SimpleProductivityBlog.com » Clutter

Applying One Box filing to Warranties

LJ — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

My Filing Heresy of putting things in one box rather than in nice neat folders has expanded.

I was in my office closet, looking at a pile of warranties to be filed, and looking at the mess that they had become. My eyes fell on my filing box, and I wondered if I could apply the one box principle. I think I can.

Filing Warranties with the One Box Filing Method

I grabbed a pile of clasp envelopes, an empty box, and the warranty pile.

I first went through the warranties, recycling anything we didn’t own any more. Then I sorted into three piles: household built-in, window treatments and other. In the household built-in pile went the warranties for the major appliances, heating systems and other large items that would convey if we moved and sold the house. Window treatments were in a separate pile because they would convey with the house, but might be changed.

I next labeled two envelopes: one for the built-ins, and one for the window treatments. I put the related warrantiesin these envelopes and put them at the bottom of the box. Next I tossed in the rest of the warranties.

All done!

I could have spent more time sorting and categorizing the warranties, but it is so rare that I have to go back into them that it seems pointless. Plus when it comes time to file new warranties, I just have to open up the box and toss the warranty in.

Photo by SuziJane

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Simplify Yourself Using Your Kids

LJ — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

One of the things I have been helping my daughter do is to get rid of the junk that has crept into her spaces. A packrat by nature, her room and play area are dizzyingly crowded with discarded papers, mixed up toys, and (sigh) Happy Meal trinkets.

We’ve been following the House Fairy program and working our way around her room. We did her desk last week.

Kind of as a treat (because I did the bossing around during her cleaning) and because I was aware of how much my space needed to be cleaned, we then tackled my desk.

She loved it. “Keep or toss?” she held up each item with a very serious look.

“Mommy, why do you have so many pens?” she looked at me very seriously. (Addiction?) “You need to get rid of some.” Pens are my weak point. But with her help, I culled. She did allow me to keep the pen she bought me last year as a reward.

But the true help came when I went to put a lipstick we had found in my desk drawer away. She followed me, and shook her head as I filled up the cat water. “Mom, I think you’re sidetracked.”

I was.

What I learned from this experience is that it is good to have another set of eyes on stuff, eyes that aren’t attached to the outcomes. No matter what age they are.

Photo by claude.attard.bezzina

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Creative Ways To Deal With Craft Supplies

LJ — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I don’t know if it was inspired by my reading of Unclutter Your Life in One Week
, or by the impending deadline of visiting relatives, but last weekend I took it into my head to clean out the craft room, also known as the guest bedroom.

Since we don’t have many overnight guests, this room has a tendency to fill up with clutter. Quickly.

Bits and pieces of anything craft-related get dumped here, along with UFOs (UnFinished Objects). So I went through the room, processing the items as I went. It isn’t so much how I decluttered this space, but how I finished the decluttering that is of interest.

Letting Go

Of course the first step in this process was to go through everything and split it up. There was too much of everything. I sorted through all the craft items and made piles, putting back only those things I intended to work on, or could remember what they were for (don’t laugh – I often buy yarn with a project in mind, and then forget what project I intended it for). Same with my daughter’s craft supplies: anything she didn’t care for, or intend to finish, was removed.

This has been a stumbling block in the past; after all, investing time in something grows my attachment to it, even if I hate the sight of it now. I gave myself (and my daughter) permission to let the stuff go.

Donate

For the items we were not going to use, we pulled aside a bag to take down to our church. The bits and pieces are used for Sunday School activities. Knowing that the materials were going to this location made it easier for my daughter to give things up. She even split up some of her things, giving half to the church and keeping half for future projects.

If this method of donation is not an option for you, consider donating extra supplies to a day care center, school or scouting organization. These organizations always need supplies.

Consolidate

One shocking thing was that I had the same types of materials in various places. Yarn stored everywhere, sewing fabric in three places. By putting the bits I wanted to keep together, I was able to see more of what I had and let even more material go.

I grouped the fabric together by types (fuzzy and non-fuzzy), yarn by material (cotton and other), and put all my embroidery floss in the same container. I also put together the sewing projects in progress and the projects that needed finishing.

Hide In Plain Sight

Before I started the purge, the closet in the room was stuffed. Yet there were things in the room not being used to advantage. Case and point were two wicker boxes that were turned upside down into a mini-display area. By turning these boxes so that the open side faced the wall, I was able to put the scrap yarn in there and hide it from sight.

