather gets too hot (today not withstanding) and before the pools and beach clubs open for the season. Are you the kind of person that keeps a box or two of items at all times that you intend to sell one day at a garage sale? Or do you choose a date and start to advertise and then scramble getting stuff "ready" to sell. Either way, keep some things in mind. Price the items as you box them so that pricing is not another overwhelming task on the day of the sale. And pricing is the best way to prepare for a sale, particularly if you are the kind of person that is prone to clutter. Being overwhelmed by clutter might indicate that making snap decisions is not one of your strong suits, so having to decide on the price of something with a yard full of eager customers (hopefully) would be highly stress producing. You can buy pre-printed price tags in bright colors in the label section of your local warehouse stationers. These labels are easily removable so you will not be damaging your "valuables." Sort item with like items, particularly like in storage and display needs. Put smaller, breakable items together and make sure you have a sturdy table on which to display these items. Put all clothing together and try to borrow a coat/garment rack from someone if you don't have one. Put all items for children together since that is often a category that people shop for at garage sales. It is also a good idea to have smaller, more expensive items, on a single table near where the cash box will be kept so that there will always be someone nearby to keep an eye on these items. You may want to consider having a "sale" hour toward the end of the day and allow people to take whatever they can fit into a bag for a dollar or two - make sure you have a quantity of standard sized bags on hand and mark the bag as "sold" with a marker when it has been paid for. I have seen people go to their car, empty the bag and then bring the bag back and fill it again. No one should be putting anything into a bag that is marked sold or paid. Know ahead of time what you plan to do with the items that don't sell. Have an organization like Vietnam Vets or Good Will on stand-by to come the same day or the next day at the very latest. Don't move the stuff back into the house. Find out from the pick-up organization if they have any restrictions on the kinds of items they will take. Have a few large garbage cans/bags available to dispose of the things that are not taken. I will say again, don't move any of it back into the house. If you commit to a sale and an item is left over at the end, consider that it is unwanted and get rid of it. Consider going in on the sale with a neighbor or two. The pre-printed labels come in an assortment of different colors. Have your neighbor(s) use a different color label if you want to keep track of the sales or just decide that you will split the profit no matter whose stuff is sold. Having a crew that can spell you when you need to take a break is worth it in the long run. Happy selling (and happy de-cluttering)!

Fresh Motivation

2010-04-06T15:12:00.000-04:00

At our meeting last Thursday, I passed around some new clutter control books that I have purchased and we agreed that one looked particularly interesting. “Clutter Busting” by Brooks Palmer looks to be a useful motivational book to help you get un-stuck from the fears and frustrations that may be keeping you from clutter clearing success. I began to read the first few chapters and I was ready to grab some garbage bags and start tossing things away. This is indeed, highly motivational. Palmer says to remind yourself repeatedly that, “Things will not make me happy.” His premise is that once you clear your life, house, car, office, etc. of the things that no longer meet your needs, you will free yourself to do what you want and to feel good about doing it. The subtitle to the book: “Letting go of what’s holding you back” is his premise in a nutshell. You have heard all of this a thousand times before and you think as a rational human being, you would not have to hear it again, but the message is presented such that perhaps this time, it may actually sink in and motivate you to finally get to the bottom of the clutter heap. Don’t resort and save – through it all away! Don’t hold on to something until you finally have a garage sale – get it completely out and away from of the house to ease your guilt and fears. Donate, recycle, trash it but just get it out and move on!

Good luck.

Surprise! I'm back

2010-03-27T14:46:00.002-04:00

Sorry that I haven't posted anything in such a long time...too bad I can't use the fact that I was busy de-cluttering as an excuse because that would be a lie!

Do you remember that one of the tips I came across was that there is never any reason to save magazine articles about a particular subject because magazines always repeat the same subjects year after year? Well, someone brought me a February 2003 issue of Woman's Day that included a feature "68 Real-Life Organizing Tips." The article is titled "Order in the House" written by Pamela Kramer. Not only are the subjects repeated, but the same tips that you know...and that you read in every book on decluttering...are given. Step 1 - Set aside a block of time. Step 2 - Pull out the stuff that you want to organize and determine what you want to keep, donate or toss. Put items that belong in another part of your house back where they should be. Step 3 - Assign a place for each item. Group similar items together by function, and put the ones that are used most often within easy reach. Step 4 - Don't hesitate to rearrange or make changes if your having trouble finding what you need or keeping the area neat. Sound familiar? This particular article suggests pulling everything out but we have discussed how that might not be the best idea - you could get overwhelmed; you may not be able to finish such a monumental task; and then you may not be able to get back to it right away and you'll end up shoving it all back in without having made any progress. We have found many "experts" that suggest to break the task down into smaller bites and do only what you can handle in a 15 to 20 minute time slot that can be repeated as long as your interest and stamina hold out. That may mean doing only one drawer at a time or just the shelf in your closet. Now, doesn't that already sound more doable?

I have purchased Jamie Novak's new book Stop Throwing Money Away. She has departed from the question and answer format of her last two books and has written a complete guide to the "Clutter-Cash" connection with lots of insight into how to get out from below the piles of clutter and perhaps the mounds of debt! She has also included some great information about doing all of this in a "green" way to protect the planet while you are at it. I have been talking with Jamie about giving an encore presentation of the program she gave a year ago. I just need to find some money in my programming budget to see if we can afford to have her back soon!

I would like to put a plug here for your support of New Jersey public libraries. In the governor's latest budget proposal, funding for the state library services might be cut as much as 74% - more than any other state department. This will mean a lot of lost services at every public library in the state including interlibrary loan services, online database access and many other services supported by the state library. If the library is important to you, please visit www.ilovenjlibraries.org and become a library champion and let the governor and your elected officials know how much you use the library. There is also a Save NJ Libraries page on Facebook. Thank you for your support. Don't forget to come to the next De-Clutter Club meeting on April 1, 2010 - no April Fool's!

Meeting Tonight

2009-12-03T16:47:00.003-05:00

We are having issues with the Internet and our email here at the library today so that I am unable to email you all with a reminder about tonight's meeting. I thought we might talk a little about any strategies you may have in order to get through December with calm and serenity. I would also like to ask everyone a few questions about how everyone does standard everyday tasks to see if we can glean any insights from each other. Consider your strategies about handling everyday paperwork like bills, etc.; how you organize the items in your kitchen including the refrigerator; how you deal with seasonal items like summer clothes, winter coats and yard equipment; organization of hobbies including books; organization of remotes and rechargers for your electronics; photos from your camera and your phone; computer files and sent and received emails; and any other clutter problem areas in your life.

I hope you are being kind to yourselves and not trying to accomplish giant projects around the house as you are preparing for social gatherings and visit from family and friends that often occurs at this time of the year. I would love to hear if anyone has changed a behavior to reduce the amount of time that the holidays can take, like sending online greetings or eating your holiday meals at a restaurant or having them catered.

Also, bring any concerns you have or any suggestions you may have heard about or any solutions that you have tried and whether they have been successful or not. I will share any insights we discover in my blogs over the next several weeks.

I hope to see many of you this evening at 7:00 in the Quiet Study. Bring a sweater; I understand the library is cold today.

De-clutter Club Meeting Tonight

2009-11-05T14:15:00.004-05:00

Things have gotten very busy here; sorry I have not written in a while. I hope everyone is doing well on all the projects you have planned to get some control of your clutter. The silly season that surrounds the holidays is almost upon us. I am no expert, but common sense says that worrying about de-cluttering, with all of the other stuff that occupies your time and your mind during the holidays, is probably not a good idea. If you have a little time between now and Thanksgiving, I would suggest you carefully pack up any de-clutter project you may have started and not yet finished and leave it go until the new year. If it is small enough to finish, go ahead, but don't take on anything big...

We have our De-clutter Club this evening at 7:00 p.m. in the Quiet Study in the library. I hope to see many of you there. Bring your holiday preparation problems and solutions. We can discuss the way we can all get through the next few months and remain cool, calm and collected.

Jamie Novak has a phone-in de-clutter group coming up. I will give you the details this evening or post them on this blog tomorrow.

More Hints from Heloise

2009-10-29T15:59:00.004-04:00

In my last blog I promised to give you the other half of Heloise’s article from the September 2004 Good Housekeeping called “Take Control of Clutter.” Here it is and you can also check out some of her other de-cluttering tips on how to store specific items like art, china and glassware. Links to these topics can be found at: http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/heloise/clutter/

Last time I gave you her things to do if you only have 5 minutes; here are some suggestions if you have a little more time.

If you have one hour...
When serious decluttering is in store, try the ABC method. Select a cabinet or closet that's been bugging you. Take everything out and arrange items into three piles:

A: always used
B: used during the holidays and special occasions, or seasonally
C: not seen or used in a year or so

Then do a final sort:
Step 1: Toss or give away C items unless they are valuable or have sentimental worth.
Step 2: Return B items to the back of the storage area.
Step 3: Place the A team in the front of the space so those items will be handy for immediate use.

Develop an organizing system — and stick with it. Try these approaches:

Oh, give me a home!
Always put things back in the same place: Children's papers belong in a basket in a central location. Bicycles and sports gear go in the designated rack or spot in the garage. Coats belong on a coat tree or in the front-hall closet. Toys should be placed in a chest or bin every night; teach kids this bedtime ritual.

Keep stuff in plain sight.
Don't let milk, eggs, and other foods with a short shelf life get pushed to the back of the fridge. Put these items up front, where you can monitor expiration dates. Place the tools you use often (say, a screwdriver or a hammer) at arm's reach on a pegboard; other tools belong higher up. Hang the clothes you wear to work front and center. To save more time: Pick your outfits for the week on Sunday and place each one on a single hanger.

Let no box go unmarked.
Use masking tape, a label maker, or permanent-ink pens. I like to tape an index card to the outside of a container. Or, take snapshots of what's inside.My favorite cheap storage helpers are plastic or metal garbage cans with lids, see-through plastic bins, wire baskets and utility shelving, and pegboard and metal racks.

Here's what to use in your...

...Kitchen
•Attach narrow racks inside cabinet doors for lightweight items — pot lids, paper rolls, plastic bags, etc.
•Store veggies and fruits in hanging three-tier wire baskets. Keep leftovers in see-through containers (I love glass mayonnaise and spaghetti sauce jars). Label the container with the date on top.

...Living Room
•Use large baskets to corral magazines, books, or TV and stereo remotes. Put skirts on side tables so you can store things underneath and out of sight.
•Place a big, handsome trunk in front of the couch or along the wall. It can serve as both a table and a storage bin.

...Bedroom
•Keep linens or off-season clothes inside plastic containers with wheels, rolled under the bed.
•Assign one bowl to hold everything that comes out of a purse or pocket. Use an over-the-door shoe rack for organizing small purses and accessories. Put a pretty box or covered basket on your bedside table as a home for your nail file, scissors, hand lotion, ear plugs, etc.

...Bathroom
•Place a lazy Susan in your under-the-sink cabinet to organize bathroom items like nail polish or small bottles, etc.
•If space is tight, hang sturdy shelves above toilet to hold towels or bath accessories.

...Laundry Room
•Keep at least two hampers — one for whites, the other for darks. Station clothing trees, a basket for clean laundry, and garment racks near the ironing board.
•Store supplies in a large plastic shelf basket to contain spills.
•Set up a counter for sorting and folding clothes.

...Garage
•Use utility racks geared specifically for storing sports equipment or bikes. Store rakes and other gardening tools inside plastic garbage cans with wheels.
•Install pegboard on walls to hang and organize small items.

...Attic/Basement
•Create specific storage zones — holiday, vacation, clothing, school. Mark the floor with tape or paint to remind you which area is which.

Hints From Heloise from Good Housekeeping

2009-10-24T15:02:00.003-04:00

This is an article from the September 2004 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine by Heloise. The title of the article is "Take Control of Clutter" and is available online. This is what Heloise has to say about decluttering.

"Getting rid of stuff seems to be the chore we all dread. But when closets are crowded, drawers are jumbled, and shelves overflow, it can really slow you down. Every day I try to focus on just one or two areas (like kitchen counters) that drive me crazy. These clutter-busting hints will help you dejunk your space — which will save you time and stress."

The following list actually comes at the end of the article but it seems to me to be a good place to start. It is a list that includes red flags that let you know when clutter has become a problem that is affecting your life and quick tips to get started and gain some control.

1. If you can't find what you need within minutes, it's time for a reality check.

2. Get everyone in your family on the decluttering/organizing bandwagon.

3. If the countertop or table surface isn't visible, take action ASAP.

4. Establish a specific place for the things you use every day — hooks for keys, a basket for catalogs, etc.

5. Always give the living room a quick pickup before bedtime.

6. Be relentless in tossing out papers — newspapers, magazines, junk mail.

7. Make lists of household staples, with their expiration dates, so you'll know what you really need.

8. Every time you bring something new into the house, try to make sure something old goes out.

9. On a regular basis, deal with your garbage gremlins, such as grocery bags, takeout containers, chipped drinking glasses, soap shards, dead batteries, rubber bands, and dried-up pens.

10. If you aren't using it, get rid of it!

The article includes a few lists of what you can do based on the amount of time you have to declutter. Today I will give you the things Heloise suggests you can get done if you only have a few minutes. The section is called: Finding Time to Toss It!

If you have five minutes...

1. Chuck crummy sponges and outdated cleaning products lingering in your kitchen; clear old leftovers out of the fridge and pitch any expired foods found in the pantry.

2. Do a TV-room makeover. I call this method "TVC": During TV commercials, quickly tidy up the room you're in. Gather all the magazines, newspapers, and bits of trash and put them in the garbage. Straighten pillows and refold throws. Organize your worktable. On the next program break, you can even give the den a quick vacuum.

3. Throw away old cosmetics and expired medicines in the vanity drawer or the cabinet over the sink. Sort bath towels and washcloths for laundering or the rag bag.

4. Weed out toys and games that haven't been used recently. If they are in good condition, you can donate them to a shelter, a hospital or a school.

5. Gather misplaced belongings in a holding basket; later, ask family members to claim their possessions and put them away.

Find this article at: http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/clutter-control-sep04

In my next blog I will include the remainder of the article which gives you some one hour tasks.

Clutter Perceptions

2009-10-22T11:02:00.000-04:00

"Walking your talk is a great way to motivate yourself. No one likes to live a lie. Be honest with yourself, and you will find the motivation to do what you advise others to do."

-- Vince Poscente

This quote rang so true to me that I had to spend some time analyzing it relative to my situation. Please forgive my ramblings today but maybe there is someone else out there that feels the same and will be motivated by what I share.

Here I am writing a clutter-control blog, giving advice to others while I am drowning in clutter around me both at work and at home. Being honest with myself will make me admit that it is a daunting and intimidating task for me to consider controlling the clutter; one that I would rather avoid all together. I know that motivation is definitely one of the qualities I lack. At a recent meeting I showed you the picture I have pinned to my bulletin board of the Noble Prize winning professor peering out from behind huge stacks of papers. I keep it there to make me feel as thought I am not too badly in need of help since I don’t have half as many papers around me and none of my piles come close to the height of his. For motivation, I think I am going to look for some pictures of restful, clutter-free spaces. I need to be able to visualize the goal since I have never actually seen it myself in any of my spaces except at the very beginning, before I moved in my stuff.

I think I may have mentioned at one of the meetings a time when I faced a similar situation and what I was motivated to do. My husband and I, many years and two houses ago, reserved a cabin on Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland for a week’s vacation. The cabin was designed to accommodate 8-10 people and we rented it just for ourselves. Of course, as a vacation rental, the house was fully furnished and appointed but definitely spacious and clutter free. All of the closets and drawers were completely empty! We spent a week of shear relaxation with nothing for us to do but enjoy life – reading, cooking, hiking, and napping…all the good things in life. After the week was over and we returned home, we were not only confronted with the stress of being back to work, but we realized how much stress our living conditions were adding to the whole. At the time, we lived in a small house in North Plainfield and we were definitely bursting at the seams. As I look back, the stuff in our house at that time, since there was less of it, was very well organized but there was just too much of it for the space that it occupied. Clutter does not have to be disorganized to be a problem. Instead of de-cluttering like we should have done when the task was manageable, we looked for a newer, bigger house to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, getting the new house only solved the problem temporarily since it is human nature to fill the space that you have. Within a few years, we were back to an organized but overwhelming quantity of stuff. Since everything was organized, (and we didn’t treat ourselves to a week in a clutter-free environment again) we were lulled into thinking that we had spare time to take on some volunteer activities – things that clutter your calendar and sap you of free time to enjoy those good things in life. When free time became scarce, it became harder to keep the stuff organized and then, the quantity became an even bigger problem, which is where I find myself now. We are in yet another house, not necessarily bigger but configured very differently and now I don’t have the time to de-clutter and get things organized. We hit the ground running when we moved into this house and after four years, we are still sitting with almost half of the stuff still sitting in the moving boxes, piled into the basement and the attic. We didn’t have enough time to de-clutter before we packed (a situation that cost us dearly in moving expenses) and now we are overwhelmed by the idea of sorting everything out into new and different locations. I suppose in some ways we are attempting to live a more clutter-free life by keeping all of that extra stuff packed up and out-of-sight, but it is not out-of-mind. Now, don’t get me wrong, we enjoy the volunteering and feel good about helping out, but, like possessions, too many “things,” including commitments, are not admirable or beneficial to your health and well being. I feel that the obligations on my time are as dangerous to my psyche as are the possessions that seem to control and overwhelm me. I guess what I need to learn is “moderation in everything.” I need to de-clutter my life physically, metaphysically and mentally! Which comes first – clearing my surroundings or my very existence? These are very deep and mind-cluttering ideas…is it time to move on?

2009-10-20T13:51:00.002-04:00

I was sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office yesterday only slightly paying attention to whatever was on the large screen television they provide. Lo and behold, there was a de-cluttering segment on organizing a kitchen. It was pretty impressive to see the cabinets all organized with clear air-tight food storage containers and all the appropriate wire racks and shelves for your china, glasses, pots and lids. It turns out that the Early Show on CBS is doing a series on de-cluttering and organizaton. Today’s segment was on clutter control in your clothing closet and can be viewed online at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/earlyshow/main500202.shtml. The series is called “Early Gets Organized” and it is being done in conjunction with Real Simple magazine. Kate Parker, a design expert and contributor to the magazine, is sharing some basic suggestions and organizational products each day that she says can help you make-over all parts of your home. In today’s feature, “Tossing is Key to Clutter-Free Closets,” she reiterates what we have been saying all along that the essential ingredient for any successful de-cluttering and organization project is “editing” the contents before you start organizing. This series also features recommendations for products: storage boxes, racks, containers and more, from stores and online outlets like Bed, Bath and Beyond (www.bedbathandbeyond.com), Kangaroom Storage (www.kangaroomstorage.com) and from my favorite, The Container Store (www.containerstore.com).

But Jamie Novak cautioned us not to go out and buy products to organized until you de-clutter. When you finish with the throwing away, you will have a better idea of what you need to store and shopping for varieties of storage solutions online could help you find just the right container for exactly what you need to store! Think of it as your reward for getting the job done to treat yourself to a new container.

The Garage Revealed

2009-10-13T11:15:00.002-04:00

"Take a deep breath, count to ten, and tackle each task one step at a time."

-- Linda Shalaway

This morning I got another email from www.onlineorganizing.com. They had a listing of all of the items in their “catalog” that are on sale until the end of the month. There were many interesting items on all aspects of organizing, from physical file sorters, to organizing software, to books on organizing and being an organizer as a career. I found among the items for time management a note pad printed with an organization scheme for a To-Do List where you can enter the tasks, errands, correspondence and notes for the day. Since the file folder idea that I attempted a few weeks ago did not end up working for me, I decided to try something else. I am not going to order the pad, which is approximately $8.00 +shipping and handling for a 60 sheet pad. Rather, I created a similar sheet on my computer and printed a copy to experiment with. That way, if it is not a help, I won’t have wasted the money on the purchased item. I will bring a copy of the sheet that I created to the next meeting in case someone else might find it useful. So far, today, it seems to be working. Writing my de-clutter blog is listed under Tasks and soon I will have my first “done” checkmark!

As to how I am doing on any other de-cluttering or organizing tasks, I am miserably no more into de-clutter than I have ever been. I did do a little tossing and organizing my desk at work, but it resulted in a small pile of stuff that I still need to determine where it goes. On the other hand, my husband is setting a perfect example of what I should be doing and how this stuff gets done. He has moved his energies inside from the garden and has begun tackling the enormous job of cleaning out the garage. He has had three good days at it and is about one half to two-thirds the way to completion. I wish I had half his energy. We had purchased some storage units a few years ago that were to be put in the corner of the garage to organize the clutter that accumulates there. Until now, they were part of the clutter. The problem that kept the units from getting installed was the fact that the garage had never been painted by the builder when the house was built. The raw drywall with the lines and patches where it was taped and spackled added visual clutter to the actual clutter. My husband doesn’t believe in doing anything half-way, so he is cleaning (removing cobwebs, dust and dirt) and painting the entire garage including the ceiling 16 feet over his head before he puts in the storage and stows the clutter. He painted the first bay of the three car garage on Sunday and was able to assemble and hang the cabinets in that bay yesterday. He was so successful that he was able to paint the next bay because he was able to store the clutter from that bay in the new storage cabinets. He was insistent that the storage units that we bought would be closed with doors, so that the items would be out of view and somewhat protected from the dirt and dust. We purchased these units from Sears, and he is right about the closed doors; it really makes the garage look neat and tidy and keeps stray stuff from just accumulating on the open shelves we have had there until now. The cabinets are the industrial looking cabinets with doors that look as though they are made from diamond plate. Did you know that Sears sells a diamond-plate fronted refrigerator to match? We didn’t go that far. We purchased two full height, double door storage cabinets with shelves, two rolling drawer cabinets and two overhead bin cabinets that needed to be hung on the wall, hence the need to paint first. All of these items are lockable so that no clutter can find their way in!!

Since the garage is the first part of the house that I see when coming home from work, it is a treat for me to see this get cleaned out and organized. I am so thankful that my husband has taken this on and it is a real inspiration to me to get my parts of the house cleaned out. He is throwing away the items that are broken, damaged or no longer used and putting the tools and other garage items away in the cabinets. Another few nice weekends and he will be done! Perhaps I can ask him to lend some of his energy and motivation to me so that we can tackle the remaining areas of clutter around the house.

For now, I can check one item on my to-do list as DONE! Until later in the week, be productive and organize!

Making Time for the Holidays

2009-10-07T11:11:00.001-04:00

Today in my email, I received a link to an article titled “Beating the Holiday Blues” by Kathy Gates that was published on www.OnlineOrganizing.com which is a great website with practical information on organizing, de-cluttering and working as a professional organizer. The article is reproduced here in my blog with permission from the publisher.

Rushing around in a blizzard, buying gifts, putting up lights, planning dinners, attending parties, and preparing for Grandma all in the week before Christmas Day may be your idea of fun -- who am I to judge? But, I honestly never really believed people who claimed they waited to do those things intentionally in the Spirit of Christmas. It always seemed to come out more like the Spirit of CRANKINESS to me.

Holidays can bring out the best, or the worst, it seems: thoughts of what could or should have been; thoughts of money problems or relationship problems; or being lonely in very personal ways. But the season also brings with it the joy of giving, of helping, or reconnecting with others. This DICHOTOMY can create a sort of imbalance in our lives.

One thing for sure is that the holiday season takes up a lot of ROOM in our lives, physically, emotionally, spiritually. And that squeeze on your time, energy, space and money can bring on the Holiday Blues. But there are definitely ways to help keep the blues to a minimum. Try these ideas:

SUBTRACT, DON'T ADD...

The holidays generally bring to mind EXTRA -- food, gifts, sales, drinks, parties, people. By making a conscious choice to clear up your schedule, clean up your space, and dust off some old attitudes and habits, you can easily make room for a happier holiday season. Physically box up and store (if you just can’t bear to toss it) anything that you don’t need access to for the next couple of months. Streamline your pantry and refrigerator. Check your schedule and put things on HOLD that aren’t vital right now. The idea here is not to shove things into a corner, but to feel the lightness that comes from actually removing things. Give the holidays the room it needs for a holiday spirit to enter your home, your mind, your heart, and the blues will be chased right out the door.

DECIDE WHAT YOU'LL SPEND

I know this is not popular, and who wants to count pennies in the Spirit of Giving. But if you didn’t start last year to put away money SPECIFICALLY for the Holidays, then you can bet from past experience that the holiday blues will catch up to you. The biggest culprit of holiday ANXIETY is overspending, and the root of overspending is not planning. To totally eliminate this problem next year, decide how much you need, divide that by 48 weeks (skipping December), and purposefully save that amount each week. I like the physicality of actually putting $20 in a little Santa jar in my closet; but a separate savings account at the bank will earn you a little interest too. Whatever works for you is what works. When Christmas rolls around next year, you’ll be set. But if you didn’t do that for this year, the easiest way to keep the anxiety and credit card consequences under control is to be honest about it. Make that list, just like Santa does -- this eliminates impulse spending, spending too much on one person, not enough on another. This way you won’t still feel SQUEEZED by the holidays when spring flowers are coming up.

IF MONEY IS TIGHT THIS YEAR...

Try giving charitable gifts of TIME instead of money. Offer to baby sit on a particular day, or run an errand for a busy working mother. A word of caution, however -- I had a friend who tried this and felt blindsided by the requests later. So I suggest that you put some parameters around it. Example -- “Lil: 5 hours of babysitting on Saturday night Feb 14 (Valentine’s) so you and John can have a romantic night out.” “Karla -- 3 pickups of kids from school plus 2 hours of after school care during your busy Tax Time in April.” “Bob -- 2 hours of yard work assistance when you plant your garden in March.” These all show your special knowledge of the person, and that’s the best gift there is. You could also choose a birthday or an anniversary. Be sure to put it in your own CALENDAR so you don’t get caught off-guard.

CHOOSING A MERRY CHRISTMAS

Holidays don’t have to bring the blues with them. Beat the Holiday Blues by making some DECISIONS early about your time, space, and attitude, and being creative in how you handle the special situations the Holidays bring.

Kathy Gates is a Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach in Scottsdale Arizona who specializes in finding happiness in daily life. She will coach you via email or telephone, your choice. Vist her website at www.reallifecoach.com.

Content provided by OnlineOrganizing.com -- offering "a world of organizing solutions!" Visit www.onlineorganizing.com for organizing products, free tips, a speakers bureau, get a referral for a Professional Organizer near you, or get some help starting and running your own organizing business. Visit their website at http://www.OnlineOrganizing.com

Resource Update

2009-10-02T11:16:00.002-04:00

The De-Clutter Club met again last night. We had a lot of new faces; thank you all for joining us – I hope to see you again at another meeting. The next meeting will be November 5, 2009. If you have a topic you would like to discuss, you can email me before the meeting and I will make sure we discuss the topic, or you can just bring your questions to the meeting to ask the group.

Last night, for the benefit of the new members, we went over some of the helpful resources that we have shared at past meetings. We had a brief discussion about Freecycle and the publicity it has gotten recently in the local press. One member shared her success with using the online service. Freecycle is a regionally based not-for-profit recycling network where people list items they have that they would like to give away (rather than throw away) to someone who has use of the item who would be willing to pick it up and take it away. The website is www.freecycle.org. You can also use the network to find things that you might have a use for, but most of the de-cluttering experts tell you to try to avoid looking at the items available if your goal is to rid your life of stuff. Giving and not getting is perfectly acceptable with Freecycle. We also discussed the consignment shops in the area.

The same member who has had success with Freecycle has also given items to Greene Street Consignment Shop in Princeton and they have been able to sell the majority of the items in a short amount of time. Greene Street also has stores in Lambertville, Bryn Mawr and Philadelphia. If you are thinking of using this service, visit their website www.greenestreetconsignment.com for locations, hours, rules and terms. They say that no one makes it easier to sell, but they do seem to have a lot of restrictions, which is probably why the stores seem to turn over merchandise quite quickly - they don't accept junk. They only take adult men’s and women’s clothing in a range of standard sizes and they are particular about labels and, of course, condition. They have a 10 item minimum and recommend that you bring more than 10 items in case they reject an item or two. They only require an appointment for women’s plus sizes and that is only in the Bryn Mawr store. Like most consignment organizations, they take a steep commission on what they are able to sell; you get a receipt for the items when they are dropped off and you are sent a 40% commission check at the end of the consignment period (60 days) for what they are able to sell. There is no annual fee if you agree to take back the items that don’t sell within a reasonable time. According to what I have heard from others who have sold through consignment stores, they will often try to cheat you by saying that they were only able to sell a few of the items you gave them and that they donated or discarded the rest, giving you commission only on a small number of items, when they may in fact have sold all of your items. Without the promise that you can have what doesn’t sell back, you have no way to prove what sold and what didn’t. Then again, once it is out of the house, you may not care as long as you get a few dollars to make the memory of how much the items originally cost not seem so painful.

If you want to save yourself the hassle, donating to rummage sales, like the large annual sale that the Princeton Hospital holds is far easier but they too are somewhat particular and won’t take items they think they would not be able to sell.

Responding to the group’s consensus that dealing with all of the paper clutter in life was the most pressing problem, the last discussion we had was about online banking. Some security concerns were raised, so I will attempt to do some research on the subject and report to everyone in my next blog. I will also repeat the resources you can use to eliminate the junk mail and catalogs coming to your mailbox in the first place.

One last reminder is for the Middlesex County Mobile Paper Shred Events. The next time the shredder truck will be in the area will be tomorrow, October 3, in the Borough Hall Parking Lot in Helmetta, at 60 Main Street at 9:00 a.m. It is advised that you arrive early since they leave as soon as the truck is full. The truck will be at the Senior Center parking lot in Piscataway on October 10 and at the Municipal Building parking lot in South Amboy on October 24. A schedule of all of the dates for 2009 with directions to the individual locations can be viewed (or printed) at the Middlesex County Division of Solid Waste Management website at:
http://www.co.middlesex.nj.us/planningboard/papershred.pdf

Turning Your Trash into Cash

2009-09-25T10:14:00.002-04:00

"It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want."

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

I went out to the magazine section just for curiosity to see how many magazines had articles about organization or de-cluttering advertised on their cover and to my surprise, there was only one! Perhaps the fact that it is fall and not time for spring cleaning could explain why I wasn’t inundated by tips and tricks from the experts. The articles in the current October issues were more about comfort food and the up-coming holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving. There were organization articles in several of the magazines but they were filler rather than feature articles. There was even a short piece in Cooking Light on how to organize your herbs and spices. Not surprisingly, the most popular "teaser" was about investing which appeared on as many as a dozen covers.

The one feature article is in Ebony and it is titled “How To Declutter and make Cash.”

The article, written by Margena A. Christian, starts with a discussion about having successful garage sales. She uses Elena Jackson of Los Angeles as an example of someone who has turned garage sales into a successful sales business where she has developed a base of loyal customers that are anxious to see what she has each month on display. Ms. Jackson not only sells the items she has de-cluttered from her home, but she also reconditions, repairs and refinishes items that she finds in the trash or that are under-priced at other garage sales or junk shops. The tips the author gives about having a successful sale are the following: Obtain a garage sale permit if required; tag the items with prices and a brief description if the item needs explanation (i.e.: works great or newly serviced); categorize items by putting like items together; make sure all items are clean and neat – presentation makes a difference; and be friendly. Let customer’s know if you don’t deliver. If you do, be clear on the charge. Do not post signs on city property; you could be ticketed and have plenty of change available.

They also discuss the merits of selling your stuff on eBay – “The World’s Online Marketplace” or on Craig’s list, a similar online marketplace like eBay only with a local customer base saving you the time and expense of shipping. Research shows that every person has approximately 50 items they would be willing to part with that could be sold on eBay. They say, “There is a buyer for everything. You may think that no one wants it. You’re wrong. There is a buyer for it on eBay.” We have held several seminars here at the library, offered by the Post Office, on how to sell on eBay (and ship using the U.S. Mail) and the library has available for check-out several copies of the DVD handout showing just how to get started, how to write an effective add and how to make money. Craig’s list is similar, but there are no costs associated with an ad placed on Craig’s list. The Ebony article tells how to get started on Craig’s list. The website is www.craigslist.org. If you are going to post multiple items or you think you may have to repost the item if it doesn’t sell, it is worth creating an account. It makes it easier to copy and paste from a previous ad and if you want to see more. You can post anonymously and still get the buyer information sent to you. You choose the city you are closest to, the category of what you have to sell, and then you post the title and price of the item(s) you have to sell. You can post an item for either 7 days or 30 days and you can repost the item if it doesn’t sell.

Chronic Disorganization and Adult ADHD

2009-09-23T11:31:00.001-04:00

This week I should be able to write the de-clutter club blog more frequently; however, now that the fall schedule is in full swing, I am going to be posting information only two to three times a week, rather than daily.

I have been doing some more reading on the issue of organizational skills for people with ADHD. I have just gotten a new book from the library, Is It You, Me or Adult A.D.D.?: Stopping the Roller Coaster When Someone You Love has Attention Deficit Disorder by Gina Pera (San Francisco: 1201 Alarm Press, 2008). This is a very well written book on A.D.D. and ways that partners of people who have been diagnosed with Adult A.D.D. can cope with behaviors that can cause friction in the relationship. The author points out that the areas in which the person with ADHD has difficulty functioning are often areas of sensitivity between couples such as communication, finances and performance. Sufferers of ADHD have difficulty forming goals, planning their execution, carrying them out effectively, changing course and improvising in the face of obstacles and being successful in the absence of external direction or motivation.

I thought about these traits relative to the goals we have been working on and realized that these are all critical to master in order to de-clutter and organize your life and lacking these skills brings enlightenment as to why people who exhibit ADHD symptoms need to find alternate methods to accomplish what others seem to be able to do effortlessly. I know that several of us have expressed or implied that there is a disconnect between our ability to de-clutter and maintain the newly cleared spaces and our partner’s (spouse or family member) perception of the issue and expectations. The author cautions to not use ADHD as an excuse for inaction but letting those you live with understand that chronic disorganization may not be a matter of laziness or incompetence…it may be a symptom of an even greater issue. This particular book, gives suggestions as to how to let others, particularly those you love, help you devise your goals and carry them out to completion. Understanding that there is not a universal right way or a wholly wrong way to do things and to recognize the different methods employed to reach a goal that are helpful to each individual will make the way smoother and less stressful for both parties.

Having a clutter-free vacation

2009-09-16T09:48:00.001-04:00

I got back to the library yesterday, fresh from my vacation, and spent the day de-cluttering my email inbox. Between getting ready to go and then getting back into the swing of things, you end up needing another vacation!

I used some of the information that I have read and shared with you in this blog about packing and unpacking for vacation and it was very successful. I started with the suitcase out much earlier than I would have in the past, and was able to toss things into it as I remembered I would need them. I had some business to attend to while in San Diego for a group for which I volunteer. We had our bi-annual convention last week and I needed to make sure that I brought along some critical items for the event. I had put them aside earlier in the summer but having the luggage allowed me to bring them all together sooner so that I wasn’t running around like crazy at the last minute.

The one thing that I did not get accomplished is to make a master list of all of the things that I need to pack for every vacation. This is the list that the experts suggest you leave in the suitcase for the next time you pack. Perhaps I can get a minute to compile that list while my memory is still fresh. I had read somewhere to pack clothing items in a similar color scheme so that you can mix and match different garments to make a variety of outfits. Of course, I always knew this, but this time I made a concerted effort to do this. When I looked at the airline scales on my return trip, even with paperwork that I picked up at the convention and souvenirs (and two pairs of shoes) that I purchased, my suitcase only weighed 32 pounds. These days, that is a critical thing to keep in mind since I have seen where airlines charge as much as $150 for bags over 50 pounds and will not accept (at any cost) bags over 72 pounds! You might as well throw away your oversized bags that are capable of holding an excess of 72 pounds unless you want to use them for moving or for storage. I am still not at the point of where I can bring clothes that I can throw away along the way, but there were times during the week that I could see the benefit of it!