Creative Storage

Other things in my room need to be stored to preserve them in between uses. My self-healing cutting mats need to be stored flat, yet there is no surface available to do this. So I slipped the mats in between the mattress and box spring on the bed. It’s out of the way, yet being kept flat for future use.

Use as Decorations

Even after stashing most of my yarn in the bins, I had two groups of skeins left: one for a coat I will make this winter, and my collection of cotton for making dishcloths. The coat wool has an interesting texture, so I stuffed it into a clear glass vase for an interesting “decoration”. The cotton was put in a shallow basket with a pair of knitting needles sticking out of it, and placed on top of the wicker boxes.

Complete (or Make Plans To)

In the midst of the clean-out, I found three projects that need to be completed. Instead of putting these back into the space (and into the forgotten throes of my project list), I took the items and put them in my in box. All three will be dealt with this weekend. These projects have been on the list, and none will take that long to finish; but they have been languishing on the Someday list for years.

With two hours of work, my guest room is ready for the coming guests and much more usable for my purposes.

Photo by evelynishere

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How To Simplify (And Organize) A Pantry

LJ — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:00:50 +0000

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I took some time this past week to tackle my pantry. Over the past months it has grown to be a mass of cluttered foodstuffs, making it almost impossible for me to find anything or even know what is in there. While I thought it would be a huge job, it turned out only take about two hours, and now I can find everything I have in the closet.

Reorganizing a pantry can seem like a daunting job, but with a few simple steps, it will go very easily.

Getting Set Up

To clean the pantry, I pulled out the trash can and put in a new bag. I also put the compost bucket nearby, and a pan of soapy water. I also had a bin to put recycleable items.

The trash can is to hold things that need to be thrown away. The compost bucket will hold vegetables that need to go, and the soapy water is to swish out the recycleable containers before I put the containers in the recycling bin.

Approach methodically

One of the worst ways to approach what is essentially decluttering is to start pulling things out willy-nilly. By breaking the pantry down into small sections, cleaning and reorganizing will seem less overwhelming.

I work from the top down, for the simple reason that as I clean, dust will fall to the lower areas via gravity. That means I am not re-dirtying things I have already cleaned.

Clean out expired, weird ingredients

I often buy ingredients I wouldn’t normally use because they are called for in a recipe. And either I don’t make the recipe, or I decide to skip the ingredients because I realize I have no chance of sneaking them by my family.

Other times food will expire. I found this to be particularly true of my “emergency” shelf, because I had not rotated the food into common usage on time.

For these two situations, I pull the food out. If the food is expired, I will toss it in the trash (or compost heap if it is veggies) and swish and recycle the container. If the food is not expired, I put it aside for the food pantry.

Sort

I like to keep my pantry sorted by like items. For instance, the short arm of the L of my pantry, top shelf, is where I keep the disposables. Paper plates, paper napkins, paper towels and disposable silverware. The next shelf down holds the condiments: wines, vinegars, oils and the backup items for ketchup, mustard and relish.

Some groupings from my pantry:

Rices
Pasta and sauces
Baking mixes and baking ingredients (nuts, chips, etc)
Cereals
Spices and seasonings
Dressings and mixes
Breads
Snacks
Canned goods
PB & J , nut butters, jams and preserves
Sundae bar (for make-your-own sundaes)

Replace Like Items Together As They Make Sense

Since my pantry is pretty much set up as groups and I was only doing a cleaning/purge, I put misplaced items with their fellows as I went.

However, if this is the first time you are doing your pantry, you might want to group like items together outside of the area before putting them back in.

Use Helpers

I’m not talking about Hamburger Helper here. I’m talking about things that make it easier to group like items together.

My canned goods are stored on a large turntable that makes an inaccessible corner accessible. My spices are stored on a double-level turntable to make it easy to access all the bottles. I use old shoe boxes and dollar store baskets to hold like items, like chips and snacks.

With a bit of sorting, tossing, and cleaning dust bunnies, I was able to simplify the pantry and get it into shape so I can find everything very quickly and easily.