As to unpacking, I followed the advice that the dirty clothes go straight into the laundry and the clean clothes, if there are any, go back in the drawer or closet. Technically, if you did a good job packing, there should be no clean clothes. If you have unworn clothes at the end of a trip, you have over-packed! I put all of the other things away and got the bag emptied in less time than I was away, although I noticed that my husband has not had the opportunity to empty his bag yet…he has a few more days.

I hope you are all working hard at whittling your piles of stuff. Our next club meeting is October 1st at 7:00 p.m. in the Quiet Study. Write to me about your successes and I could use some suggestions about the areas of concern you have and what you would like to read about or discuss at the meetings. My email is outreach@sbpl.info.

Tips to last a lifetime

2009-09-04T14:55:00.000-04:00

In the last two postings, I shared the three steps that Elizabeth Fenner developed to help make time for fun in your schedule (“More Free Time,” Real Simple, July 2008, pgs. 147-152). At the end of the article, Fenner gives some tips to help you rearrange your schedule and your life and to make sure that you stick to it. 1) Take a tiny bite out of the task you most often avoid, even if you spend just one minute. When you realize how much anxiety is wasted over nothing, you will find the energy you need to get the task out of the way entirely. 2) Fight procrastination. A recent Real Simple poll reveals that six out of 10 women confess that procrastination is a major reason why they don’t get their work done. Put up a Post-it note that asks, “Are you inventing things to do to avoid what is important?” 3) Break projects onto pieces. 40 to 90 minutes is the optimal amount of time to spend on any one task. After that you need to schedule a break. If you have scheduled start and stop times, you are less apt to allow one task fill your day. 4) Take rest seriously. Sleep deprivation (having less than 8 hours of sleep per night) can make you feel more scattered, causing you to think you don’t have enough time to get everything done. Getting the proper amount of sleep to feel rested makes you better able to focus and get your work done. 5) Don’t worry, be happy. Fenner cites some additional statistics from another Real Simple reader pole, this time on happiness and they found that 65% of women who say they are “very happy” make time for themselves while only 39% of the women who are “somewhat happy” give themselves the same benefit. She concludes that “The odds are good that the more time you make for yourself, the happier you will be.”

We missed many of our regulars at the De-clutter Club meeting last night. We reviewed individual successes, discussed Suzanne Neilson’s presentation from Thursday night and shared some ideas for where to get started and how to stay motivated. I am on vacation from September 6 through September 14. I will be back in the library and back to posting to the blog on September 15. Enjoy your Labor Day holiday and if anyone else feels like posting some information on the blog, be my guest. You are all authorized.

The Next Steps

2009-09-03T13:38:00.002-04:00

Step 2 proposed in Elizabeth Fenner’s article “More Free Time” (Real Simple, July 2008, pgs. 147-152) is: See what you can give up. The author admits that this is the hard part but she also says that “Devoting more time to what you love can help you get more done overall.” Neil Fiore, psychologist, exercise coach and author of The New Habit (Penguin Group, 2007) says, “Research shows that to be productive and creative, you must make time for recreation and relaxation. Trying to skimp on them hurts your motivation and often leads you to procrastinate.” Elizabeth Fenner adds, “being a little selfish will keep you from becoming resentful, burned out, or cranky.” She suggests you find ways to free up time by looking at your diary and determining 1) What you can delegate – household chores to your spouse or children or give junior staff at work assignments that will challenge them; 2) What can you outsource – housecleaning, lawn and garden care, laundry and cut back on some luxury expenses to be able to afford these services – your time is more valuable; 3) What can you do less well (at least sometimes) – when something you are working on is good enough, stop; 4) What distractions can I limit, if not eliminate - don't constantly checking your email while you are at work, give your PDA a rest when you are home and curtail your television watching only to the shows you love and then turning off the set. “You will get more psychological benefits from choosing other forms of fun.”

Step 3 of the program to free up more free time in your life for fun, according to Fenner, is to re-schedule your schedule. Decide what you want to spend your time doing and put time for those activities into your schedule as “non-negotiable” commitments. Then you can make up the rest of your schedule insuring that you have the time to do what you want. Just like the axiom that you will full up the space that you occupy with possessions, no matter how much space you have; you will fill up your time in the same way. Consider how much you can get done in a day when you want to leave work early or when you have to get out of the house for a doctor’s appointment. Contrary to some of the suggestions we have had about lists of tasks, Fenner challenges you to create your to-do list on a 3 x 5 index card, writing only the things you can accomplish in a day (3-5 is doable). Make sure that at least one item from your wish list is scheduled (in ink) during your week. Schedule a quick and brainless task first to get something out of the way which will start you off feeling accomplished and then put your most onerous task second. That way you will get it over with early. Challenge the validity of the list by trying to cross something off – sometimes that is all it takes! Gina Trapani from LifeHacker.com makes a weekly schedule and evaluates it on a weekly basis saving the time that it would take to do this daily.

If only this were all easy...I will share her concluding thoughts in tomorrow's posting. Hope to see you all tonight at our September Clutter Club meeting at the library at 7:00.

More Free Time

2009-09-02T15:02:00.001-04:00

I was looking through the issue of Real Simple that I brought to the last meeting and found an article on how to have “More Free Time.” It was written by Elizabeth Fenner and it starts on page 147 of the July 2008 issue. The article begins by considering the results of a recent Real Simple survey. The survey revealed that 93 percent of their readers who responded to the pole didn’t think they had time for fun. That is a very sad statistic and I will admit that I am part of that majority. The problem I think that most of us face is that in our fast-paced, got-to-get-ahead society, we feel too guilty to add fun to our day.

The article says that “with the help of a dozen psychologists, researchers, and coaches…they have come up with a three-part plan to re-seize the day.” They add that how you spend that time is entirely up to you. My recommendation is that if you use these strategies to add some free time to your schedule – make sure you use it for fun!

Step 1: Step back (for a second). Figure out why you want more free time. This is the same recommendation that we have read in all of the books by our “experts” – setting a goal makes it easier to accomplish the task. This is true for why you want more free time as it was for why you want to clear the clutter from your life. What is it you want to be doing that you are not doing now.

Make a wish list. This is a nice way to think about your list of life goals – as a wish list. I think a wish list is more apt to include things that you might think are unattainable than what would be included on just a list of goals – and it is possible to make all things come true with some effort and desire. I apologize for bringing up an overused cliché but “think outside the box.” The author suggests to “write down activities that you long to do more of – things that make you happy, relaxed or sane (or all three).” She suggests ranking the items on your list in the order of importance to you and then picking the top one or two to focus on first – the rest you can come back to once you have had success with the first few.

Then she suggests keeping a diary of how you are currently spending your time. You may have already done this earlier in our process; Suzanne Neilson, our time management coach, suggested this last week. I believe this is really a good idea and maybe you will be motivated to keep the records more by the idea that this will help you have time for fun rather than helping you have more time to de-clutter…no one can say that de-cluttering is fun! Real Simple has some time diaries for three of their readers posted online (www.realsimple.com/timediaries). You can compare your day against theirs to see if you are over or under scheduled!

The article cites Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture (Hyperion, 2008), professor at Carnegie Mellon University and father of three (www.thelastlecture.com/index.htm). Sadly for Pausch, it took a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer to bring him to the realization of “how little time we spend doing the things we love most.” In his crusade to urge others to live every moment, Pausch adds, “the key question to keep asking is, ‘Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have.’” We should be able to change our behavior without having a fatal disease become our wake-up call. I think I told you about the time management coach who asked the question, “If you knew you only had three months to live, what would you change in your life?” And then he added this sobering reminder, “What makes you think you have three months?”

I will continue tomorrow with Step 2.

Organizing versus De-cluttering

2009-09-01T15:42:00.002-04:00

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens” - Carl Jung

One of the reasons that de-cluttering books show up in multiple locations in the library is that theoretically there are subtle differences between the content of each of the books. The books that are more specialized, such as a book for those with ADD or one that addresses the home and the office, will find their way to more specialized numbers in the Dewey Decimal System like heatlh and business respectively. This made me wonder if there really was a difference in the approach of these various resources or were they all separated just by the catchy title that the author and their agent applied to the manuscript. I got another book by Julie Morgenstern through Interlibrary Loan and she had made some observations that clearly define for her some of the differences.

On page 12 of Julie Morgenstern’s Book SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life (Simon and Schuster, 2008), the author starts a section titled “SHED is Not a De-cluttering Crusade.” She says, “…organizing is not about getting rid of things. Organizing is about identifying what’s important to you and giving yourself access to it.” Ms. Morgenstern’s SHED is a mnemonic device she uses to represent her four step process: 1) Separate the treasures 2) Heave the trash 3) Embrace your identity and 4) Drive yourself forward. She claims that all of the well-meaning people that counsel you to be tough and just rid yourself of your accumulation of “junk” don’t take into account the emotional attachment you may have to these objects and do not give you a reason to part with them permanently. She claims that her SHED principle will “help you avoid the most common pitfalls of de-cluttering: 1) By ensuring you are doing it for the right reason – ‘to get unstuck’ rather than to get organized, 2) By teaching you what you do before and after getting rid of things to make sure your effort lasts and 3) By changing your view of clutter from ‘just junk’ to what I call a Point of Entry – an opportunity for real transformation.”

She has a free online tool (on her website at www.juliemorgenstern.com) where you can determine your SHED Profile.

This is Ms. Morgenstern’s philosophy, although her book on organizing shows up in 648 with the other de-cluttering books, not in 640 with the other books on organizing. So much for my theory…

Professional Organizer's Presentation

2009-08-28T15:07:00.000-04:00

An audience of about 30 attended the presentation on Time and Paper Management given by Suzanne Neilson, professional organizer. Thank you to those who attended; I hope that her advice will be helpful. I will try to summarize what she said for the benefit of those who were unable to attend.

The topic of time management was covered first and Suzanne said that she was going to present just generalizations – there are as many different ways of doing something as there are different people in the world and you need to discover, on your own or with the help of a professional organizer, what works best for you. To get started, it is important to determine how you are currently spending your time. Like when you start on a diet, Suzanne recommends carrying a little notebook and keeping a diary listing everything you do in a typical day and how long you spend at each task. Every task that takes longer than 5 minutes should be noted. This will help you discover what you spend your time doing.

The next step is to set some goals – both short term and long range – so that you can take control of how you spend your time, making sure that you are doing what you want in life. You need to make your long-range goals as specific as possible, listing the steps that will be necessary to accomplish each goal and the estimated time it will take to complete each step. For short term goals, you should list the things that are the biggest issues you face every day. Once you have the lists, you need to prioritize the goals (using A, B, C or numbers) determined by considering what task is bothering you the most or causing you the most stress.

Suzanne recommends that once a draft of your goals is completed that you rewrite the list in the proper order. I would add here that the idea I mentioned in yesterday’s posting of making a to-do list with sticky notes, would make this prioritization easy and would save you having to rewrite the list. I will add the time that I estimate that the task will take to my notes, and add a column to my master folder marked “today” where I will line-up the notes for the tasks I want to accomplish that day.

Suzanne warned about having too many items on the list or having too broad a list – no more than 10-20 items. I would say that the size of the list is up to each user. She says the best way to control your time each day is to use this list of goals to create a daily to-do list and follow it. Each task should be assigned a start and stop time and the total time allotments should not exceed the amount of available time you have in the day. Do not make each task or the list so long that you work until you get exhausted. Be realistic and allow for rest periods and time at the end of the day (at least 15-30 minutes) to wrap-up, consider what you got done and to start to plan the next day.

She says that to avoid procrastination, start the list at the first task and work on it until it is done (or until you get enough of it done to be able to move it further down the list.) Completing a task alleviates a lot of stress. At the end of the day, the things that did not get done should be put at the top of the list for the next day. Having a start and a stop time is critical and should be monitored with the use of a kitchen-type timer. This kind of scheduling will keep you from getting lost in your email or immersed in a task so long that you lose track of time.

Be disciplined; avoid interruptions. Don’t plan to check your email more than 3 times a day; disable the inbox alert feature. Turn off your phone; close the door. If you are frequently interrupted by family members, announce that you need a few hours of uninterrupted time so “get your questions asked now” because after this, you will not be available for your pre-set amount of time. Ask your spouse or partner to assist you in eliminating the interruptions. Be disciplined also in avoiding distractions. Distractions are interruptions that are caused by your own inattention. Stay on task and get the job done.

Suzanne cautions about any system or method you try; if it doesn’t work for you after a few days (and you will know) throw that idea away and try something else. Don’t keep laboring under a system that you will never assimilate.

The next topic Suzanne addressed is paper management and her prime recommendation about managing the paper in your life is to reduce the volume of paper that enters your life in the first place. To get off direct mail lists, contact Mail Preference Service, Department 8067068, Direct Marketing Association, P.O. Box 282, Carmel, NY 10512. Give them your name and address, tell them that you don’t want any more junk mail and sign the letter. She has also used the postage paid envelopes that are often included with a solicitation to send the material back with the message, “Please remove me from your mailing list.” This will generally stop the mailings, since they don’t want to have to pay for returns. The www.catalogchoice.org website is where you can request to stop delivery of particular catalogs or you can call the 800 numbers of the retailers themselves and ask to be removed from their mailing list. To end credit card offers, call 1-888-5OPTOUT (567-8688) or visit their website at www.optoutprescreen.com. Consider canceling (or not renewing) magazines that you don’t read regularly and every time a new magazine arrives, you should discard the oldest one.

Since the daily mail is where the majority of the paper enters your home, she recommended setting up a recycle bin (or shredder) in the garage or near the front door where you can deal with the junk mail before it enters your home. Immediately throw away, unopened, promotions, sales brochures, fliers, catalogs that you don’t look at, etc. Tear up or shred all credit card offers. This will probably reduce the quantity of the pile of mail by half. After entering the house (and putting your keys in the spot you have designated for keys) deal with the remainder of the mail before doing anything else; make it a habit to spend 15 minutes putting this information where it belongs. As Marcia Ramsland said in her book Simplify Your Space (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) “Remember, one pile sitting out is the potential beginning of a complicated life. Keep your life simple, and put the pile away.” Sort items into folders or baskets designated for a specific purpose. Pay bills immediately or open them and file them in order of the date they are due. You should put bill paying in your schedule and plan to pay bills every two weeks or set up automatic bill paying online for your routine bills like water, trash, cable, etc. Have a folder for items you need to act on (such as invitations and personal correspondence) and one for items you are considering (such as promotional offers). Have two separate containers (baskets, racks, trays) to sort magazines and catalogs. These should be kept where they can be read or browsed at your leisure or in time you have designated for the task.

Suzanne has a “locations list” where she records the designated location for where items are kept and says that the key is to store all like items together. Have a fire-proof box where all of the important documents are kept – will, birth certificate, marriage license, social security card, etc. Tax records need to be kept for seven years, and receipts for all home improvements (not maintenance) need to be kept until the sale of the house. If you don’t deduct the money paid for certain bills, then throw them away after verifying the amounts and paying the balance. Retirement information and a record of your stock purchases need to be kept in order to know the cost basis when you go to sell. There is no need to keep the ATM receipts after they have been checked against your bank statement.

Making Strides Against Clutter

2009-08-27T16:13:00.002-04:00

Don’t forget that we have a guest speaker this evening to talk to us about Time and Paper Management. The program is free (thanks to the Friends of the Library) and starts at 7:00 in the Meeting Room. I hope to see you all there.

I have just found a good quote in the book Simplify Your Space by Marcia Ramsland (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007). It is a Finnish proverb that says, “Happiness is a place between too little and too much.” How do you react to that? Does that ring true to you? It is interesting that every book about de-cluttering tells us we have too much and I guess if we don’t have a place to put everything away, then we have too much. So I guess our goal is to reduce ourselves and our lives to that place between too much and too little and strive to stay right there. A report on the Today Show this morning from an editor of Prevention Magazine said that having a positive attitude and leading as stress-free a life as possible could give us as much as another 17 years of quality life! There’s an incentive!

I have actually made some headway, in little increments, this summer. Yesterday I employed the trick of taking photographs of things I want to remember and keep the photograph, rather than the object. I have for years kept some t-shirts that I have picked-up along the way from vacations, conferences, fairs and the like. They are all practically brand new because the fact of the matter is, I don’t wear t-shirts with writing on them. I find I really don’t like being a billboard. So, I laid each one out on the bed and took a digital picture of each one, front, and back if needed. I have put them all (well, almost all) of them either in my pile of clothes to give away to a good cause or in the drawer that we keep for gifts we have bought for others. I have a few nieces and nephews that wear t-shirts that may appreciate a few of them. One of my personal favorites is a black shirt with the sentiment, “What if the hokey-pokey is really what it’s all about?” That one is very hard to part with, but I can use the sentiment without having the t-shirt take up room in storage. I have a nephew that I am sure will appreciate the sentiment! These t-shirts have taken up over half of a large Rubbermaid tub that I use for swapping out-of-season clothes. I now have room to get another few sweaters put away in the summer or more of my summer clothes once the weather turns cold.

I also started a “system” that was recommended in one of the books on organizing for the chronically cluttered. It suggested that instead of making lists upon lists of things to do, make a to-do list out of sticky notes that can be added to, removed and rearranged. They recommended laying these notes out in the inside of a file folder, but I have a friend who also does this successfully in her calendar. I am really working hard on avoiding little scraps of paper everywhere. At work, I have a steno book always handy where I record all of the phone calls I get, including the date, the phone number and any pertinent information I think I may need. In order to get my work done, I have been trying to let my calls go to voicemail so I don’t get distracted from the task at hand. I have the steno book ready when I retrieve my messages so that all of the information is available should I need to refer to it in the future.

These little tasks are not much, but they feel like a big hurdle to me! I am at least starting to do something more than gather resources! See you all either tonight or next week for our September meeting.

Organizing Expert's Advice

2009-08-26T10:12:00.002-04:00

"Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person."

-- David M. Burns

The above quote was emailed to me over the weekend from a daily quotation site I subscribe to. “Allowing yourself the right to be human” is a good lesson when applied to de-cluttering as well. No one is perfect, so your mastery over clutter will never be perfect. Don’t put off the task because you have feelings of having failed to achieve perfection in the past or over the fear that you won’t ever have the perfect, clutter-free house!

Since we have a program this Thursday evening, August 27, at 7:00 on "Time and Paper Management for the Chronically Clutter Challenged," I thought I would share some of the information that Suzanne Neilson, our presenter, has written for the local papers. One article that she wrote for U.S. 1 brings up the issue I discussed in my last posting, the concept of being chronically cluttered. She suggests that there are certain personalities that live chronically cluttered lives such as creative, concept oriented individuals. She identifies the personality type of the individuals that become professional organizers like herself as being detailed types “who can see through the physical and mental clutter.” These differences most likely keep her calendar full.

She recommends, like many other clutter-control professionals, breaking the task down into manageable time allotments (15 minutes at a time using a timer). She says about de-cluttering for just 15 minute increments, “you can stand it for 15 minutes.” I like that way of looking at it. Just think how often you wait in line for 15 minutes when you are in a hurry, or wait for your food to be served in a restaurant for 15 minutes when you are hungry. You can stand anything for just 15 minutes. And then you can probably stand another 15 minutes after that!! These allotments of time, applied on a regular basis, will help you achieve your goal.

She has some very basic principles that come up in many of her articles – “keep like items together in a way that makes most sense to you” and be ruthless in what you throw away. The first principle is easier if you live alone; deciding how things should be organized based on your own logic. If you live with others, the sorting you do to make sense to you may have to be explained to anyone in your household who does not think like you. If not, you may spend a lot of time moving things back to where you think they should go! This idea of deciding for yourself what makes the most sense it very sound advice. You can try very hard to make yourself conform to one of the systems we have discussed from the many books on the subject, but if it doesn’t make sense to you, you will never be able to stick to it. Give there decisions some thought, but don’t labor over it. Suzanne recommends on your first pass through the piles of clutter, just sort items into labeled piles of like objects and ruthlessly throw away the stuff you no longer need. If you are indecisive, you can put the items you think you might “need some day” together in a box dated six months in advance. Put that date on your calendar and when the date comes up, throw the box away unopened. She points out, “if you haven’t missed anything yet, chances are you never will. And if you do miss one thing, so be it. Life will go on without it.”

After you have done the sorting, you can see what piles you have created and it should be easier to decide where these things should reside permanently. Things should be stored closest to where they are used or needed and in a manner that will be easy to maintain in the long run. Then you need to make it a habit to continually put these items in their designated locations. In an article Suzanne wrote for The Princeton Packet where she talks about ways to avoid spending time searching for things like keys or glasses, she stresses that once you decided where things are to be stored, “self-discipline and training are required, as you actually have to think about this every time and allow yourself no choice other than to set [the items] in their spot first and foremost. Follow that plan and right off the bat you will save yourself a great deal of time and frustration throughout your days.”

More Resources!

2009-08-20T09:39:00.003-04:00

I can’t believe it…I found another cache of de-cluttering/organizing books in another location in the library. There is an assortment of books in the very beginning of the 640s, which is considered, in the antiquated Dewey Decimal Classification System, the Home Economics subdivision of the Technology section (600s). The cookbooks are also in the 640s. The books at the beginning of the section are general books on household management like Hints from Heloise and there I found a newer book called It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh (Free Press, 2007), a professional organizer from TLC’s hit series Clean Sweep. There was also the book Simply Organized: How to Simplify Your Complicated Life by Connie Cox and Cris Evatt (Perigee Books, 1986) and the ubiquitous Organizing for Dummies by Eileen Roth, “Renowned Organizing Consultant," (IDG Books Worldwide, 2001). I can’t believe that I didn’t see these books before. There was also another book by Donna Smallin, Organizing Plain and Simple (Storey Books, 2002). And, I found an organizing book in 650, which is the beginning of the Management section. This one is called Conquering Chronic Disorganization by Judith Kohlberg (Squall Press, 2006). This book led me to another class of de-clutter books that are directed at specific groups and the ones that interested me most are the organization books that have been written specifically to help adults with Attention Deficit Disorder! I put several of these books on hold since we do not own any copies here in South Brunswick. When they come in, I will let you know if ADD sufferers are any more prone to clutter and any different in terms of a cure! Anyone else who is has ADD, like I do, might have an excuse, but the end goal is still to get rid of the junk, permanently.

In Judith Kohlberg’s book, she considers the difference between disorganization and chronic disorganization. The dictionary definition of chronic is persistent, constant and enduring. On page 7, Kohlberg says, “Chronic disorganization is disorganization that has a long history.” She recognizes that for some people, no matter how many times they get organized, they will soon fall back into their old patterns. She gives a short checklist to determine if you are chronically disorganized. On page 9, she offers the following three questions: “1. Has getting organized been a challenge most of your adult life? 2. Does being disorganized negatively affect the quality of your life in some way every day? 3. Have you been unable to sustain organization?”

According to all of the other books we have read on the subject, the issue raised in the second question is always given as a reason to make de-cluttering a priority. I suppose the difference here might be the adding of being negatively affected EVERY DAY. Her conclusion to her observations about people who are chronically disorganized is that these are people who think in non-conventional ways and therefore have difficulty conforming to conventional organization methods. According to Kohlberg, her little book offers ways to organize for non-conventional thinkers. I have not had a chance to read through this yet, but it does seem to be the first book I have seen that offers a different approach than all of the other books, so I will let you know.

Unpacking Challenges

2009-08-19T11:10:00.000-04:00

Bill Adler, author of Outwitting Clutter (Lyons Press, 2002) gives some advice that is needed at the end of your vacation when you come home and are faced with the task of unpacking. I have a friend who says she can always tell whether her husband enjoyed the trip or not by the speed at which his luggage is unpacked – the longer the time it takes to dismantle the travel experience and unpack, the more he enjoyed the trip. After tedious business trips, he is unpacked in a flash!

Bill Adler calls the lack of inertia to unpack, “Post-Traumatic Travel Stress Syndrome…otherwise known as laziness.” He is blunt about our reasons for non-action! He also notices, however, that the task seems to be more daunting by the fact that the contents of your suitcase is comprised of a mix of items that get disbursed to many locations in your house, making it seem like you had to walk home from your destination by the time you get everything back in its proper place. He recommends doing this task with as little effort as possible by breaking down the contents into manageable units to be handled in a predetermined order over a period of days. He suggests “setting yourself and easy-to-follow, even leisurely schedule of what unpacking you will do on which day of the week…” However, he cautions to not let your unpacking take longer than the vacation itself! He suggests putting away clean clothes first. Next do the dirty laundry. Notice that he doesn’t say, “put the dirty laundry in the hamper.” Do it right away and then it will be done! Next he suggests taking care of your film followed by souvenirs. Since a lot of people are taking digital photos these days, getting film in to be developed is not so important, but if you do still take vacation photos with a film camera, get the photos off to be developed right away, (or download your digital images) so that you can label them and add them to your photo storage system while you still remember the names of the places and the dates of the visit. You will want to share your photos with friends while the vacation is still fresh in your mind. As for dealing with the souvenirs, get the ones that you bought for friends given out while your friend still remembers or cares that you went away and get your personal souvenirs to their final destination, whether it is set out on a display shelf or hung on the wall. Don’t buy souvenirs if they are not usable objects that can be put immediately into service or if you don’t have the place in your house to put them out for display. There is no point buying something that will just go into a drawer and become part of your next de-cluttering garage sale!

But Bill Adler gives the best piece of advice about making the unpacking process easier: Don’t pack a lot of stuff in the first place! “Unpacking is a lot faster and easier when all you have to put away is the barest of essentials.” Disposable items like plastic rain ponchos can be discarded when you are done with them. If something is ruined during the trip, throw it out and don’t carry it home. When I was in Alaska last year, I found that a particular pair of shoes that I brought for hiking hurt my feet so badly that I knew I would never wear them again. I took them to a clothing drop and left them for someone in Alaska to make use of. Sometimes you can even leave them at the hotel and someone on the staff can find a home for them. This is similar to what was suggested in one of our clutter club meetings by the member who said she packed clothing (t-shirts and even underwear) that she was ready to get rid of and then she threw the items away at the end of every day, lightening her load along the way.

What ever you do, don’t spoil your wonderful vacation memories by sweating the unpacking and don’t jeopardize the de-cluttering that you have accomplished by loading yourself down with new stuff.

Don’t forget that we have Suzanne Nielson, a local professional organizer, coming to talk to us about time and paper management. Her presentation is next Thursday evening, August 27, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. in the library meeting room. I hope to see you all there.

Vacation Planning

2009-08-18T12:35:00.001-04:00

Summer is a tough time to get motivated to do large scale projects. Spring is when everyone thinks about cleaning; summer is when everyone thinks about vacations and relaxing. However, if you are planning a vacation, you can do a few things for yourself that will make you feel as though you accomplished some organizing in the process. Do you make a list of the things that you don’t want to forget when you are packing to go away? Many clutter control experts suggest that you do that once and reuse the same list every time you go away; keeping a copy of the master list right in your suitcase. I think this sounds like a great idea. Mostly, you need the same things when you leave home, whether for the weekend or an extended trip; you just need to adjust the quantity depending on how long you are going to be gone. You can keep the list generic and not specify specific clothes, shoes or outerwear, or you can have a blank form with places to fill in the specifics if you need them. You could also add some sticky notes for particular items you may need only for the current excursion or you can make a second shorter list of items over and above the master list. No matter how you plan to do the list, don’t fail to make a plan. The best way to spoil your vacation is to lug too much baggage around with you or to forget something important only to find that you can’t replace it where you are traveling. And, there are some things that you don’t want to buy twice because the extra item becomes clutter when you return home. Start planning early and carry a notebook or sticky note pad around for a week or so before you leave on which you can record any item that you remember that you want to pack.

Also, I think it is a good idea to keep a kit of toiletries and essentials in a travel kit and keep that somewhere ready to grab and go. You can fill it with the extra soaps, small bottles of shampoo and a spare toothbrush that you found when you cleaned up and de-cluttered the bathroom! Although some experts suggest leaving this kit in your luggage with your master packing list, I don’t think that is a good idea if it contains any liquids that my leak out while the suitcase is in storage, particularly if you store your luggage in a hot attic or a damp basement. You also need to remember as you unpack to refill any products that you used up while away or remember to check quantities before it gets packed for the next trip. If you are traveling with a companion, share the burden and only bring one of basic items such as a hairdryer or bottle of shampoo, or better yet, find out if the place you are going has hairdryers and basic toiletries and use them. Most hotels these days have hairdryers in each room or you can get one from the front desk to use while you are there. But whatever you do, don’t bring the extra bottles home unless you are very good about using them up at home, need them for the guest room or plan on giving them to a shelter or other needy cause. You can take one small bottle of shampoo you like to use in your toiletry kit for the next trip, but you probably don’t need any more shampoo and you certainly don’t want to drag it around for the rest of your trip.

Find out the weather forecast at your destination and pack only what you need. Pack only things that go with everything else in your suitcase. In other words, coordinate the items of clothing and shoes you pack so that you can make up several outfits using individual pieces or layer them if necessary for more warmth. Plan to layer rather than pack bulky sweaters or jeans. If you are going someplace cold, consider a pair of lightweight thermal underwear so that you don’t have to pack your heaviest articles of clothing. If you are going to be away for a while, plan to find a laundry facility mid-way through the trip so that you only have to pack half as many clothes. If you plan to do some laundry, pack a small quantity of detergent and a dryer sheet so that you don’t have to purchase these items – laundromats often over charge for the single pack of detergent if they have them at all.

One of the books I have read suggests bringing a spare cotton pillowcase in your luggage to use for dirty clothes and recommends putting a dryer sheet in that pillowcase to keep your dirty laundry from stinking up your suitcase until you get home or find a washer and dryer.

I always pack some kind of collapsible tote bag or carry-on in which to bring home anything I may acquire on my vacation that doesn’t slip easily into my suitcase.. I have found some compact ones at places like Brookstone or the Container Store, but I try not to rely on using them and adding to my burden. And don’t get a really big spare bag, because you will be tempted to buy too much which will add to your clutter. Think about deciding on a particular kind of souvenir before you go. Decide an item that is lightweight, useable and easily carried that you can always bring home from each vacation (like socks, dish towels or pencils) or something that is useful and representative of the destination would be best and then it becomes an adventure shopping for and finding just the right item rather than bringing home a bunch of clutter. If you feel you must bring something for your friends or family, consider something edible. Food items can usually be bought at the airport as you head home, or even the airport at home, so that you can avoid loading down your luggage with souvenirs as you travel. I have a friend who has been known to purchase very heavy items like lava rock bowls or solid wood carvings. These make lovely, unique souvenirs (unique because most people are smart enough not to purchase rocks while traveling) but heavy items not only make running for a train or plane more cumbersome, they might end up damaging something else in your bags.

Don’t pick up other travel literature along the way, like guidebooks, event calendars, maps and brochures unless you think you will revisit that destination soon or add the item to a scrapbook. If you are planning a scrapbook or travel journal, be selective about what you bring home by tearing out useful pages or photos and throwing the rest away. You may be able to leave a few brochures or maps behind in a hotel drawer for the next occupant of the room. Most of the information you will need about places to visit can be found online and the likelihood that a brochure will still be current by the time you need it precludes the need to collect it and save it. By all means, jot down the name of the location and the website if they have one for future reference.

Bring an assortment of zip lock storage bags to hold miscellaneous items in your suitcase. Snack bags can be used for cotton balls, Q-Tips, jewelry, batteries, sewing kit, medicines, etc. and the larger ones come in handy if you have a wet bathing suit or some handwash that is not quite dry by morning. You can even use plastic bags to organize smaller items in the suitcase like socks, underwear or t-shirts. A friend of mine makes small bags of sets of jewelry (rings, earrings, bracelets and/or necklaces) and packs them into the suitcase right next to the appropriate outfit, but an easier method would be to just bring (or wear) some comfortable “goes-with-everything” costume jewelry that you won’t mind if it gets lost or stolen.

You should travel with a list of important numbers for things like credit cards (and the phone number to call in case of loss); passports; traveler’s checks and prescriptions. This list should be kept somewhere not too obvious and could perhaps be carried by more than one traveler in your party. Lori Baird, ed., Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff (Yankee Publishing, Inc., 2002) suggests printing all important numbers out in a small clear font from the computer and taping the list inside a plastic (non-zip lock) sandwich bag under one of the insoles in your shoe. This seems a bit overkill, but I have been robbed on vacation so whatever precautions you feel are necessary will make you enjoy your vacation more in the long run.

Bill Adler, author of Outwitting Clutter (Lyons Press, 2002) has some suggestions about unpacking that I will share tomorrow.

Calendars

2009-08-15T10:27:00.002-04:00

I don’t know if you all keep a calendar or not, but I could not live without one. Every year, at about this time I start my search for next year’s calendar, after all, a good calendar can help keep you organized, store important data and keep you on time for all meetings. Properly used you can keep track of your bills and expenses, you can maintain an ongoing to-do list, you can keep a shopping list at hand for small and large items and you will never miss acknowledging another birthday or anniversary. I have a rule that I have only one calendar where I keep my appointments. If you have more than one calendar, you are bound to miss meetings and you will drive yourself crazy trying to figure out on which calendar you entered a date or a phone number. Because I keep only one personal calendar, it needs to be of a convenient size that can fit in my purse or bag without adding too much weight or bulk. This is not to say that I don’t have wall calendars for reference by my computers, and I do have a household calendar by the door to the garage where I enter the trash and recycle days and record when the lawn is cut and so forth – dates that I don’t need to have cluttering up my personal calendar. I also keep a small calendar in the bathroom that indicates when I should throw away my disposable contact lenses and start a new pair. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to carry my personal calendar into the bathroom!

There are several key criteria I have for the calendar selection process. As I have said for my personal calendar, it needs to be of a size that makes it convenient to carry. That is not to say that I could survive with the little pocket sized calendar that Hallmark gives out every year but I have seen people do this. They have to write really small! I use my calendar as a filing system for all kinds of miscellaneous data so it needs to have about a post-it sized place for every day of the week and preferably a place where just notes can be written. I also like to have reference calendars on every page showing as many of the months of the year as possible, both past, current and future and larger reference calendars at the back that show the past current and future years. I think I have tried every calendar system known to man: Day-timer® (a super organized but pricy system that has file boxes, insert pages and a nice leather refillable cover); various kinds of picture diaries from museums and places I have traveled; all kinds of daily, weekly and monthly variations of the At-a-Glance variety and I even used a PDA for several years, but all have been a disappointment in the end.

The systems like Day-Timers® (Filofax®, Steven Covey, Day Runner, etc.) are amazing systems for organizing your life. There are diaries for dates, addresses, expenses, ideas, etc, (there is even a separate booklet in which you can keep a running to-do list) all stored in a lovely plastic file box with folders for receipts and papers, but you have to be very organized to take advantage of these tools. I used the junior size thinner wallet which required a separate little diary for each month and I invariably forgot to change the booklets and never got into the habit of using the organizing options for expenses and other data. The little plastic boxes are so nice and useful looking (they even come with a little book of instructions on how to use the system), that I can’t bear to throw the material away, even though, I hate to admit, it has been 20+ years since I used it. Every so often I think that maybe I will start up with it again, but when it got right down to making the purchase, either the cost or the amount of decisions you need to make about format and content would stop me. I bought a picture diary with beautiful photos of Alaska on our cruise last year to use for 2009, but did not end up using it because the amount of space allocated to each date was too small.

The PDA I had was one of the first versions of Palm Pilot. It worked for several years for many reasons: I had games to play while I waited for an appointment and it could hold an incredible amount of data. I loved the fact that you could enter an address and include driving directions and other information attached to that record. Everything was pretty much in one place. But the overall view of an entire month of appointments frustrated me because everything you have entered on the day screen shows up as a dot on the monthly calendar with no way to be able to distinguish or select one dot over another. If you want to see when you made your next dentist appointment, you normally would go to the month view but all you saw were little dots on the calendar; the only way to call up that appointment was to page through every day until you came to it. There were probably ways to put those appointments in as a particular category and then call up all of the dates in that category, but that was way to fussy for me when I was standing in the dentist office writing down the date. I am sure that the newer Blackberries have fixed many of those problems and if I had used my PDA better in conjunction with an electronic calendar on my desktop computer, I may have been able to keep it going, but the “Graffiti” writing system you used to enter data and the need to keep it charged were ultimately the end of my days with the Palm.