Photo by lu_lu

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De-cluttering the kitchen

GuestPost — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:00:00 +0000

This is a guest post by Trish Smith, Owner of Simple Meal Plan. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

We all enjoy having a well-organized kitchen – it makes cooking a pleasure, rather than a chore. But if your kitchen is overcrowded and messy, what can you do? Well, it might be time for you to clear out those gadgets, tools, and appliances you don’t use. But where do you start?

Start by thinking about how you actually cook. Not about how you’d like to cook, or about how you’d cook if you had the time (this is my biggest weak spot), but how you actually cook. Your goal is to keep only those items that you use on a regular basis, or that you use for “special projects” often enough to make them worth keeping (my 20 quart stockpot, food mill, and cookie cutters all fall in this category).

Now go through the kitchen and start tossing! First, get rid of duplicates. You don’t need three garlic presses, two mixers (I’m talking to you, Mom), or four zesters. And speaking of that garlic press, you can reclaim a lot of your kitchen real estate by eliminating single-use tools. Garlic can easily be chopped by hand (or even simply smashed with the side of a knife blade), and no one needs a strawberry slicer, a cherry pitter, or an apple corer. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. Keep a tool, gadget, or appliance if:

The task it performs is one you do a LOT of, and which would take you considerable time if you had to do it yourself (or is a skill you simply can’t seem to master). For example, if you make several gallons of lemonade each month in the summer (like I do), it might be worth having a professional juice presser (like I do). But if you only juice a few lemons a year, think about getting rid of it and replacing it with a simple hand juicer.
It allows you to cook or bake an item you’d never have time to make any other way. For example, if you have a breadmaker, I’d recommend getting rid of it and learning to bake bread by hand. Making bread by hand is an experience that is, in my opinion, superior to doing it by machine. But if there simply isn’t any time for you to make bread any other way, then I’d tell you to keep your machine and keep baking homemade bread, because the quality is so much better than store-bought.

This applies to pots and plates as well as gadgets and kitchen appliances. A family of four does not, generally speaking, need 30 plates. If you need extras for holiday entertaining, remove those from the kitchen and store them in the dining room or your attic with the rest of your holiday items. Of course, if storage is a premium, you might have to keep them in your kitchen. But if that’s the case, designate one cabinet or area for holiday supplies, and keep your cake plate, holiday serving pieces, special tablecloths, etc. in that area. That keeps them out of the “everyday” areas of your kitchen, and makes day-to-day cooking easier.

Once you’ve gone through this process, you’ll be amazed at how much more room you have – and how much easier it is to cook and bake now that you don’t need to wade through things you don’t use.

Have you tried de-cluttering your kitchen? How did it go? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Trish Smith brings you information each week that can help you make better food choices – from how to find locally-produced food, to how to prepare that food in a way that’s easy, simple, tasty, and healthy.

Photo by army.arch

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Picking up is not cleaning

LJ — Wed, 26 May 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Something I read in a blog came back and hit me square between the eyes…picking up is not cleaning! I know, it probably seems obvious, but that is one thing that trips me up. I spend time picking things up and congratulate myself on a good session of cleaning.

It’s the easy way out. “I’ve picked up every day this week. Why isn’t the place clean?” But I haven’t cleaned. I’ve merely put stuff away.

So the answer to how to clean a house is first to make sure that things are put away. And the easiest way I know to make sure that putting things away doesn’t turn into a major job is to put them away right after I use them.

I’ve given myself a break from doing anything but the bare minimum around the house until the end of June, and then I hope to get back on track with a method I can live with. But I think the method is going to have to start each and every session with a room pick-up, then move onto cleaning. Maybe Sundays could be devoted to picking up? It’s a thought.

So I know this is kind of rambling, but I thought I would share this with you all.

In June I’m going to have a couple of reader surveys go up. I’d like you all to help me design future offerings from the blog; these will probably include housekeeping and productivity systems. Look for them…they will have prizes attached!

Photo by Urban Woodswalker

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Clutter 101: How To Start Decluttering

LJ — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 11:00:35 +0000

Decluttering. It can seem so overwhelming if you were never taught how to do it. Here is a quick guide on how to declutter.

Gather Supplies

Decluttering requires a few things. They are things you have around the house, so gather them up!