This past year, I used a freebie that the director got and passed on to me. It has the library’s name printed on the cover but that is about all it has going for it. It is a straight unadorned, no-frills monthly calendar. I have survived the year but just barely. It has no tabs to get you to the current month (or any month) so I clip the top right corner at the end of every month to make it easy to at least turn to the current month. (That is a little trick I have carried over from Day Timers, where the corner is perforated to make it easy to remove.) It has decent enough boxes to write in (I have spilled over less than 10 times this year) and there are usually boxes at the beginning and end of the month in which I can write notes. The biggest problem with this calendar is its size. The pages are fine, but there aren’t enough of them! It is so thin that it could (and does) easily slip into a file folder or a stack of papers. I have spent a considerable amount of time searching for it in the canvas bag I use as a briefcase or on my desktop and I have frequently left work without it because it was hiding and not easily noticed. I have tried to make this one more useful by using a system I saw a friend of mine use very successfully. She uses post-it notes on the page for the current month and lists all of the things she .

With every failure, I keep coming back to the one calendar that works for me, the “QuickNotes® Weekly/Monthly Medium sized Self-management System” from the At-a-Glance company. It has everything I need and I sometimes wonder why I don’t end up with one every year. Each page is divided into fourths, one equal sized section for every day plus a QuickNotes® box, in yellow, where you can record data or make a note of something. It has tabbed pages for each month and on that page is a full page calendar where you can see the whole month. At the top of the left hand page is a small calendar of the current month, with the current week highlighted in red. On the facing page are calendars of the previous month and the following month. It is made from some recycled materials, it is spiral bound and this year, it includes a storage pocket! The medium size measures 4 7/8” x 8”. Perfect. And my new 2010 QuickNotes® Weekly/Monthly Medium sized Self-management System is already tucked into my purse and already filling with dates.

My love (or hatred) of calendars is more complicated by the fact that I keep the main meeting room and event calendar for the library. For the work calendar, I have another set of criteria that are not so easily solved. I have not found that perfect calendar to use at work and I probably spend more time in that calendar that I do in my own. The biggest problem I face every year is that business type calendars don’t contain any room for a Sunday. Hello! People do have dates on Sundays and in the case of the library, we are open every Sunday and have programs that need to be scheduled. I have four meeting rooms that I schedule plus the showcases and the display panels, so I need a full day, every day, so that I can list simultaneous programs on the same day and keep track of ongoing activities like the displays. A daily calendar might be an option, but the activities of the week and the month and how it works in terms of staffing, shared spaces, etc, is critical, so a daily calendar is really too much. Another option that would be great would be an appointment calendar for a multi-staffed medical or legal office but they never have a Sunday! I found one calendar last year that worked fairly well; it had equal spaces (although smaller) for Saturday and Sunday, but those are short days, so it has worked pretty well. It has tabs and a monthly two-page planning calendar (at the tab) that I can use to schedule the showcases and display panels. It has a few nagging little short comings. The reference calendars on the weekly page are for the previous month and the following month, but not the current month and the reference calendar for the years is at the front of the book. When I need to see the month, I have to remove that paper clip I keep on the pages that have past and turn all the way back to the beginning. Doesn’t it seem logical that you would put the next year’s calendar, which is the one you refer to more that the past, at the end of the book? But the biggest shortcoming by far is that it doesn’t seem to be available for 2010. I have checked online and in the stores and did not find it and had to settle for a similar one that has a tiny little corner for Sundays. Oh well, we will get by!

Organizing Systems

2009-08-14T14:07:00.000-04:00

Being a librarian, books are of interest to me, even though they can add to the clutter if you are not careful. In the list I gave you Wednesday about the seven types of people and their problems with getting organized, I am most like the first type, someone who collects organization tools, references and ideas but never gets around to implementing them! I don’t need any more clutter control books, but I was curious just how many of them there might be out there. I did a search in Amazon.com on “clutter control” and 840 books came up for that subject including 7 e-books for their new Kindle! A search on “organizing” came up with 272,264 hits! Yikes! I could be in much worse shape!

Over the years I have collected a large variety of organizing systems that I have started to use but for one reason or another, I have abandoned in favor of something else. Finding just the right system is as expensive and frustrating as trying to find the best book on clutter control (even thought they are pretty much all the same). You should be careful when you evaluate a system you have bought into; make sure you are not being too much of a perfectionist and see if there isn’t some way you can modify the system you have (or your behavior) to make it work better. Or, if you are waiting to organize some collection or pile of stuff, don’t hold back until you have the perfect system. If you can make do with something you already own, you will at least get the clutter under control and then you can take your time considering the organization problem and find, or devise, the system that will work for you.

There is a series of four free (somewhat amateurish) videos on another clutter control website that I found called The Organized Times (http://www.organizedtimes.com/) that describes a way to sort recipes. In the video, Flo Feldman describes using a shoebox, with self-labeled manila folders, (helped to stay upright by using the tissue paper that comes in the shoe box) as an organizing system. Folders and shoe boxes are probably items that you may already own and setting up this simple filing system will allow you to at least sort and categorize a collection of papers until you decide if something more formal will be needed. You may decide in the end to just throw all of the information away!

I have not taken my own advice over the years, mostly because I love stationery stores, containers and all things made of paper but also I am a perfectionist (number 7 on the list)! I have purchased many organizing systems that run the gamut from calendar organizers to file systems to storage system for sorting notes, recipes, etc. to address books and birthday calendars. But I have found the perfect system for only a few of the many clutter categories that need organizing in my house. This will sound crazy, but I have a good system for organizing greeting cards, craft supplies (particularly sequins and confetti), powdered sauce mixes in the kitchen and writing implements. (Not many!) The only problem I have with these systems is that none of them are large enough and they are not easily expanded.

For greeting cards, I have two file boxes with dividers into which I put cards I like as I find them and then go “shopping” in the appropriate file box when I need a card. I have two boxes because I love cards so much! One box is for birthdays and anniversaries. It has dividers for each month on which I have written the names and the dates that I need to remember for each month and some dividers for the general categories of birthday, child’s birthday and anniversary. When I find a card for a specific person, for a specific event, it goes in behind the divider for the month that I will need to send it. With this system I can buy cards any time of the year when I see just the right one for a particular person. Once a month I look at the divider and send the card if I have one or pick one from the general folders in the back. (Don’t ask me, or my friends and family, if I manage to do this every month.) The other box has other categories that make sense to me. There are standard ones for New House, Wedding, Shower and Sympathy, but there are also folders for cards from me to my husband and visa versa, postcards, blank notes and my favorite category – “Girl Power.” That is were those great cards go that have humor that women in particular will appreciate! Sometimes the cards stay in the box so long the envelopes get yellow. This either means that I no longer like the card and I throw it away (not often the case) or that I like the card too much to send and I have to move it to another spot where I keep cards that I really like - either blank, or those that have been sent to me. I did say that I love cards, didn’t I? The silly thing is that I have a room full of rubber stamps and other paper crafting supplies with which I am supposed to be making my own greeting cards! I need to do this on a regular basis and fill the sections in the box by topic because I never have the time to make a card when a significant date approaches.

Those craft supplies I mentioned are all stored in clear plastic containers that are labeled as to the contents. Like supplies are stored together which makes them easy to locate. I have some strange categories that only I understand like things that erase, things that stick or glue, small parts, etc. We have a room set aside in the house that we use as an art studio. There are built-in cabinets, with doors, in that room to hold all of the plastic containers. This room has been very slow to get set up since our move to a new house several years ago. My confetti and sequins are stored in a spice rack (with matching bottles) that I abandoned years ago when I decided I didn’t like having to transfer the spices from their original containers. The size of the containers were never equal which meant I had to save the remainder of the spice to refill the uniform ones that sat out for view. I now only need to store the container that the spice comes in and I have a pull out shelf cabinet in the kitchen for that specific purpose. The old spice rack comes in handy to sort those little decorative confetti (that I often shake into greeting cards) and sequins.

My powdered mix envelopes (like Knorr and Campbells) are sorted in the pantry in a small upright letter sorter, the kind you get in the stationery store. This keeps them upright where I can see what I have and easily grab one without having to sift through a pile or a drawer. You will be happy to know that I stop short of alphabetizing them!

As to writing implements, because my husband and I are both artists, we like to have the right pen or pencil for each task. I have found a use for all of the spare mugs I have gotten over the years that I don’t really want to use when someone comes to visit. I have a cluster of them on the countertop in the studio, adjacent to my computer, on the desk top and even on a shelf in the kitchen. There are usually at least two to separate the pencils from the pens and I also include a letter opener and a pair of scissors at each location. Mugs work well for this purpose because they are short and wide making them very sturdy and not easily knocked over when grabbing a pen.

I’m sure that none of these storage solutions are unique or earth shattering, but I have been able to maintain them for about 10 years, so for me that is a good system! Tomorrow I will discuss calendar systems and the problems inherent with choosing the best one for the year.

What kind of de-clutterer are you?

2009-08-12T11:36:00.003-04:00

At our meeting on Thursday, I talked about Jamie Novak's list of the kinds of people that fall into the Clutter Trap. The list can be found in Jamie Novak's The Get Organized Answer Book (Sourcebooks Inc., 2009). She has identified seven different kinds of people and specific solutions for that specific issue. I don't know what you will think, but I can find aspects of many of these that I can identify with!

Types of disorganized people:
1. Organization product and tip junkie. You collect ideas and buy tools, but never actually do the work. Your solution: Stop buying and reading tips. Instead, set a timer for 18 minutes and tackle a small project.
2. Last on the list. You organize everyone else in the house, but your stuff is a mess. Your solution: Realize that you are setting an example for everyone else and they need to become self-sufficient. Show them how to organized on their own and spend a little more time on yourself.
3. The keeper. You keep everything because it means something to you, you paid good money for it, it’s still good or you might use it someday. But keeping everything clutters up space, preventing you from using the stuff you love. Your solution: Work on items that have the least meaning for you, and fill one bag with things you can give to a new home where they will be used and loved.
4. The last-minute emergency. The doorbell rings and you run around the house scooping up stuff and tossing it into baskets and bags. Then you stash the baskets and bags and greet your guests. Your solution: Plan ahead by breaking up larger clutter-clearing tasks into small jobs. Set a timer for 18 minutes and get to work.
5. The procrastinator. You plan to spend some time de-cluttering but never seem to get around to it. Or you start by picking up an item but then put it down, unsure what to do with it. Your solution: Set a schedule by making clutter-clearing dates with yourself and writing them on the calendar. Work for a small block to time and then give yourself a reward for a job well done. Your reward might be to watch a television show, have a special snack, have coffee with a friend, or relax and do nothing.
6. Driven to distraction: You set out to tackle an area and find something that belongs in another room. You bring it there and while you’re there get caught up doing something else, leaving your original project undone. Your solution: Focus on the task at hand by making piles of items to deliver somewhere else. Once the task is completed, distribute the items.
7. Perfection: You have a vision of what the space will look like, but there is no way you can live up to your high standard, so you do nothing. Your solution: Choose one small area and work on it. Resolve to make it good, and go back in your spare time to perfect it. (BLB: But remember, no one is perfect.)

The Last Word on Photographs from Jamie Novak

2009-08-08T16:14:00.003-04:00

The following information is summarized and quoted from Jamie Novak's Get Organized Answer Book (Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks, Inc., 2009) Some is similar to the information I gleened from other Clutter Control books and sumarized in my last two posts. If you haven't spent some time with one of Jamie's books, you are missing some great motivational and factual information. Her books are full of practical advice for every kind of organizing challenge. Thanks, Jamie for your expertise!

First, Jamie suggests that you gather all of the photos you can easily find into one place; don’t go digging for them to get started, just work with the ones that are easily accessible. You will eventually need to get all of the undeveloped photos developed, including disposable cameras. Sort by event, person or chronologically. Have envelopes handy in which to send photos to other people, particularly duplicates. Don’t keep more than one copy of a photo. If there is no one to send them to, dispose of them. Don’t hold onto photos you don’t like.

Don’t do this in one marathon session and this is true for all clutter control projects. If you do too much, you may burn yourself out and cause you to lose motivation. Sort in front of the television; make it a family project or have friends come over with their photos and do the sorting together.

Once you have sorted all of the photos, then you need to decide how you are going to store them. Use whatever system works for you; if it isn’t easy for you to use, you won’t use it. You can enjoy photos from a box as easily as from an album. Precious photos like wedding and new baby photos should be kept in a disaster-proof box for safekeeping. This is also where you should store important negatives but the photos and the negatives should not be stored together in case something happens to one or the other. Use acid-free photo-safe boxes and store them away from direct sunlight, extreme temperatures and moisture. Standard photo-safe boxes hold about 1000 photos and have tabbed dividers. Negatives should be stored in acid-free envelopes or polypropylene pockets. For easy retrieval later, clearly label each storage “container,” whether you use albums or boxes. You can also use a combination of both – most photos stored in boxes with a few themed albums for vacations or other special events.

Don’t damage photos by:

Storing them in the basement or the attic. Extreme temperatures can cause irreversible damage.
Don’t store them where the humidity is over 70 percent (they can mildew) or under 40 percent (the can become brittle).
Don’t expose photos to direct sunlight.
Don’t place photos on magnetic pages in photo albums; the glue will ruin the photos.
Don’t adhere photos to black photo pages. These pages are not acid-free and can damage the photos.
Don’t write on the back of photos with a ball-point pen. It breaks the emulsion and can bleed through. Use a photo-safe pen instead.
Don’t leave photos in a jumbled mess. Work in small yet consistent blocks of time to organize the piles of photos.

Digital Photos

Deciding to digitize your photo collection still requires a great deal of organization. To store and retrieve digital photos, you need to develop a system. Make it a habit to download your photos the same day you take them, no matter what. (If you don’t know how to do this, get help. Digital camera manufacturers often have toll-free numbers you can call for assistance.) As soon as you download the photos, delete the ones that are not so great. Better, yet, delete them as soon as you take them!

You can store photos in your computer in folders with the name of the event and date. You can group like events together in a large folder labeled with a time frame such as a year, or a season and the year, such as Fall 2009. Within the main folder you can create sub-folders for each of the events that you documented during that time frame. Name each photo with a recognizable caption. You can also group photos into folders by person, location or activity such as Mom’s Photos, Photos at Home or Company Picnics. The key to the success of this, or any, system is consistency. Whatever file naming system create, follow it regularly.

If you prefer to store and share actual photos, you can print them on your home printer; you can bring a flashdrive or disk to the local on-site digital printing facility such as your drugstore or variety store like Wal-Mart or K-Mart; or you can upload them to a photo publishing website like www.snapfish.com, www.Kodak.com, or www.shutterfly.com.

To store photos somewhere other than on your computer, you can burn them onto a CD. Then once you have labeled it, store the CD in a CD case. Again store like photos together, and make a CD of the same type of photos. Try not to burn photo of a wedding and a holiday onto the same CD. Make duplicate copies of CD’s containing special photos, and store them at someone else’s home or in a disaster-proof storage box. Also, make sure to back up your computer. If you don’t back up the files, your photos might be lost in the event of a major crash.

Digital Options

2009-08-07T17:38:00.002-04:00

Rather than keep a lot of photographic prints that need to be put into albums and protected from temperature changes and moisture, you can consider storing your photos digitally. The main issue with this method is the capacity of the media type you choose. Photographs are usually very large files that take a lot of memory in your system, so many people choose to make copies of their photos to store in other places on other media than your hard drive. As with all information stored electronically, you run the risk that the media you have chosen becomes obsolete. I have heard recently a recommendation to update your archived files and their media type every ten years, but that may be too long. You need to keep abreast of the latest trends in electronic storage and weigh all of the factors that come into play – size of the device or media, the cost to store and maintain the data and the safety and stability of the media to be protected from damage or erasure. I’m sure we have all heard the horror stories of someone’s wedding video that got taped over by a football game or something along those lines.

The current favorite would be using a CD to store your digital images. CDs are very inexpensive to purchase and very easy to create. They allow another layer of classification for retrieval in that you can create CDs that are arranged by date, subject, location or photographer, just as we discussed yesterday for hardcopy photos, and you can make copies for your friends and relatives. DVDs are another alternative, but some older computers don’t have DVD burners and the media is a little more expensive and possibly a little more sensitive to damage. There are now a lot of inexpensive external hard drives that are great for storage of data. The smallest would be the flash or thumb drive and the cost/size ratio keeps getting better and better. When they first came out, a 512k flash drive could set you back $50+ and that device would not hold many photo files. Now you can get a good quality 8 gigabyte flash drive or larger for as little as $10.00! The fear with using flash drives might be that USB ports, where a flesh drive connects to your computer, could just as easily be replaced by some other connection in the near future that is faster or better…you never know. Consider that people who started saving their photos at the beginning of the digital photography era might have had to changed their media four or five times by now: 5 ¼ floopy disks, to 3.5 disks, to Zip or Jaz disk to CDs and now HD CDs and DVDs (and I’m sure I’m not up-to-date on the latest and the greatest). The factors that have made these different types of media come and go are more than just the capacity of this media. Other characteristics are the data transfer rate, seek time, power consumption, audible noise and shock resistance.

There are many sites on the Internet that now offer digital storage online that make sharing photos with friends quite easy, but this will have ongoing costs to continue to have them stored at these sites and your photos are at risk if the site you choose should shut down without notice.

Keeping your photographs digitally is a great space saving option, but it may not be a time saving option and it requires you to always have access to a computer or other electronic device to save them and to display them.

You can consider digital storage even if you did not take the photos digitally. You can scan your old pictures into your computer, which is incredibly time consuming or you can have them done professionally by a photo lab, which is very costly. In the Princeton area, you can bring all of your old photos to a photo lab like Taylor Photo on Alexander Road in West Windsor, (www.taylorphoto.com, 609-452-9444) and they will digitize them all and return them to you on a disk(s). If the photos were taken digitally, it will be more economical to deal with them electronically and never print them. If you want to share them with someone who does not have a computer, you can purchase a digital picture frame, load your pictures and give it as a gift. Make sure that you send detailed directions if you are sending this to someone who is not computer literate or you may find that they put the frame away never realizing that there are photographs stored on it for their viewing pleasure!

Like physical photos, virtual photos need to be organized and it is essential that you set up a system and continue to follow the guidelines you establish in order to ever expect to locate a single image after time has gone by. These guidelines will include a naming convention for each picture, a data storage tree of files, folders and subfolders and a sorting hierarchy similar to the physical photo storage system by date, place, event or subject. As with photo prints, the bad digital photos (over exposed, blurry, eyes shut, pose mis-aligned, etc.) should be deleted as soon as you take them or at the very latest when you download them from the camera. There is even less sense keeping bad digital photos since at the time you retrieve them from the camera, you have not spent any money on them to feel guilty about throwing away. And if you have been using digital photography for some time, you have probably gotten into the habit of taking many shots since “they don’t cost anything” but the theory of that practice is that you probably only get one out of 20 (or less) that are worth keeping. The best way to handle digital photos is to download the images from your camera right away (on the day they were taken if possible) so that you won’t be faced with a full disk of 300+ photos taken over a six month period to deal with. Once they are downloaded you need to edit them, name them, sort them and “file” them while your memory is still fresh.

Photographs among the clutter

2009-08-06T17:31:00.002-04:00

I have been finding some common themes that are addressed in every book I have read on the subject of clutter. One common theme is how to deal with photographs. I suspect that photographs occur in everyone’s collection of clutter. Dealing with photographs is time consuming even for the most organized person because you have to deal with storage systems, format and retrieval. I think this is a subject that is worth exploring in this blog.

The biggest hurdle when dealing with photographs is selecting a system for storage. There are many options available, from scrapbooks, which have become a significant pastime for many people; to photo albums, boxes or binders; or to one of a myriad of electronic storage options. Every book agrees that the best system is the system that works for you personally and making that determination will be worth any time and effort you dedicate to it in the long run. You might assume that whatever system you may have attempted in the past has not really worked if you find that there are photographs mixed into your piles of clutter. The criteria you should consider when evaluating these systems are ease of use, cost of purchasing and expanding the system, and ease of retrieval and the bottom line on all of these considerations is keep it simple!

Unless you are looking for an enjoyable yet time consuming and often expensive hobby, scrapbooks should not be your primary system of choice. Even if you are a dedicated scrap-booker, you should have a method of storage and retrieval that can handle photos from the start quickly and easily; you can always move the special ones to a scrapbook at some time in the future. Photo albums are the easiest way for people to casually glance through snapshots, but the photos in the albums and the albums themselves need to be organized and labeled in some meaningful way. Making guests rummage through page after page of dull photos is a sure fire way of insuring that your friends will think twice about coming to visit you in your home!

The first task is to sort through the photos and throw away any repeats or multiple shots of the same view. Keep one (or two) at the most of each view and only keep the best. Get rid of most of the negatives as well. There are very few photos that you will go back years later and have reprinted from a negative; making copies of actual photos is very easy to do these days. Keep negatives only for prized photos and truly meaningful events. For those that you do save, they should be stored in their own envelope, labeled as to the content, or in archival polyethylene transparent holders and in a different location than the photos themselves. Neither photos nor negatives should be stored in the attic or the basement.

The second most important task is to label all photos as soon as possible with as much information as you think will be necessary for future recollection. There should at least be a date and the full name of anyone who appears in the photo. If the location or the action of the photo isn’t obvious to any causal viewer, you should include that information as well. You should never write directly anywhere on the photo itself; use an acid-free label applied to the back of the photo or write the information on the album page. Use only albums with acid-free paper; albums with “magnetic pages” or black paper are not safe for the storage of photos. Use only archival adhesives. Albums are easier to store and flip through than looking at stacks of photos in photo boxes, unless you are very good at sorting and making section labels for the box. Also, putting them in albums makes you consider more carefully which you should keep and which you should send to a friend or relative or throw away.

Your final task before relegating photos to a storage system would be to sort them into some usable and logical order either by date, location, activity or person (either the subject of the photo or the one behind the camera.) You should select the sorting categories based on how you might imagine you will want to use the photos in the future. Consider if you are more likely to want to take a trip down memory lane by date (as in what we did in our 20’s), by location (as in what countries have we have visited in Asia), by activity (as in let’s compare all of our Christmas trees) or will you want to have all of the pictures you have of your brother or all of the pictures taken by your daughter all in one place. This may or may not be possible and exceptions can be made, but the clearer your method of sorting, the easier it will be to put photos away in the future. You also may be organized to have several different types of storage systems and a heirarchy of sorting, but the more decisions you have to make, the less likely you are to always get your photos stored.

And whatever system you decide on and whatever method you use for sorting your photos, this should be done as soon as possible after the photos are taken and developed or printed. Don’t set them down somewhere to do later…do it right away…and knowing that this will be your goal; create your system with this in mind.

Tomorrow I will look at electronic storage of photos.

Post Inventory Information

2009-08-01T15:25:00.002-04:00

We did an inventory here in the library yesterday. Every employee regularly scheduled to work Friday was assigned a section of shelves to scan and, with 40 employees and volunteers, we completed most of the non-fiction section. As was the case last year, I was so impressed by how much you can get done if you just plan a task to get completed and set your mind to it…and get the help of 40 of your friends and family members! If only we could have a crew like that at our disposal to help with the task of de-cluttering! Some books suggest having de-cluttering parties where you have your friends come over to help you de-clutter and you do the same for your friends. I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you are fairly well organized and your friends are clutter-a-holics. You may never have the opportunity to get back to your own house to enjoy the success you had during your de-clutter party.

Anyway, as luck would have it, I was assigned the section of shelves where the de-clutter books are kept! For those who want to visit this section, you will find it just past the cookbooks at 648.8. I have pulled all of the books that were in that section and I thought I might take a moment to tell you what titles we have. We have a copy of Outwitting Clutter, by Bill Adler, Jr. (Globe Pequot Press, 2002) which I shared at our last meeting; Jamie Novak’s first clutter-control book, 1000 Best Quick and Easy Organizing Secrets (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006); Organizing From the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life by Julia Morgenstern (Henry Holt and Company, 1998); Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff: the Q.U.I.C.K.* Way to Bring Lasting Order to Household Chaos, edited by Lori Baird (Yankee Publishing Co., 2002); The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Simple Life by Georgene Lockwood (Macmillan, 2000); Simplify Your Space: Create Order and Reduce Stress by Marcia Ramsland (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2007); The Simple Living Guide: A Sourcebook for Less Stressful, More Joyful Living by Janet Luhrs (Broadway Books, 1997); and Organize It!: How to Declutter Every Nook and Cranny in and Outside Your Home by Mervyn Kaufman (New York: Filipacchi Publishing, 2006). The last book on this list is a Woman’s Day Special publication and includes photographs of clutter free spaces using storage systems and furniture designed for such a purpose. These space are inspirational, but are they spaces used by real people?

I will glance through these books to see what information I can glean for the meeting next week but get them back on the shelves as soon as possible, in case someone might like to borrow one in preparation for the meeting. See you Thursday evening!

*Quantify Your Clutter, Unload, Isolate, Contain, Keep it Up from Lori Baird's book Cut the Clutter and Stow the Stuff.

Tips for Success 3.0

2009-07-31T10:23:00.001-04:00

I will try to glean today’s tips from Michelle Passoff’s Lighten Up! (HarperCollins, 1998). Although the book is written in chapters within three major sections and not in the form of the other books I have been consulting which are generally a series of short paragraphs giving tips or answering questions, there are “at-a-glance” checklists at the end of each section that serve as a helpful summary of the ideas Ms. Passoff has presented in that section. The following tips are direct quotes or are paraphrased from the at-a-glance sections of the book:

Part One - Getting Started At-a-Glance (pgs. 50-51)

1. Being clear on what you in your life (instead of the clutter and the time wasted on its maintenance) will help you choose what to keep and what to get rid of. Write these goals down and refer to them for encouragement.
2. Start by taking a non-judgmental tour of your home to identify clutter hot spots. Keep a journal of the process, including your goals on what you are making room for by clearing the clutter. Take before and after pictures of each location for encouragement along the way (have your digital camera handy to record these images and to capture an image of items that you want to remember, but not save.)
3. Seek encouragement from family and friends, like our de-clutter club!

Part Two – Learning Skills At-a-Glance (pgs. 154-155)

4. Handle one item at a time. Don’t worry about getting everything where it is ultimately going; just get it on its journey whether it be to somewhere else in your house or out of your house altogether – to the dump, the recycle center, the consignment shop, etc.
5. Leave no stone unturned – go 100%!
6. Dispose of stuff with panache and ceremony! Celebrate your successes!
7. Don’t cover your tracks – once an area is de-cluttered, don’t put any more clutter there! Be diligent and don’t be afraid of empty space – this is a good thing!

Part Three – Living Clutter Free At-a-Glance (pgs. 185-186)

8. Routinely handle the daily mail and don’t let it accumulate – have a system in place and discipline yourself to use it until it becomes habit. Adapt it as necessary until it feels comfortable.
9. Use your new found time wisely – let go of ideas that restrict and confine you. Use time for its best and true purpose – as the space within which you can live your life fully. Keep and carry only one time planner or date-book system and use it to create a schedule that corresponds to what you are making room for in your life and that you look forward to following.
10. Housekeeping at regularly scheduled times can not only help you keep the space you created open, but make it sparkle. Declutter emotional, mental and spiritual realms as a way to continue to honor yourself and be more at home in your world.

Tips for Success 2.0

2009-07-30T14:37:00.002-04:00

Today’s tips, as promised, are all quoted or paraphrased from Donna Smallin’s earlier book; Unclutter Your Home (Pownal, VT: Storey Publishing, 1999). This is a book that claims to have 700 tips and ideas, so there are lots to share…

1. Store the things you use most often in the most accessible location. This is true for placement in your house as well as for placement within a closet, cabinet or bookshelf. Store things where you use them.
2. When uncluttering a shelf, drawer, cupboard or closet, take everything out. If you pick and choose things, you will never make a dent. Clean the closet or shelf while it is empty including vacuuming the carpet and dusting all of the contents. Put like things together; get rid of stuff you don’t use, need or like; contain what is left and put it back. Time your projects to be able to complete each task and put everything away by the end of the session. (However, I have also read that leaving a project unfinished will help motivate you to continue and save you the time it will take to decide what to do.)
3. If you have a bag of stuff to discard, and it is not near garbage collection day, plan a trip to a dump or recycle center, otherwise you may be tempted to reconsider your decisions.
4. Repurpose containers you like, such as bowls, baskets and decorative boxes, to store items in plain sight. A basket can contain rolled towels on the floor of the bathroom near the shower or tub or a basket or decorative box can contain CDs on a shelf near your audio equipment. Keep a small bowl or tray in the places that things like keys or change accumulate. Decorative hat boxes, piled on top of a shelf, high dresser or even on the floor, make attractive storage containers for miscellaneous items like scarves, gloves, etc. or for individual craft projects.
5. Use your vertical space to the best advantage. Shelving units that don’t go to the ceiling waste the space above. If you do go up high to store things, keep a step stool close at hand.
6. Use the back of every door in every room, closet and cabinet. Use store bought racks that are made for this purpose to store shoes, books, pantry items, etc. At the very least, install a few clothes hooks.
7. Use a hanging shoe bag with clear pockets on the back of coat closet doors to store mittens, gloves, earmuffs and hats. You can also use a shoe bag in other closets to organize smaller items: in your clothes closet for hose, socks, scarves and accessories; on the back of the bathroom door or inside the linen closet to store miscellaneous toiletries and make-up or in the closet where you store cleaning supplies to put vacuum bags, sponges and brushes.
8. Hang a doorknob or wall-hanging basket or key hooks on or near the door you use most often to contain keys and outgoing mail.
9. Think of your refrigerator as a large cupboard. Designate specific shelves for specific things. Always keep leftovers in the same place in the refrigerator so that things won’t get hidden. Use storage bins for small items on the shelves and get racks that hang below the shelves for large soda bottles. Consider adding a turntable to make items at the back more accessible.
10. Keep a nylon bag hung on the back of the bedroom door in which to put clothes that need to be dry cleaned.

And one final word of encouragement from Donna Smallin’s book: In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Always do what you are afraid to do.” Tackle that clutter today!

Tips for Success

2009-07-29T11:05:00.001-04:00

After all of the philosophical ramblings of my past few blogs, I am in the mood to deal with more practical information so I took some time to look for good tips to share. In the interest of avoiding plagiarism, I will take ten good tips from particular reference books or sources and share them with you one day at a time. Today’s tips are from Donna Smallin’s book The One Minute Organizer: Plain and Simple (North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2004).

1. You are not the person you were 10 years ago; your interest, tastes and styles have changed. Aim to keep around you only the things that represent who you are today.
2. If something has a layer of dust on it, it is an indication that you haven’t used it in a while – get rid of it.
3. When evaluating what to keep, imagine that you are packing to move across the country. Consider the item in terms of: a) is it worth the time to pack it? b) is it worth the effort of carrying it to the moving van c) is it worth the amount per pound that it will cost to have it moved a great distance and d) is it worth carrying into and putting up or storing in your new home?
4. Establish limits on things that accumulate, like plastic shopping bags, food storage containers, rags and scrap paper for taking notes. Decide in advance what is a reasonable amount to have at any one time and recycle the rest.
5. Give yourself permission to get rid of things. Yes, that old t-shirt would make a good rag, but how many rags do you need? Throw it away.
6. Create the rule: “If it is ugly or unfixable, it’s garbage” and stick to it!
7. Take photographs of sentimental items (preferably with the person with whom you share the memory or the child who created it) and get rid of the item.
8. Get rid of bath and shower items you haven’t used in over a month. Put them into smaller containers for travel or guest baths. Donate the rest to shelters or food banks.
9. Schedule time to go through your closet and try on things that you haven’t worn. If it looks good and you love it, hang it back up. If it doesn’t fit or if doesn’t look good on you, donate it.
10. When organizing, keep a small notebook and pen at hand. When you come across or think of a good organizing project, write it down so that it can be dealt with at a separate session – don’t get sidetracked.

Tomorrow’s ten tips will be from Donna Smallin’s earlier book: Unclutter Your Home (Pownal, VT: Storey Publishing, 1999).

What is clutter?

2009-07-28T11:10:00.002-04:00

In the past few months, I have spent some time with Michelle Passoff's categories of clutter from her book Lighten Up! (Harper Collins, 1998) and I have excerpted a few ideas on clutter from Donna Smallin's book Unclutter Your Home (Storey Books, 1999). The other two books I have used are titled organization books, The One-Minute Organizer, also by Donna Smallin (Storey Books, 2004) and Jamie Novak's The Get Organized Answer Book (Sourcebooks Inc., 2009) but they are all essentially about de-cluttering your life. Which leads me to the question about whether there is truly a difference between de-cluttering and organizing and what constitutes clutter? Is an organized pile of stuff clutter? Does it have to be chaos to be clutter? Is getting the stuff in your life organized enough to claim that you are de-cluttered?

My brother and I had this conversation yesterday. He is the marketing manager of a family of mutual funds and has an eye on investment trends and consumer behavior. He has observed that the baby-boomers, the generation that has been at the forefront of consumer spending since the early 60's, are, perhaps for the first time in their lives, setting self-imposed limits on their personal spending and acquisition of material goods and exhibiting a general downsizing. We have seen, from the proliferation of information available on the topic, that there is a trend in the U.S. today to clean out, de-clutter and lighten our load. From this conversation about the trends in society, we discussed our own personal crusade against clutter. He sees clutter as the chaos in his life and the accumulation of random stuff that has no orderliness or significance and it is his goal to rid himself of this stuff. When I expressed that I was trying to rid my life of all of the detritus that I have acquired with or without intent, he drew a distinction between his chaos and my ordered accumulation. I don’t think that just because most of my stuff is in boxes, drawers, closets and organized on shelves, it isn’t clutter. Granted, that for the most part the stuff that surrounds me - that gives me stress and takes away all of my free time - isn’t heaped up in unmanageable piles, but to me, it is still very much clutter.

Perhaps the distinction I am making is the difference between garbage, clutter and true personal treasures! I think that clutter can be neatly ordered and can have value, per se. The task we are facing is to determine if it still has value to the person who owns it! To do this, it is important to make sure that your goals and your priorities are clear in your mind (and written down on paper). It will ultimately be the only way that you can make the distinction in your life about what to keep and what to throw away.

2009-07-25T14:17:00.002-04:00

I have continued to read through Elaine St. James' Simplify Your Life and have enjoyed the feelings of possibility that it affords. It is as though she is saying that our very lives are cluttered and by following these simply stated (not simply done) practices of changing our habits and patterns of behaviour, we can become clutter-free to the core...completely without extra baggage and commitment. I can feel the tension leave my body when I envision my life led in this simple, straight-forward manner! But in my knowledge that I need to conquer things one-at-a-time, I find myself with concern on staying centered on these goals through-out the process.

I think that the idea of writing out my goals and keeping them close at hand will be a positive experience. Did any of you complete that task, of writing down what you could accomplish if the time spent dealing with clutter was given back to you? I think that it is really worth doing. I would love to share some of your goals at our next meeting, which will be here before you know it. See if we each can list at least one or two desires to share with the group on August 6th. See you then.

Moving On

2009-07-24T10:35:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago I told you I found a copy of Elaine St. James' Simplify Your Life (New York: Hyperion, 1994) on my bookshelf at home. I found it amusing to note that her first chapter, in Section One: Your Household, is "Reduce the Clutter in your Life!" This is the number one recommendation that the author has in a book about simplifying your life! I guess I shouldn't be so surprised by this priority from all that we have been finding. This seems to be a universal problem among Americans these days, perhaps even a problem beyond our mass consuming society. A friend just told me that she read somewhere that the Chinese Government is encouraging Chinese citizens, who are newly enlightened to the “glories” of Capitalism, to buy more goods and services! It is too bad that developing countries don’t learn from our mistakes, but of course, "simplicity" is not the message that we are projecting about our culture, even though it seems to be what the vast majority of our citizens desire!