Boxes.You will need 6 containers with rigid sides. They can be leftover boxes, laundry baskets, plastic crates or whatever. The rigid sides mean that it will be easy to put stuff into them quickly.
Marking Pens. You will need to label each of the six containers. If you can’t write directly on them, use scrap paper and tape a sign on each one. Label them: Trash, Recycle, Shred, Give Away, Put Away, Undecided.
Trash Bags. Line your trash container with a trash bag. If you want to get fancy and line your recycle, shred and give away boxes, feel free. Just remember that this might cause the contents of these boxes to end up in the trash, because the bags will be indistinguishable from regular trash.
A Timer. A portable timer works best. You will use this to limit what you are doing so you don’t overspend your energy.

Learn the Ground Rules

Don’t start too big. You can’t declutter a whole house in a day, so don’t try. If you do too much you will burn out and you won’t want to do more later.
Don’t haul everything out at once. Deal with small sections at once. Pulling everything out will overwhelm you.
Set a timer and take breaks. This is important. Don’t work too long, and don’t work too long without a break. I like 15 minute increments: work for 15, then spend 5 minutes doing something fun. I never spend more than 45 minutes in a day decluttering, though.
Put on upbeat music. Make this fun. Energetic music will want to make you move.

Getting Started

For your decluttering session:

Pick one room. If your messiest room seems too overwhelming, pick something easy to start with. But limit yourself to one room.
Start with the floor from the door, clockwise. The room will seem less cluttered once everything is off the floor.
Pick up each item once and make a decision. Here are the questions to ask yourself:
- Have I used it in the past year?
- Do I love it?
- Is it mine?
- Does it belong in this room?
Choose a box. If you know you don’t use it or love it, but you can’t bear to get rid of it, put it in the undecided box. However, you can only put one item in the undecided box for every 10 items that you handle. Note: if something is worn, stained or broken, or in a shape you would not give it to your best friend, it is trash. Deal with it accordingly.
Next, declutter the flat surfaces, clockwise around the room. This includes tables, desks, chairs, shelves, anything that is horizontal.
Next, do the hidden areas. This includes drawers, storage bins, closets, and anything that can’t be seen when you first enter the room.

Finishing Up

When your session is finished, you must deal with your boxes.

Put everything away in the put away box. If it doesn’t have a home, reconsider if it should be in one of the other containers.
Put trash in trashcan. Take it outside of the house and get rid of it. Don’t leave it to clutter up another part of your house.
Put give away in car, and get rid of it by the end of the next day. Don’t let your give aways pile up either. Locate the nearest charity drop-off and drop the items off the next day.
Put recycling in bin. See trash notes.
Shred everything in the shred bag. Don’t let this pile up.
Seal and date the undecided box. Set the date for six months. If you haven’t needed anything in there for six months, take the sealed container to your favorite charity for donation.

Congratulations! You have just decluttered a room!

Photo by JD_WMWM

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Stock Theory of Decluttering

LJ — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

A friend and I were having lunch when I told her about my inability to throw out an orchid. A gift, it had stopped blooming a few years ago, although putting forth healthy shoots. I gave my husband another orchid, but when he asked if I would get rid of the other one, I said no. After all, all the special needs animals seem to collect at my house. Why would I give up on a plant just because it no longer bloomed?

My friend introduced me to the stock purchase theory of decluttering. I have her permission to relate it here.

The Stock Theory of Decluttering

If you are considering buying a stock, you decide partly on how much it costs now.

In the Stock Theory of Decluttering, you decide if you would buy the object today, at today’s prices, knowing what you know about the usefulness and the current state of the item. If not, it should leave your house.

Applying the Stock Theory Of Decluttering

Applying It to Clutter

The first application of this theory is to the stuff laying around my house. Inspired by Simplify. 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life, I have been working on getting rid of stuff. Applying the Stock Theory gives me one more way to consider the items I am assessing: do I love it? Do I use it? Am I taking care of it? and now, Would I buy this today knowing what I know about it, in its current state?

Applying It to Activities

The Stock Theory can also be applied to other areas of my life. Activities, for example. Would I have gotten involved with creating specifications for a non-profit’s sound system knowing what I know now? No. Would I be a Brownie leader? Possibly. Would I write this blog? Yes. Would I continue to teach at my summer retreat? Yes.

It has been very interesting to apply this new theory to simplifying my life. I keep finding ways to apply it, and it is making things a bit easier as I go through the on-going process of simplifying.