Elaine St. James says pretty much the same as the rest of our clutter control mentors, to follow the guideline: If you haven’t needed or used an item in more than a year, get rid of it. She suggests the same ways to rid yourself of the clutter – give it away to a friend or a charity; sell it at a garage sle; recycle it if possible or put it in a Dumpster if it is not able to be recycled.

Because of the brief format she uses for her recommendations, she steps out on a limb and says specifically where to start with the task. She says, “Start with your clothes closet and branch out from there. Clean out every closet, every drawer, every shelf, in every room in your house, including the kitchen. Don’t forget the front hall closet, the linen closet, tool chests, and medicine cabinets. Remember the laundry room, the garage, the attic, the basement, your office, your car, and any storage space you may be renting or borrowing” (pgs. 10-11). In my opinion, where St. James is way off track comes in a following paragraph. She says that “you can complete the initial stage of an unclutter program in a couple of Saturday afternoons.” She has obviously not seen the amount of clutter that needs to be removed from my house and I suspect from a great number of Americans’ houses!!

Chapter 2 is titled “Dave’s Uncluttering System” in which she describes her friend Dave’s method of boxing stuff in boxes that are left unlabeled as to the contents but dated two to three years in the future. If the boxes are unopened during that two to three year period, they should be thown away without opening! This is not Dave’s unique system, and I would say, it is not aggressive enough to truly rid your life of stuff. The dates should be more like six months to a year in the future. If you haven’t had use of the unidentified items in that length of time, it is doubtful that another year or two will make a difference.

In the meantime, if you develop the skills to throw the stuff away as it comes into your life, you will be free of much of your clutter in no time.

Jamie Novak had another telephone chat last night. Did anyone catch it? Sorry I didn't get a reminder out to everyone. If you listened, I hope it was beneficial. Let me know what was discussed!

The other three...

2009-07-23T15:23:00.002-04:00

The other three categories of clutter that happen, from Michelle Passoff's Lighten Up!, are three situations that are as inevitable as clutter itself and are probably rooted deeper than just a bad habit. The fourth category is stuff that relates to uncomfortable areas of life. This, Ms. Passoff describes as, stuff that relates to some task that you are avoiding or that you dread but one that won't go away no matter how deep you try to bury it. She says on page 17, "clutter increases in direct proportion to the amount of time you ignore a problem. Take action and watch your dread dwindle as your clutter is reduced."

The fifth category Passoff calls hanging onto or dishonoring the past. Into this category she includes photographs, memorabilia - things that remind you of the past. She makes the distinction about these things being clutter or not depending on how you store them and/or display them. Well ordered memorabilia that has been sorted, culled and organized with the goal of being able to have it accessible to share and to appreciate is not clutter; but, having random bags, boxes, drawers, etc. filled with the detritus of the past is not a healthy way to live. The dishonoring comes from keeping this shrine of past accomplishments rather than focusing on the possibilities in the future.

The sixth and final category that causes clutter is indecision and I would venture a guess that indecision is at the heart of most of the clutter in life. Indecision is wrapped very closely with the feelings you get from being overwhelmed when you literally shut down rather than having to make a determination to keep something and find a place where it can be safely and retrievably stored versus discarding the item and possibly have to purchase a replacement in the future. This is where having a goal and a mission about what your life can be like without clutter and what you could accomplish if you were in control comes in handy. It is a benchmark against which you can compare the situation at hand to help you have better, more positive resolve.

I hope that keeping these issues in mind will help you avoid the pitfalls that will come between you and a clutter-free life! I have spoken with a professional organizer about coming to speak at the library. I asked everyone at our last meeting if there was a topic that would be of particular interest to the group. One of the topics that she can speak about is time management. Would that be of interest to anyone? Let me know by commenting on this post. I hope we are all taking advantage of these grey, rainy days to take a bite out of the chore of de-cluttering! Think about how much more you will enjoy that leisurely afternoon in the sun if you have made some headway with the clean-up!

2009-07-21T10:55:00.003-04:00

I told you all a few weeks ago that I would share some more information about the mindset needed to clear clutter that Michelle Passoff writes about in her book Lighten Up! (HarperCollins, 1998) I summarized her description of six different kinds of clutter; however, it thinking about these, I realized that these categories are not exactly kinds of clutter but scenarios in which bad habits cause items to become clutter. Today, I would like to share some of her insight into why knowing these categories and knowing why they are different will help us learn to control the clutter. The first category is garbage. Here Ms. Passoff is literally taking about stuff that has not yet been thrown away! On Page 15, she says, “three-quarters of the piles of papers on desks and tabletops are things that have not yet been tossed…throwing out your garbage is part of the process!” I would say that on the surface, this is a no brainer – just throw away your garbage! Having bags of garbage that is not actually removed from the house is part of the bad habit of not completing a task to its very end – getting the stuff physically removed from your life. But it may really consist of bags of stuff waiting for the shredder or bags of recyclable products waiting for recycle day. I realized yesterday, that the three bags of catalogs and magazines that I cleared out the other day are still sitting by the back door waiting to be recycled. In the town in which I live, there is only curbside pick-up for bulk paper, such as newspapers, that has been tied into bundles. We do not have a container that can be brought to the curb for paper recycling loose paper recycling must be brought to the town recycling center, which has limited hours of operation. If you find yourself in a similar situation, it leaves the possibility of having the soon–to-be-recycled material still cluttering your house for a week or more! The best bet would be to find an out-of-the-way spot to stage these materials that doesn’t end up looking like the clutter is still with you and making sure that all of the items are delivered to that spot.

The second category that Ms. Passoff identifies is “a mass of mixed-up, jumbled, unlike objects.” She notes that these often occur near the entry door where things like mail, keys, small toys, unpaid bills, etc. are dropped the minute you come in the door; or on the dresser top when you empty your pockets or your purse at the end of the day. She suggests that the way to decrease the chance of these piles occurring is to “separate all unrelated items from one another.” This means to me that you have to have a system in place into which these items can be sorted, going back to the age-old adage, “a place for everything and everything in its place.” One such system is Jamie Novak’s open-top, hanging file folder box that is kept right near the door into which is sorted items such as bills to be paid, receipts to be compared against statements and then discarded (or saved in a tax file if it is an item that can be deducted or in major purchases file if you may need the receipt for future repairs or exchanges) and correspondence to be answered. She cautions not to file something if it can be dealt with immediately. This will require allowing a little more time as you enter the house or before you go to bed, to deal with stuff right away…all a matter of discipline or forming good habits.

The third category, and the last one I will address today, is unfinished business. Into this category on page 16, Ms. Passoff puts some of the items that gather as mentioned above: “a scrap of paper with a telephone number of someone whose call you have not returned; a letter you have been meaning to respond to; a half-wrapped package earmarked for the post office; bags of clothing standing at attention by the front door ready to be given away; an unreturned catalog purchase; and a long list of undone to-do’s.” She documents their often endless migration all over the house until you are finally shamed into doing something about finishing the business; however, she cautions that often by the time you get around to doing this, the task has escalated into a larger task perhaps with financial consequences. Obviously, developing the habit of doing a task when it comes up, and completing the whole task from beginning to the end when it is out the door, is worth the effort.

I will finish the last three categories from Michelle Passoff tomorrow. I hope you are all still making head-way not only into tackling the clutter, but in forming new habits that will help you continue to lead a clutter-free life.

Return to the basics...

2009-07-17T09:45:00.002-04:00

Now that I have told you all about the shredding events that are coming up, I want to get back to the basics that I talked about earlier. Has anyone tried the exercise recommended by Michelle Passoff in her book Lighten Up? (Passoff, Michelle. Lighten Up! Free Yourself from Clutter. New York: Harper Collings, 1998). Did you spend some time imagining and writing down your dreams for a life in balance with a positive relationship with clutter? I think that this is an excellent exercise. I know that I have been much more determined to rid myself of stuff, now that I have started to compare its value to the value of life without all the baggage. It makes it very easy to toss stuff that only recently seemed so important! I also find that if I look at something for less than a minute and the reason that I set it aside does not immediately come to mind, I can say to myself that it really wasn't that important after all and I can pitch it without spending any more time with it. Hopefully, in the future, I will know immediately what is worth setting aside in the first place!

If the written exercise didn't work for you or you didn't think that it would be beneficial, she suggests an alternate activity. She also says that this might be useful just for fun, providing "a way for you to tap into your heart and reveal your unconscious desires." It also gives you a purpose for magazines you may have collecting in your house! She suggests, on page 27, going through a pile of magazines that you have and "clip anything that attracts your interest on a visceral or intellectual level." You can clip photos or words that are either random (and let your subconscious mind inform you about your inner most desires) or you can clip items with conscious intention, looking for images and phrases that remind you about what you are looking for in the future to improve your personal or work life, your relationships with family and friends or your finances and your physical surroundings. As Ms. Passoff goes on to say, "usually there are no accidents."

When you have gone through (and then recycled) several magazines, lay out what you have clipped on one large poster board, sheet of newsprint or length of freezer paper (or on smaller sheets sorted by ideas or topics). How you arrange the individual elements is part of the imaging process. Glue them down (if you dare). For some, this may be too much of a commitment to the future to truly attach things "permanently" to your dreamscape. Remember, you can always remove something later, or paste something new or more important over top of an old idea, just like you can always change a bad habit by replacing it with newer, healthier behaviors (hint, hint!)

When you have finished, stand back and look at the collage of ideas and images you have created and try to get more inspiration from the new relationships that are formed by the adjacencies and notice the items that stand out among their surroundings. Keep this collage somewhere where you can revisit the ideas it contains whenever you get stuck at your task of de-cluttering or whenever you need additional motivation. Update it periodically with new ideas that come out as old habits are dispelled. Start over with a completely new collage at key points in your challenge to conquer clutter or at specific time intervals (monthly or annually). Go ahead and write things on the poster or on sticky notes that you add to the montage as new insights and inspirations occur to you as you approach your goals. If you do this exercise and you are comfortable doing so, bring it to one of our future meetings and share with the group the things that you have learned about yourself.

I will move on to some of Michelle Passoff's insights into the accumulation and elimination of clutter and her pointers on creating a game plan in the coming posts. I have also found a copy of Elaine St. James' Simplify Your Life, (Hyperion, 1994) on my bookshelves at home, which has some chapters that will give us positive ideas to incorporate into our mission. Good luck this weekend – remember to set and achieve three goals for our next meeting on August 6th.

More on Shredding

2009-07-15T14:07:00.002-04:00

I had asked one of my coworkers yesterday about the shredding program run by Middlesex County so today she brought the 2009 calendar of all of their stops. According to the calendar, the shredding equipment will be in Plainsboro on July 18; Woodbridge Department of Public Works on July 25; New Brunswick High School Parking Lot on Friday, July 31; and at the Middlesex County Vocational High School in Perth Amboy on Saturday, August 8. The events all start at 9:00 a.m. and I assume that the same rule applies that they will stay at the location until 1:00 or until the equipment is full. I will have copies of the calendar at our next meeting for the dates for the remainder of the year.

I know I promised to continue with some more information from the book Lighten Up, but I have another small diversion that I wanted to share. I recently got a few issues of Real Simple dropped on my desk. I realized that this magazine regularly has a lot of interesting information on the kind of topics we are discussing and I was going to suggest that if you are not familiar with this publication, you should look at an issue next time you are in the library. But then, another thought occurred to me. I realized that the library magazine section contains many magazines that most likely feature this kind of information - clutter is such a universal problem that magazines use it to sell as many issues as the promise of weight loss or stylish hair styles. By taking advantage of the subscriptions that the library has, you don't have to pay for subscriptions of your own and deal with that magazine clutter in your home. You can check out and read just the issues and articles that you want and you won't have to worry about recycling.

I also wanted to remind you that the library has an online magazine index on our webpage at www.sbpl.info under Databases. The database is called EBSCOHost, and it contains the full text of most articles that were published since 1996 in over 1700 different magazines and journals. Articles can be located by a simple subject or keyword search. By using the magazine index, you can find articles on any topic and read the full text right online or if you want to read the actual magazine, you can come to the library with the citation and check out the specific issue that contains the article in which you have an interest. With this resource, you never need to subscribe to another magazine or keep any articles that you might want to refer to at a later date. All you have to do is use the database when you need information on a particular topic and you will be able to locate any article you may have read previously as well as similar articles that might have different or more recent information.

As a test, I did a search using the term "clutter control" and found over 460 general articles on the subject from magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Working Mother, Newsweek and even American Girl that was directed at young girls. There was more information there than one could ever use. You can also be as specific as you want with your searches. The second search I did was specifically on records management or managing paper clutter and I got over 2000 articles.

Take advantage of the resources that you have access to that don't increase the clutter in your life. Don't be tempted to print the information out, causing more clutter. You will always be able to go back and find the information again when it is needed. If you must save it, save it to your computer and access it all paper-free. Save a tree and remove some stress by learning some easy tasks that can make life easier.

Shredding Event

2009-07-14T10:31:00.004-04:00

Thank you Grace for alerting me to this information. Grace forwarded me an ad that was in the local paper that said that the Middlesex County Division of Solid Waste Management will have their mobile paper shredder at the Municipal Center in Plainsboro on Saturday, July 18, 2009 from 9:00 until 1:00 or until the truck is full, whichever comes first. I would suggest trying to get there as close to 9:00 as possible; I understand the later (filling the truck before 1:00) happens quite frequently. The address of the Municipal Center is 641 Plainsboro Road and to contact the Middlesex County Solid Waste Management office you can email solidwaste@co,middlesex.nj.us or call them at 732-745-4170. They can send you a schedule of where they are going to be other Saturdays. The Plainsboro shredding event is this coming Saturday so we have four days to fill as many boxes and bags with stuff to be shredded. This is a great opportunity to rid yourself of a lot of your paper clutter!! Think about old documents and confidential papers. They take any paper (staples and paperclips do not need to be removed) but they don't take books or anything bound or non-paper items such as floppy disks.

I will continue with information from Lighten Up tomorrow...I just want to share that I actually did some de-cluttering yesterday!! I filled three paper grocery bags with old newspapers, catalogs, etc. without even really trying. I am starting to sort like items together to get them at least to the right room to be dealt with as I get to them. My office already looks much better!!

Keep up the good work and take advantage of the bulk shredder for the stuff you think is sensitive - it can save you a lot of time!

Another Clutter Control Book

2009-07-11T10:57:00.002-04:00

Last week, I found another clutter-control book in with the donations to the book sale. This one is called Lighten Up! Free Yourself from Clutter: Create the Space for Miracles by Freeing Yourself from Too Much Stuff by Michelle Passoff. (HarperCollins, 1998). It says pretty much the same as the other books but the claim that you can experience Miracles if you clear out the clutter is pretty enticing!

The book is divided into parts, chapters and sections. Part 1 is "Getting Started." The first chapter, "How Did Things Get to be Such a Mess?" is filled with insight as to why clutter happens and some advice on how to psych yourself up to make the control process happen. There is a nice section titled, "There is No End to Clutter" that lays reality on the line: no matter how good a job you do de-cluttering, more clutter will come your way. "As long as you still have blood running through your veins, a stream of objects will keep passing in front of you throughout your life." (page 23) The point of this observation is that recognizing that you will never be rid of clutter can rid you of any associated guilt and fear over its existence and its accumulation. Passoff says, "Rather than think that one day your clutter will be gone forever, I suggest that you instead try to develop a lifelong relationship with your physical environment that makes it a more joyful place in which to dwell." I would say that is a very sound piece of advice.

In the section titled "Becoming a Clutter Connoisseur," (page 15) Passoff identifies six different "varieties" of clutter: 1) Garbage 2) A mass of mixed-up, jumbled, unlike objects 3) Unfinished Business 4) Uncomfortable areas of life 5) Hanging onto or dishonoring the past and 6) Indecision and she says that it is important to recognize and appreciate the differences and to learn the skills to deal with each in order to be fully in control of your environment.

I think I will spend some time on the points that Ms. Passoff makes in this book over the next week or so in this blog. She presents a very positive position on the process that is worth consideration. Let's see if we can create some of those miracles she promises.

For an exercise to do over the weekend, you can try what she suggests as your starting place, to identify what you are making room for. She suggests carving out an hour or so of uninterrupted time "to jot down s0me thoughts about how your life would be if you could have it be any way you wanted it to without clutter in the way." She says to avoid generalizations like "I would be happy" and to be as specific as possible, making long- and short-term goals and identifying objectives and strategies like you would if you were in the business of clearing clutter. You will use this to help you identify later the stuff you will keep and the stuff you will let go of.

Personal Confessions

2009-07-10T11:03:00.002-04:00

Sorry I haven't updated in a week...life is busy!

Thanks to all of you who attended the meeting last week; we had a good turnout (including some new faces) and a lively discussion. Congrats to you all who accomplished your three goals. We had some who had completed great tasks...getting entire rooms cleaned out. And, we had some, like myself, who had more modest successes to share but the fact that we are hanging-in is a great success in itself.

Now, as to my confession... I went away for the holiday weekend and when I returned, I was so motivated by having been away (and frankly so disappointed by the clutter that was all around) that I did a gathering up of a lot of stuff (mail, magazines, etc.) and did a good sort and purge using Jamie Novak's file folder sorting system and a large garbage bag. However, that is where it ended. Two of the piles that I left were 1) stuff to go through and act on immediately and 2) stuff to go through and pitch. I was careful not to put the piles into folders, because for me, out of sight is out of mind. The piles are still sitting where I left them on the living room floor very much in sight and still out of mind!

And yesterday, as I was working at my computer, I would periodically look around and attempt to attack a pile, bag or box with the goal of complete elimination of that bit of clutter, and I got completely overwhelmed!! I should take a picture of my home office and share it with you but I wouldn't want to be responsible for any one of you fainting! One of my goals for this month has to be finding a way to break this stuff down into managable bites so that I don't get so bogged down with the magnatude of clutter that one can accumulate in 50 years!! (I have been a pack-rat all my life and so has my husband...after all, you never know when you might need or want something again!) I am going to start using the 18 minute rule - to break the task down into little 18 minute sessions and set an alarm and then decide to quit or continue for another 18 minutes when the time is up - I am hoping that will work!

I actually find it amusing that I am writing this blog when I don’t really have a history of success at de-cluttering. I usually console myself that at least my clutter is “neat” and “organized” in my mind, but the reality is that no matter how neat and organized I think I am, I still spend way to much time looking for things that I need. Clearly my expertise lies in encouragement to get motivated, since I have been doing that to myself for years and at giving support if goals are not met since I have also had a lot of practice at that as well!!

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Share your strategies to get motivated with the group by commenting on this blog.

Gone Surfin'

2009-07-01T10:34:00.002-04:00

I did a Google search the other day and came up with a half-dozen great sites on the first search. It seems that controling clutter is a hot topic on the Internet and one about which people love to share information. Here are the half-dozen that came up from a search on clutter control:

http://www.pioneerthinking.com/cm_cluttercontrol.html

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/heloise/clutter/clutter-control-sep04

http://www.creativehomemaking.com/organizing/clutter_control.shtml

http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf318796.tip.html

http://www.simplelifecorp.com/ccc.html

http://www.declutteryourhouse.com/clean_house/tag/clutter-control

I have looked through these six and found more information than I could digest in week! Now I realize that I have enough information; I just need to put some of what I have learned into practice.

How are you all doing? Are you planning to come to the meeting tomorrow night? Don't forget, 7:00 in the Quiet Study at the library. We will move to the back of the room where there is a little more room to accomodate us all. If we fill the back of the room, we will have to find another room in which to meet and perhaps a different night to meet since starting in September, the larger room is used for our Intermediate Yoga classes on Thursday evenings. Bring your calendars so we can confirm some dates and be prepared to share your successes, information or topics with the group. We will get motivated and empowered to continue on our path to a clutter-free life.

One-Minute Motivations

2009-06-26T11:06:00.002-04:00

An affirmation is a strong, positive statement that something is already so.

-Shakti Gawain

Guess what? I found another clutter control book at home! This one is called The One-Minute Organizer: Plain and Simple also by Donna Smallin (Pownal, VT.: Storey Books, 2004). Throughout this book, she has interspersed affirmations that can help motivate. I would like to share a few and continue to do so weekly for a while. You may want to put the ones that speak to you on the top of your calendar or on the start-up screen of your computer to help you daily strive to lead a clutter-free day.

“You don’t have to stop everything to get organized. You just have to START. Make organizing a part of your daily life. Do it first. Do it fast.” (pg. 11)

“Yes, organizing is work. But there’s nothing all that difficult about it. The hardest part is getting STARTED.” (pg. 16)

And…

“Our experience is driven by our beliefs. If, for example, you believe that nothing you do makes a difference, that will be your experience. See if you can pinpoint one belief that may be limiting your ability to get organized.” (pg. 23)

We can share some of our beliefs and experiences at the next meeting on July 2nd. Jot down some of the things you are thinking about the task and we can help each other dispel negative thoughts.

How did I get here?

2009-06-25T11:32:00.001-04:00

I have found another clutter control book in my clutter at home. How many of these books have we bought over the years? If you are like me, they are all appealing because of the promises they make to rid your life of stress and disorganization, but the reality is often quite different. And, not surprisingly, they are all very similar in the message they deliver.

In this one, called Unclutter Your Home: 7 Simple Steps, 700 Tips and Ideas by Donna Smallin (Pownal, VT.: Storey Books, 1999. pages 11-13), the author gives a nice list of the Top 10 Reasons Why Clutter Collects. Here is her list:
1. You think you’ll need it someday.
2. It has sentimental value.
3. You’ve got a big house.
4. You’ve got a small house.
5. You are chronically disorganized.
6. You leave stuff out because you’re afraid you’ll never find it again.
7. You feel guilty about throwing things away.
8. You feel like you never have time to get organized.
9. You were brought up by pack rats.
10. You’re stuck on the “work, shop, spend” treadmill.

I don’t know what was the source she used to determine that these are the top ten, because she mentions other reasons that seem to me to be equally at the root of the problem: our lives have become increasingly complex; gathering clutter compounds the problem, causing many to buy larger houses that then leave us less time to deal with the clutter; we develop emotional attachment to stuff; clutter develops from an instinct for self-preservation and feeling of insecurity; we are indecisive in how we deal with clutter; and she says that the main reason is because we don’t know where to start!

Knowing these reasons might be useful in our effort to conquer clutter. We should examine these reasons (or excuses) and try to eliminate any stumbling block to our success!

I put that in a safe place...

2009-06-23T09:55:00.003-04:00

How many things have we put "away" over the years where we say either, "I'll put this where I can easily find it later" or "I'll put this in a safe place?" And how many times have we later said, "Now, where did I put that...?" Do the numbers of times come close to being equal?

Bill Adler, Jr. in his book Outwitting Clutter (Globe Pequot Press, 2002) has a great suggestion as to where you can store the location of the safe places and other important information. He suggests that you use your address book, either physical or electronic, because you are not likely to misplace your address book! He suggests putting the "safe place" locations under S, or perhaps list the specific items under the name of the item, such as the location of your will under W. He also proposes that you store passport numbers, driver's license numbers, your children's locker number and combination, credit card numbers and the specifics of the contents of your safe deposit box (including serial or certificate numbers) in your address book but make sure that you don't keep your PIN or passwords in the same location, particularly if you are using an electronic address book. Those numbers and words should never be listed in the same place as the account numbers and never in any device that is connected electronically to other devices, be it computer, PDA, cell phone, etc. People who know how to use the Internet for illegal purposes are very good at finding the information they need!

If you use a paper address book, you may need to add some pages to hold this additional information, but it would be well worth it to have all of this important information in one location.

Remember our goal of accomplishing three things before our next meeting on July 2 at 7:00. It can be anything, even counting coming to the next meeting or reading this or other blogs. We have to remember not to be hard on ourselves...the clutter didn't accumulate in one day, or even one week or one year, so it is not going to disappear that fast either! We should concentrate on changing some behaviors as much as we worry about the progress we make against the clutter. See you next month.

Professional Organizers on the area

2009-06-20T13:36:00.004-04:00

I am working on your request to have another speaker (or two) to give a presentation at the library. Thanks to those who have made referrals of organizers they know...I will be talking with all of them about what programs they offer and bring my findings to the group to discuss. I will also make a copy of the contact information for organizers in the area in case anyone wants some help. If anyone else has a referral to make, please bring the contact information to the meeting and I will add it to the list. I won't be able to say if these people are qualified or make any recommendations, but the Online Organizing site that I mentioned yesterday has a nice checklist to use if you want to hire an organizer to make sure that you ask the right questions. Here is a link to that checklist: http://www.onlineorganizing.com/FindAnOrganizer.asp?content=C03OrganizerInterviewChecklist

According to the Online Organizing website, there are two recognized organization to which professional organizers can belong: "The National Association Of Professional Organizers or NAPO has been around the longest and is the most recognized name in organizing. The newer International Association Of Professional Organizers or IAPO is another organization dedicated to improving the professionalism of the industry. Both accept members from around the world. There is also a group called Professional Organizers In Canada -- and look for more overseas groups to start up in the coming days." (from www.onlineorganizing.com: FAQs on being an organizer)

But don't feel that you need to hire someone to help. I hope that our group can provide the motivation that we all need and all of the resources that we have at the library and online and tips we can gain from sharing our successes should allow us to be able to tackle this on our own and, as Jamie Novak said in her presentation, "without spending a dime."

Get Motivated

2009-06-19T14:06:00.000-04:00

In my search yesterday, I found a great website for organizing and de-cluttering tips. It is called Online Organizing: A World of Organizing Solutions. I suspect many of you have seen this site at www.OnlineOrganizing.com. They have a blog, free newsletters, great tip sheets and links to products and services that can help us in our quest to live a clutter-free life! The one tip sheet that I found to be quite handy is The Clutter Control Checklist written and submitted to the site by Ramona Creel. It helps to prioritize some of the things we have discussed such as where to start and how much to retain and how much to throw away. You are able to print out this and other resources but be careful not to add to the clutter by printing too much. It may be better to look at sites like this as motivation tools to get you up and doing. Read as much as you want but don’t worry about storing the information in your cluttered office, or in your cluttered memory! Just like the library, the information is there should you need it but the storage and upkeep of the information is left to someone else! Enjoy!

Clutter Control Experts and other resources

2009-06-18T11:46:00.002-04:00

We have talked a lot about weeding and throwing away clutter that has accumulated around our houses, but it is also essential not to allow new clutter from entering our lives and re-cluttering spaces that we have worked so hard to clear. We need to develop as much discipline to stop the incoming clutter as we have devoted to strategies to rid ourselves of what we already have.

Yesterday I quoted some tips from Outwitting Clutter by Bill Adler Jr. (Lyons Press, 2002). I like a lot of what I read in this book, so I went to the Internet to see if Bill Adler was a clutter control expert, like Jamie Novak. I found out that Bill Adler is part of a company called Adler and Robin Books, Inc. who do a series, not of clutter control books, but a series of "Outwitting" books! He has written books such as Outwitting Squirrels, Outwitting Toddlers, Outwitting Neighbors, Outwitting Mice, Outwitting the Adoption Maze, etc. Bill Adler Jr. seems to be an expert on outwitting all of the annoying, complicated or challenging things in our lives. As he says on his webpage: "Outwitting means coming up with some clever new tricks, looking at the problem from an offbeat perspective; in today's business jargon, 'thinking outside the box.'" (http://www.adlerbooks.com/outwitting.html) I like these descriptions when applied to our mission to fight the clutter in our lives - using new tricks, offbeat strategies, etc. Bill Adler himself describes our goal as "the battle over clutter. " He says that "warfare is a good metaphor to help you achieve your goal. You must never let down your guard. Don't let clutter sneak up on you. Clutter is cleaver - it will often disguise itself as something benign." He points out that saving things for an eventual need, that are easily gotten when the need arises, should be avoided. He also cautions against buying the super-sized supply of essentials in bulk if you don't have enough super-sized storage space in bulk. The savings overall are often not worth the cost that having these items around and under foot bring you in terms of added stress and diminished time. He identifies another class of clutter as the things that come into your house unbidden such as the glass vase that comes with a gift of flowers. He reminds us that we rarely get flowers without another of these vases and if we should get fresh cut flowers, we probably all have a much nicer vase that we would rather use than one that came free. He gives us permission to just discard these items he calls "Trojan Clutter Horses" and he says we should "aggressively, even ruthlessly, defend our homes against them!"

If you can't bear to just throw away "a perfectly good vase" or the extra rolls of toilet paper beyond what we could possible use in our lifetime, you should find ways to quickly donate them. I know that some churches divide large flower arrangements that decorate the sanctuary on a Sunday morning into smaller arrangements that are delivered to shut-ins. These churches will often welcome vases that they can use to make up these smaller, deliverable arrangements. And many charitable organizations like food banks, pet shelters and daycare centers will certainly take any extra paper towel rolls or jumbo sized boxes of trash can liners that you may have been tempted to buy by the gross only to find that you really don't have room for them. You can make up a receipt including the approximate cost of these items and have the organization sign the receipt for you to use for a tax deduction at tax time.

Be vigilant and you will soon be victorious over the clutter!

2009-06-17T14:27:00.002-04:00

Hi Fellow Clutter Free Friends of the Future!

Did anyone make any progress over the past weekend on a task? I have heard from a few of you that you have begun to set new habits! Remember, the clutter didn't accumulate in one day so you can't expect to get rid of it in one day! Dedicating just 18-20 minutes at a time; that should be possible for us all every day!

In his book Outwitting Clutter that I passed around at the meeting, author Bill Adler reminds us that the stress-free goal that we are seeking by un-cluttering our lives should not be diminished by the way we reach that goal. We should not drive ourselves to burnout with an all-or-nothing, perfectionist attitude but rather we should get something out of the process. He suggests looking of the process of de-cluttering in a positive light. "Outwitting clutter puts you in a zone of reflection, self-awareness and purification." He goes on to say, "Decluttering needs to be done at a calm, steady pace. Let yourself enjoy the act of decluttering. Don't look at outwitting clutter as a chore, but more as a way of ascending to a better state of being." (pg. 6)

If you don't buy into that concept, he also offers the following: Use the process of decluttering as a form of exercise. "Incorproate large, sweeping body movements whenever you can. The more moving the better." (pg. 7) I would add that a few trips up and down the stairs, if you have some, can burn a few calories as well. Just don't hurt yourself in the process; you don't want the positive experience of de-cluttering to be associated in any way with pain!!

So you see, we can improve the quality of our lives through working to achieve a clutter-free environment. Keep up the good work and don't forget to share your successes with the group on this blog and/or at the next meeting at 7:00 p.m. on July 2nd at the library.

End the week with a success

2009-06-12T11:30:00.002-04:00

Here we are at the end of another work week and we have a lovely weekend ahead. Why not plan to end the week and start the weekend with an 18 minute de-clutter success? When you get home tonight, set your timer and take just 18 minutes to de-clutter one little spot in your life. Choose something that can be done in the 18 minute time period and that you can see and appreciate for the entire weekend. Once you have accomplished that one success, you can free yourself to relax and just enjoy the weekend, or you can be motivated to conquer more 18 minute projects. But, whether you finish just one little de-clutter task or spend the whole weekend doing an area or task much larger, stand back when you are done and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Share your success with us on this blog. I have set you all up as authors on this blog, so you are free to post anything you want to share with the group.

I once attended a motivational speaker who suggested that we should periodically give ourselves a standing ovation. You should stand and look at your success or look yourself in the mirror, and give yourself a full minute of actual applause! "A minute is enough," she said, "you don't want to get a swelled head!"

Bravo - enjoy your weekend.

Jamie's Conference Call

2009-06-11T09:18:00.003-04:00

I tuned in to Jamie Novak's conference call last evening and I know that at least one other in our group was listening as well. If you weren't listening, I will give you a brief summary of the way it was conducted, which I think is a good way for us to consider for our group meetings.

Jamie started by having people share their successes, no matter how small or how large. She was great to give very positive feedback and praise to the person who had achieved the success and still give encouragement to those who may not have completed their goal. Unfortunately, the mechanics of the conference call, where more than one speaker would cut out all other conversation, did not allow the entire group to add their kudos, but we were all applauding in spirit. I think that is an important part of why we will meet, to share our progress and give our support. The next segment of the meeting was the part where Jamie encouraged people to share their ideas on a particular topic with her providing additional information and advice. The topic that Jamie wanted to focus on last night was emotional attachment to the things that we have in our lives that contribute to the clutter. She had some good advice: to determine exactly what we collect and why it is important to us and then decide how much of these items are necessary and how best we can store them and use them or how to donate or discard them. She stated that a good goal to strive for was to reduce everything by at least half! She also encouraged us to really consider if these things are really necessary and to consider that if we can give them to a good cause or someone that may give these items a new life, that we would have a good feeling about moving them out of our lives! There were some great suggestions, particularly about magazines and newspapers, clutter that many of us accumulate. One person who loves to read the newspaper has purchased a Kindle (an electronic wireless reading device that is sold by Amazon.com) on which she subscribes to her favorite newspapers and magazines. This saves her from having to deal with the paper and recycling that a hard copy subscription brings. Another caller brings the magazines she believes are of interest to her doctor's waiting room and leaves them for other's enjoyment. We all know that this would be a great benefit for us all as a replacement for the often old and tired magazines that are usually found in waiting rooms. My advice is to remember to remove your name and address from the magazine before you leave it somewhere. I would also like to add that the library carries a subscription to many good magazines and has a copy of each of the local papers to read for free - no recycling necessary. We also have magazine article databases that can be used to find specific information that is published in magazines, so that you don't need to keep a hard copy of an article about how to fix things that aren't yet broken; you can use the library to find all of the information you will ever need if and when you should need it! And the databases are available on our website 24/7 and you will never have to dig for hours to find that article you remembered seeing! Check out the databases on www.sbpl.info

The final segment of the call was a Q&A period, which Jamie is qualified to run since she has the knowledge and resources to answer most people's questions. If we have this segment, the answers will have to come from our collective knowledge or we will have to leave the meeting with an assignment to find the answer for our next meeting or to share on our blog!

I hope we can use this advice from last night's mini-class to make our group as useful as possible.

If you were also listening in, let me know what you may have gotten from the phone call.

Today is the first day...

2009-06-10T09:01:00.003-04:00

Today we begin our journey to clutter control! Don't forget tonight at 8:30 - Jamie Novak's free "Bite sized organizing class by phone." Join in the call and get more practical advice to get organized. Visit her website for details: http://www.jamienovak.com/Products.html Jamie Novak's seminar at the South Brunswick Public Library last month was a great opportunity to hear first hand many of her organizing tips and solutions; many thanks to the Friends of the Library for sponsoring this event.

Today I was reading The Get Organized Answer Book (Jamie Novak, Sourcebooks, Inc., 2009, pg. 19) about bad habits. Jamie reminds us that "...disorganization is not solely a product of bad habits; you can have great habits and still have clutter. Organization systems that work for you in conjunction with good habits are the keys to success." We will be working on organization systems in our De-Clutter Club, sharing what works and what doesn't. Bring your ideas about how to organize some specific type of clutter - junk mail, clothes, children's toys, magazines, etc. Pick something that is particularly difficult for you - something that you may have had some success with in the past - and share with the group organization solutions you may have tried, whether you have had success or not. We will get through as many of these ideas as we can and continue on this blog or at later meetings.

Join me again here tomorrow and share what is on your mind.

2009-06-09T16:21:00.000-04:00

This is the new blog for the South Brunswick Public Library's DeClutter Club. Look here for daily information on de-cluttering your life, your home, your office, your environment and your world. Members of the group are welcome to post their suggestions and discoveries. Let's get organized!