Photo by jm3

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Decluttering Firefox

LJ — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Fridays are tip days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I switched to Firefox almost as soon as it came out. While I work with Microsoft products for a living, I hated working with IE6. Firefox gave me so much more… tabbed browsing, and the ability to expand functionality with extensions! Oh my, the extensions!!!!

Don’t you hate it when something that works well for a long time stops?

But it was bound to happen. Firefox slowed down. To the point where I couldn’t use it at home anymore. I would click on a site, and it would be slow to load. And then any time I was typing anything — search, URL or whatever — there was a significant lag, and sometimes my typing didn’t always show up completely.

Back to Basics

Mozilla recommends that the first thing you do is remove all extensions.

Remove my extensions? Are they nuts? My extensions make Firefox easy for me to incorporate in what I do. Still, I had to do something, so I opened up the screen to see what I could remove. Surely there were things I wasn’t using.

What I Found

If there ever was an area that needed decluttering, it was my Firefox extensions. I never realized how much stuff had accumulated. 3 different managers for GMail, tools for dissecting and reassembling web pages, and some extensions that I don’t even remember why I installed.

So out they came.

But It’s Still Slow!

The Great Shoveling of Extensions had no effect. So I had to go further. I knew it couldn’t be all the extensions, more likely the problem was in one or two of them.

So I made a list of the ones I had to have. Then I removed everything.

Zippy!

Firefox came back to a quick little browser. So I started re-adding the extensions one by one.

Problem Child Found

It turns out that the problem child was the Google toolbar. So while I miss having my Google bookmarks right there, I am currently working without the extension. And Firefox is still zipping along.

Please note this doesn’t mean it is a problem everywhere – I’m still using the toolbar at work with no problems. Go figure.

Photo by fczuardi

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Organized Does Not Mean Storage Boxes

LJ — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

An acquaintance of mine was eager to talk. It could have been out of a sitcom: a woman walks into a house, laden with bags. She announces: “I’m going to get organized. Look at all the containers I bought!”

Stop.

All that pretty containers will get you is a bunch of clutter stored in pretty containers.

I don’t agree with Flylady on everything (see Why Flylady Didn’t Work for Me), but this one I do: you can’t organize clutter. Putting clutter in boxes just gets it out of sight. It may not be visible, but somewhere in your mind it will be weighing you down.

Getting organized is one of the top resolutions people make every year. And every year, people fail at this, because they are trying to organize what they have, rather than getting rid of the stuff they don’t need.

Organization is simply applying the rule: “Everything has a place, and everything in its place.”

I will be re-organizing this year, and I have already started. But the difference is that I am decluttering first.

But Where Do I Start To Declutter?

I like a gut-level approach. I know when things bug me. So I decide I’m going to spend some time decluttering – I will usually take a look around the room I am in and figure out what bothers me most. For instance, I was in my bedroom recently and decided that my top dresser drawer really bugged me. This has turned into a junk drawer of sorts, so I spent some time clearing it out.

You can also do a systematic approach, where you cycle through the rooms and areas of your house and regularly declutter them.

How To Declutter

There are many ways to declutter, but the method I prefer is the pile/basket method. Here are the steps:

Get some containers or set aside space for piles. You are going to need four: keep, give away, throw away, put away. I like using boxes or baskets for the give away and put away. I usually have a trash bag for the throw away, and I just put the keep to the side, for it will go back in where it came from.
Pull everything out. The key to making decluttering work is not to tackle too big of an area. You need enough space to pull everything out of the area you are going to declutter.
Sort. Go through the pile and put it in one of the four categories. If you can’t decide right away on something, put it in the put away pile.
Put the keep items back. Clean out the space and neatly put the keep pile back in place.
Remove the garbage. Take the garbage out of the house.
Remove the give away. Put the give away in a place where you will get rid of it in the next three days.
Put away the rest. Here’s the key to successful decluttering. You have to have a space for everything. And you have to tell yourself you can’t dump your stuff in an area you’ve already decluttered. (Otherwise you run the risk of just moving piles around the house). If something ended up in the put away pile because you didn’t know what to do with it, think seriously why you can’t get rid of it. If you are still very attached to something that serves no purpose in your life, put it away, out of sight for a while. You’ll get back to it.

Once everything is decluttered, you’re going to find you don’t need all those storage containers. And things will be organized!

Photo by taberandrew

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